The fence is long gone. But the image is forever seared into memories like a brand on cattle: A near-dead college student, his flesh so beaten, bloodied and intertwined with cord that the first passers-by mistook him for a scarecrow.

Not an image you can tear down as easily as a fence.

And yet 11 years later, the curious still venture to the outskirts of Laramie, looking for the spot where University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was robbed, pistol-whipped, tortured and left to die — many believe, because he was gay.

It’s behind a Wal-Mart now. But anyone looking for that iconic fence will find only “no trespassing” signs.

So why do people still go out there looking for it?

“Because that’s what we’re famous for,” one Laramie local is quoted as saying in “Laramie Ten Years Later.” That’s a new, 90-minute epilogue to the “The Laramie Project,” a landmark, Denver Center-born play developed from interviews conducted by New York’s Tectonic Theatre Project after the 1998 killing.

The play has become one of the most produced in the world, and it was made into a 2002 HBO film.

On Oct. 12, more than 150 theaters around the world, from high schools to New York’s Lincoln Center, will perform staged readings of the new epilogue. Playwright Moises Kaufman and his team returned to Laramie to explore what has — and has not — changed in this small college town that, as much as that fence, is synonymous with a grisly murder most agree could have happened anywhere.

But it happened in Laramie — and the aftershocks from the murder continue to reverberate there.

What Tectonic found, and found most troubling, “is that so much of the town is rewriting the crime as not a hate crime,” said Stephen Belber, a writer on both “Laramie Project” incarnations.

The irony: The primary killer now admits that it was.

“Matt Shepard needed killing,” Aaron McKinney bluntly told Tectonic company member Greg Pierotti for the epilogue, which includes the first interviews with McKinney and Russell Henderson since 2004.

“As far as Matt is concerned, I don’t have any remorse,” McKinney said during nine hours of talks with Pierotti. “The night I did it, I did have hatred for homosexuals.”

McKinney’s initial motive was robbery. But he targeted Shepard, he said, because “he was obviously gay. That played a part. His weakness. His frailty.”

McKinney now calls himself “the poster child for hate-crime murders.”

Shepard’s death has mobilized both sides of hot-button issues like hate-crime legislation, gay marriage and domestic partnerships. Much of the debate over the past decade has been whether a hate crime is worse than any other crime.

Ironically, McKinney’s own words might now help settle that argument.

The Matthew Shepard Act, currently before Congress, would expand the 1969 federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

“I think there was a very strong political side to Matthew that would have made him proud as hell to have been the namesake on this movement,” said Belber. “But I think there would be a bit of bemusement, as well.”

A community, not a project

Ten years later, Belber found some in Laramie to be in denial, others in a state of “extreme self-examination.” But the antipathy residents have for the town’s continued association with the crime is palpable.

“Laramie is not a project,” one resident says. “It is a community.”

One that has been forever pigeonholed.

“Laramie is notorious now as ‘the place where Matthew Shepard was strung up on a fence,’ ” Belber said. “But what does a town then do to reclaim its identity when it has been nationalized this way?”

Using the passage of time to morph a horrible incident into something, well, less horrible, is human nature, said Rick Barbour, who is directing an already sold-out Oct. 12 reading of the new epilogue at the University of Denver’s Newman Center.

“It’s an example of how we will change history to live with ourselves in it,” said Barbour, who has assembled a cast of 28 that includes Gov. Bill Ritter as Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal.

“As a prosecutor, we worked on a lot of cases with people who were victimized because of their sexual orientation,” Ritter said. “Matthew Shepherd was obviously an extreme circumstance, a very tragic case. But what this is about is dignity, respect and the treatment of all people.”

The second act is dominated by the interviews with the killers. Belber believes McKinney’s chilling lack of remorse offers valuable insight into the mind of a murderer.

“I think Greg caught Aaron in a particularly nonremorseful moment,” Belber said. “But Aaron has gone through various stages of remorse for his crime. He expresses no remorse for Matthew’s family now, but he has in the past.

“I think remorse takes place over many years and has many iterations. We can’t pin it down. But I think we should walk away from the play not putting Aaron McKinney in a fixed hole where we think, ‘Oh, this is an evil person.’ We have to keep a more open mind. We should want to chart him, I think.”

Belber interviewed Henderson in prison. He was the accomplice in the robbery, but McKinney says Henderson played no part in the killing, yet received the same life sentence.

“These are two different individuals whose lives have taken very different paths since the crime, even though they are sitting in prison, literally, side by side,” Belber said. Henderson has taken a victim empathy course. He talks about how his own mother was raped and killed in Laramie. He wrote a letter of apology to Shepard’s mother.

Ambitious effort

The University of Denver reading will be one of the more ambitious efforts around the country Oct. 12, the anniversary of Shepard’s death. The cast includes many representatives of the Denver Center Theatre Company, which staged the first production of “The Laramie Project” in 2000. Among them are Denver Center president Randy Weeks and actors Larry Hecht and Billie McBride (who had a small role in HBO’s film).

Many area companies will be represented in the cast, including Curious Theatre founder Chip Walton, as well as DU faculty and students, media, and Thomas Howard of The Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Gatherings like these “help to expand and make more meaningful the national conversation about what kind of country we want to have,” said Stephen Seifert, executive director of the Newman Center and the organizer of the DU reading. “We have learned from the epilogue that an important conversation once started should not soon be over. Much work remains to be done.

“The act of creating and performing the epilogue encourages us not to forget, to be conscious of how fragile memory is, and how malleable history is.”

John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com

“Laramie Ten Years Later: An Epilogue”

Simultaneous staged readings will be made at hundreds of theaters around the world on Oct. 12.

In Denver: 7:30 p.m., Gates Concert Hall at the Newman Center, University of Denver, 2344 E. Iliff Ave. Sold out.



In Boulder: 7 p.m., Nalanda Studio Theater, Naropa University, 2130 Arapahoe Ave. Free.

The University of Denver cast

Scheduled readers:



Kim Axline, DU faculty



Hilary Blair, Denver Center for the Performing Arts



Gabriella Cavallero, Modern Muse Theatre Company



Kari Delany, DU graduate



Sabine Epstein, Denver Center for the Performing Arts



Larry Hecht, Denver Center Theatre Company



Allison Horsley, DU faculty



Drew Horwitz, Modern Muse Theatre Company



Thomas Howard, Matthew Shepard Foundation



Anthony Hubert, DU faculty



Jim Hunt, Modern Muse Theatre Company



Nyle Kenning, DU student



Gregg Kvistad, DU Provost



Christopher Mazza, National Theatre Conservatory



Billie McBride, Denver Center Theatre Company



Shannon McKinnon, DU student



Leigh Miller, National Theatre Conservatory, Curious’ “Yankee Tavern”



Kirk Montgomery, KUSA Channel 9 entertainment reporter



John Moore, Denver Post theater critic



Anne Penner, Denver Center for the Performing Arts/DU adjunct



Anthony Powell, Curious’ “Yankee Tavern”



Bill Ritter, Colorado Governor



Jeff Roark, Arvada Center’s “The Crucible” and “Evita”



Ashlee Temple, Denver Center for the Performing Arts



Chip Walton, Curious Theatre



Randy Weeks, preseident, Denver Center for the Performing Arts



Joseph Yeargain, National Theatre Conservatory



Narrator/Director: Rick Barbour, DU faculty

This week’s theater openings

Opening Wednesday, Oct. 7, through Nov. 8: National touring production of “Wicked,” Buell Theatre



Opening Thursday, Oct. 8, through Oct. 31: Denver Center Theatre Company’s “A Raisin in the Sun” Stage Theatre



Opening Thursday, Oct. 8, through Oct. 24: Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s “The Sunset Limited” (at the Dairy Center)



Opening Friday, Oct. 9, through Oct. 18: Performance Now’s “Oliver” Lakewood



Opening Friday, Oct. 9, through Oct. 25: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center’s “Broadway Bound”



Opening Friday, Oct. 9, through Oct. 24: Square Product Theatre’s “Why We Have a Body” Boulder



Opening Friday, Oct. 9, through Nov. 7: Firehouse Theater’s “Haunted”



Opening Friday, Oct. 9, through Oct. 25: Arvada Festival Playhouse’s “Curse of the Werewolf”

This week’s theater closings

Today, Oct. 4: 73rd Avenue Theatre Company’s “Muriel’s Memoirs” Westminster



Today, Oct. 4: Jester’s Dinner Theatre’s “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” Longmont



Tuesday, Oct. 6: Iron Springs’ “North to Laughter” Manitou Springs



Saturday, Oct. 10: No Credit Productions’ “Slut Energy Theory” (at Crossroads Theatre)



Saturday, Oct. 10: Thunder River’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Carbondale



Sunday, Oct. 11: Aurora Fox’s “The Big Bang”

Most recent theater openings

“Afghanistan in the Age of the Flowers” This original drama chronicles the plight of the women of Afghanistan since World War II to the present. Through Oct. 31. Presented by the Mercury Motley Players at the Mercury Cafe, 2199 California St., 303-294-9258 or mercurycafe.com

“Halloween Dreams” Gram Doobie and her grandchildren celebrate Halloween all month. But this year there’s a murderer on the loose. A family-friendly thriller. Through Oct. 31. Vintage Theatre, 2119 E. 17th Ave., 303-839-1361 or vintagetheatre.com

“Heads” Contemporary hostage drama by E.M. Lewis in which a British embassy worker, an American engineer, a network journalist and a freelance photographer must decide what each is willing to do to survive. Performs Tuesdays through Thursdays only. Through Oct. 29. Presented by And Toto Too Theatre at the Victorian Playhouse, 4201 Hooker St., 720-280-7058, or andtototoo.org

“Invisible Voices: New Perspectives on Disability” The New York theater company comes to Colorado Springs to weave the stories of six local Colorado Springs disabled residents on the stage. Presented by Ping Cong & Company at TheatreWorks’ Bon Vivant Theatre, 3955 Cragwood Drive on the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs campus. Call 719-262-3232 or go to theatreworkscs.org for exact schedule.

“The Lost Soul of Cripple Creek” This adaptation of an 1867 Victorian melodrama tells the story of a poor Cripple Creek miner who journeys to Denver to reclaim his wife and have his vengeance on the villain who stole her. Through Oct. 31. Presented by the Thin Air Theatre at the Butte Theatre, 139 E. Bennett Ave., Cripple Creek, 719-235-8944 or butteoperahouse.com

“Night of the Living Dead” George Romero’s 1968 Zombie thriller as it was never meant to be seen: Live and onstage. Seven people are trapped in a farmhouse surrounded by flesh-eating ghouls. Will any of them get out alive? Through Oct. 31. The Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St., 303-477-9984 or bugtheatre.org

“Rent” A modern musical about love, friendship and community in AIDS-era New York City. This is the first locally mounted production by any professional Colorado company. Mature subject and themes. Not recommended for under 13. Through Nov. 21. Carousel Dinner Theatre, 3509 S. Mason St., Fort Collins, 970-225-2555 or adinnertheatre.com

“The Rocky Horror Show” On the way to visit an old college professor, two clean-cut youngsters, Brad Majors and fiancée Janet Weiss, run into trouble and seek help at the freaky Frankenstein mansion. Little do they know that the mansion is inhabited by alien transsexuals from the planet Transylvania and Dr. Frank N. Furter is in the midst of one of his maniacal experiments. Songs include “Time Warp.” Dress as your favorite character, but no props allowed. Through Oct. 31.

73rd Ave. Theatre Company, 7287 Lowell Blvd., Westminster, 720-276-6936 or 73rd avenue’s home page

“Slut Energy Theory” Jazz singer Rene Marie uses songs and spoken-word essays to present her one-woman play about an elderly yet ageless woman whose harrowing life experiences have left her anything but speechless. Through Oct. 10. Presented by No Credit Productions at the Crossroads Theatre, 2590 Washington St., 303-832-0929 or denvercrossroads.com

“Third” In this, the final play by Wendy Wasserstein, professor Laurie Jameson is disinclined to like the jockish, jingoistic attitude froma student named Woodson Bull III (but you can call him “Third”). He is, as she puts it, “a walking red state.” Believing that Third’s sophisticated essay on “King Lear.” could not possibly have been written by such a specimen, Jameson reports his plagiarism to the college’s Committee of Academic Standards. But is Jameson’s accusation justified? Or is she casting Third as the villain in her own struggle with her relationships, her age and the increasingly polarized political environment? Through Oct. 25. Lake Dillon Theatre Company, 176 Lake Dillon Dr., Dillon, 970-513-9386 or lake dillon’s home page

“Where Did My People Go?” A religious choir piece written and produced by Connie Sauls Wilkins. Friday and Saturday only. Presented by Mile High Choir at Montbello High School, 5000 Crown Blvd., 303-371-6801.

Complete theater listings