But the Matthew Shepard story is not yet finished. A new twist came last year with the publication of another book, this one by investigative journalist Stephen Jimenez, who has spent 13 years interviewing more than 100 people with a connection to the case. His conclusion, outlined in The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard, is that the grotesque murder was not a hate crime, but could instead be blamed on crystal meth, a drug that was flooding Denver and the surrounding area at the time of Matthew’s death. This new theory has, understandably, caused a lot of anger.
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“People object to the idea of the book, rather than what is in the book,” says Jimenez. “The anger directed at me has been pretty extreme.”
Jimenez had no intention of causing such controversy. He’s an award-winning writer and TV producer, and visited Laramie shortly after the murder to gather material for a screenplay about the case. When he started he was convinced that Matthew died at the hands of homophobes, but he soon discovered that Matthew’s tragedy began long before the night he was killed.
Jimenez found that Matthew was addicted to and dealing crystal meth and had dabbled in heroin. He also took significant sexual risks and was being pimped alongside Aaron McKinney, one of his killers, with whom he’d had occasional sexual encounters. He was HIV positive at the time of his death.
“This does not make the perfect poster boy for the gay-rights movement,” says Jimenez. “Which is a big part of the reason my book has been so trashed.”
Matthew’s drug abuse, and the fact that he knew one of his killers prior to the attack, was never explored in court. Neither was the rumour that the killers knew that he had access to a shipment of crystal meth with a street value of $10,000 which they wanted to steal.