Anythiing To Make A Buck- Smear Mathew

[Lucky]

The NY Post columnist Adrea Peyser has lent what credibility she might have to author Stephen Jiminez. Not sure what credibility he has, but he has written an entire book to advance his theory that Mathew Shepard tried to exchange sex for crystal meth, a choice that led to his death.

It's a shame that after 15 years someone is trying too make money off of a tragic death. And more of a shame that Jimenez claims to be gay himself.

I hadn't heard of this book until now, but others have, and Jimenez is met with protests at various book signing events he creates. Amazon actually carries the book, and describes it thus: " The Book of Matt is a page-turning cautionary tale that humanizes and de-mythologizes Matthew while following the evidence where it leads, without regard to the politics that have long attended this American tragedy." So far, among 40 customer reviews, it gets 4 stars out of five.

Amazon says that People magazine calls it "a gripping read." Even gay magazines are in on the praise:

“Jimenez does a masterful job of unspooling this haunted narrative like a puzzle, giving you seemingly disparate pieces that take a while to form a larger picture... Anyone interested in the Matthew Shepard case needs to read this book.” – Jeff Walsh, Oasis Magazine, an online publication for LGBT youth

"What if nearly everything you thought you knew about Matthew Shepard’s murder was wrong? What if our most fiercely held convictions about the circumstances of that fatal night of October 6, 1998, have obscured other, more critical, aspects of the case? . . . None of this is idle speculation; it’s the fruit of years of dogged investigation by journalist Stephen Jimenez, himself gay. In the course of his reporting, Jimenez interviewed over 100 subjects, including friends of Shepard and of his convicted killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, as well as the killers themselves. . . . In the process, he amassed enough anecdotal evidence to build a persuasive case that Shepard’s sexuality was, if not incidental, certainly less central than popular consensus has lead us to believe." — Aaron Hicklin, Editor-in-Chief of Out magazine, in The Advocate

One of 7 unfavorable reviews has it thus: Before purchasing this work, please read this commentary ...

This work, "The Book of Matt", attempts to show that Matt Shepherd was murdered as part of a methamphetamine related hit ... that Matt and his killers knew each other ... and were lovers.

Strange that not of this speculation came out in the trial"

It's all a mystery to me, but I have no plans to read the book. I think the facts came out a long time ago.

[Lucky]

mediamatters.org has provided one of the attorneys for Mathew's killers a forum to express his view on this book:

The appellate attorney who represented an accomplice in the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard assailed author Stephen Jimenez's book suggesting that Shepard's murder was fueled by meth, not anti-gay hate.

In a statement provided to Equality Matters, attorney Tim Newcomb - whom Jimenez lists as a source in The Book of Matt - responded to Jimenez's claim in a recent interview that Newcomb's criticism of the book is invalid because Newcomb was an appellate attorney and not involved in the Shepard case from the beginning. As a longtime resident of Laramie, the small college town where Shepard was brutally murdered, Newcomb said in his statement that unlike Jimenez, he has a long-standing familiarity with the tight-knight community:

Unlike the author, who visited Laramie from New York a year and a half [after Shepard's murder], I was an attorney living in Laramie, and had been for several years, when Matthew was murdered. I mention that only because Laramie has few people and we tend to know of each other. Hidden truths behind notorious crimes are as rare as windless winters.

Moreover, as the appellate attorney for Russell Henderson, Aaron McKinney's accomplice in Shepard's killing, Newcomb dealt with one of Jimenez's apparent sources, who claimed to know the "hidden truths" in the murder. In his statement, Newcomb described how -- like many of Jimenez's other sources -- this man put forth multiple shifting stories, including the theory that Shepard's murder wasn't motivated by homophobia:

During the time I represented Russell, a man called his grandmother, saying he had been Matthew's lover and had his diary. I called him and asked if that was true. He told me it was, so I asked for a copy. His story shifted; his sister had the diary. I asked that she send me a copy. His story shifted again. She wouldn't show it to anyone because she feared for his life. I asked why he called Russell's grandmother then; eventually, he seemed to suggest that he didn't have enough money.

Our conversation ended but I'm told he became a source for a recently published book rewriting Matthew's murder, claiming that McKinney did not target Matthew because he was gay.

Newcomb remains convinced that anti-gay hate was the central motive for the crime. And unlike Jimenez, Newcomb can point to verifiable evidence supporting his theory. In his transcribed confession, McKinney derided Shepard as a "fag." Jimenez asserts that McKinney's claim of a homophobic motive was simply part of an effort to cover up an extensive meth underground in Laramie, concocted as a legal survival strategy in the weeks and months after the murder.

But even after being sentenced to life in prison, McKinney continued to refer to himself as "homofobick [sic]." As Newcomb notes, McKinney defiantly stated years after the murder that "Matt Shepard needed killing," and that "[t]he night I did it, I did have hatred for homosexuals." Explaining why he targeted Shepard, McKinney said it was because "he was obviously gay. That played a part. His weakness. His frailty."

Jimenez may wish to cast doubt on the reality of Shepard's murder as a hate crime, but his narrative is undermined by McKinney himself, who boasts of his status as "the poster child for hate-crime murders."

[AdamSmith]

Thanks for both of these posts. Goes to show several things: conscienceless money-grubbingness of the book biz, as you note. Ditto for the bulk of the book-review biz -- grind through (most of) the book over a weekend, or at least enough of it to mine a few concrete comments on specific passages, bung them into the usual hackneyed faux-evaluative book-review phrases (exactly as some of which you quote), rush it in on deadline.

There are exceptions of course -- the Times Literary Supplement (London) is a shining example -- but not many. The NYT Book Review e.g. has descended (some would say just level flight all along) to bird cage liner, more or less.

And your mediamatters citation goes to show the Internet's profoundly good effect of giving voice to critical watchdog and outsider perspectives which no longer have to depend on the MSM or expensive self-funded physical means of publication/distribution.