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Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard was born prematurely on December 1, 1976 in Casper, Wyoming (At the time it was the largest city in Wyoming). Before his parents, Dennis and Judy, decided to relocate in Denver, Colorado, Shepard attended school in Casper until his junior year of high school when he finished his primary education at The American School in Switzerland. Shepard spent much of his childhood traveling around the world, mainly due to the fact his father worked as an oil rig safety inspector. He embraced the opportunity of travel and explored Europe, where he became familiar with the languages of German and Italian. Eventually Shepard, because of his father's previous affiliations, ended up studying political science, foreign relations, and language at the University of Wyoming in Laramie where he chose to devote his life studies to the fight for human rights.
Matthew was roughly 5'2", 110 pounds, yet he was a down-to-earth and accepting young man. He always put his family and friends first and had a gift of getting along with everybody. He was very approachable and always looked to tackle new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences. Throughout college he expressed his passions by being chosen as the student representative for the Wyoming Environmental Council.
However, due to his sexual orientation, Shepard had struggles with his inner self. According to his mother, one time during a high school trip to Morocco he was beaten and raped causing him to withdraw and experience bouts of depression and panic attacks. However it was the disturbing events on the night of October 6-7, 1998 that forever changed America and the rest of the world. Two men, Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney entered the gay bar in which Shepard was working at and convinced Shepard to leave with them. Thereafter, Shepard was taken to an open field and was robbed, tortured, tied to a fence, brutally attacked and beaten. Despite suffering from multiple lacerations around his head, face and neck along with brain stem damage and skull fracture, Shepard was managed to be taken to a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. After battling hypothermia and multiple injuries for several days, Shepard died at 12:53 am on Monday October 12th, 1998, at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his family at his bedside.