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Authors: Stephen Jimenez
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statements by Aaron McKinney’s father and girlfriend, was there any reason to doubt anti-gay hate as the motive?
Whatever other traits Bill McKinney and his son may share, their sharp facial features and eyes bear an uncanny resemblance, right down to their tight, slightly upturned lips when they’re pissed offabout something. After meeting Aaron in person, I could never be in his father’s presence without having the discomfiting sense that Aaron was there, too.
Bill McKinney only agreed to talk with me, he said, “because you seem to have an open mind on the case, with more questions than answers.” I couldn’t help but wonder just the same: Would he have given me the time of day had I disclosed up front that I’m gay? One personal paradox of revisiting Matthew’s murder was my decision to remain closeted with several sources, at least early on. I was concerned that my investigation might be perceived as having a gay agenda and that sources in Wyoming might hesitate to open up. But it later became apparent that Bill McKinney knew I was gay from the start and was unfazed.
Over many cups of coffee at Shari’s twenty-four-hour restaurant on Laramie’s North 3rd Street — and despite my initial skepticism — I slowly warmed to Bill’s no-nonsense disposition. Never once did he suggest his son was anything less than fully culpable for his explosive violence against Matthew Shepard. On the contrary, he volunteered, “Aaron has always had a terrible temper, going way, way back.”
But like others, Bill McKinney was unconvinced that hatred of gays was behind the attack. He reminded me of something I had heard from others in Laramie: that at the time of the murder both Kristen Price’s mother and the mother of Russell Henderson’s twenty-year-old girlfriend, Chasity Pasley, were in lesbian relationships and “there was no evidence whatsoever of Aaron or Russell expressing anti-gay feelings.”
“Aaron lived in the same house with Kristen’s mother for months and they never had a problem,” Bill recalled.
When I asked him if it was possible that Aaron had been sexually involved with other males, he said he had “no knowledge of it” but appeared to shrug my question off as dumb or irrelevant.
“Come on, Steve, we’ve all experimented one way or another,” he added without the slightest diffidence. “Most people that tell you they haven’t are full of it.”
Had Bill McKinney not screened me and given his okay, Aaron would not have agreed to an interview. He made that clear in our first phone conversation on August 1, 2002. Both of us began talkingwith some trepidation, as we knew the call was being recorded by the Wyoming Department of Corrections. This was also the first time Aaron violated the oath of silence that was part of his 1999 sentencing agreement. Immediately following his conviction, he spared himself the possibility of a death sentence by agreeing, among other conditions, to refrain from discussing the case with the media.
By the time of our first interview, I had been commissioned by The New York Times Magazine to write an article reexamining the murder. Any moral reservations I had about persuading Aaron McKinney to talk with me were overshadowed by the host of troubling questions that his trial had left unanswered and the media never bothered to probe. A few renowned legal scholars even argued that the suppression of his right to free speech was unconstitutional.
As I began communicating with both Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson that summer, my foremost challenge was convincing each of them to talk openly when they had nothing to gain, beyond helping to set the record straight. And could I depend on anything they told me when each had lied often in the past?
During many hours of phone interviews with Aaron in August and September 2002, he was mostly cooperative, yet blunt and unintimidated — as if he had no time to waste on formalities. He acknowledged in short order that
Whatever other traits Bill McKinney and his son may share, their sharp facial features and eyes bear an uncanny resemblance, right down to their tight, slightly upturned lips when they’re pissed offabout something. After meeting Aaron in person, I could never be in his father’s presence without having the discomfiting sense that Aaron was there, too.
Bill McKinney only agreed to talk with me, he said, “because you seem to have an open mind on the case, with more questions than answers.” I couldn’t help but wonder just the same: Would he have given me the time of day had I disclosed up front that I’m gay? One personal paradox of revisiting Matthew’s murder was my decision to remain closeted with several sources, at least early on. I was concerned that my investigation might be perceived as having a gay agenda and that sources in Wyoming might hesitate to open up. But it later became apparent that Bill McKinney knew I was gay from the start and was unfazed.
Over many cups of coffee at Shari’s twenty-four-hour restaurant on Laramie’s North 3rd Street — and despite my initial skepticism — I slowly warmed to Bill’s no-nonsense disposition. Never once did he suggest his son was anything less than fully culpable for his explosive violence against Matthew Shepard. On the contrary, he volunteered, “Aaron has always had a terrible temper, going way, way back.”
But like others, Bill McKinney was unconvinced that hatred of gays was behind the attack. He reminded me of something I had heard from others in Laramie: that at the time of the murder both Kristen Price’s mother and the mother of Russell Henderson’s twenty-year-old girlfriend, Chasity Pasley, were in lesbian relationships and “there was no evidence whatsoever of Aaron or Russell expressing anti-gay feelings.”
“Aaron lived in the same house with Kristen’s mother for months and they never had a problem,” Bill recalled.
When I asked him if it was possible that Aaron had been sexually involved with other males, he said he had “no knowledge of it” but appeared to shrug my question off as dumb or irrelevant.
“Come on, Steve, we’ve all experimented one way or another,” he added without the slightest diffidence. “Most people that tell you they haven’t are full of it.”
Had Bill McKinney not screened me and given his okay, Aaron would not have agreed to an interview. He made that clear in our first phone conversation on August 1, 2002. Both of us began talkingwith some trepidation, as we knew the call was being recorded by the Wyoming Department of Corrections. This was also the first time Aaron violated the oath of silence that was part of his 1999 sentencing agreement. Immediately following his conviction, he spared himself the possibility of a death sentence by agreeing, among other conditions, to refrain from discussing the case with the media.
By the time of our first interview, I had been commissioned by The New York Times Magazine to write an article reexamining the murder. Any moral reservations I had about persuading Aaron McKinney to talk with me were overshadowed by the host of troubling questions that his trial had left unanswered and the media never bothered to probe. A few renowned legal scholars even argued that the suppression of his right to free speech was unconstitutional.
As I began communicating with both Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson that summer, my foremost challenge was convincing each of them to talk openly when they had nothing to gain, beyond helping to set the record straight. And could I depend on anything they told me when each had lied often in the past?
During many hours of phone interviews with Aaron in August and September 2002, he was mostly cooperative, yet blunt and unintimidated — as if he had no time to waste on formalities. He acknowledged in short order that
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