Dennis Shepard Statement (cont.)
with a greater pride when I saw him on the
stage. The hours that he spent learning his
parts, working behind the scenes, and helping
others made me realize that he was actually an
excellent athlete—in a more dynamic way—
because of the different types of physical and
mental conditioning required by actors. To this
day I have never figured out how he was able to
spend all those hours at the theater, during the
school year, and still have good grades.
In addition to losing my son, I lost my father on
November 4, 1998. The stress of the entire affair
was too much for him. Dad watched Matt grow
up. He taught him how to hunt, fish, camp, ride
horses and love the state of Wyoming. Matt,
Logan, Dad and I would spend two to three
weeks camping in the mountains at different
times of the year—to hunt, to fish and to goof
off. Matt learned to cook over an open fire, tell
fishing stories about the one that got away, and
to drive a truck from my father. Three weeks
before Matt went to the Fireside Bar for the
last time, my parents saw Matt in Laramie. In
addition, my father tried calling Matt the night
that he was beaten but received no answer. He
never got over the guilt of not trying earlier. The
additional strain of the hospital vigil, being in
the hospital room with Matt when he died, the
funeral services with all the media attention and
the protesters, [and] helping Judy and me clean
out Matt’s apartment in Laramie a few days later
was too much. Three weeks after Matt’s death,
dad died. Dad told me after the funeral that he
never expected to outlive Matt. The stress and
the grief were just too much for him.
Matt officially died at 12:53 a.m. on Monday,
October 12, 1998, in a hospital in Fort Collins,
Colorado. He actually died on the outskirts of
A young Matthew Shepard with his grandfather. Courtesy of the Shepard family.
The Laramie Proj