In 1999, a year after his son Matthew had been brutally beaten to death in a gay-hate crime that shocked America, Dennis Shepard stood up in a Wyoming courtroom and read a profound and emotional speech during the sentencing of one of his son’s two killers.
The grieving father imagined his murdered son breathing in sagebrush and pine on his last day of life, and hearing the “ever-present Wyoming wind for the last time”. He spoke of his love and pride for the 21-year-old university student, who was extroverted, fluent in several languages and studying foreign relations and political science with plans to work in the US state department.
