20/20

During this week my class watched, read, and discussed many different topics related to the killing of Matthew Shepard, but the one thing that we watched that impacted me the most was easily the 20/20 Report on this case. This is because this report presented so many different views and so many different ideas that were not presented in any of the other items we read or watched. One of the things that shocked me that was discussed in this report was the fact that members of the Westboro Baptist Church Picketed Matthew's funeral, saying that he deserved to die because he was homosexual. This amazed me because I never thought anyone could go so low to ever say something like this about a person. Another reason why this report was the thing that shocked me the most, and probably the biggest, was the fact that both of Matthew's killers, Aaron McKinney and Russel Henderson, were interviewed during this report. This was very interesting to me because of some of the things that they said, and just the fact that it was the first time that they were ever interviewed after Matthew's death. One of the big things that Aaron McKinney brought up during his interview was that Matthew's murder had nothing to do with the fact that he was homosexual, and this was very interesting because almost everyone believed that this was the sole motive for Matthew's murder. Another thing that was brought up during this interview that was very shocking to me was during Russel Henderson's interview when he said that all he did was tie up Matthew, and other than that he never touched him. He even says that he tried to stop Aaron from beating Matthew, but Aaron responded by hitting Russel with his gun. During his interview, Aaron says that all of this is indeed true, and that he feels that it is completely his fault for Russel being in jail. Overall, this report was packed with shocking information, and it was the one thing that impacted me the most out of all of the different things my class went over.