Oct. 12, 1998, Eighteen years ago, Matthew Shepard was murdered.

[misterhighwasted]

6. Debunking Stephen Jimenez's Effort To De-Gay Matthew Shepard's Murder

SNIP
Anonymous or simply unreliable sources are at the heart of Jimenez's effort to de-gay Shepard's murder. An anonymous "Wyoming law enforcement official" told him that "Shepard's murder had nothing to do with his sexual preferences."
Jimenez doesn't elaborate on the extent of this official's involvement with the case, but he assures readers that the official's claim was "an assertion I would come to hear often during interviews."
Among the others repeating that assertion was Glenn Duncan, a disbarred attorney who lost his law license after allegations of misusing clients' funds. Duncan agreed to an interview with Jimenez on the condition "that someone in the media finally tells the truth about Shepard's murder."

In fact, Jimenez relates, "[t]he more time I spent in Laramie ... the more frequently I heard rumors of a cover-up around the murder." While unfounded gossip is hardly unheard of in the aftermath of a horrific crime, Jimenez is seemingly convinced that these rumormongers are on to something.

The "hidden truths" Jimenez claims to uncover are that McKinney and Shepard were regular methamphetamine users deeply implicated in the drug trade, and that, contrary to what McKinney (the principal attacker), Henderson, prosecutors, and Shepard's friends and family have always said, the two men actually knew each other before the night of the attack. What's more, Jimenez says, the two had had sex before - suggesting that homophobia couldn't possibly have been a factor in Shepard's murder.

The principal source for the latter claim is Thomas "Doc" O'Connor, a Laramie chauffeur and operator of the Lincoln Escort Service. O'Connor told Jimenez that one night, McKinney and two other men were fooling around in the back seat of his limousine, and that "Matt may have been one of the guys in back [of the limo] with Aaron. ... I can't say for sure."

More at link:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/02/debunking-stephen-jimenezs-effort-to-de-gay-mat/196229

Unreliable sources and no proof beyond local whispers.

HERE'S ANOTHER by ThinkProgress

The Book Of Matt’ Doesn’t Prove Anything, Other Than The Size Of Stephen Jimenez’s Ego

"But the problems with Jimenez’s ethics begin in the Author’s Note that begin The Book of Matt.
“Though this is a work of nonfiction journalism, I have occasionally employed methods that are slightly less stringent to re-create the dialogue of characters — words I did not personally hear; nor could the characters themselves recall every word exactly from memory,” he explains. “But my intention throughout has been to remain faithful to the actual characters and events as they really happened.”
This is a dubious practice to employ at all, but Jimenez compounds the problem by not distinguishing which quotations are manufactured from recollections, which are paraphrases recounted by sources, and which were spoken directly to him."

https://thinkprogress.org/the-book-of-matt-doesn-t-prove-anything-other-than-the-size-of-stephen-jimenez-s-ego-c7ba5d0becee#.y4d7idnhc

Stephen Jiminez would be a fine storyteller of fiction based loosely on a actual event.