I see Andrew Sullivan is still trying to make that 20/20 hit piece on Matthew Shepard into something it isn’t…namely journalism…

I don’t doubt that homophobia fueled the disgusting murder. But I am unconvinced it was the sole motive. ABC’s 20/20 report brought some serious facts to the table – most specifically the crystal meth binge that the killers had been on, and the original motive being possibly robbery of someone McKinney knew casually

No…No…and, No…

To: Andrew Sullivan
From: Bruce Garrett
Subject: What Facts?

You’re still trying to make that 20/20 episode into something it isn’t…a serious exploration of the circumstances of Matthew Shepard’s death.  There is nothing confusing or mysterious about what happened that night.  It is in fact, one of the best documented cases of a gay bashing/murder, with that classic aspect of overkill that such murders almost always have.  Yeah…they robbed him.  But had be been heterosexual, a robbery would have been all that it was.

The facts are there, staring you in the face…you’re just not paying attention to them.  Question:  if McKinney and Shepard knew each other, then why did he ask Shepard if he could read his license plates?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/11/02/shepard/

Both sides agreed that McKinney committed the murder, with Custis actually using that legal term in his closing argument. The points of contention boiled down to whether the act was premeditated or the result of extreme intoxication.

Prosecutor Cal Rerucha alluded to testimony that McKinney was actually sober at the time of the killing, and focused on his final request for Shepard to read McKinney’s license plate as the most damning proof of premeditation — allegedly proving that McKinney intentionally killed Shepard to make sure he could never be a witness in a case against him.

If they knew each other, even casually, then this is pointless.  Shepard already can identify him.  But there it is. 

If you have any doubts about what was going on that night, I suggest you do what I did.  Go to Laramie, and drive the route Shepard’s killers took from the bar they picked him up at, to the fence where they beat him to the edge of death.  I have family in California and I regularly drive out to visit them because I love seeing America from the road.  One year I detoured to Laramie and just to see for myself.

Well you can’t get to the fence now from the road: there are signs warning you that it’s a private driveway now.  But you can take the drive from where the bar was to close enough to where the fence is and I am here to tell you that you won’t get halfway there before it becomes sickeningly clear that it may have started out as a robbery in the bar, but by the time the two of them got that 112 pound kid in the truck and started heading out of town it wasn’t that anymore.  They could have robbed him anywhere along that route pushed him out of the truck and gotten safely away.  Hell, they could have put a bullet in his head and dumped his body out in various spots along that route where nobody would likely have seen anything.  Drive the route late at night.  I did it one July, but doing it around the time of year of the killing would be even better, because the route would be even darker, the air much colder, the driver even less likely to see other people out there.  It is very clarifying. 

You go out of the downtown section…you drive for blocks…past the university…past the outlying convenience stores…a few fast food joints…some liquor stores…out to the edge of town and beyond.  Into the rolling sage.  Into the darkness.  I know why they turned off onto Pilot Peak Road now.  Pilot Peak was their last turn off before the Interstate.  They had to make that left, or they would have been on the Interstate and from there it was either drive west and back toward town or drive east for miles and miles to Happy Jack Road.  So they took the left onto Pilot Peak Road and drove back into that sub division as far as they could.  Into the darkness.  Where no one would see.  Where their handiwork wouldn’t be discovered for a long time.  They made an effort to take him where they did, and that only makes sense if they planned to beat the living daylights out of that poor kid, simply for being a homosexual, because he disgusted them.  Perhaps…perhaps…because they disgusted themselves, and now they had a queer they could take it out on.

I repeat: if McKinney and Shepard knew each other, then why did he ask Shepard if he could read his license plates?   Oh…and Doc O’Connor says they were never together in his limo.  And the detectives found no evidence of any kind of drug connection to the crime.  But who are you going to believe…the detectives or the killer’s friends?  All 20/20 did was take the drug saturated gossip of the friends of Shepard’s killers and elevate that to "serious questions" about the killing.  Their testimony is contradicted in so many ways by both the evidence and the testimony of the detectives that it’s impossible to see what 20/20 did as anything other then a hit piece. 

But if you have doubts, like I said, go there and drive that route for yourself.  Do it around the same time of night as Shepard’s killers kidnapped him.  Try to keep a picture in your mind of those two thugs with a 112 pound kid in their truck, driving that route, and all they have in mind is robbing him.  Trust me, it won’t last long.

—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.

This isn’t rocket science…