My Laramie Project
January 2, 2002 — I am visiting my sister and her family in Fort Collins, Colorado. I drove here from Oakland, California, and on the way I noticed the exit for Laramie, Wyoming, just 60 miles or so north of my sister’s new home. Laramie. Infamous site of the 1998 torture and murder of openly gay college student Matthew Shepard. I know that I’ll be heading back tomorrow, and so I vow to take advantage of this spooky locale and explore what I can. I’m up very late doing research on the Internet to avoid uncomfortable questions from my brilliant and precocious seven-year-old niece. I Google it; among scores of hits find an article in salon.com, a site with the details of the abduction and subsequent events, and a disturbing homophobic site or two.
The Geocities site is rich with information.
| Datum | Detail |
|---|---|
| Location of the crime: | Sherman Hills neighborhood, east of Laramie, split-rail fence on Snowy Mountain Road |
| Gay bar where Kinney and Henderson abducted Shepard: | Fireside Lounge, Laramie, Wyo. |
| Place and time of death: | Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft. Collins, 12:53 a.m., Monday, Oct. 12, 1998 |
WHAT? Fort Collins? Poudre Valley Hospital? That’s the hospital not two miles from here, where my niece had gone after she had gotten her arm stuck in a pool drainage pipe and had to have the pipe cut from her swollen hand. (I had waited on edge there, a nervous, worried uncle who just happened to be visiting when this none-too-small trauma unfolded.)
I read on, fascinated, only to learn that in the days after the first news of Shepard’s attack, college students had ridden--
“atop a homecoming float that featured a scarecrow figure designed to resemble Matthew’s battered body. The figure was wearing a sign that said ‘I’m gay.’ An obscene message was painted across the back of the scarecrow’s shirt.”
The article continued, seeking not to come down too heavily on the students.
“The students didn’t mean to be insensitive. It was supposed to be a joke. They were just ordinary, average guys, having a bit of fun.”
The location of those “ordinary, average” college students? Colorado State University, right here in Fort Collins.
I had been working at my first Internet startup in the fall of 1998 when the news of the hate crime captivated us all. First, there was the horribleness of the incident and then, only 5 days later, the unexpected, disappointing, terribly sad news of Shepard’s passing. I had never known this guy, and yet, I do remember that at one point, in private, I cried for what his loss meant.
And now, by pure serendipity I find myself with the time and the opportunity to look farther into this infamous crime. I’m here with my car and a camera. Perhaps I can gather some until-now-undiscovered insight into this horror; some tidbit that somehow might add hopeful meaning to it all?
After saying goodbye to my sister and nieces I hit the road for Laramie. I leave in mid-afternoon, so that I can arrive before sunset and have a quick look around town and find a hotel to use as my base of operations from which to do my investigative journalism. Granted, I’ve never done any investigative journalism. I’ve never been trained in such an undertaking, and I probably don’t have the natural extroversion and assertiveness necessary for the task. But how hard could it be?
The roads are covered with about 8 inches of snow, and my car slips and slides a bit while I slowly track through the main roads leading to the University of Wyoming, the school Shepard had attended. Visibility is low, and I don’t see anything that might pass for a gay bar. My notes tell me to look for a place called “The Fireside Lounge.” The campus seems more or less deserted, I supposed because they’re in the middle of their winter break. So I’m off to find a hotel to set up my HQ.
It’s 7:00 — way too early to go out, and I’m a bit tired anyway, so I have a brief nap and order a pizza while I consider my plans. The pizza is good, if a bit oily. I find “Fireside Lounge” in the phonebook and get its address. I will call a bit later, after the staff presumably would have arrived, and see if I can get directions to the bar. Perhaps there will be some kind of memorial to Shepard in the bar.
Surely there will be people who will have known him personally. It’s already 9:00 — time to call the bar to see if the staff are in yet. No answer, and no answering machine. I watch TV for a while, and then, it’s 10:00. Surely the staff will be there by now. I call again. No answer, no machine. I watch more TV and call on the half-hour. Saturday Night Live comes on. No answer, no machine. SNL ends. Midnight, so there’s no chance that the staff has not arrived. I give up on getting directions and set out with my gas station Laramie map and headlights. I make it through the subfreezing temps to my car, and it does eventually start. There are very few cars on the snowy main road (it’s a very small town!), so it’s not that big a problem that I’m going so slow and checking for street signs and address numbers.
I drive up and down the length of Custer Street, but there’s nothing anywhere that resembles a gay bar — surely I would see the crowd long before the street address! I cross the main road to the other side of Custer and park my car to rest and get my bearings. And then I look up and see that the large, flat building that I’ve passed several times has a sign on it, “DRINKIN’ -N- DANCIN’: Package Liquor” and then, on the side of the building around the corner, “Fireside Bar & Lounge: Drinkin & Dancin, DJ’s, Live Music, Package Liquor” It’s silent. Pitch black. I guess they’re closed for the winter break.
Disappointed and a bit dazed, I make my way back to my hotel room to plot my next step. So I won’t be meeting any leads at the bar. In the morning I’ll head out to see if I can find the general location of Shepard’s ordeal — the split-rail fence on Snowy Mountain Road. Maybe there’s a shrine or something — there’s got to something marking the site of this historical horror, right?
In the morning I study my map for directions to Snowy Mountain Road. Only problem is, it’s not on the map. Nor is it on the map I picked up in the lobby of the hotel. There’s a ‘Snowy Range Road’, but it’s way in West Laramie, on the other side of town from the Sherman Hills neighborhood where it’s supposed to be. I drive around in search of a more detailed map. This being Sunday morning, almost everything is closed. There’s a place that looks like a gas station shoppette, and it’s got a big “Yes! We’re OPEN” sign in the window, just under the odd, “SF — Smoker Friendly” sign. I enter and look around but don’t see any maps, just lots and lots of cigarettes.
I ask the young woman at the counter if she knew where I could find a map. After some thinking, she says, “Um, you could try the Chamber of Commerce — it’s just up the road.” I thank her but as I leave, I distinctly hear her mutter to another customer in the store, “Some people!” I have no idea what that’s about. Has she noticed the California plates on my car? Am I just one more straggling outsider bent on bringing further infamy and condemnation on their fine town?
I study my two maps from inside my car. Actually, this one map is quite detailed, and it seems to clearly show every street in the Sherman Hills neighborhood mentioned in the Geocities article. Could they have actually renamed the road to avoid pesky would-be investigative journalist outsiders like me? Is it just too far out to be on this map?
I do try the Chamber of Commerce, but they’re closed. I can see I’m just not going to get anywhere on this trip. I drive back to the Fireside Lounge and take snapshots of the signs for later scanning. Then there’s not much else to do but get back on I-80 heading west.
As soon as I’m back on the freeway, I consider my total failure at finding anything worth writing about, and somehow, it doesn’t really bother me. What really more is there to say about the ignorant, homophobic culture that spawned the two murderers of this innocent person? “The Laramie Project” is a critically acclaimed theater production and now, an HBO movie.
Maybe I’m just rationalizing away my utter failure to uncover anything of value, but at least until the point where my car slips on the ice and I end up safely but frighteningly careening off the road for 50 yards, my mind soaks comfortably in the self-assured notion that the particulars of evil, in and of themselves, are simply not that interesting.
