CHEYENNE - An upcoming television report on the 1998 Matthew Shepard murder in Laramie blames methamphetamine - not anti-gay prejudice - as the main impetus behind the crime.

The kidnapping, robbery and murder of Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, captured the nation's attention after authorities said the killers targeted him in part based on his sexual orientation.

ABC's "20/20" interviewed killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, their then-girlfriends, and others with connections to the killers and victim for a program scheduled to air Friday, one day before the end of the November television ratings "sweeps" period.

The program contains McKinney's and Henderson's first public statements about the crime "to set the record straight on a story they say has been dramatically oversimplified," according to the show's narrator.

ABC provided an advance screening of the program in Laramie for a few Wyoming journalists last week. It airs locally at 9 p.m. Friday on KTWO-TV, cable channel 6 in Casper.

The show casts McKinney as the leader of the duo with Henderson assisting. Both killers directly deny that they targeted Shepard because he was gay.

"No, I did not," McKinney replied to a question asking if he attacked Shepard because he was gay. "I would say that it wasn't a hate crime. All I wanted to do was beat him up and rob him."

Henderson also denied the "hate crime" aspect to the attack.

"It's not because me and Aaron had anything against gays or anything like that," he said.

Instead, both killers said McKinney had set out that night to rob someone else, but they ran into Shepard at the Fireside bar and decided to rob him instead.

The program also suggests that McKinney's methamphetamine use was the driving factor behind the violent nature of the attack on Shepard, whom McKinney hit with a gun dozens of times.

"Sometimes when you have that kind of rage going through you, there's no way to stop it," McKinney told a reporter. "I've attacked some of my best friends coming off of meth binges."

Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, said the 20/20 broadcast exposes nothing new, despite ABC's promotional efforts. She said Harper's Bazaar reported much of it in a 1999 article, "A boy's life: for Matthew Shepard's killers, what does it take to pass as a man?" by JoAnn Wypijewski.

"20/20's 'bait and switch' tactics began with a sensationalized press release promising new witnesses and unopened court documents," Judy Shepard said in a statement. "Instead, they seem to be delivering nothing new, with an account full of holes and questionable witnesses."

She suggested that the show could well be a publicity ploy by Henderson's attorney as part of an effort to get a sentence reduction for his client.

"If there is anything 'new' about this broadcast it is the fact that it marks an unfortunate downslide of this respected news magazine show. They have sacrificed fair and accurate reporting and high standards for a stab at revisionist history … and ratings," Judy Shepard said.

Then-Albany County Attorney Cal Rerucha also chimes in that the murder was drug-induced instead of fueled by bigotry.

"I don't think the proof was there" that it was a hate crime, Rerucha said.

Later, he said Matthew Shepard would be alive today if McKinney had not become involved with meth, which Rerucha said drives people out of control.

He is backed up by a university professor who said it is not unusual for people to lose control while using meth.

McKinney said his attack began when Shepard put his hand on McKinney's leg, but he said he was planning to beat up and rob Shepard all along.

But McKinney said the attack wasn't a hate crime.

"All I wanted to do was beat him up and rob him," he said.

At trial, one of McKinney's defense strategies was to use a "gay panic" defense to explain why he so violently attacked Shepard. But in the 20/20 interview, he said there was no "gay panic."

So why the lie?

"At the time, that seemed to be the best way to prove that I didn't mean to kill him," McKinney said.

His then-girlfriend, Kristen Price, testified at trial that McKinney told her he and Henderson pretended to be gay to lure Shepard from the bar so they could rob him after Shepard had made a sexual advance at McKinney.

But she told 20/20 that she lied about McKinney's motivation for the attack because "I would have said or done anything at that point to get him out."

Among other revelations on the program is that Henderson and McKinney both say McKinney perpetrated all of the violence against Shepard, though Henderson tied him to the fence where a bicyclist found him unconscious with his face covered in blood the next day.

"I never struck him. I never hit him. I never pushed him. I never even shook his hand," Henderson said.

McKinney said, "It's real hard to talk to Russell seeing him in this situation, knowing that I put him here."

Henderson, though, acknowledges his responsibility for what occurred.

"I've learned that I could have stopped it," he said. "I'm sorry to the Shepard family. They've had the hardest of all this. I'm sorry to the nation, because this affected a lot of people. I wish every day that I could change it or fix it."

The program suggests that McKinney and Shepard knew each other and that they were both into the same drug scene in Laramie. Two people on the show insist that they knew each other and had been to the same parties.

While McKinney has heard that suggestion, he denied that it was true.

"I've never met him," he said. "Maybe they'd seen us somewhere in the same place. I don't know."

The program also provides a witness who said he knew McKinney to be bisexual, but McKinney also said that was not true.

Some on the show, however, including Dave O'Malley of the Laramie Police Department, say they still believe the murder was an anti-gay hate crime.

And even if it wasn't, it doesn't change the fact that Shepard's death "led to enormous changes in understanding and tolerance," the program's narrator said.

"Attitudes toward gay people in this state have changed a lot for the better," said Jason Marsden, a friend of Shepard's and a Star-Tribune reporter at the time of the killing. Marsden went public with his homosexuality in a column in the Star-Tribune the day after Shepard's death.

Andrew Sullivan, a journalist and gay advocate, said society owes anyone killed in the manner that Shepard was a duty not to forget about it easily.

"The case for protecting gay people from violence is strong, overwhelming, regardless of what we find out about the Matthew Shepard murder," Sullivan said.

The narrator said prison authorities asked ABC not to reveal where the network interviewed McKinney and Henderson, who are being housed in an out-of-state prison.

Steve Jimenez, one of the show's producers, said he could not comment directly on the program, but he said he provided the screening last week to give the state advance notice about the program.

"No one knows better than the Wyoming press how the national media, and I'll include ABC here, picked up on one aspect of the Matthew Shepard murder and ran with it," Jimenez said.

He said most people outside the state have a lasting image of the murder as simply a hate crime, but people in Wyoming and especially Laramie are more skeptical of that view.

"I thought it was only fair to give folks in Wyoming an early look at what we've done with this investigative report," he said.

Capital bureau reporter Bill Luckett can be reached at (307) 632-1244 or at bill.luckett@casperstartribune.net.