In October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally attacked and tied to a fence outside of Laramie, Wyoming. Five days later he died of deep wounds inflicted in one of the most vicious anti-gay attacks in American history.

In this wide-ranging interview with PFLAG Cape Cod’s Rick Koonce, Jeff Mack, a personal friend of Matt’s and today the Executive Vice President of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, talks movingly about Matt, his life, and the Foundation started by his parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, just months after Matt’s gruesome death.

Jeff talks about the foundation’s ongoing work to combat hate and prejudice. He talks, too, about the Laramie Project, a now famous play by Moises Kaufman about the city and its residents that was produced after Matthew’s murder. And finally, Jeff talks about the day, in 2018, 20 years after his death, when Matthew was finally laid to rest in the safe sanctuary of Washington DC’s National Cathedral.

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