At first, the passing bicyclist thought the crumpled form lashed to a ranch fence was a scarecrow. But when he stopped, he found the burned, battered and nearly lifeless body of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who had been tied to the fence 18 hours earlier.
On Friday, the 22-year-old University of Wyoming student was in a coma in critical condition. At Albany County Courthouse, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and attempted first-degree murder. Two women described as friends of the men, Kristen Leann Price, 18, and Chastity Vera Pasley, 20, have been charged as accessories after the fact to attempted first-degree murder.Shepard's friends said that he did not know his alleged tormentors. Laramie police say the primary motive was robbery, although court papers filed Friday indicate Shepard's homosexuality may also have been a factor. Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime.
"He was very open about his sexuality," Tina LaBrie, an anthropology student here, said of her friend. "I admired him for that, because it is very courageous to be yourself even when others disagree."
A few hours before he was beaten, Shepard, a slight 5-foot, 2-inch man who wore braces on his teeth, had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, said Walter Boulden, a friend of Shepard's.
"He was sitting at the bar, having a beer, when two men came up and talked to him," Boulden, a 46-year-old university lecturer of social work here, said Friday between tears. "He indicated he was gay, and they said they were gay, too."
"Now, he is in a coma," continued Boulden, who visited his friend at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday. "I don't think anybody expects him to pull through."
Shepard, who spoke Arabic and German, studied at a boarding school in Switzerland before moving back to the United States to attend the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of his father, an oil rig safety inspector in Saudi Arabia. Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, the capital of Wyoming's oil belt, and spent much of his youth there.
Calvin Rerucha, the county attorney, charged in court documents that McKinney and Henderson posed as homosexuals and lured Shepard out to McKinney's pickup truck.