Points of Bias

Matthew Shepard died on October 12, 1998, along with 26 other murder victims that year in Wyoming.  Shepard was no poster child, but a regular person that had problems just like everyone else.  Unlike the other 26 people that died in 1998, Matthew Shepard was openly gay.  Despite investigating the murder further to find other possible motives behind the attack, the Media jumped to conclusions and labeled the murder as a hate crime.   The media came bustling into the small community of Laramie, Wyoming, broadcasting the murder on national news and then “…descended and there was no time to reflect on it anymore.” (Jon Peacock 50).  The town of Laramie was now “defined by an accident, a crime.” (Jedadiah Schultz 7)  The media never got the full story behind this case, and portrayed Laramie as an outcast from the real world society.  Although, in the next several years, strong evidence and new witnesses came forth that questioned the true motive behind the attack.  The beating, torturing, and eventually the killing of Matthew Shepard was not only hate crime against his sexual orientation, but also a murder caused purely by meth-induced rage.

The Laramie Project, by Moisés Kaufman, is one source that shows bias towards the murder being a hate crime.  The 200 interviews themselves are truthful and are not bias one way or anther.  It is the order of the interviews in the play that show bias towards it being a hate crime.  Kaufman arranged the interviews just like any other play by having the introduction and setting in the beginning, raising action describing Shepard’s life leading to the murder, and then falling action leading to the denouement; the court sentencing Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson to life in prison for murdering Matthew Shepard because of his sexual orientation.  The purpose behind the play is not to tell the life story of Matthew Shepard; it’s about being targeted and murdered for being “different” and how this affects the community.  The murder of James Byrd is another example of how people are killed based on their race or sexual orientation.  Three white men dragged Byrd behind a pick up truck for three miles and then dumped his torso in front of an African-American cemetery.  There are no other credible motives behind the attack other than it being a hate crime against Byrd’s race.  However, unlike the James Byrd Case, the Matthew Shepard case seemed to have been more complex than just a hate crime.  The 2004: ABC News 20/20 Report: The Matthew Shepard Case revealed new information that the murder of Matthew Shepard was not a hate crime.  Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were interviewed for the first time after the event in prison.  Defying what they said in court, both Henderson and McKinney admitted that they did not kill Shepard because he was gay, but out of meth-induced rage.  The 20/20 report does show bias towards the crime by only acknowledging their point of view and not other possible motives like the hate crime.