The Book Of Matt: Matthew Shepard, the Real Story?

The story we were fed was that Matt Shepherd was hitting on homophobic Christians in a bar who then kidnapped the University of Wyoming student, pistol whipped him and tied him to a fence. We got a story of Christian homophobia that killed an innocent homosexual. This new book, written by a gay author, has done more research and came up with different facts.

All three people knew each other, and Matt and the killer were both homosexual, and they were meth buddies, and possibly meth dealers. The murder now seems to be more related to either Matt Shepherd wouldn't share his meth with the other two, or he had taken meth from the killer.

Another example of media manipulation? It was right before a big election, and the DNC playbook needed an example of Christian hate. It doesn't appear that anyone involved were churchgoing folk.

This is not new news, because the reason one person kills another is typically not important in figuring out if it was right or wrong.

If it was meth, gay hate or whatever, it does not change the crime. The guy who did the killing was bad, the guy who died did not need to die.

But be sure the news stories back in the day were 100% on the mark, they sold the ads for that time slot and allowed the news companies to sell more, from a news perspectives, no issues here. Even better, we can report on it again and sell more ads.

But if you look at the news as some high and mighty thing that is more than advertising hooks, then this is a big deal.

But you don't have a problem with them changing the details of the crime to fit their agenda?

Until you give a source for this it's just more of your always unsubstantiated fairy tales Fred.

The Book is coming out in two weeks and you can pre-order it on Amazon right now, so we will see the press vet it pretty soon. And Archer if you can prove that this meth theory is without merit and only done to sell books, I will be happy. It scares me that the press would so slant this story to push an agenda and make Matt Shepherd a hero instead of just a druggie who ran afoul of his buddies. The book also says meth was in Matt Shepherd's system when they did the autopsy.

This was revealed on 2004 ( http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=1 ). It was Shepard's friends that initially speculated that the murder was a hate crime and then the lawyers for Arron McKinney tried to use "gay panic" as a defense hoping that would get more sympathy from the jury in Wyoming

I was doing a little more reading on this and the people who wrote the Matthew Shepherd play didn't like the 20/20 story. I am more inclined to go with ABC News on this, taking the time to properly research this after initial passions had declined. When you try to build up a martyr, it is easier if you hide his failings. Undoubtably stories like this making them victims have helped homosexuals gain acceptance in society, is it worth it if this acceptance is built on lies? And by falsely convicting men for hate crimes that weren't their motives?

archer wrote: Until you give a source for this it's just more of your always unsubstantiated fairy tales Fred.

Late on the night of October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a twenty-one-year-old gay college student, left a bar in Laramie, Wyoming with two alleged “strangers,” Aaron McKin­ney and Russell Henderson. Eighteen hours later, Matthew was found tied to a log fence on the outskirts of town, unconscious and barely alive. He had been pistol-whipped so severely that the mountain biker who discovered his battered frame mistook him for a Halloween scarecrow. Overnight, a politically expedient myth took the place of important facts. By the time Matthew died a few days later, his name was synonymous with anti-gay hate.

Stephen Jimenez went to Laramie to research the story of Matthew Shepard’s murder in 2000, after the two men convicted of killing him had gone to prison, and after the national media had moved on. His aim was to write a screenplay on what he, and the rest of the nation, believed to be an open-and-shut case of bigoted violence. As a gay man, he felt an added moral imperative to tell Matthew’s story. But what Jimenez eventually found in Wyoming was a tangled web of secrets. His exhaustive investigation also plunged him deep into the deadly underworld of drug trafficking. Over the course of a thirteen-year investigation, Jimenez traveled to twenty states and Washington DC, and interviewed more than a hundred sources.

Who was the real Matthew Shepard and what were the true circumstances of his brutal murder? And now that he was larger than life, did anyone care? The Book of Matt is sure to stir passions and inspire dialogue as it re-frames this misconstrued crime and its cast of characters, proving irrefutably that Matthew Shepard was not killed for being gay but for reasons far more complicated — and daunting.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Matt-Mat ... 1586422146

So now you have the all important link and quote archer - not that it wasn't something you couldn't have found yourself in less than the time it took you to type out the reply quoted above.

Yet more info, posted 5 days ago, this time from good old Huff-n-Puff:

Not only does Jimenez's research contradict the claim that McKinney and Henderson only met Shepard the night of the murder, but it mars the picturesque image of the 21-year-old student and the world he lived in prior to his death. The book reportedly claims that Sheppard and Mckinney were both dealing and using methamphetamine and, in addition to being business rivals within that venture, had a sexual relationship.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 14707.html

And before we get to the usual deflections from the left. Yes, I do believe that some homosexuals are harmed solely because they are homosexual. Nor is anyone trying to say that crimes are not committed for that reason. What we are talking about here is what happened in one instance and whether or not Matthew Shephard's life was cleaned up ala Trayvon Martin for the benefit of the storyline that was attempting to be sold.

Thanks PrintSmith, yes I could research it myself, but it is a bit of a pain on a cell phone. Why is it such an issue to provide a source for controversial info? What ever happened to common courtesy?

Rather than a lack of courtesy, perhaps the reluctance of some to provide a link is based upon the tendency of some to immediately attack the source rather than discuss the subject?

Note that I am not stating this is a fact, not even that it is my opinion - I have no source for it, it is merely a thought for consideration, in the event that anyone wishes to consider it.