Last Updated 12:14 AM ET

October 12, 1998

Reuters

Suspect's Father Denies Wyoming Beating Hate Crime

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (Reuters) - The father of a suspect in the beating of a University of Wyoming student denied contentions the attack was a hate crime, saying the victim had embarrassed the suspect, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The victim, Matthew Shepard, 21, was breathing with the aid of a ventilator and was in intensive care in critical condition in a Fort Collins hospital, spokesman Armi Hall said.

Doctors said it was still too early to know if the student would recover from the severe head injuries he sustained during the attack last week.

A vigil was scheduled for Sunday evening at the Catholic student center on the campus in Laramie, Wyoming. Demonstrations in support of Shepard were also planned for Monday in Denver.

Police said two men lured Shepard out of a bar, pistol whipped him and left him for dead tied to a wooden fence on a dirt road just outside Laramie, a small college town.

Two men were charged with attempted first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery. Their girlfriends, who allegedly provided them with alibis and helped hide bloody clothes, have been charged as accessories after the fact.

Police have said gay bashing and robbery were motives in the crime. Shepard reportedly led an openly gay life as a student at the University of Wyoming.

But Bill McKinney, father of suspect Aaron McKinney, said the two men accused of the attack targeted Shepard because he flirted with Aaron McKinney at the bar and embarrassed him, the Denver Post reported Sunday.

Price, the only one of the four out of jail, told the Denver Post the attack "wasn't meant to be a hate crime."

ABC News, meanwhile, reported that Bill McKinney said his son had confessed to the crime and did not want to live. "He's got to be punished," the father said.

Bill McKinney told the newspaper there was no excuse for what his son is accused of doing, but said the attack did not warrant national attention.

"Had this been a heterosexual these two boys decided to take out and rob, this never would have made the national news. Now my son is guilty before he's even had a trial," Bill McKinney said.

A vigil was held Saturday night outside Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins where Shepard was being treated. He was taken to the Colorado hospital just over the border from Wyoming because the hospital has specialists to treat his severe head injuries.

The hospital has received about 250 e-mail messages on a special Web site set up Saturday, Hall said. The address is MShepard+Libra.PVH.Org.

President Clinton condemned the attack and Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer said he was "outraged and sickened" by it.