Book: Matthew Shepard Was a Meth Dealer Murdered by ‘Friend’

Instead of being the “hate crime” pushed by leftwing activists for the last 15 years, there’s evidence it was more about meth than ‘homophobes’.

From The Advocate.

What if nearly everything you thought you knew about Matthew Shepard’s murder was wrong? What if our most fiercely held convictions about the circumstances of that fatal night of October 6, 1998, have obscured other, more critical, aspects of the case? How do people sold on one version of history react to being told that facts are slippery — that thinking of Shepard’s murder as a hate crime does not mean it was a hate crime? And how does it color our understanding of such a crime if the perpetrator and victim not only knew each other but also had sex together, bought drugs from one another, and partied together?

None of this is idle speculation; it’s the fruit of years of dogged investigation by journalist Stephen Jimenez, himself gay. In the course of his reporting, Jimenez interviewed over 100 subjects, including friends of Shepard and of his convicted killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, as well as the killers themselves (though by the book’s end you may have more questions than answers about the extent of Henderson’s complicity). In the process, he amassed enough anecdotal evidence to build a persuasive case that Shepard’s sexuality was, if not incidental, certainly less central than popular consensus has lead us to believe.

……In The Book of Matt, Jimenez examines the laudable, if premature, effort on the part of two of Shepard’s friends to alert the media to what they believed to be a crime of hate. At the time, Shepard was still fighting for his life. By the time he died, five days later, the question had been firmly settled, as news reporters and gay organizations like GLAAD rushed in. As JoAnn Wypijewski wrote in a brilliant 1999 piece for Harper’s Magazine, “Press crews who had never before and have not since lingered over gruesome murders of homosexuals came out in force, reporting their brush with a bigotry so poisonous it could scarcely be imagined.”

……By several accounts, McKinney had been on a meth bender for five days prior to the murder, and spent much of October 6 trying to find more drugs. By the evening he was so wound up that he attacked three other men in addition to Shepard. Even Cal Rerucha, the prosecutor who had pushed for the death sentence for McKinney and Henderson, would later concede on ABC’s 20/20 that “it was a murder that was driven by drugs.”

By the way, while the leftie nutbags and LGBT mob had a crying jag over Shepard, 13 year-old Jesse Dirkhising got no such sympathy or publicity:

“Jesse slowly suffocated and died.”

A jury heard those chilling words this week in the opening statement of a little-noticed Arkansas trial. A mother heard those heartbreaking words spoken about her 13-year-old son, Jesse Dirkhising, whom prosecutors say died at the hands of two men who raped and murdered the boy during a marathon torture session. The trial raises grave questions about society’s increasing tolerance of gay pedophilia. But in New York and Los Angeles, the national press hounds were more interested in covering the trial of rap star Sean “Puffy” Combs than in reporting on the tragic death of Jesse Dirkhising.

The details are sickening: On Sept. 26, 1999, Jesse was at the Rogers, Ark., home of a family friend, 39-year-old Davis Carpenter, and Carpenter’s roommate and alleged gay lover, 23-year-old Joshua Brown. According to a local Associated Press account, prosecutor Bob Balfe told jurors Wednesday that “the boy had been given a strong sedative, then restrained while his own underwear was stuffed into his mouth and held in place with duct tape. Brown then folded Jesse into position atop a bed while supporting the boy’s body with pillows.”

“While Jesse was bound and helpless and naked in this position … he was repeatedly raped … over a period of hours,” Balfe said. “Jesse slowly suffocated and died.” The prosecution says Brown raped and sodomized Jesse with various objects, including food, while Carpenter stood in the bedroom doorway watching and masturbating. According to a police affidavit, Brown took a break from the assault to eat a sandwich. When he returned, prosecutors say, he discovered that Jesse was not breathing. Carpenter then called police, who found the boy naked and near death on a bedroom floor.

Police gathered evidence from the men’s apartment that included lurid drawings showing a bound person, written descriptions of a homosexual assault, pieces of paper describing objects with which Jesse was sodomized, and a printed grocery receipt listing duct tape and other items found near Jesse’s body. The defense will argue that Jesse — outnumbered, overpowered, overdosed, and strapped helplessly to a mattress — was a willing and consenting participant in this sexual torment.

This was a child. A 13-year-old child. A boy who should be riding a scooter and wrestling with his friends and watching cartoons and doing his algebra homework. That the defense could even dare make a public case for consensual sex between a 13-year-old boy and two adult men shows how far this country has sunk into the cesspool of moral apathy and cowardice. Public leaders are so worried about not offending gay political interest groups that they remain silent about the mainstreaming of homosexual predation.

The Left has made “hate crimes” into a cottage industry. When atrocities are committed by their own, not so much.

Related articles

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply