Activist Romaine Patterson Remembers Her Friend Matthew Shepard in New Doc

"I wanted to be a rock star," Romaine Patterson tells EDGE. Instead, partly due to the shocking murder of her friend Matthew Shepard, she became an educator, advocate, and co-host, for the past 20 years, of the award-winning radio program "Derek and Romaine."

On the night of Oct. 6, 1998, in the town of Laramie, Wyoming, Shepard, a 21-year-old university student, was targeted for robbery by a pair of young men who picked him up at a bar after guessing that he was gay. The pair held a gun on Shepard, drove him to a remote area, stole his wallet, and viciously pistol-whipped him. They then tied Shepard to a fence and drove away, leaving him for dead. Eighteen hours later, Shepard was spotted by a passerby on a mountain bike who initially mistook his limp body for a scarecrow. Miraculously, Shepard had survived the night. Even more improbably, news of the murderous attack spread, and the nation became captivated with the story of a young man who, in photographs as in life, seemed lit up with a brilliant smile and a palpable sweetness. But tragedy followed: after five days of clinging to life in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, Matthew Shepard died on Oct. 12, 1998.

A few days later, at Shepard's memorial service, Fred Phelps and his flock from Westboro Baptist Church arrived with picket signs emblazoned with crude and profane anti-gay slogans. Phelps' vulgar messaging, was catnip to the media, so when the trial for Shepard's murder commenced the following April and Phelps showed up again, LGTBQ+ equality advocates were ready to take the spotlight off him: Even as news cameras were turned on the preacher and his hate-filled rhetoric, a legion of angels – people dressed in white robes, sporting handmade wings and singing hymns – suddenly appeared. Surrounding Phelps like a cocoon of light, they overcame his darkness. Thus was Angel Action born – Romaine Patterson's brainchild, and an early triumph in her long career of educating and advocating.

The author of "The Whole World was Watching: Living in the Light of Matthew Shepard," Patterson has spent the quarter century since Shepard's death speaking up and speaking out. A former regional media manager for GLAAD, Patterson remains committed to "educating youth about hate crimes" – even in these times, when state laws in places like Florida have criminalized any such acknowledgement or discussion in classrooms.

Patterson appears, along with other advocates and celebrities like Rosie O'Donnell and Adam Lambert, in the Investigation Discovery special "The Matthew Shepard Story: An American Hate Crime," which marks the 25th anniversary of Shepard's murder and recounts the events of that fateful night in 1998 and the aftermath that followed.

EDGE heard Romaine Patterson's recollections of Matthew Shepard, what it was like to be caught up in the tumult following his murder, and her thoughts on whether we've really made much progress 25 years later.

EDGE: You met Matthew Shepard when you were in college together in Casper, before he went to Laramie.

Romaine Patterson: I was the only openly gay [high school] student in the state of Wyoming that I knew of. When I went to my first year of college, I was a bit of a Wyoming urban legend, so all the gay students kind of sought me out.

One day I was walking around campus and I met an instructor, and she noticed that I had a gay pride necklace, and she goes, "Oh, you must be that lesbian I've been hearing all about." And I'm like, "That's me." She and I got to know each other a little bit. Matthew was referred to her through his therapist, [who called my friend] saying, "Hey, listen, I've got this client. He's young, he's gay. He's in Casper. I really would like him to meet other young gay people. Do you know anyone from the from the campus that I can introduce him to?" So, she called me, and she said, "Can I introduce him?" And I said, "Of course you can."

I had a little gaggle of gays that I was running around with, and we welcomed him immediately into the fold. It's Wyoming Right? If you want to meet other gay people, you gotta do some legwork.

EDGE: Did Matthew's murder galvanize you toward what became your career in advocacy and education, or were already on track for such a career?

Romaine Patterson: It's a little bit of both. When I was in high school, I joined the speech team and, at the at the encouragement of my brother Michael, I had written a speech about HIV and AIDS. Ryan White's mom was coming to the state of Wyoming to tour at various high schools and talk about HIV, and they asked me if I would accompany her on several of those high school stops and deliver the speech that I had written – kind of be the opening act. I feel like that was the start of my activism because I learned that your voice can be very powerful when it is focused on a message and tries to convey something important to people.

When Matthew died, and all the media was descending upon Laramie, I understood the value and the importance of what I had to say. I took those skills that I learned from my speech years in high school, and I applied those to this situation. And I've been doing it for 25 years.

EDGE: Did the high-profile nature of this story make it complicated to deal with your grief?

Romaine Patterson: Oh, yeah. I did not grieve Matthew's death for years. There was this onslaught of media... The media wanted you to cry on camera to get their sensational story, and they were absolutely ruthless in what they would do to try to get that. You kind of had to compartmentalize your feelings, you kind of had to put all of that aside.

It was years later when I finally stepped away from activism for a short period and focused my life on something else for a minute. The second I did that, it came crashing in like a wave. And, I mean, I almost drowned, it was so overwhelming. I tried to heal through the work that I do, by talking to young people about "The Laramie Project" or participating in things like this [documentary] that continue to share Matthew's story.

EDGE: There was national grief and horror around Matthew Shepard's murder that felt different from other, similar stories we'd heard. What is it about this story that touched such a deep chord?

Romaine Patterson: I think it's a few things, and it speaks a lot about us as a society. The way that the crime unfolded, from Matthew being found in such a crazy way and the timing of when Matthew's attackers were found and how quickly the police were able to put together the pieces of what happened – all of this is playing out in real time in the media.

But the most important thing that we have to acknowledge here is, no one would care about this story if Matthew was not adorable, white, blond boy who came from an upper middle-class family, and look the way that he did, and appear to be the sweet person that he was. If Matthew had been Hispanic or Black or Native American, we would not be talking about Matthew Shepard 25 years later. Crimes like that had been committed for years against gay people of color and nobody cared. But Matthew captured our attention, and a lot of it has to do with race.

I think the other part [was], for five days, Matthew was in the hospital, and for five days the world had an opportunity to root for this underdog, this small kid who seemed nice, who had everything going for him and then all of that was taken away. When he died, there was this collective sadness that this underdog we've been rooting for didn't make it. We had to then acknowledge what we as a society had done to create a situation where something like this could happen to a young man like Matthew. In many ways, it was the perfect story in the perfect place that led to this collective caring.

EDGE: That said, we also recently saw the outpouring of grief and anger over the death of O'Shay Sibley, a gay Black man who was harassed for dancing to Beyonce and then killed. Are we still making progress despite everything?

Romaine Patterson: There was [an outpouring of grief for O'Shay Sibley] for three minutes. I mean, this is the problem, right? There might be acknowledgment of other hate crimes that have happened towards people of color, but they do not have the lasting impact in the media cycle that Matthew did. Transgender women of color are being brutalized in this country right now, and you're not hearing those stories the way you heard about Matthew.

There will not be hate crimes legislation in [Sibley's] name, there will not be massive change in his name. [Sibley's] friends and family deserve the same kind of healing that I got, because change did happen; something positive was able to come out of something negative. It makes me mad, and it makes me want to fight that much harder, because these lives matter. These lives that are lost are important, and they deserve to be honored for who they are. We are falling short as a society right now, and we have to do better.

"The Matthew Shepard Story: An American Hate Crime" premiered Oct. 9 on ID and is streaming now on Max.