Coming up on 25 years soon. Sadly, while Matthew death was real, the narrative of it - straight-up homophobia - was indeed shown as false.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behind-americas-most-famous-gay-hate-murder-matthew-shepard
Matthew Shepard’s horrific death at the hands of redneck homophobes shocked America and changed its laws. Now a different truth is emerging, but does it matter? Julie Bindel reports
[OUT, GAY] investigative journalist Stephen Jimenez...spent 13 years interviewing more than 100 people with a connection to the case. His conclusion, outlined in The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard, is that the grotesque murder was not a hate crime, but could instead be blamed on crystal meth...
When [Jiminez] started he was convinced that Matthew died at the hands of homophobes, but he soon discovered that Matthew’s tragedy began long before the night he was killed.
Jimenez found that Matthew was addicted to and dealing crystal meth and had dabbled in heroin. He also took significant sexual risks and was being pimped alongside Aaron McKinney, one of his killers, with whom he’d had occasional sexual encounters...
So: per eyewitness accounts, Matthew & Aaron McKinney were same-sex sex workers together, partied & occasionally had sex with each other.
...the fact that [Matthew] knew one of his killers prior to the attack, was never explored in court. Neither was the rumour that [McKinney & Henderson] knew that [Matthew] had access to a shipment of crystal meth with a street value of $10,000 which they wanted to steal...
Laramie is considered the most liberal town in Wyoming....[Police officer Flint Waters who arrived on scene, said] "...It was fairly well known in the Laramie community that McKinney wouldn’t be one that was striking out of a sense of homophobia..."
But activists & elected officials seized Matthew's killing as a chance to score points, get attention, raise funds, etc.
McKinney & Henderson, though mostly dumb, surely would have been just smart enough to know they were headed for jail in any event & had best play along.
...says Jimenez. “...Nothing in this book takes away from the iniquity and brutality of the crime or the culpability of his murderers, but we owe Matthew and other young men like him the truth."
That truth is: It was drugs. Ie. the inhuman struggle addicts feel, to obtain drugs and/or money.
Matthew got the worst of it, a tragedy.
As to Henderson:
Although McKinney has never acknowledged that he knew Matthew, Jimenez found a dozen sources that had seen them together. One is Kathleen Johnson, the former owner of Laramie antiques store Granny’s Attic, who knew Henderson, McKinney and Matthew...
...“Russell Henderson used to hang around with gay people,” Johnson told me. “Laramie had a big gay population. I knew what people’s sexual orientation was because my best friend’s son was gay. I saw them hanging around with Russell.”
The police did not investigate the killers’ relationship to the gay community.
Again: because Matthew's death got instantly politicized or framed in a particular way. It was done. Who would rock that boat?
John Stoltenberg is a gay-rights activist who lived with the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin until her death in 2005. He’s a long-time supporter of The Laramie Project, but has also blogged positively about The Book of Matt. “Keeping Matthew as the poster boy of gay-hate crime and ignoring the full tragedy of his story has been the agenda of many gay-movement leaders,” he says. “Ignoring the tragedies of Matthew’s life prior to his murder will do nothing to help other young men in our community who are sold for sex, ravaged by drugs, and generally exploited. They will remain invisible and lost.”
Stoltenberg surely means porn actors among others. I get it, that it's uncomfortable to mention all this on a porn site.
Ted Henson is a former lover and long-term friend of Matthew’s. The pair originally met when Matt was growing up in Saudi Arabia. Henson told me he believes that The Book of Matt is “nothing more than the truth” and that he was “never certain” that the murder was an anti-gay hate crime.
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