Shepards bring message of kindness to Arvada | Arts & Entertainment

Dennis and Judy Shepard had a simple message for the hundreds who came to hear them speak at the Arvada Center over two emotional gatherings on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

“If we could just take a step toward being kind and understanding, and try to be respectful of one another, we could just make so much progress in this world,” Judy Shepard said. “Let’s just try it.”

It’s been 25 years since the Shepards’ son, Matthew, a gay University of Wyoming student, was tortured and left to die while tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie. The Arvada Center is staging “The Laramie Project,” a play based on his killing, through Nov. 5.

The Shepards founded the Denver-based Matthew Shepard Foundation with a mission to transform their grief into positive change. In Arvada, they talked about the Matt the world never got to know – the old soul who got involved in local politics at age 7; the boy who was drawn to the performing arts through a Casper community theater company; who grew up camping, hunting and fishing; who never acted like he was fully aware that he only weighed 115 pounds.

“He was not the perfect child that everybody tries to make him out to be – far from it,” Dennis Shepard said. “He was just an ordinary kid. The thing we have always wondered since his story became worldwide news is this: Would this have been the same story if he’d have been of a different skin color? The reason we continue to (tell his story) is to help make it better for others.”

I asked the Shepards how they cope with – and respond to – the persistent conspiracy theories that try to obfuscate the murder as a drug deal gone bad – or worse.

Ironically, the issue over whether the killing was a hate crime became settled law in 2009 – not by a journalist or an investigator but by actor Greg Pierotti, a member of the Tectonic Theater Project that came to Wyoming and turned their interviews with townspeople into “The Laramie Project.”

Ten years after the killing, the company returned to Laramie to make an epilogue. At that time, Pierotti scored the first jailhouse interview with killer Aaron McKinney in five years. He confessed to Pierotti that he did “have hatred in his heart for homosexuals that night,” and said outright that “Matthew Shepard needed killing.”

Shortly after, President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into federal law. North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx then notoriously proclaimed that the murder itself was “a hoax to justify passing hate crimes bills.” That didn’t age well.

But because that key McKinney quote is not part of the original “The Laramie Project” script that continues to be performed around the world, it’s now largely forgotten, overshadowed by baseless revisionism like “The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.”

That controversial 2013 book has been fully embraced by some who want (or need) to explain the killing away as anything other than a grotesque act of barbarism.

Judy Shepard doesn’t like to give what she calls the book’s “cruel delusions” any more oxygen. But because it lingers, she addressed it.

“That’s been debunked so many times I’ve lost count,” she said. Added her husband: “The Laramie Police Department investigated every rumor, every conspiracy theory, anything that came along to see if there’s any truth in it. There was nothing.”

“Here’s my question,” Judy Shepard added: If it was a drug deal gone bad, then why didn’t (the killers) just say so? It would’ve gone so much better for them if they had. We have all heard their remarks that they were anti-gay, and that they targeted Matt in the bar because he was gay.

“So the whole thing is just nonsense to me, and that’s how we have treated it. That’s just what those people want to believe – but when you try to convince someone of something they so desperately need to believe, you’re just spitting into the wind. So we just don’t pay any attention to it. It’s just goofy.”

Believe it or not, the Shepards hold no ill will for the notorious Rev. Fred Phelps, the late pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church who defiled Matthew’s funeral with hate speech. “Fred turned out to be our best friend,” Judy Shepard said, “because when he would come to town and spout that hate and that nonsense, the counter protestors always far outnumbered him. I remember thinking, ‘I should just take Fred on the road with me.’”

When the Shepards visit theater companies that are staging “The Laramie Project” for a talk, they don’t often watch the play, which they have seen many dozens of times. In this case, they did – but the Arvada Center cast was not told in advance. Actor Rodney Lizcano (also the play’s co-director) spotted the Shepards sitting in the audience while he was speaking some of his lines.

“It took me a minute for that to register, and to try to come back from that and do the play,” he said. They’re part of the play, and these are their lives on the stage, so I’m still a little raw from that.”

Judy Shepard is now 71; her husband is 74, and they wonder how much longer they can stay active in the daily work of the Matthew Shepard Foundation. But they are still highly motivated: Wyoming remains one of three states that still does not have a single hate-crimes law. Reported hate crimes have been on the rise every year since 2016. There is more work to be done.

“The difference now, however, is that the hate is really focused on the trans community – and especially trans kids,” Judy Shepard said. “Because I think those who have hatred toward the gay community – they know they have lost that part of the battle. But the trans community is still very vulnerable, and that’s just heartbreaking to me.

“But this is the last battle, I promise. They know that they have already lost, which is why they are so fervent in their hate at this particular time. It will be over.”

But for that to happen, she said to loud cheers: “You all have to vote.”