What’s a good factual resource for Matthew Shepard? He’s being interred at the National Cathedral in Washington and is mainly famous for being the victim of an anti-gay hate crime, but wasn’t it subsequently learned that it was a drug deal gone bad and at least one of the killers was openly gay himself? He was brutally and cruelly tortured and murdered, I don’t want that overlooked, but he might not be the ideal figurehead for what he’s being used as the figurehead for. What is the straight dope here?
You have been duped by Jimenez’s Conspiracy theories.
This is entirely untrue.
It was not a ‘drug deal gone bad’. Neither of the 2 killers was a reliable dealer, and when Matthew bought marijuana it was from someone else. Had it been a drug deal, there would have been no reason for them to drive miles out into the countryside to complete it. The killers testified that the deliberately decided to offer Matthew a ride home, and them to assault & rob him. They deny that they intended to kill him, which is why they avoided a first-degree ‘premeditated’ conviction.
(Personally, I don’t see how leaving a person beaten unconscious outside in a freezing night, and tied up so he can’t go for help is not ‘intent’ to kill, but the jury was more lenient.)
Both of the killers vehemently deny that they are or ever have been gay.
At least one of them had previously been a prostitute available to both male & female customers, but states that this was strictly a financial transaction.
At the first trial, the killers admitted they did it because Matthew Shepard was gay. It was only after they realized they were sentenced under hate crime legislation that increased their prison sentences that the “drug defense” suddenly came to be used. A friend of their attorney wrote a book claiming that it was drugs that cause Shepard’s death and he was a known druggie, despite the fact that no drugs were found in the autopsy and he had no drug arrests.
The whole thing was a crock of shit, and it’s one subject I will go off on when it’s brought up.
Wow, somehow I had never heard this “defense” of his killers before… I’ve not heard anything more than condemnation even here in the close-minded heart of regressive America… where he was actually killed.
As well you should. This is intensely pernicious misinformation and repeating it as fact it is quite the opposite of fighting ignorance.
However, ignorance was fought and all is well in the end.
And even if it were true (and it is totally made up and a flat out fucking lie) does that somehow “justify” tying a young man to a fence to let him suffer a slow death?
It should be called the “O.J. Simpson” defense, cause he has stated that Nichole and Ron’s death had to be drug related because the restaurant where Ron worked was a known drug selling place. Had there been any drug arrests or overdoses there? What do you think?
Hereis a story on the case from ABC. It says that it was not a drug deal gone bad but that the two killers were seeking a victim to rob for drug money and that they targeted Sheppard because he was gay and would go into their truck. Neither was openly gay. It said that one of the killers really liked threesomes with two guys and a girl and a man who participated in one of those believed he was bisexual as did his girlfriend. There seems to be a dispute as to whether one of the killers knew and had done drugs with Sheppard before the murder.
That story was from the same person as the book.
The claims are false, have been demonstrated as so and this is just a conspiracy theory pushed by a political group to fit their selfish needs.
Stephen Jimenez, one of the producers for that story, and he wrote the book and that is all documented in the SPL link I offered before.
This is a cruel and politically motivated set of lies.
From your cite:
So, to be clear, Shepard was selected as a target for robbery and the fact that he was gay led them to believe he would be an easier mark because they could seduce him into their vehicle.
McKinney, who seems like a closeted homosexual himself, made up a story about Shepard coming onto him and him beating him to death because he thought that would mitigate the action he took. When he found out it would not, he changed his story.
In any event, the left’s narrative that these men plucked him off the street and beat him to death simply because he was gay and that they hated gays is not true at all based upon known facts.
So the story he made up about Shepard coming on to him wasn’t true, but we should believe the story he told that they choose Shepard because they thought he was an easier mark?
We can also say the narrative that these men didn’t pluck him off the street and beat him to death simply isn’t true either based upon the known facts.
No one can can truly know what was going through the minds of those twisted fucks. It’s interesting the story you choose to believe.
What part are you referring to as lies? It is established that Sheppard was robbed. Two people have said that one of killers enjoyed threesomes.
The left’s narrative? :dubious:
This doesn’t seem like a left/right thing, from what I can tell.
Right. We don’t know. So why is he held up as the poster boy for anti-gay attacks? Of course it is terrible what happened to him for whatever reason it happened to him.
Maybe because, given that he was gay and anti-gay attacks are horrendously common, and he was beaten, burned and left to die tied to a fence in a far more brutal attack than is usually the case with robbery victims, it’s extremely likely that he was in fact the victim of an anti-gay attack?
Also, it’s often the case that a particular issue hits a “flashpoint” due to a combination of long-simmering anger and a case that really resonates with people, even though it may not be the most “textbook” example of injustice and oppression. For example, there have been plenty of black victims of racist police brutality more unambiguously innocent and victimized than Michael Brown. But Brown’s turned out to be the “flashpoint” case in the national visibility of Black Lives Matter and related movements.
Likewise, even though there are sadly many, many more unambiguous instances of hate-crime murders specifically and explicitly due to homophobic bigotry, the Matthew Shepard case is the one that hit the cultural flashpoint.
I got news for you, buddy: People can say anything. That don’t make it true.
As has been pointed out, the “drug” motive came down two years after the murder. It was never mentioned in the first trial. And furthermore, the story keeps changing: We did it cause he was gay. And he came on to us. No, wait, we robbed him for drug money. No, he was a notorious drug user, what with being gay and all. No, he was a notorious drug dealer, and it was a drug deal gone bad.
Can anyone show me a bit of verifiable, unbiased evidence that any of the drug related statements are anything but an attempt to get a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card?
I don’t know who you are arguing with. The motive was robbery. The prosecution argued it was robbery, because Sheppard was robbed and the killers then tried to find his house to rob that. From the Ap news story “Police said that robbery was the main motive but that Shepard apparently was chosen in part because he was gay.” The killers were convicted of felony murder which is murder committed during a felony and the felony was aggravated robbery.
Because it’s standard OP for robbers, after brutally beating their victim, to tie their victim to a fence, barely alive and then go back into town and start a fight with two other minorities (Hispanics).
Nope doesn’t sound like a couple of hate crime people at all. Nope. :dubious:
Because those were the charges on which they could get a conviction. Wyoming doesn’t have a hate crime law, so the prosecutors used the robbery/felony murder route.
Al Capone went down for tax evasion.