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 Billy Jack's Killer, Mullins, Pleads Guilty to Capital Murder Mullins to Avoid Chair?—McKinney Saying Not a Hate Crime? |
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Compiled By GayToday
Washington, D.C.--When John Aravosis of Wired Strategies here heard that Matthew
Shepard's alleged killer, Aaron McKinney was saying he hadn't known Matthew
was gay, he deadpanned his response: "Yeah, right."
"In an apparent effort to deny the fact that Shepard's death was a violent anti-gay hate crime," Aravosis theorized, "Aaron McKinney is now trying to claim he didn't even know Matt was gay." McKinney, the Washington strategist points out, seems to be contradicting earlier statements he reportedly made. The Rocky Mountain News (April 7) said of him, for example: "McKinney confessed to sheriff's Detective Sgt. Rob DeBree in an Oct. 9 interview that he had lured Shepard out of the bar, robbed him and repeatedly hit him. McKinney said he knew Shepard was homosexual, and that the University of Wyoming student never made any advances to him, according to testimony at McKinney's preliminary hearing last fall. " 'Guess what? We're not gay. You're going to get jacked,' DeBree testified, relating what McKinney said he told Shepard seconds before landing the first blow with a stolen .357-caliber pistol." In a separate article, the Rocky Mountain News told: "When Aaron McKinney learned that Matthew Shepard was gay, he 'flipped out' and beat the college student with a gun, two letters attributed to the murder suspect reveal. Shepard 'said he was gay and wanted a piece of me,' according to one letter, both of which were obtained by News4 reporter Rick Sallinger from an attorney in the case. "'Being a verry (sic) drunk homofobick (sic) I flipped out and began to pistol whip the f-- with my gun,' said the letter, written to a cellmate's wife." Reports also circulated nationally in October, 1998 stating that McKinney and Russell Henderson had lured Matthew Shepard from a campus bar by telling him they were gay and that they wanted to get to know him better. Bill McKinney, the defendant's father and Kristen Price '(one of the two girlfriend/accomplices)' were reported by the Denver Post (October 11, 1998) as saying that "McKinney, 22, was embarrassed that Shepard made two passes at him in front of his friends." Controversy is now heard as to the wisdom of the surprise legal strategy that has been adopted by Aaron McKinney's lawyer, namely, that the defendant had no knowledge of Matthew's openly-espoused sexual self-definition. Murderer Pleads Guilty in Alabama's Billy Jack Gaither Case
Driving to an isolated spot, they again beat their victim, this time with an ax handle, lighting the old tires with the kerosene, and placing Gaither's body atop to burn. Gaither was found the following day. In exchange for the murderers' guilty pleas, prosecutors had said last March that they would recommend a sentence of life without parole for the accused men rather than death in Alabama's electric chair. ``I kidnapped Mr. Gaither, forced him into the car and killed him intentionally,'' Mullins confessed to the court. |
