ROMAINE PATTERSON: Well, a year ago, I wanted to be a rock star. That was my goal. And now, um, well, now it’s obviously changed in the fact that, um, throughout the last year I—I’ve really realized my role in, um, in taking my part. And, um, so now instead of going to school to be in music, I’m gonna go to school for communications and political science. Um, because I have a career in political activism.

Actually, I just recently found out I was gonna be honored in Washington, D.C, from the Anti-Defamation League. And whenever I think about the angels or any of the speaking that I’ve done, you know … Matthew gave me—Matthew’s like guiding this little path with his light for me to walk down. And he just—every time we get to like a door, he opens it. And he just says, “Okay, next step.”

And if I get to be a rock star on the side, okay.

NARRATOR: This is Jonas Slonaker.

JONAS SLONAKER: Change is not an easy thing, and I don’t think people were up to it here. They got what they wanted. Those two boys got what they deserve, and we look good now. Justice has been served. The OK Corral. We shot down the villains. We sent the prostitutes on the train. The town’s cleaned up, and we don’t need to talk about it anymore.

You know, it’s been a year since Matthew Shepard died, and they haven’t passed shit in Wyoming … at a state level, any town, nobody anywhere, has passed any kind of laws, antidiscrimination laws or hate crime legislation, nobody has passed anything anywhere. What’s come out of it? What’s come out of this that’s concrete or lasting?

NARRATOR: We all said we would meet again—one last time at the fence.

DOC O’CONNOR: I been up to that site in my limousine, okay? And I remembered to myself the night he and I drove around together, he said to me, “Laramie sparkles, doesn’t it?” And where he was up there, if you sit exactly where he was, up there, Laramie sparkles from there, with a low-lying cloud,… it’s the blue lights that’s bouncing off the clouds from the airport, and it goes tst tst tst tst … right over the whole city. I mean, it blows you away.… Matt was right there in that spot, and I can just picture in his eyes, I can just picture what he was seeing. The last thing he saw on this earth was the sparkling lights.

MOMENT: DEPARTURE

MOISÉS KAUFMAN: We’ve spent the last two days packing a year’s worth of materials and saying our good-byes. We’ve been here six times and conducted over two hundred interviews. Jedadiah cried when he said good-bye.