This episode is rated a 5 (on my Serious Crime Scale). On Oct. 7, 1998, a teenager was riding his mountain bike in some fields just outside of Laramie, Wyoming, when he discovered what he thought was a scarecrow that had fallen off its post. Or, perhaps it was some type of Halloween gag, a dummy lying on the ground, maybe? It WAS October, after all. But when the teen got closer, he realized it was a person. The person was still alive, but barely breathing. It was 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming freshman, and he had been tortured and tied to a log fence with a rope. He had been there, left to die in the frigid cold temperatures, for at least 18 hours before the teen discovered him. This is the story of one of the nation’s most heinous and unprecedented anti-gay hate crimes.

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