American murder victim Matthew Shepard was BOTD in 1976. Born in Casper, Wyoming, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia in his teens and attended school in Switzerland. During a school trip to Morocco in 1995, he was beaten and raped, triggering years of anxiety, depression and suicidal behaviour. He returned to the United States to study the University of Wyoming. In 1998, he was approached by two men in a bar in Laramie, Wyoming, who offered him a ride home. He was driven to a remote rural area and robbed, pistol-whipped and tortured, then tied to a barbed-wire fence and left to die. After being discovered by a passing cyclist, he was hospitalised but fell into a coma, dying six days later, aged 21. His attackers were charged with murder, arguing temporary insanity due to alleged sexual advances from Shepard, which was dismissed by the trial judge. Evidence later revealed that they had pretended to be gay to gain Shepard’s trust. Both were found guilty but were spared the death penalty, largely due to an intervention from Shepard’s parents. His death attracted international attention, sparking debates about homophobic violence against queer people, eloquently expressed in Time magazine’s 1998 cover story The War Over Gays. In 2009, President Barack Obama passed the Matthew Shepard Act into federal law, extending hate crime legislation to cover violence against LGBTG people. Shepard’s story inspired a number of dramatic works, including Moises Kaufman’s play The Laramie Project and TV films The Matthew Shepard Story and Anatomy of a Hate Crime. His ashes were interred in the Washington National Cathedral in 2018. His parents continue to advocate for LGBTG rights.