Has Anything Changed?

"The fact that cops like DeBree and O'Malley, law officers in positions of real power, are committed to gay and lesbian people and their protection, that should be construed as concrete change," says Beth Loffreda, author of the book, "Losing Matthew Shepard." "You won't find that in a statute or in a public monument to Matt, but that's real and meaningful change."

A real cause for concern, however, is the emergence in Laramie of a narrative that has gained many proponents in recent years: one that states that Shepard's murder by two local residents, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, was only "a robbery gone bad" or "a drug-fueled murder" and not a hate crime. "That's nonsense," says Fluty. "All you have to do is look at the evidence." O'Malley, lead investigator of the Laramie Police Department agrees, "I'm convinced that these guys killed Matt because he was gay."

Debree of the Sheriff's department adds: "We went in depth reviewing [the murderers'] blood for any kind of drugs or anything to that effect. There was nothing." The fact that this was a hate crime was decisively proved at the trial when in excerpts of McKinney's confession, the jury heard him tell DeBree: "[Shepard] put his hand on my leg. ... I told him I'm not a f---ing faggot" before beginning to brutally beat Matthew Shepard.

Catherine Connolly, the first openly gay professor at the university, also takes issue with this willful ignoring of the facts: "This distortion of history, this is what kids 18, 19 years old think now. It's devastating to us. This is our history."

So why has this distortion of the truth become so prevalent? One hypothesis is that because Laramie was portrayed in the media as a backward town where hatred and bigotry were rampant, forcing the citizens to question their identity as an idyllic community, a "good place to raise your children." "And when we have a theory about who we are," says Laramie resident Jeffrey Lockwood, "and the data goes against that theory, we throw out the data rather than adjust the theory. We are hardwired as human beings not to contemplate our own complicity in things."

Yet there are many people who found in this murder an opportunity to reflect deeply about the role that the culture and values of Laramie played in the crime. "This whole thing forced us to look at our warts," says Dr. Don Cantway, the physician who treated Matthew's injuries. "To look at our bigotry, the hatreds, the intolerance that exist here."