A guy gets lured into a gay van

The killers would tell police they planned to lure Shepard into McKinney's pick-up truck so they could rob him. As Matthew Shepard's ashes are interred in the nation's spiritual home, those who knew him reflect on his remarkable legacy. You could see his braces, so of course it's Matt.

But there's nothing to indicate this is the site of a deadly assault that changed America. Matthew Shepard died as a cultural age of innocence - some would say blissful ignorance - was coming to a close for America's millennials. The two teens were in a group of five people.

But he couldn't persuade them to join him for a beer afterwards. At the Fireside Lounge, the year-old somehow ended up chatting to two roofing workers, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, both the same age as him. His parents rushed to the Colorado hospital from Saudi Arabia, where Dennis Shepard worked as an oil rig inspector.

The whir and warble of dial-up internet was beginning to be heard in homes around the country. The openly gay University of Wyoming freshman had just met up with friends to plan LGBT awareness week on the town's campus. As well as a crushed brain stem, Shepard suffered four skull fractures from the blows of McKinney's.

They were from men who had been lured to a house on SW 34th through the gay dating app “grindr.” The men showed up thinking they were meeting someone from the app and instead they were held. The arrested students allegedly set up a profile claiming to be a year-old gay male — 16 is the age of consent in.

Two nights earlier, on Tuesday 6 October , Matthew Shepard walked alone into a dive bar in Laramie. WA Police made two arrests on Thursday relating to an alleged gang of homophobic thugs who used fake Grindr accounts to lure gay men into the open. The president had two months earlier admitted an affair with a White House intern.

The attackers recorded the assault on video, leading to their arrest. Two days after Shepard passed away, tearful politicians and celebrities gathered on the steps of the US Capitol to address a vigil of thousands. That's how Judy and Dennis Shepard knew it was their son in the hospital bed.

The former crime scene is still a windswept field studded with cacti and criss-crossed by antelope spoor. They drove about a mile out of town down a dirt path that ended in a rocky prairie of sagebrush and range grass. Tubes everywhere enabling his body to stay alive.

The following evening a teenager fell off his mountain bike and noticed nearby what he thought was a fallen scarecrow or Halloween costume. Standing at the spot now, the former patrol officer recalls: "Matt was on his back with his arms behind him. McKinney and Henderson stole their victim's patent leather shoes and left him to die.

Sheriff O'Malley says the student was "struck in the head and face between 19 and 21 times with the butt of a very large Smith and Wesson revolver". His respirations were far and few between. She remembers trying to revive him, saying: "Baby boy, I'm here kiddo, you're going to be OK, hang in there, don't give up, come on, you can do this.

Twelve students at Maryland’s Salisbury University have been charged with hate crimes after they allegedly targeted a man on Grindr, lured him to an apartment and savagely beat him in a sick. The death of a gay student, tortured and tied to a prairie fence in Wyoming two decades ago, shocked America.

Today the buck fence where Shepard was bound and bludgeoned is long gone. President Bill Clinton condemned the attackers as "full of hatred or full of fear or both". Their son never regained consciousness. But it was clamped shut. Fluty - now 57 and retired - attempted to open Shepard's mouth to clear his airway.

The manner of his killing - the New York Times likened it to the Western custom of nailing a dead coyote to a fence to ward off intruders - detonated national outrage. Albany County Sheriff Dave O'Malley, who was lead investigator in the case, says: "McKinney's own statement said he and Russell went into the bathroom at the Fireside bar and they planned to act like they were gay to try to gain Matthew's confidence.

He died five days after the attack.