Stephen Jimenez, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard

To join Stephen and Mark in conversation, please click this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81918418506

Twenty-two years ago, the grotesquely violent murder of Matthew Shepard shocked America. On October 6, 1998, twenty-one-year-old Matthew Shepard left a bar in Laramie, Wyoming with two alleged “strangers,” Aaron McKin­ney and Russell Henderson. Eighteen hours later, Matthew was found tied to a log fence on the outskirts of town, unconscious and barely alive and days later he died.

The crime was a flashpoint in the struggle for gay rights. Overnight, the media painted the picture of a hate crime… before police investigated the real motives. The Truth was far more complicated – and dangerous. Witnesses were gagged. Case records were sealed. Many were afraid to talk.

WHY?

Award-winning journalist Steve Jimenez spent two decades digging deep in Laramie, Wyoming. As a gay man, he felt an added moral imperative to tell Matthew’s story. But what Jimenez eventually found in Wyoming was a tangled web of secrets. His exhaustive investigation also plunged him deep into the deadly underworld of drug trafficking. Over the course of a thirteen-year investigation, Jimenez traveled to twenty states and Washington DC, and interviewed more than a hundred named sources. 

The Book of Matt is sure to stir passions and inspire dialogue as it re-frames this misconstrued crime and its cast of characters, proving irrefutably that Matthew Shepard was not killed for being gay but for reasons far more complicated — and daunting.

The story he found there is a chilling page-turner.

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This event is co-sponsored by News From Underground NYC & Steerforth Press