11 Oct 1998 11:41:57 PDT

UPI

Suspect's family: ``Not a hate crime''

LARAMIE, Wyo., Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The two suspects in the savage beating of an openly gay University of Wyoming student allegedly targeted Matthew Shepard because he flirted with them at a bar.

The father and girlfriend of suspect Aaron McKinney told the Denver Post today that McKinney, 22, and Russell Henderson, 21, never set out to kill Shepard, who remains in critical condition with severe head injuries.

Bill McKinney and 18-year-old Kristin Price say McKinney and Henderson wanted to get back at Shepard for apparently humiliating McKinney at the Fireside bar Tuesday night. They say the two men just planned to rob Shepard.

Bill McKinney says there's no excuse for what his son and his friend are accused of doing to Shepard. But, he says, there isn't a good reason for the nationwide media attention over the case."

"The news has already taken this up and blew it totally out of proportion, because it involved a homosexual,'' Bill McKinney told the Post.

Price and 20-year-old Chastity Pasley, Henderson's girlfriend, are charged as accessories after the fact. Prosecutors allege the women supplied false alibis for their boyfriends after the two men were arrested.

Price, the mother of Aaron McKinney's 4-month-old son, says neither she nor the other three suspects hate gays. She said: "It wasn't meant to be a hate crime. They just wanted to rob him.''

Investigators believe Henderson and McKinney lured Shepard into McKinney's truck Tuesday night, beating him as they drove about a mile from town. Shepard, lashed to a wooden fence and stripped of his shoes, allegedly begged for his life as he was beaten with the butt of a .357 Magnum until his assailants believed he was dead.

Shepard was found Wednesday by two passing mountain bikers who initially mistook him for a scarecrow.

Aaron McKinney allegedly told his girlfriend that Shepard had embarrassed him and Henderson in front of their friends at the Fireside bar. His father and girlfriend say McKinney, who is not much bigger than the 5-foot-2, 105-pound Shepard, hated to be embarrassed in front of other people.

Price says the two suspects tied Shepard up and took up his shoes so that they would have enough time to burglarize his house. But for some reason, she said, they just kept beating him.

Price said, "It just got out of hand, I guess.''