The Book of Matt (32 page)

Elizabeth Vargas:
How much money was in there?

Aaron McKinney:
Thirty bucks.

Elizabeth Vargas:
Thirty bucks?

Aaron McKinney:
Yeah, that’s it …

Elizabeth Vargas:
So if he gave you the wallet and money, did you stop beating him?

Aaron McKinney:
No.

Elizabeth Vargas:
Why not?

Aaron McKinney:
I don’t know. I’m not sure. I was pushed past my point — my tolerance.

Elizabeth Vargas:
Well, why were you so angry? What made you go off?

Aaron McKinney:
Well, a lot of things altogether. My financial situation — and drugs I was on. That anger and violence, I already had building up with everything, and then, you know, the drugs just make that a lot worse.

Seconds after Aaron pulled out his gun, Russell followed his instructions and took a left off Grand Avenue into the Imperial Heights subdivision. Aaron told him to drive to the last street with houses, bordering the edge of the prairie.

“It dead-ended there,” Cal later explained to the jury, “and they travel on a dirt road four hundred yards.”

“I told [Russ] to take an old dirt road,” Aaron agreed, years after his trial. “It was in a rocky field. I figured that would be a good place —”

It was also an area Aaron knew well because he had grown up in the subdivision and had often played in the fields of dry grass and sagebrush. As a boy it had been his backyard.

But now, in the front seat of the truck, Matthew continued to shield himself from Aaron’s blows.

“I hit him probably five or six times altogether,” Aaron told Elizabeth Vargas.

“How badly was he hurt?” she asked.

“He was bleeding pretty good,” he responded vacantly.

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Yeah, he was still talking — mostly, you know, ‘Don’t hit me.’ And he’s being real apologetic, real cooperative.”

“So if he was being apologetic and cooperative, and he gave you all of his money, why did you continue to beat him?”

“Sometimes when you have that kind of rage going through you, there’s no stopping it. I’ve attacked my best friends coming off of meth binges … Any little type of thing when you’ve been up for that long can set you off and make you snap right away.”

Aaron also described the physical sensations he was experiencing at the time, much as he had to police during his confession.

“I was hallucinating pretty bad,” he said. “I wasn’t in any condition to be driving … It was almost like an out-of-body experience, I guess, or what they tell you. Felt more like I was watching the whole thing.”

Although Aaron initially lied to police about his weeklong meth binge, he admitted in 2004 that he’d also been in the midst of “coming down” on the day and night of the crime.

“You’re still wide awake, but you … can feel your body is really tired, and that you want to sleep, but you can’t,” he stated. “You want to stop doing [meth], [yet] you want more …”

As the lights from nearby homes receded behind the truck carrying Aaron, Russell, and Matthew, the road grew more bumpy and desolate.

According to Cal Rerucha’s summary,

They stop in an area that borders the old Warren Livestock land … To make it a little more aesthetic, instead of just “No Trespassing” signs, the owner of the property erected a rail fence … It is secluded. It is in a depression. This is where phase two of the ordeal of Matthew Shepard takes place.

Mr. McKinney pulled Matthew Shepard from the vehicle. This is probably the only time he fights back. Mr. McKinney said it was a frail attempt. He tried to kick at my chest, but I was soon able to pull him out of the vehicle, and the beating continues … As each blow is stuck, there is the pain and the screams that come forth when he is struck. There is also the begging for some type of mercy.
Actually begs for his life, and there is negotiation going on at the same time. Matthew Shepard negotiates with McKinney for his own life.

He tells them, there is only $20 [sic] in the wallet, but in my home I have $150. Take what you will, but give me mercy. The beating continues. Blow after blow.

Finally when McKinney is satisfied that he has extracted the information needed so he can burglarize Mr. Shepard’s house, there is a pause. He tells Henderson to go get some rope in the back of his truck. Mr. Henderson dutifully responds, and it’s a white clothesline, and Mr. Henderson lashes Matthew Shepard to the fence.

Later, when asked why he told Russell to drive to that particular spot, Aaron said,

“It seemed like a good secluded spot to drop [Matthew] off. And it would take him a while to get out of there, with no shoes. I took his shoes … That whole field is rocky, riddled with cactus. It would take a guy a long time to walk across it barefoot.”

Aaron added, “Well, he’s going to call the cops on me when he’s done. I’m out on bail for another felony [the KFC burglary]. I got to have time to get away … I decided it probably be even better idea [sic] to go ahead and tie him up while I was at it … It would give us more time. I decided at some point — I was going to rob his house while I was at it.”

Russell admitted that it was he who tied Matthew to the fence, but the sequence of events he described was somewhat different from Cal Rerucha’s account to the jury. When I first noticed the differences, they appeared subtle and almost irrelevant.

According to Russell, after Aaron pulled Matthew out of the truck,

I got up and came around from the truck and then, at that time, at that point, [Aaron] said, Get some rope so we can tie him up. And so I went and got the rope out of the back seat of the truck. And ended up tying his hands … behind
his back … I didn’t even, I didn’t even really tie it. I just wrapped the rope around so he could eventually get away … It wasn’t very tight. I just — cause it was a real long rope. And I just wrapped it around a bunch of times and that was it. And I just didn’t even tie it.

When asked if he tied the rope to the fence, Russell said, “It wasn’t even to the fence. It was just, his arms were around the pole of the fence.”

It was hard to believe Russell’s statement, as the police officer who untied Matthew from the fence the following day noted that the rope was extremely tight.

“So how did it get tight?” Russell was pressed further.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know. The only thing I could think of is, is cause it was wrapped a few times around and it just … cause they said his [wrists], that he had swelled. And when it swelled it seemed like it was tight on there, I guess.”

According to the narrative Cal Rerucha presented to the jury, Aaron asked Russell to get the rope and tie Matthew
after
most of the beating had occurred, “blow after blow.” Yet Russell stated that he had gotten the rope and tied Matthew moments after he got out of the truck.

“At first Mr. Henderson laughed,” Cal said, “and as the beating continued, he became afraid, and he asked his friend, Mr. McKinney, for mercy for Matthew Shepard.”

The assertion that Russell laughed during the beating is easily traced back to the secondhand statements of Kristen Price, who claimed Aaron had told her that after the crime. But Kristen, who also helped fabricate Aaron’s gay panic alibi and concealed his dealing activities, has since admitted the degree to which she lied; she “would have said or done anything at that point to get him out.”

Aaron himself, in his interview with Elizabeth Vargas, was asked to clarify Russell’s involvement:

Elizabeth Vargas:
What was Russell doing during all this time?

Aaron McKinney:
He didn’t want to [be] any part of it. He wasn’t happy with what was going on at all.

Elizabeth Vargas:
What did he say to you?

Aaron McKinney:
He was telling me to quit it. You know, cut it out. Quit hitting [Matthew]. Quit pushing him around. Just leave him alone.

Aaron said Russell was also saying those words “on the way to the fence,” then “once we got there … it all happened pretty quick.”

But it would not be until six months after Matthew was killed that Russell spoke for the first time about his attempt to stop Aaron from beating Matthew at the fence. Russell had already accepted a plea bargain for two life terms by then, to avoid a possible death sentence.

“[Aaron] was still hitting —” Russell stated tentatively at his sentencing on April 5, 1999, “— he hit Matthew a few times with the gun, and Matthew looked really bad, so I told him to stop hitting him, that I think he’s had enough. And at that time, he hit me with the gun.”

Cal Rerucha apparently believed that Russell had, indeed, tried to stop the beating but failed. “Mr. McKinney took his attention away from Mr. Shepard, turned to his friend, Mr. Henderson, and struck him in the lip with the .357,” he told the jury at Aaron’s trial in November 1999. “Mr. Henderson went back to the truck to lick his wounds.”

Several years later, when asked what Matthew’s condition was at the time he tried to stop the beating, Russell stated, “He still seemed coherent … he was still conscious … but I mean, he was bloody and looked like he had been beaten up pretty bad … When I went and got into the truck, he was still conscious at that time … I know that when I left, that Matthew was still … talking.”

After Russell returned to the truck, according to Cal’s opening statement,

Mr. McKinney went to the buck fence where [Mr. Shepard] is tied, his hands behind his back, to the bottom part of
the fence, unable to defend himself, and this is the third part of this saga.

… As Matthew Shepard is lying there … he is asked a question,

“Can you read my license plate?” For whatever reason, Matthew Shepard said, “Yes, I can read your license plate.” And reads it to Mr. McKinney. With that information and the knowledge that he can be identified, Mr. McKinney once again raises the .357 Magnum pistol, looks down at Matthew Shepard, defenseless, who cannot raise his hands even in his own defense, and strikes him as hard as he can in the head, once. He strikes him again in the head as hard as he can, twice. He strikes him as hard as he can in the head three times.

As Mr. McKinney turns away from Matthew Shepard, there are no screams of pain; there is no negotiating; there is no nothing. There is [sic] the sounds of silence, because he knows Matthew Shepard is dead or will soon be dead.

Over the past fourteen years, each time that I’ve read Cal’s description of the pain and suffering Matthew endured that night, I have felt a sickening sense of sadness and despair. But those feelings have also left me with a moral imperative to understand, to the very best of my ability, what really happened that night — and why.

Just as the media missed or left out essential components of this multifaceted tragedy, there were important elements missing from the case Cal Rerucha presented to the jury — and also from the defenses raised by Aaron’s lawyers as well as Russell’s.

In his description of those final moments at the fence, when Aaron asked Matthew if he could read his license plate, Cal assumed a motive or purpose that can no longer be substantiated by the facts.

“With that … knowledge that he can be identified,” Cal said, “Mr. McKinney once again raises the .357 Magnum pistol … and strikes him as hard as he can in the head …”

In light of the personal relationship between Aaron and Matthew and their ongoing conflict, there was never a question of Matthew’s ability to identify Aaron. (Ten different sources have acknowledged that they were in the company of both men together, or that they learned from Matthew himself about his relationship with Aaron.)

I’m not questioning whether Aaron asked Matthew if he could read the license plate. But what was really driving Aaron’s rage?

According to Cal’s narrative, Aaron asked Matthew about the license plate after he’d struck Russell with the gun, causing him to retreat to the truck.

But Russell said the exchange about the license plate took place
first
, after he had tied Matthew to the fence.

“The only thing I can remember that was being said is that [Aaron] did ask him if he could recognize the license plates on our truck,” Russell stated. “And Matthew — Matthew said, Yeah, that he did. And then [Aaron] hit him a few more times …”

It was then — when Aaron continued beating Matthew — that Russell tried to stop him and was struck across the face with the gun.

“It didn’t do any good cause it didn’t help Matthew any …” Russell added dismally. “After that I went and got in the truck.”

When asked why he got back in the truck, Russell said, “I was scared … of the situation. At how far it had got [sic] out of hand … Just cause … [Aaron] had lost control.”

But in April 1999, shortly after he was sentenced to two life terms and long before my own interviews with him, Russell was questioned extensively by Detective Rob DeBree, who was still trying to piece together the real sequence of events at the fence.

“Do you think it was an accident that [Aaron] hit you?” DeBree asked.

“No, I’d say it was intentional,” Russell answered unequivocally. “Actually I was pretty scared. Scared of the same thing [sic] would happen to me, that was happening to Matthew.”

Beyond Matthew’s ability to read the license plate on Bill McKinney’s truck, Aaron revealed some things in a 2004 interview — perhaps
unwittingly — that serve as a further indicator of what was really driving him that night.

He described his final moments with Matthew at the fence, after Russell had returned to the truck but as his own rage intensified:

I just got done telling [Matt] … you know, “Don’t tell on me or there’ll be consequences.” Letting him know I took his ID’s and told him that certain people would have his ID’s. So it would be in his best interest not to tell on me. I felt like I finally got the point across to him, not to tell on me. Then when I’m leaving, he says he’s going to tell on me.