Remembering Matthew Shepard
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_10697785Milton Monson
10/12/2008
It was October 1998, and I was a junior at Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyo.
For a week our community was turned upside down when word broke that a former student from our school, then a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, had been brutally murdered. He had been beaten, tied to a split-rail fence, pistol-whipped and left to die in near freezing temperatures.
It was shocking, it was sickening, and it left people wondering why. For six days I watched the news and prayed for his recovery, but on Oct. 12, 1998, Matthew Shepard's battered body finally gave out and he died. During that week, we discovered the reason that Matthew had been beaten and left to die: He was gay.
