Thick, and it was said all women should develop skin like a rhino. She is decisive when you hear about things she said to the aid and the whitehouse Correspondent Dinner and used profanity to say she didnt want to think about the effect it would have. And there is law emotion in a way more politicians are careful hiding. We had an aid say she is not as calculated about political comeback. Which doesnt mean she is not seeking it, but isnt thinking about the right moment with the right person. Thanks for being here and thanks to our students from Iowa State University and mediacom communication for sponsoring the buses. You are watching booktv on cspan2. Here is our primetime lineup we wrap up at 10 p. M. Wi with after wards. Next it is argued that the kill of Matthew Shepherd was an antigay crime but a robbery gone wrong let me tell you how we came to be here tonight. As most of you are aware, sorry,igate got cold here. I was the assistant principal at the Junior High School and was in the Laramie School system for 30 years. And so, i saw a lot of stuff from my position. Here in november a friend of mine and i pal around and a friend said have you seen the new book on Matthew Shepherd and i am sure like you, that is old news. Why do we want to drag that up . And she said no, this, i think it is worthy of you reading it. So erma let me have the book and i didnt put it down for two days because i lived it. I dont know want to change anythi anything, and had the opportunity to look at it through another persons eyes, i told steven i would like to have written this book. One of the nice things about my job is probably 99 of the kids that went through the Junior High School came back and you know, we are on, i mean, i dont want to say were buds but they will tell me anything and we laugh about it. And i have had a number of them coming back and you know, we would talk about stuff like drugs, alcohol use and stuff that was going on at the Junior High School and in the community. I know a number of them in the drug culture that came back and said that was not what it seems to me. It is one of those things as a laramie boy, i went to school here, my seventh grade here, we are talking 1959, my first class was the 19601961 shaclass. Laramie born and raised here. And when i read this book, you know, it started a burning that i need to do more about this. And i actually was living in loveland and i am trying to find the right property to buy in laramie to get back. I was up here working with gary, one of my friends here, and we were looking at property that we are working on, and i got a call from my wife saying, steven, who wrote the book is going to be doing a reading in fort collins. I said good bye and made it down for in time for steve to come out and do his reading. As i sat there, you know, in that audience, and just reliving it again, by the way, some of you, i dont know if you remember diane smith, who was a prep i stand corrected, thank you. I went up and introduced myself to steven and said i would like to spend more time talking with you about this. Why are you not doing this in laramie . And he said i have not been invited. So i said, hey, consider yourself invited. I will try to get us together and i guess where i am with this is that i am not wanting you or telling you what to think, i am asking you to read the book and once you read the book, make up your own mind. See what the reason is. And by no means are we trying to, you know, these young people that committed this, you know, i dont know want to change anything there. It was a tragedy. But dont we want to deal with the truth . And that was the way i was looking at it. So over the course of the last 23 months we put thigs this together and there have been a number of me doing it. I want this to be education number one. And i want it to be informative because there is a lot to be learned here. If you have questions like i did, we welcome and want your input. So no further ado here, i am going to turn it over to ray hagan and he was a radio announcer and doing a lot of stuff in there. So i am going to give it to you from the perspective. I remember the morning after the attack, and there was a series i would not say a series, but a couple other people who had been murdered so you were getting used to vis visiting the folks at the Albany Court House. What struck me as insane and there is a chapter in the book called wild fire about how the narrative of this incident quickly went wild. And the way the media descended on the town and judged the citizens. A lot of people saw the stories, shook their head and said that is not this town. And just an andote from that. We were sitting in the courthouse and it was early on. I was sitting next to a couple Network Reporters and they were talking back and forth and talking about what the next thing in the process was going to be. And what do you think is going to happen . And this is what i think is going to happen. And this went on back and forth and an hour later i went back to the station to put together a newscast and we had a television on. And one of the reporters was doing live standup and said sources inside the Albany Court House that the next move in this process is going to be and he started relating the story he was talking to with the other fellow. And technically the story was correct. There was a source inside the alba Albany Court House, but you have to fill time in the 24hour news. And i want to ask why does the media refuse to let go of a narrative once they have established it. It was an interesting frontrow seat, i guess, if you will, to see how the process works. I will read from the book jacket about steve here. And when this book came out, i sought initial press reports on the internet and ran over to barnes and noble to pick it up and they had not unpacked it from the boxes. The lady didnt recognize the book and i asked her to poke look it up. He said i think we have it in the becoackroom. So went and found it for me. He is an Award Winning journalist writer and producer. He was a nonfiction norman maylar fellow. He was written news for abc news, 20 20, novembera, fox court tv and others. His accolades include the western guild of american award let me put my eyes on here the award for investigative reporting, an emmy and fellowships at the Cross Association in wyoming. Taught screen writing at New York University and other colleges. He lives in new york and sante fe. Thanks for coming out and visiting us. [ applause ] thank you. Good evening. And it is really a pleasure to be here in laramie again because i just went on a very long and wild journey that i never expected would happen. But what i would like to do first is i will read a couple short readings from the book but first i would like to tell you how i came to the story first. Obviously when this crime happened, i was horrified by everyone around the country about the brutality and the horrible violence committed. But it wasnt at the time of the crime i decided to come to laramie. It was at the time principle perp perpetrator was arrested. I read the statement from shephers father when he was convicted and he was barring his sole and shepherd probes his sole and said things like why wasnt i better father and friend to matt and how will i get the answer now . The record was under seal by the court for years. And not just witnesses but principles involved in the case people that worked in the courthouse. People that worked with defense lawyers and Law Enforcement. I was very interested in going to that Public Record that i came here to write the story of the antihate crime as it had been presented by the National Media. I am a gay man and ive been out since the 70s and it seemed to me that this was an important story to look at an fulllength form. So i know those of you with me are familiar with what that merit and narrative was that the time. I can say eventually i went through some changes in my thinking about the case but i just want to refresh our collective memory here about how this was reported initially. From the very first reports at the up october 6, 1998 attack major news organizations provided a generally uniform account of the crime and the motives behind it, a sampling of newspaper and magazine stories painted a harrowing picture. This is first from the boston globe. Shepard, 22 a firstyear student at the university of wyoming paid dearly allegedly for trusting to strangers enough at the fireside lounge to tell them he is gay. What followed was an atrocity that forced the stun community of laramie to painfully confront the festering evil of antigay hatred as the nation and its lawmakers watched. This is the denver post. Police investigators turned up the following sequence of alleged events, sometime tuesday night shepard met henderson and mckinney while at the fireside bar and lounge. Shepard told them he was gay. They invited him to leave with them. All three of them got into mckinneys fathers pickup in the attack again. Newsweek. Hungry for cash, perhaps riled by shepherds trust in the admission that he was gay they drove to the edge of town police say pistol whipped him until his skull collapsed and then left him like a fallen scarecrow or savior to the bottom of the crosshatched fence. That was newsweek. This is the Washington Post. Albany county sheriff gary polls who suggested the beating was being investigated as a hate crime said the investigation is aggressively continuing. Larry Laramie Police commander she told the Associated Press that wild robbery was the main motive shepherd was targeted because he was gay. This is time magazine. What people mean when they say Matthew Shepards murder was a lynching was that he was killed to make a point so he was stretched along a wyoming fence not just as a dying young man but as a signpost. When push comes to shove it says this is what we have in mind for. Finally the New York Times. While some gay leaders saw crucifixion imagery in mr. Shepards death others saw a different symbolism. The old west practice of nailing a dead coyote to a ranch fence as a warning to future intruders. So that was kind of i began the book there and that i think is pretty true to the way the case was presented in the National Media. This crime happened on tuesday october 6. Within just a few days i think it was pretty widely believed that this was an antigay hate crime. Matthew was taken to a hospital in fort collins and died in the Early Morning hours of october 12. At the time matthew had died the president of the United States though clinton had made statements urging passage of the hate crime bill that was stalled in congress. Let me just say just a tiny bit about the context. The attack on Matthew Shepherd shepard happened just four months after the dragging death of james bird junior in jasper texas so there was a hate crime bill that was stalled in congress at the time this attack on matthew happened here in laramie. I will go back to my arrival here. I arrived in the courthouse and asked to look at documents and i started to go through those records and take notes during his first trip. I was fortunate that day calarusso was Walking Around up in the county attorneys office. I recognized him because i had seen him in news stories and i just approached him and i said would you talk with me for a few minutes about the case and he agreed. I went into his office and we spoke that first day for about 45 minutes. It was very clear that he was sizing up ion tensions not just then but in the months that followed. He told me that he wanted nothing to do with anything that would inflict any further pain on Matthew Shepards family and i basically said to him, would you help educate me about the case . I wasnt here during the trials and the many Court Proceedings and would you steer me in the right direction as far as some of the documents and he agreed to do that. I took a lot of notes that first trip. I returned east end began a series of interviews with him by phone and then i returned to laramie and continued not just with cowell aruba that but began to talk with other people in Law Enforcement and other people in laramie. Although he didnt say this i kept hearing from other people in town that there was more to this case. Its not as it appeared to be. I had one person Law Enforcement say to me shepards homicide had nothing to do with his sexual preference. My curiosity was aroused. Eight months into my research i finished a first draft of the screenplay largely based on the official record and i came back to laramie. I wanted kal aruba to read the script but i wanted to get any documents that i hadnt copied to take with me but i thought it was going to be my final research trip. I was going through some folders at the courthouse and i came upon a letter and the letter, it was an anonymous letter that was there in the courthouse and essentially what the letter said was bad Aaron Mckinneys gay panic defense was false and it said that Aaron Mckinney was familiar with gay guys at gay bars and he was comfortable being around gay guys and it implied that some of this had to do with receiving money and other favors, that aaron had received money and other favors for his contact with gay guys. It means someone here in laramie is one of Aaron Mckinneys gay friends. So after eight months of working on the screenplay i was in a quandary and i ultimately decided to put the screenplay a side and to begin to look at the case as a journalist. While my experience wasnt as a journalist. I was a documentary filmmaker who had done longform stories in several stories dealing with crime, law and justice so briefly i put the screenplay a side and i began doing some investigation of my own. I would say i did quite a bit of that for about a year. When i had gathered enough information i took the story to the newark times magazine and pitched it to them and based on what i brought them they commissioned me to write an article for the sunday times magazine. I worked on that story on and off. I was doing a couple of other things but i worked on it over a period of two years. This was from 2002 until early 2004 and in 2004, the story was killed at the New York Times magazine. They did not criticize the reporting. They actually said the reporting was really good and we would like to work with you on Something Else but the suggestion was that they really didnt want to go into some of the darker aspects of the story. As luck would have it i was talking at the same time to abc news 2020 because i had hoped that maybe i could do the times magazine story and do a piece for television but when the times magazine killed it i thought forget it, abc is not willing to do this but in fact what happened was that abc news based on the material in the article at times magazine killed abc news said lets do this. And that but the resources of the network behind me and i worked on that story with a producing partner for six months solid and that hes aired in november of 2004 so that was my first bit of reporting publicly that came out on this shepard murder. Inapp piece we said some things and in the book aye quite a bit further because after the abc piece aired i was haunted by some unanswered questions. There was still some additional sources i wanted to talk to. I want to go back to sources that were more information and so that is ultimately what is the book of matt, taking the investigation beyond where the abc news piece was. In the abc news piece for those of you who havent seen it we suggested that Aaron Mckinney and matt shepard had known each other prior to the night of the crime and as you saw from what i read the established story was these were strangers, too quote unquote rednecks walked into a bar and saw a fellow that was well dressed and appeared to be gay and they decided to robin beat him. I was able to trace of that story itself has several different iterations. One of the versions, the version that i read to you was that Matthew Shepard was identified in the bar as being gay and he left with the two strangers. Kristen price, Aaron Mckinneys girlfriend a few days after matthew was found, after the crime she went on National Television coincidentally on abc news 2020 and said that again she was not there. She was not part of the crime and she was not at the fireside lounge that night that based on what Aaron Mckinney had told her she said that what had happened is aaron and russell were in the bar at the fireside. Matthew made a sexual advance on them and it embarrassed them and humiliated them in front of their friends and they decided to take matthew out and beat him up to teach him a lesson not to come on to straight people. Well there were other iterations of the story. By the time of Aaron Mckinneys trial as part of his gay panic defense Aaron Mckinney wasnt saying that matthew had come on to him or to Russell Henderson in the bar but that he, after they had left the bar aaron, russell and matthew after driving through town they were at the other end of town at a walmart and matthew reached over and grabbed him and it was that that had caused him to explode as maffei grabbed him. There w