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Wyoming v. Aaron J. McKinney
Preliminary evidence heard in Wyoming beating
Updated Nov. 19, 1998
7:38 p.m. ET
Nov. 19 (Court TV) — Aaron McKinney, one of the two young men charged with the gruesome beating of Matthew Shepard, an openly homosexual University of Wyoming student, was in court Wednesday as the state presented initial evidence linking McKinney to the assault.
On Nov. 10, co-defendant Russell Henderson waived his right to a preliminary hearing, leaving McKinney alone to answer the charges.
There was abundant evidence to use to formally charge McKinney, said prosecutor Calvin Rerucha as he opened the hearing with an emotional statement and recounted the witnesses he planned to call. Rerucha briefly described the grisly crime. Shepard was covered with blood, he said. Only one clean spot was found on his face "where tears had run down." He powerfully described how Shepard remained tied to a fence, with the "constant Wyoming wind as his companion," for 18 hours before he was found.
Using an aerial map to pinpoint the relevant locations, Police Commander David O'Malley discussed the chain of events leading to the assault on Shepard. Just after midnight on Oct. 7, 1998, police responded to a vandalism call, he said. The officers who arrived at the scene, noticed two suspicious looking young men — Henderson and McKinney — near a pick-up truck.
The men had just been involved in an altercation with two Hispanic teens — Emiliano Morales III and Jeremy Herrera. O'Malley described how the officers discovered that Henderson had struck Morales with a .357 magnum. Herrera had hit McKinney with a stick.
It was during this investigation that authorities realized the two young men had allegedly committed a second crime. There was too much blood on the gun to have been exclusively from Morales' wound, O'Malley said.
Shepard's shoes, coat and credit card were found in McKinney's pick-up truck, O'Malley stated, and Shepard's wallet was later found at McKinney's home, wrapped in a dirty diaper in a garbage pail.
O'Malley also held his ground in a cross-examination by defense attorney Jason Tangeman. Because this hearing was primarily to establish probable cause for the state's charges against McKinney, Tangeman was unlikely to attack the evidence so early in the case.
Patrol officer Reggie Fluty spoke about her 6:22 p.m. call to the Shepard crime scene and her subsequent attempt to assist him. Looking at sketches of the crime, Fluty described finding Shepard covered in blood — his hands bound with rope, his body tied to the fence.
Shepard's brutalized body was first discovered by a cyclist, who thought the limp body was a scarecrow, Fluty said.
Tangeman questioned Fluty about other people she encountered around the crime scene. He also asked her about a watch and an ID card found near Shepard, and asked her to detail the manner in which Shepard was tied and the sort of medical aid she provided.
Detective Ben Fritzen spoke about interviewing Kristen Price, McKinney's girlfriend. During his interview, he said, Price was adamant that the jacket found in the pick-up truck belonged to co-defendant Henderson, while Henderson's girlfriend, Chastity Pasley had told the detective she had never seen the coat before.
Using this inconsistency, Fritzen was able to get Price to admit that she knew about the beating, he said. Price also told the detective how she helped dispose of Henderson and McKinney's bloody clothes.
Fritzen said Price described in detail what her boyfriend had told her about the murder. "McKinney struck him while Henderson laughed," she said, according to Fritzen, and then Henderson tied him up. Shepard "begged for his life" the entire time, Price allegedly told Fritzen.
As for Henderson's girlfriend, Pasley initially lied about her knowledge of the incident, Detective Sergeant Rob DeBree told the court. However, on the second interview he said she told him what she knew about the crime.
Rurucha also asked DeBree to speak about his interviews with McKinney. The detective then read excerpts from a videotaped statement he took of McKinney. In the statement, McKinney admitted to beating and robbing Shepard and "leaving him for dead."
On cross-examination, public defender Dion Custis pointed out that DeBree only had pulled out selected information from the McKinney interview. He noted that any exculpatory information may have been omitted from DeBree's testimony. Custis also stressed that there was no information that McKinney intended to kill Shepard, or that Shepard was kidnapped.
Price and Pasley are accused of assisting their boyfriends in disposing of bloody clothes and have also waived their preliminary hearings.
Defense attorney Custis addressed Fritzen's interviewing tactics, asking the detective if he told Price that she could go to jail and lose her child if she did not cooperate. Fritzen denied threatening Price. Custis also speculated that Price's knowledge of events could have been influenced by Henderson and Pasley.
Detective Sergeant Jeffrey Bury explained how the Shepard beating was connected to the initial Morales and Herrera crime scene. Matthew Shepard's name appeared on both the credit card found in the pick-up truck used by McKinney and Henderson and the ID card located near the fence bore the Matthew Shepard, he said. He also narrated a crime-scene video which was played for the court.
Matthew Shepard was severely beaten and tied to a buck fence in southern Wyoming. Five days after the beating he died from his injuries in a Colorado hospital. He had sustained at least 18 blows to his head.
Henderson and McKinney were charged with first-degree murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping with intent to to inflict bodily injury or terrorize the victim. If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
On the night of the beating, Shepard had attended a meeting of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association. He then went to a bar, where he allegedly met McKinney and Henderson, who told him they were gay.
The suspects then allegedly lured their prey into McKinney's pick-up truck, where they told him, "We're not gay — you've been jacked."
The 5-foot-2, 105-pound Shepard already had been beaten twice, presumably because he was outspoken about his sexuality, since the beginning of the 1998 school year. And, while the primary motive for the October attack was robbery, court papers list sexual orientation as a factor.
Shepard's friends call the attack a hate crime. Additionally, Price and Pasley said they heard their boyfriends make anti-gay remarks.
McKinney and Henderson are also separately accused in the attack on Morales and Herrera. While Morales and Herrera are hispanic, they say their attackers did not use any hate speech against them.
Shepard, who spoke four languages and aspired to someday become a diplomat, chose to attend the University of Wyoming because his father went there.
—Kathryn Rubenstein
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