* McKinney's girlfriend, Kristen Price, said, "I knew that night it was all about getting money... Money to get drugs." McKinney himself, talking for the first time (he did not testify at his trial), told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas that "it wasn't a hate crime... [A]ll I wanted to do was beat him up and rob him." In fact, McKinney said, "I have gay friends. ... You know, that kind of thing don't bother me so much."<ref>[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/10/reject-the-hate-crimes-bill/ Reject the 'hate crimes' bill]</ref>
A book published in 2013 reports:
*A former lover of Shepard’s confirms that Shepard and McKinney had sex while doing drugs in the back of a limo
*Another subject, Elaine Baker, tells Jimenez that Shepard and McKinney were friends who had been in sexual threesome with O’Connor<ref> [http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2013/09/13/have-we-got-matthew-shepard-all-wrong?page=full Have We Got Matthew Shepard All Wrong?
A new book argues that America’s most notorious hate crime was not a hate crime at all.]</ref>
Activists claimed even before the details of the crime were known that the murder was due to anti-gay bias. Once the crime was discovered, Shepard's friends "were calling the County Attorney's office, they were calling the media and indicating Matthew Shepard is gay and we don't want the fact that he is gay to go unnoticed."<ref name="20/20" />