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Matthew Shepard, seen here in an undated AP file photo. The coverage his death inspired may have implications beyond those gay activists consider as some crimes that capture the national consciousness, like the killings of Lacy Petersen or JonBenet Ramsey, do so because the victims are perceived as especially sympathetic, helpless or beautiful. (Photo by Gina Von Hoof)
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HOME > ENTERTAINMENT > FEATURE
By: RYAN LEE and DYANA BAGBY COMMENTS
 
‘A terrible death had so many positive things that went along with it’ |
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It is impossible to compre-hend the loneliness Matthew Shepard might have felt as he hanged from a rickety fence for almost 18 hours in a barren Wyoming field.
If he was conscious during that time on Oct. 7, 1998, he may have wondered if anyone would come to his rescue after being beaten within an inch of his life, and he probably knew that the reason he was beaten, the reason he was hanging on the fence, was because he was different.
Because he was gay.
The image of Shepard in that empty Laramie, Wyo., field conjures up a feeling of intense isolation, but the truth is that Shepard was never alone in experiencing the awful realization that his life was in jeopardy simply because of who he was.
Almost a week after being attacked and deserted by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, Shepard succumbed to his injuries and died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colo. Ten years after his death on Oct. 12, 1998, Shepard continues to be the iconic face of anti-gay violence in the United States, despite the brutal killings of many gay, lesbian and transgender victims since then.
Four months after Shepard was killed, 39-year-old Billy Jack Gaither had his neck slit, his head cracked open with an ax handle and his body torched atop a pile of kerosene-soaked tires on a rural Alabama creek bank. Like Shepard’s assailants, the men who killed Gaither — Steven Mullins and Charles Butler — said they did so because Gaither made an unwanted sexual advance toward them.
A so-called “gay panic” killing also took place in metro Atlanta in May 2001, when Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Ahmed Dabarran was allegedly pistol-whipped to death while sleeping.
Roderiqus Reshad Reed alleged that Dabarran forcibly performed oral sex on him after luring him to Dabarran’s Cobb County apartment, and said that he hit Dabarran in the head several times in order to escape.
Unlike Shepard and Gaither’s killers, Reed escaped jail time when a Cobb County jury agreed with his lawyers that he was defending himself from Dabarran, even though Reed stole Dabarran’s cell phone and ID during the killing.
And just this summer, Angie Zapata was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher after Allen Ray Andrade discovered that Zapata was transgender. Andrade faces second-degree murder charges in the 20-year-old’s death, but Zapata’s killing in Greely, Colo., has received scant media coverage compared Shepard.
“It’s disturbing to me that since Matt was killed, there have been equally as horrific crimes committed against other people because of their sexual orientation, or their race, or other reasons, and they didn’t get the same kind of press,” said Dave O’Malley, a member of Laramie City Council who was the town’s police chief at the time Shepard was killed.
Shepard’s death helped transform O’Malley from a casual homophobe into one of the staunchest supporters of a federal hate crimes law. As passionate as he is about ending anti-gay violence, O’Malley said he wouldn’t be aware of killings like Dabarran’s were it not for his lobbying and activism on behalf of Human Rights Campaign.
“The biggest horror of that is that [Reed] used the gay panic defense and got acquitted, and we didn’t here anything about that out here [in Wyoming],” he said. “I think we need to keep the media working on those type of things so that people don’t think that what happened to Matt was an isolated incident.
“You can insulate yourself in Laramie, think the problem is solved, and not realize that the violence continues,” he added.
By the time Cathy Renna arrived in Laramie in the days after Shepard was attacked, media outlets ranging from CNN to MTV had already set up shop in the small Wyoming town to cover the death. One of the primary missions for Renna, who was working for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) at the time, was “to teach the media that this is not the first, and certainly not the last” anti-gay attack, Renna said.
“I literally just stood there and talked to reporter after reporter,” Renna said. “The reality is that what happened to Matt is not isolated, it still happens today.”
Shepard’s murder and the media coverage of it “became an issue that, for a while, permeated a ton of our ...
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