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Oct. 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student at the University of Wyoming, was robbed and beaten in the parking lot of a Laramie, Wyo., bar. His two anti-gay assailants then took him to a remote spot outside town where he was stripped naked, tied to a wooden fence, tortured and left to die. Shepard was found by two mountain bikers who delivered him to a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., where he died six days later. Two men, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, were convicted of murder â Henderson also was convicted of kidnapping â and sentenced to life in prison.
Shepardâs murder rocked the nation and prompted calls for extending hate crime laws to cover violence based on an individualâs sexual orientation. And, indeed, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act â aka Hate Crimes Act of 2009 â bears Shepardâs name and the name of another hate crime victim, a Black man who was murdered by a group of Texas white su