A Wall of Angels: The Matthew Shepard Story

0:00 [MUSIC] One morning, in October of 1998, a cop in Laramy Wyoming shows up to a fight and looks inside a pickup. He finds a bloody gun and a credit card with a stranger's name. He finds a pair of shoes, too. The guys in that truck know who shoes those are and they know where he is right now. This is the story of Matthew Shepherd. [MUSIC] The kids at Matthew Shepherd's school in Casper, Wyoming voted him peer counselor.

1:03 And then the kids at his school overseas did it, too. So on both sides of the ocean, Matt was the guy that you went to and found when your life was falling apart. Why overseas? His dad, Dennis, took a job with Saudi Aramco. And since Saudi Arabia at the time had no good American high school for him, Matt went to school in Switzerland. His friend, Romain Patterson, calls him a total nerd. He loved the theater and politics and treated strangers like friends that he just hadn't met yet. Dennis said Matt could talk hunting and fishing and then turn around and talk theater. Some of Matt's school writing survived. He's mischievous and homesick in those writings and he makes it clear he wants people to respect his privacy.

1:47 On a school trip to Morocco in 1995, Matt was raped. Nobody was ever caught and his family says depression and panic hung on him for a long time after that. He started at the University of Wyoming in Laramie in the fall of 1998 and he joined the campus LGBT group. He was 21 years old. About 10,000 people in Laramie were university students and the campus was more of a liberal corner of a conservative ranching state. People describe Wyoming back then as "don't ask, don't tell." Where if you're gay, you mostly kept it to yourself, though gay folks in Laramie later told reporters that the town had acceptance in it, too. Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were Laramie guys, both high school dropouts who did roofing and they drank together.

2:33 Aaron had a girlfriend named Kristen Price and a baby son. He also had a sin and sing coming up because he'd been arrested for taking about $2,500 out of a Kentucky fried chicken. Russell's grandmother raised him. He dated Chasady Paisley. Matt Sheppard spent the evening of October 6th at a planning meeting for gay awareness week. Then he went to a bar called the Fireside Lounge. Russell later told the court that "a robbery was Aaron's idea." And years later he said he figured that if he kept Aaron drinking, Aaron might forget it. What was the plan? Kristen, Aaron's girlfriend, told the jury the guys worked it out in the bathroom.

3:14 They'd act like they were gay so Matt would get in the truck. And then they would rob him. Matt did walk out with them and got an Aaron's pickup with Russell driving. And everything you'll hear about what got said in that truck comes from Aaron and Russell because they're the ones who talked to the police about it. Somewhere on the drive east of town, Aaron pulled out a 357 revolver and told Matt that this was a robbery, demanded his wallet, and then started hitting him. Aaron claimed later that Matt touched his leg. That claim is Aaron's and there is no neutral witness in the truck to verify that or to say it didn't happen. Aaron and Russell parked near the Sherman Hills subdivision and Aaron pulled Matt out and kept beating him with the gun.

3:59 And then on Aaron's orders, Russell got a rope out of the truck and tied Matt's wrists to a wooden split rail fence. Russell told the court that he tried to stop the beating and Aaron hit him in the face with the gun also. And Russell went back to the truck. They took Matt's wallet. They took his shoes too. And neither man's account explains why they took the shoes. He was close to freezing outside and they got in the truck and they drove back to town. Back in Laramie, Aaron got into a fight with two guys and hit the first guy with that same gun. And the second guy fought back and gave Aaron a head injury. A police officer showed up and detained Russell and in the pickup he saw the bloody gun and Matt's credit card.

4:41 He also saw Matt's shoes. If you're that officer, you're looking at a stranger's credit card and a stranger's shoes. And that stranger, he didn't know at the time, was tied up to a fence out past the edge of town. The police, for some reason, let Russell go. Later that day, Russell and the two girlfriends drove the bloody clothes all the way to Cheyenne. A whole different city, just to throw them into a dumpster and then they got their alibi's lined up. Matt, by the way, is still out there tied to this fence. About 18 hours after the attack, a guy was out riding his mountain bike and he came up on the fence where Matt was still alive. A sheriff's officer named Reggie Flute got there first.

5:22 She cut Matt loose and worked to keep his airway open. When her gloves gave out, she kept going with her bare hands. Matt ended up in the hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado and Judy and Dennis came all the way from Saudi Arabia to be with him. And then you had the whole country following it on the news. It made national news. The hospital read a statement from the family asking for privacy, which is the exact thing that Matt kept asking for in all of those school papers. Aaron's first story to the police was that somebody had borrowed his truck. Then he sat down with the lead investigator and admitted the beating. The investigator said Aaron came across as cold and mostly seemed upset about losing time with his son.

6:03 At some point Aaron allegedly said it's gay awareness week. Matt spent his last night out helping to plan it. Matt, by the way, never woke up. He died at 12.53 in the morning. It was October 12 and his family was there by his side. Russell played guilty to felony murder and kidnapping in April of 1999, which took the death penalty off the table. He got two life sentences and apologized to the shepherds. Westboro Baptist Church, picketed Matt's funeral and the court proceedings and remain the friend who called Matt a total nerd, answered with something she called "angel action." Where volunteers and white robes and enormous wings lined up to block the protesters from view.

6:48 If you walked into that courthouse, you saw nothing but a wall of angels. Aaron's trial ran that fall. His lawyers wanted to argue Matt made a pass at him and it set off memories of Aaron being abused as a kid. And the judge kept that gay panic defense out because Wyoming law didn't allow it. The jury acquitted Aaron of premeditated murder and convicted him of felony murder, which could still get him executed. The next day, the shepherds backed a deal, life with no parole if Aaron gave up his appeals. Dennis, Matt's dad, told Aaron in court, quote, "I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKenney." Then he said he was choosing mercy and Matt's memory.

7:31 Here we go further, let's separate two things, what the court decided and what people still argue about. Wyoming had no hate crime law covering sexual orientation and the federal government didn't either. So if you'd been on that jury, you'd have been deciding murder and kidnapping. The argument is messier. In 2004, Aaron and Russell told ABC News it was about money and meth and Kristen, the girlfriend who testified about the bathroom plan, told the same show that she lied before and didn't think it was a hate crime. Keep those two versions of Kristen in your mind because she gave the first version under oath. A journalist, Stephen Jimenez, wrote a book with the theory that Matt and Aaron already knew each other through meth.

8:17 Critics challenged the sources pretty diligently and Matt's autopsy showed no meth in his system. Aaron changed his story again in 2009. "The night I did it, I did have hatred for homosexuals," he said. He also said that Matt "needed killing." And here's my read that nobody asked for. It started as a robbery and Matt being gay had a lot to do with why they picked him and how Aaron treated him and how much meth played into it, he really can't measure because Aaron has told so many different stories and so many different ways that you really can't believe him. Judy and Dennis started the Matthew Shepherd Foundation that December and a theater company interviewed people all over Laramie.

8:59 And those interviews turned into the Laramie project, a play that's been staged thousands of times since. President Obama signed the Matthew Shepherd and James Bird Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. The shepherds held on to Matt's ashes for 20 years because they were scared that any grave that they might set up would get vandalized. In 2018, they interred him at Washington National Cathedral. For Pride Month in 2021, the White House put a pair of Matthews sandals on display. Aaron is still at prison in Rawlings. He has no parole date. Russell is still serving a life sentence and he's worked with hospice patients and trained shelter dogs in there. The parole board turned down his request for commutation in 2024.

9:44 Judy got the presidential medal of freedom that same year. And that mischievous, homesick school writing of Matt's is at the Smithsonian now. And the National Museum of American History with notebooks and his photographs where you can go look at it for yourself if you're ever in Washington, DC. Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime. Hello, I'm Joe, I'm the host. And here's an email. I'm going to introduce my friend, Joe. I just wanted to tell you that I got a new job and my commute went from 40 minutes down to 12, which is great for my life and terrible for my podcast listening.

10:26 So now when I'm behind on episodes of your show, I just take the long way home and catch up. Anyway, still here, still listening, just a little slower now. I'm glad the show is still going well. Brian in Lakewood, Colorado. Brian, thank you for listening. Thank you for taking the time to write and congratulations on the commute time. I would normally say congratulations on the job, but holy crap, going from 40 down to 12, that's a big, huge improvement. You're getting a whole 30 minutes almost back of your life just one way. That's an hour a day you're saving. So congratulations on that. That's huge. I know that back in the day, I had a job where my office was an hour and 20 minutes away from my house.

11:07 And this was before podcasts were a thing. So I was just raw dog in this drive with whatever was on the radio. I think I lasted maybe two years at that job. But yet nowadays, this podcast seems to be a big hit with people that are commuting and I really do appreciate you commuters that are listening to the podcast. That's second behind only doing housework. People listen a lot while they're doing housework. And I'll take it however I can get it. Alright, if you're a new listener to this podcast, welcome to 10 Minute Murder and make sure you hit subscribe wherever you like listening to podcasts. Go to 10minuteMurder.com for more information about me and the show. And if you're really enjoying it, make sure you share it with your friends and your family.

11:48 And that's going to do it. That's it for today. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder.