"The Book of Matt": Debunking a myth of the gay-rights movement

The notion that Shepard was murdered for being gay originally came from two friends of his who had no firsthand knowledge of the case but started the homophobia narrative when Shepard was still alive (he didn’t die until five days after the attack) by calling a gay reporter, several gay organizations and the police.

By the time Shepard died, the motive of homophobia was solidly entrenched in the media. Then the leader in the killing, Aaron McKinney, and his girlfriend both cited his gay panic as a motive, apparently in the belief that it would be seen as a mitigating factor.

Now both of them say that story was a lie. And McKinney told a detective the night of the crime that Shepard “said he could turn us on to some cocaine or something, some methamphetamines, one of those two, for sex,” according to the book. From prison, McKinney now says his “original plan” that night was to rob a meth dealer, but when that didn’t work out he decided to rob Shepard instead. Prosecutor Cal Rerucha told the author that the murder was “driven by drugs.”

McKinney’s own father, when asked whether his son had had sex with other men, said “we’ve all experimented one way or another.” A limo driver told Jimenez he saw McKinney and two other men in the back of his vehicle “buck naked” and “playing around.”