Free The Book of Matt by Stephen Jimenez Page A

portion of his recorded confession when he told police that Matthew had offered drugs in exchange for sex. Aaron said he “never made that statement.” When I asked if I should send him the official transcript of his confession so he could have a look, he responded blankly, “No, you don’t need to send it.”
    In my frustration I turned to Bill McKinney a few times, hoping he could convince Aaron to be more truthful. Bill was sympathetic but had no solution to offer.
    “Aaron’s been lying since he was a kid,” he said. “Believe me, you’re not the only one. He lies to me, too … One thing I always tried to teach him, and I think I failed miserably, is the difference between honor and loyalty. Aaron still confuses the two. He would rather be loyal to something or someone, to anything really, even if it’s a lie. Then he convinces himself it’s honor.”
    After a thoughtful pause, Bill McKinney added, “When I ask him about that night [of the murder], he tells me he doesn’t remember.”

NINE
    Wildfire
    In my search for the truth of Matthew’s murder, I tracked down a number of his friends, especially those who had spent significant time with him in the summer and early fall of 1998. Some had moved from Laramie and were reluctant to talk. A few said they had spoken to the media previously but were angry at being misrepresented. And nearly everyone I contacted seemed skeptical — if not fearful — of my attempts to uncover hidden aspects of the killing.
    One of Matthew’s close friends whom I was eager to meet was Alex Trout. According to Cal Rerucha, the earliest reports of an anti-gay hate crime had originated with Trout, then twenty-one, and another longtime friend of Matthew named Walt Boulden, a college instructor in social work who had turned forty-six on the day of the attack. According to The Denver Post , Boulden described himself as a sort of big-brother figure to Matthew.
    Trout and Boulden apparently had no firsthand knowledge of the crime, but in their shock at Matthew’s near-fatal beating they began to spread the word immediately, before police had fully launched an investigation.
    I interviewed Trout the first time on June 12, 2002, at a family-style restaurant in Rochester, New York, where he was working as an assistant manager. Beyond what Rerucha had told me, my interest in speaking with Trout came from reading police reports in which he’d claimed that Matthew had been involved with methamphetamine.
    A report by Detective Sergeant Jeff Bury, which was sealed by the court until after Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were convicted, noted: “[Trout and Boulden] stated that … when [Matthew] was in Denver, that he had gotten into some cocaine use and had also participated in some methamphetamine use.” Trout and Boulden’s mention of cocaine and methamphetamine couldn’t helpbut remind me of Aaron’s later statement to police that Matthew had offered “some cocaine or … some methamphetamines … for sex.” Yet from everything I had examined in the case record, it appeared that some police investigators — for unknown reasons — had chosen to ignore evidence of a possible drug component.
    Short and boyish, with wide eyes and a moist handshake, Trout picked me up at the Rochester airport in his car and drove us into town. Almost as soon as we began talking, he said he would have “nothing to do with” my investigative efforts if I intended to write that “Matt’s murder was [about] anything but anti-gay hate.” I told Trout I was interested above all in who Matthew was as a person, which had been missing from most of the media coverage. He agreed, but I could see I was going to have to tread very lightly.
    Another friend of Matthew had already informed me that the Shepard family had excluded Trout and Boulden from Matthew’s highly publicized memorial service at the family’s hometown church in Casper, Wyoming. That, too, stirred my curiosity since both men had