TRISH STEGER: And, uh (pause) I—I felt sick to my stomach … it’s just instantly sick to my stomach. And I had to tell Romaine, “Yes, it was Matthew. It was your friend.”

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you what is overwhelming.

NARRATOR: Matt Galloway:

MATT GALLOWAY: Friday morning I first find out about it. I go to class, walk out, boom there it is—in the Branding Iron. So immediately I drive to the nearest newsstand, buy a Laramie Boomerang ’cause I want more details, buy that—go home … before I can even open the paper, my boss calls me, he says:

MATT MICKELSON: Did you hear about what happened?

MATT GALLOWAY: I’m like, “Yeah.”

MATT MICKELSON: Was he in the bar Tuesday night?

MATT GALLOWAY: I go, “Yes, yes he was.”

MATT MICKELSON: You’ve got to get down to the bar right now, we’ve got to talk about this, we’ve got to discuss what’s going to go on.

JON PEACOCK: By this time, I was starting to get upset, but still the severity wasn’t out yet.

RULON STACEY: It was Thursday afternoon.

NARRATOR: Rulon Stacey at Poudre Valley Hospital:

RULON STACEY: I got a call: “We just got a kid in from Wyoming and it looks like he may be the victim of a hate crime. We have a couple of newspaper reporters here asking questions.” And so, we agreed that we needed one spokesperson: As CEO, I’ll do that and we’ll try and gather all the information that we can.

ROMAINE PATTERSON: And then I watched the ten o’clock news that night, where they started speaking about the nature and the seriousness of it …

MATT GALLOWAY: So I’m on the phone with Mickelson and he’s like:

MATT MICKELSON: We need to go to the arraignment so we can identify these guys, and make sure these guys were in the bar.

MATT GALLOWAY: So we go to the arraignment.

MOMENT: THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

NEWSPERSON: Our focus today turns to Laramie, Wyoming, and the Albany County Courthouse, where Aaron James McKinney and Russell Arthur Henderson are being charged with the brutal beating of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student.

NARRATOR: Catherine Connolly:

CATHERINE CONNOLLY: The arraignment was on Friday. Right around lunchtime. And I said, “I’m just going.” I just took off—it’s just down the street. So I walked a few blocks and I went. Has anybody told you about the arraignment?