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Bush gets an F in foreign affairs
The Texas governor who would be president can't identify the leaders of Chechnya, Pakistan or India. Has he been taking lessons from Dan Quayle?
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[11/04/99]

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The revisionism intensified during the last two weeks as the media reported the defense's portrayal of Shepard's killers as suffering from "gay panic" and Shepard himself as a reckless sexual aggressor who probably provoked his own death, even if he didn't deserve it.

Statements made by one of the convicted killers, which were revealed for the first time Thursday, reveal these accounts to be false. But the national media wasn't around to report it.

In October 1998, Shepard was beaten with a .357 Magnum and tied to a fence in the Wyoming countryside. Five days later, the 21-year-old died from his injuries. Earlier this week, a jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of first-degree felony murder. Shepard's parents agreed to an unexpected deal with defense attorneys to a sentencing agreement, giving McKinney two life sentences, rather than exposing him to the death penalty. In April, McKinney's friend and fellow roofer Russell Henderson pleaded guilty to felony murder and was sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole.

With the completion of the final murder trial, and the lifting of Judge Barton Voigt's gag order, key information related to those questions was revealed Thursday. According to detectives who interviewed both of the convicted murderers, there is no evidence that Shepard made any sexual advances to the pair -- and the detectives dismissed the idea that the murder was the mere result of a robbery gone bad.

"Far from that!" scoffed Sgt. Rob DeBree, the chief investigator in the case. "They knew damn well he was gay ... It started out as a robbery and burglary, and I sincerely believe the other activity was because he was gay."

DeBree was available to reveal much of the sealed information in the case, but said only a handful of reporters -- none of them from the major national media -- had asked. He and police Detective Commander Dave O'Malley spoke extensively with Salon News Thursday afternoon and again Friday morning inside the Albany County courthouse.

McKinney and his defense team were silent on the new information, because his sentencing agreement forbids them from ever discussing the case, or profiting from it.

The most significant revelations emerged from the secret confession of Henderson, obtained just three days after his plea bargain. Henderson's confession is crucial, since he is the only person besides McKinney who knows what really happened at the Fireside Lounge and that infamous fence last October. Henderson spoke to DeBree and other detectives for about an hour and 45 minutes after his sentence was finalized and he had nothing else to lose.

Henderson debunked the portrayal of Shepard that has gained currency the past few weeks. Had he testified in court as scheduled at McKinney's trial, he would have blown apart the watered-down "gay panic" defense pursued to the end by McKinney's legal team, despite Voigt's rejection of some of its key components.

During his closing argument, public defender Dion Custis hammered home the gay panic theme repeatedly, summarizing the key elements of his defense in two sentences: "It started because Matthew Shepard grabbed [McKinney's] balls. It continued because Aaron McKinney was a chronic meth user."

The grope never happened, DeBree insists. Henderson told investigators that as far as he knows, the grope was entirely fictional. In order for McKinney's story about the pass to hold up, DeBree said, his response to the homosexual grope would have to have been so silent and serene that Henderson was oblivious to the entire incident. The three young men were crammed into the front seat of the truck, with Henderson driving and Shepard squeezed into the middle. What's more, the defense team's opening statement at trial repeatedly emphasized that it was McKinney's humiliation in front of his friend that triggered the attack. Henderson said he never saw it.

But one aspect of the defense's portrayal of McKinney did hold up under investigation. Independent of Henderson's testimony, the detectives concluded that McKinney's stunning allegations that a neighborhood bully forced the 7-year-old McKinney to perform oral sex on him were completely true. O'Malley lived next door to McKinney for several years, and he said his son was prepared to testify to witnessing those events during the penalty phase of the trial. Both detectives said the bully had left Laramie years ago.

Despite the defense team's repeated allegation that Shepard groped the young man, DeBree said McKinney recanted it in his own taped confession. The tape was played in court, but much of it was inaudible to the gallery where the press was seated. Transcripts were provided to the jury, but remained under seal late Friday afternoon. DeBree said the tape shows that initially, McKinney claims Shepard reached over and grabbed his crotch or his leg. "Then later, he says 'as if he was going to.' To me that says clearly, it never happened."

Henderson was scheduled as the star witness for the prosecution, as a key condition of his plea bargain. But he created a flurry of courtroom drama by abruptly breaking that bargain Oct. 28, refusing to testify just minutes before taking the stand. He'd already been transported 100 miles from the state penitentiary in Rawlins, and actually sat down on the stand during a recess. He was inexplicably pulled from the witness list after a lengthy closed-door hearing. Only later that day was the source of the drama revealed. Prosecutor Cal Rerucha said he had taken Henderson at his word, but that with two life sentences hanging over the convict's head and no possibility of parole, he had no leverage to force compliance.

Next page | What if Henderson had testified?