Laramie, Wyoming

McKinney and Henderson are small men, but this boy is smaller. He's the same age as they are but wearing incredibly stylish clothes, a clean shave, shiny patent leather shoes. His hair is bleached; his hands on the bar are white and flowerlike. He himself looks like an emblem of everything they have never been allowed to be. He's a child-man, or looks like one: still wearing braces, but with enough money to pay for strangers.

The bartender loves him. Matthew thanks (and tips) him with a marvelous politeness after every round. Russell and Aaron barely know how to speak that way, like someone who's fluent in Arabic, French and German, who was able to be openly gay in high school (at a fabulous private school in Switzerland); like someone who's already chosen a career in international human rights. They stare at him across the bar (witnesses differ on whether they take his cash or not). Matthew is, quite probably, being flirtatious. ("Matthew was flirty with everyone," says Jason Marsden, who was a close friend.)

But these two boys have faces that might be read as gay, and Henderson is actually cute. There are good grounds for believing that something passed, both ways, between them and Shepard.

Media reports to the contrary, gay-bashing is an erotic crime, not just a violent one. Most bashers, like Russell and Aaron on this evening, proposition their victim before they kill. And it is easy to see why Matthew would arouse these feelings. His very charm and generosity are seductive. Russell and Aaron could never give in to the allure of such flirtatious femininity in another man, but that doesn't mean they haven't felt it: Most men do. For Russell and Aaron it is an attraction tinged with envy. They have never been allowed to be this feminine--or even, you might say, this nice. They have never been allowed to take such pleasure in fabrics and textures as this boy is taking in his expensive clothes, but they have wanted to.

Matthew's interest in them makes him infinitely more threatening; this feminine boy has made a masculine pass by offering to pay for their drinks. His wealth threatens to put them on the bottom where they have always been, but this time, in relation to a tiny, femmy boy.

He tells them he is gay and they say that they're gay, too. "Let's go back to Aaron's place," they say, "and get to know each other better" (as Aaron's girlfriend will recount on 20/20). Once he gets into their truck, Aaron takes out his gun and smashes the butt of it into Matthew's head. "We're not gay, and you just got jacked," he yells.

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