Matthew Shepard’s parents open up to Oprah about their son’s murder

Matthew Shepard’s parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, have opened up about the harrowing days following their son’s murder in 1998 in a new interview with Oprah Winfrey.

The couple were in Saudi Arabia when they received a phone call in the early hours of October 8, 1998. It was a call that would change their lives forever. Their 21-year-old gay son, Matthew, had been found beaten and tied to a post in a field in Laramie, Wyoming. Judy and Dennis rushed home to be by his side, hopeful he would survive, but he passed away five days later.

Speaking to Oprah, Judy recalled the sight that awaited her when she rushed to her son’s bedside.

“I actually wasn’t even sure it was Matt. He was just so disfigured and swollen, stitches all over his face. As we got closer, there [are] things you see – his braces, for one thing. You can’t mistake those. And one eye was partially open. The twinkle of life that you expect to see wasn’t really there. That was not what we expected.”

Shepard’s attackers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, drove him to an abandoned field, where they tied him to a fence post and beat him with the butt of a pistol 18 times leaving him unconscious. He suffered through freezing temperatures for almost 18 hours before a cyclist, who mistakenly thought he was a scarecrow, found him.

You have your Mother’s Day calls and Father’s Day calls, and cards you don’t get. You have the Christmas, you have the birthday. That’s when it starts to hit,” said Dennis.

However, the brutal murder pushed Judy and Dennis into a lifelong fight against bigotry and a quest to preserve their son’s memory. They were involved in the creation of Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine, a new documentary that highlights the memories of those who knew him.