The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed by Judy Shepard

Author:Judy Shepard [Shepard, Judy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Gay Men, Parenting, United States, Biography & Autobiography, Family & Relationships, Homicide, Mothers and Sons, Gay Rights, Laramie (Wyo.), Motherhood, Civil Rights, Wyoming, Loss (Psychology), Crimes Against, Personal Memoirs, Laramie, Political Science, Death; Grief; Bereavement, Children
ISBN: 0452296382
Google: lAhM7KH5uLUC
Amazon: B003XU7WAU
Publisher: Plume
Published: 2009-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

MATT WASN’T the only patient in the emergency room when he arrived at Ivinson Memorial Hospital on that Wednesday night. In fact, he wasn’t the only patient in the emergency room suffering from head trauma. Aaron McKinney was there as well, and he and Matt were both being treated by Dr. Cantway, who later said that—counting Emiliano Morales, who had been in the emergency room about fifteen hours earlier—he’d never before seen a time when the hospital had to deal with so many head injuries in a twenty-four-hour period.

Within an hour after Matt was admitted, Dr. Cantway determined that the hospital in Laramie wasn’t equipped to deal with either Matt’s or McKinney’s injuries, so he sent them both—in separate ambulances—to Fort Collins, where, again, they were treated by the same neurosurgeon.

I’ve had many conversations with Dennis and Logan—as well as with Rob DeBree, Jeff Bury, Dave O’Malley, and Reggie Fluty—since that day after Matt’s death, when we all met for the first time to discuss the details of the murder. We’ve all agreed that, at the time, it felt like all of us—including Matt, McKinney, and Henderson—were pieces in a big board game, being moved around by some higher power. When we stopped to think about it, too many things happened on the day of my son’s attack that were unlikely to have transpired in the normal, logical stream of life. Matt’s bad luck in meeting McKinney and Henderson in the first place was followed quickly by the police officer noticing McKinney’s truck as he and Henderson headed back to town after beating Matt. Then McKinney and Henderson running into Herrera and Morales downtown, Officer Waters catching Henderson when he thought he was chasing one of the suspected vandals, and Aaron Kreifels hitting the rock and taking a tumble where he could see Matt tied to the fence. Next the bank card found on the dash in McKinney’s truck helped police connect the dots quickly. And then there was the surreal fact that Matt and his murderer were treated simultaneously, in two different hospitals, by the same doctors, who at the time had no idea how the two men were connected.

It’s not that I think Matt was meant to be murdered or that Henderson and McKinney were driven by anything other than their own hatred when they killed my son. That’s certainly not the case. It’s just that, after things went so horribly off track that night—in that typical local bar in that typical American town—it seemed to all of us that somebody, something, or some power stepped in to, as much as possible, set things right.

Reggie later told me a story about when she first saw Matt tied to the fence that only further underscores my feelings about involvement of a higher power. Reggie said that as she ran to the fence she saw a large doe lying near Matt—as if the deer had been keeping him company through the night. “I didn’t see her until I started running up,” she said of the deer.

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