“I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney. However, this is the time to begin the healing process. To show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy. To use this as the first step in my own closure about losing Matt… Mr. McKinney, I’m going to grant you life, as hard as that is for me to do, because of Matthew…Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.”
— DENNIS SHEPARD, father of MATTHEW SHEPARD, in his Statement to the Court 11/4/99

AARON MCKINNEY and RUSSELL HENDERSON, nearly two decades ago, beat MATTHEW SHEPARD striking him 19 to 21 times in the head with the butt of a .357-caliber Magnum Smith & Wesson pistol. They then tied his dismembered body to an A-Frame fence in Laramie, Wyoming, leaving him to die.
He was beaten so badly, AARON KREIFELS, the mountain biker who discovered him the next morning, said that he could not tell if it was a human form that he saw. He thought it was a ScareCrow. Sheriff REGGIE FLUTY reported that SHEPARD’s face was caked in blood except where tears had left tracks along his cheeks.

That was in the Autumn of 1998.
It seems like it was Two Weeks Ago.

Two weeks ago —
It seems like it was Eighteen Years Ago —
OMAR MATEEN entered PULSE NightClub in Orlando Florida.
He killed 49 innocent people, and injured 53 more.
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