The parable drawn from the crime was supplemented with beauty shots of Mr. Shepard that made him look like a frail James Dean, and arraignment photos of Mr. McKinney and Mr. Henderson that made them look like tight-lipped white power people.
The men, however, did not have ideologies. They were full-time roofers with steady girlfriends. But Mr. McKinney was also a speed freak, an operator who won $100,000 in a malpractice settlement (his mother had died in a botched surgery) and spent it on "cars and drugs," he says now. According to a drug buddy interviewed by Ms. Vargas, Mr. McKinney had been on a weeklong no-sleeping bender before he murdered Mr. Shepard. Mr. Henderson says on camera that he was so worried about Mr. McKinney's drug-induced volatility that night that he hoped to keep him drinking in a local bar until he calmed down.
Newly armed with a large-frame revolver - the impressive kind that Dirty Harry used, says the man who traded it to him for drugs - Mr. McKinney was hoping to commit a robbery. He was full of scattershot rage. When Mr. Shepard, who was also at the bar, asked him for a ride home, he agreed, planning to steal his wallet for drug money. Mr. Henderson went along on the drive, and after Mr. McKinney beat Mr. Shepard senseless with the gun, he tied him to a fence in a remote field. The two men then took off for town, where Mr. McKinney attacked another guy he came across, cracking the man's skull....
But it's Mr. McKinney's story that's the real showstopper here. As a tweaker and dealer, he appears to have liked the high life - or whatever he could buy of it in Laramie.
But Mr. Shepard did, too. Like Mr. McKinney, he had a meth habit, his friends say here. And this is where the documentary spirals into a real twist - the kind generally reserved for episodes of "Mystery!" or Errol Morris documentaries.
It turns out that if you like high life in the high plains, you go for limousines - namely, the rental fleet owned and chauffeured by Doc O'Connor. Mr. Shepard hired one of these, which Mr. O'Connor drove, to get to a gay bar one night in Fort Collins, Colo. Mr. O'Connor noticed he was upset on the drive home, and later, Mr. O'Connor tells Ms. Vargas, Mr. Shepard told him he was H.I.V. positive. "20/20" relies heavily on the interview with Mr. O'Connor, who comes across as an invention of David Lynch. (His accusations are not confirmed with anyone else on camera.)
But that's not the end of Mr. O'Connor's involvement in this story. In defending himself from charges of homophobia Mr. McKinney says, noxiously, "I have gay friends," which gives the documentary a chance for a bravura transition.
"One of McKinney's gay friends may have been Matthew Shepard," Ms. Vargas says in voice-over.
What? They knew each other?
Mr. McKinney denies it to Ms. Vargas, but "20/20" then produces several interviews with people who had seen the men together. And then a bomb is dropped.
Mr. O'Connor, ever the mixer here, volunteers that Mr. McKinney didn't hate gays because "I know of an instance where he had a three-way - two guys and one girl at a party, an all-nighter." After confirming that Mr. McKinney had had sex with the man of the trio, Ms. Vargas asks Mr. O'Connor how he knows about such an intimate experience.
"Because he did it with me," the limo driver says.
Now what does this prove? That Mr. McKinney was bisexual, as his girlfriend goes on to confirm? (Mr. McKinney denies that he has ever had sex with a man.) Does that mean he wasn't homophobic? And as for the news about Mr. Shepard - so what if he did meth or had H.I.V.?
