Any LGBT person worth their salt is aware of the story of Matthew Shepard, but a new book reveals some disturbing details that put Shepard and his murder in a new light.
The 1998 murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in a horrific hate crime was one of the first of its kind to gain major media attention and put a spotlight on anti-gay violence. The Laramie Project, a play that was written about the impact of the murder both on Laramie, Wyoming where it took place and the citizens who were left to deal with the fallout, is still performed to this day.
The Matthew Shepard Foundation continues to fight hate with educational outreach programming, and his name (along with racial hate crime victim James Byrd, Jr.) is attached to federal hate crime legislation designed to harshly punish those who commit crimes based on race or sexual orientation. There is arguably no symbol in the modern gay rights movement who is more deified than Matthew Shepard. However, nearly 20 years after his murder, a new book aims to change how Shepard’s death is viewed.
The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About The Murder of Matthew Shepard is an exhaustively researched book written by openly gay journalist, writer, and producer Stephen Jimenez, who initially traveled to Laramie in 2000 to write a screenplay about Shepard’s murder. What he claims to have found after a bit of digging and 13 years of travel, interviews, and research with some of the key figures of the case are a few shocking details which are likely to ruffle more than a few feathers.
Among the more shocking revelations is that one of the men convicted of murdering Shepard, Aaron McKinney, was his sometime lover and a closeted bisexual who may have killed him not out of gay panic, but because he was in possession of six ounces of crystal meth that had just come into Laramie. Jimenez also asserts that Shepard was not only HIV positive, but also had a history of substance abuse that continued right up until his death.
Andrew Sullivan interviewed the author (below), who seems acutely aware of the fallout from the LGBT community he may face, but is determined to report the truth of what he found during his years of researching the case. Matthew Shepard was as human as any of us, and though the community has made great strides to ensure that his death wasn’t in vain, Jimenez obviously feels that the truth of his life deserves to be shared.