送交者: 无知 于 2005-12-14, 14:48:21:
回答: 记者是无冕皇帝，发东西要你过目？他们压上的，是自己的信誉人格。 由 无知 于 2005-12-14, 14:42:00:
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Michael Smith/Boomerang Staff
Former Laramie Police chief Dave O’Malley is angry with the direction of the Nov. 26 segment of ABC’s 20/20.
Former police chief angry about 20/20
By Debra Thomsen
Boomerang Managing Editor
“Only three people know what really happened that night,” retired Laramie Police Chief Dave O’Malley said. “One of them is dead and the other two are known liars and convicted felons — murderers.”
O’Malley was a detective with the Laramie Police when 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered six years ago.
He was one of several people interviewed for ABC’s 20/20 that aired Nov. 26. He said that the interview and the way the show was ultimately put together has left him angry.
O’Malley was notified about a week in advance of the ABC crew’s arrival for the interview. He invited them into his home and they stayed for “maybe three to four hours.”
He did not see the tape until the night the show aired.
The people interviewed for the show did not surprise him. He was, however, surprised that “a production as popular as 20/20 would hinge all of their support for their theory on meth addicts, Doc O’Connor and two convicted murderers … it did not surprise me the way the thing came out.”
O’Malley said that he did find out what the focus of the show was shortly after the interview was over and the crew left Laramie. Someone with the crew had left copies of e-mails on his dining room table — 10 pages of information discussing the overall focus of the program and “their pre-conceived focus that this was not a hate crime. This was a drug crime. That’s what they went with,” he said.
When he was approached by the producers of this particular segment, O’Malley said he had a weird feeling. “After 30 years, you learn to trust your gut instinct. I asked them specifically if they were coming to do something from a particular angle … I wanted to be able to answer intelligently, think things out.”
In the conversation with the producers, O’Malley was assured that the report would be objective, six years after the actual event.
Prior to the arrival of the 20/20 crew, he had heard that the show might be more about the methamphetamine issue. When they arrived at his home, O’Malley asked a few questions of his own.
“I was trying to be comfortable … and I felt comfortable. But when Elizabeth Vargas got into the methamphetamine portion of it, it surprised me,” he said. “Actually, it made me extremely angry and, in my opinion, these guys lied to me.”
During the segment of the 20/20 program, O’Malley said that he believed that Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, the two Laramie men convicted in Shepard’s death, intended to rob the University of Wyoming student. But, for reasons only McKinney and Henderson know, something happened and the killing became a hate crime based on Shepard’s sexual orientation.
“My feelings have been that the initial contact was probably motivated by robbery because they needed money,” O’Malley said. “What they got was $20 and a pair of shoes. … then something changed and changed profoundly.”
McKinney told investigators that “he only had to hit Matt once to get his wallet,” O’Malley said. “But, we will never, ever know because Matt’s dead and I don’t trust what they (McKinney and Henderson) said.”
One of the things O’Malley said during his interview with Vargas was kept in. However, he said, “I think the only reason they put in the part about the transformation I may have had personally, was because they were trying to show there was some good, regardless of what happened, that had come out of Matt’s death,” he said.
O’Malley said that if the 20/20 crew had been objective, they would have learned that a lot of what was said by Kristen Price early in the investigation was corroborated. Price also told authorities that McKinney and Henderson had not used any methamphetamines for several days because there was no money.
“That night (Oct. 6), they bought two pitchers of beer with pennies, nickels and dimes,” he said. “Also, after they were arrested, they exhibited no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. A person who has been on a meth binge, there will be withdrawal symptoms apparent.”
20/20 did not discuss the expertise of the arresting officer.
“Flint Waters is a trained narcotics officer. … in controled substances,” O’Malley said.
Waters reported that Henderson exhibited no signs of being under the influence of meth, just an odor of alcohol.
O’Malley said that 20/20 failed to report on the jailhouse letters that McKinney had written — letters that added information that this could have been a gay-hate crime.
The 20/20 segment with McKinney indicated that he, along with his lawyers, had concocted this gay panic issue, but, according to O’Malley, police interviews with McKinney showed that he had already started that (the gay panic issue) without the benefit of council.
“The statements he made, the fact that after he was sentenced he was high-fiving other inmates and signing autographs in the jail — if it wasn’t motivated by bias, he was sure eating that up.” O’Malley said.
Shepard was struck between 19 and 21 times, all to the face and head area.
“It was a concentrated effort to destroy somebody,” O’Malley said. “I believe it was triggered because Matt was gay. I’ll go to my grave believing that.”
O’Malley said that “It is abysmil that they (20/20) don’t present the other side of the issue … to be objective in their reporting.”