Matthew Shepherd

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Anyone know the story of Matthew Shepherd? He left a gay bar in Wyoming in 1998 and was brutally tortured and left to die. So sad. It spawned new laws and was a major news story at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

I’ve read his mom, Judy’s, book about him “The Meaning of Matthew”. In it, she talks a lot about his “social awkwardness” and “naive-ness”… all of which fit right into this? He left that bar with people that obviously were not his friends, but he was unaware. If he were around now, I’d think he might well be a WP member.

Judy launched the “Matthew Shepherd Foundation”. There still seems to be no sign that anyone was aware, that if he did, have ASD. But as many authors write, when this is a new concept to a parent, often they don’t want to admit to possibly having an autistic child, even if that child was otherwise very intelligent, as Matt was.

There’s no talk about whether he had Asperger’s or was otherwise ASD even so many years later, which seems obvious to me, having read and thought about it for 23+ years. If you search Google Images for him (filter out the others with the same name which isn’t uncommon), many of his photos show the usual “withdrawn look” which we know doesn’t really represent his real state of mind, due to mind/body separation in ASD.
http://www.newschannel10.com/resizer/HO ... T7SRFA.PNG

So… thoughts?

Geez, still no replies? Is there anyone over 35 here?

i well remember him as well as the infamous scum that did him in. i will admit back then i was not aware as i am now of spectrumy things, but in retrospect i can dig that he might have been somewhere on the spectrum.

Be patient. The LGBT section of WP is a dead section. If you had posted your thread in the General Autism Discussion, you would've got responses a lot more quickly.

What a horrible story! I didn't know about this case. I think it's very possible that the victim had ASD. People started to pay attention to autism relatively recently and at the time this crime happened, not many people were diagnosed, I believe.

I don't like the idea of government money being wasted on those useless pieces of scum in jail. Better euthanize them and use the money on innocent homeless people etc.

I remember his murder from when it happened. Not only was it discussed in great detail on The Advocate's website and other US gay sites, the event was published in Time Magazine. It seemed at last anti-gay violence was getting publicity in the mainstream assisted in part by the particularly nasty way it Shepherd was done to death.