The recent torture and murder of 24-year-old trans man Sam Nordquist bears similarities to the 1998 murder of 21-year-old cisgender gay man Matthew Shepard. Shepard’s murder shocked the nation. Like Nordquist, Shepard was allegedly killed by someone he was attracted to, both of their bodies were discarded in rural fields after the attacks that killed them, and neither one’s assailants were charged with hate crimes. Also, both were murdered during times of intense anti-LGBTQ+ political hostility.
Nordquist’s murderers reportedly subjected him to prolonged physical and psychological abuse, police said. His attackers sexually assaulted him with a “table leg and broomstick,” and made him endure “prolonged beatings by punching, kicking and striking [Nordquist] with numerous objects, including but not limited to sticks, dog toys, rope, bottles, belts, canes and wooden boards.” The suspects then allegedly tried to hide their crime by discarding his body in a field in Canandaigua, New York.
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Capt. Kelly Swift of the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation called Nordquist’s murder “beyond depraved” and “one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated.” State police commander Major Kevin Sucher said, “No human being should have to endure what Sam endured,” and Ontario County District Attorney Jim Ritts said that Nordquist’s murder was “absolutely without question the worst thing that we have ever seen.”
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The attack occurred in a welfare hotel; his alleged assailants were known to each other and identified as LGBTQ+, and at least one of them lived with Nordquist in the time leading up to the murder, police said — one may have been a woman that Nordquist was interested in dating.
Each of the five suspects has since been charged with second-degree murder with depraved indifference, which carries a potential sentence of 15 to 20 years. Investigators concluded that Nordquist’s murder wasn’t motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ animus, so prosecutors won’t pursue hate crime charges.
The October 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard
On October 7, 1998, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney murdered Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. Prosecutors said that the men had planned on robbing Shepard (possibly in connection to drugs), but murdered him after he allegedly sexually propositioned McKinney.
McKinney then repeatedly beat Shepard with the butt of a large Smith & Wesson revolver at least 19 to 21 times, fracturing his skull and crushing his brainstem in the process. They then tied him to a fence with a clothesline, stole his patent leather shoes, and left him for dead for 18 hours in the 28-degree overnight freeze.
A cyclist found Shepard early the next morning, initially mistaking his lifeless body for a scarecrow. Shepard’s face was reportedly covered in blood except for the places where tears had streamed down his cheeks. The attack left him in a coma. Bruises, bandages, and stitches left his face nearly unrecognizable, even to his own parents. He remained hospitalized on life support for six days before dying.
While court testimony revealed that meth dealing may have brought Shepard and his murderers together, McKinney reportedly said he felt threatened by Shepard’s homosexuality. The murderers asked their girlfriends to help provide alibis and hide evidence during the police investigation.
Henderson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and kidnapping to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced in April 1999. His accomplice, McKinney, was convicted of kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and second-degree murder later that year. To avoid the death penalty, he accepted a sentence of life in prison without a chance of parole or appeal. Neither man was charged with hate crimes because Wyoming lacked a hate crime statute for sexual orientation.
Will Nordquist’s murder spark change the way Shepard’s did?
At the time of Shepard’s murder, LGBTQ+ activists were mobilizing against institutional queerphobic federal policies including “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the military’s 1993 ban on out LGBTQ+ service members; the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denied all federal recognition of same-sex marriage; and the continuing AIDS epidemic, which had killed nearly 300,000 Americans and compelled Christian conservatives to demonize queer people as disease-spreading, ungodly sexual deviants looking to “infect” and “pervert” American families.
Similarly, Nordquist’s murder has occurred at a time of queer activism against the transphobic policies of President Donald Trump, who has issued numerous executive orders seeking to eradicate the existence of trans people. He has banned trans people from the military, denied all federal recognition of trans people, and demonized all trans people as selfish, dishonorable, undisciplined liars who are a threat to women and who seek the “chemical castration” and “genital mutilation” of children.
It’s unclear if Nordquist’s murder will spark the same sort of national outcry and activism propelled by Shepard’s. Both murders compelled mourners to hold vigils, but Shepard — a cis white man — was quickly taken up as an iconic victim of anti-gay violence, especially since one of his murderers said he killed him for being gay. None of Nordquist’s murderers have said that they attacked the Latino trans man for his trans identity.
Also unlike Shepard, LGBTQ+ groups and spokespersons have not spoken out as widely about his murder and have not held him up as a victim of current political hatred.
In 2009, nearly 12 years after Shepard’s death, Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a law that expanded federal hate crime protections and was named after both Shepard and a 49-year-old Black Texas man dragged to death by white supremacists. Shepard’s parents also created a foundation and have begun careers as public speakers to educate people about anti-LGBTQ+ violence.
Despite the lack of similar reactions to both men’s deaths, trans groups have nonetheless pointed out that Nordquist was indeed a victim of a larger epidemic of transphobic violence that requires action.
“The murder of Sam Nordquist shows us that we have not done enough to change the material conditions of trans people’s lives,” said Raquel Willis, the Black trans co-founder of Gender Liberation Movement, “particularly trans people of color.”
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