Blaming the Victim: Portrayal of Florida Man Killed for Being Gay Doesn’t Ring True
It sounds like the Matthew Shepard story all over again, this time in Florida.
The body of a gay man, 25-year-old Ryan Keith Skipper, was found dumped on the side of the road last week in the flyover country between Tampa and Orlando, stabbed 20 times. Two men have been charged with the killing, which police are investigating as a hate crime.
The local paper, the Lakeland Ledger, quotes Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd as being unequivocal on the victim’s intentions.
“What we do know is that Ryan was out looking to pick up someone that evening,” Judd said.
The scenario doesn’t add up, friends saySkipper was driving around Wahneta on Tuesday night when he found [21-year-old Joseph] Bearden walking along Sixth Street in Eloise about 11 p.m. Tuesday, and offered him a ride. The two went back to Skipper’s house, where they smoked marijuana and discussed using Skipper’s computer to copy checks, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The scenario from the local news being disseminated to regional and national outlets, is that the victim, himself a lowlife, was out trolling for a hook-up and made a move on the wrong hombres. But almost nothing in that story adds up, according to people who knew him.
That’s where it starts to get kind of Pulp Fiction.
They left Skipper’s house with his laptop and went to another home, at 110 First St. in Wahneta, to meet [20-year-old William] Brown.
“At this time, they decided to rip Ryan off for his car and his laptop,” Judd said…
Judd said Brown and Bearden attacked Skipper inside his own car. His body was left by the side of the road, stabbed nearly 20 times.
The two suspects then drove to another home at 2131 Cypress Gardens Road, where they discarded some papers from the car. Their next stop was at 16 28th St. S. in Haines City to try to clean up the vehicle.
“The car was full of blood because the homicide had occurred in the vehicle,” Judd said.
Eventually, the paper said, after “parading” the car around and bragging to friends, the suspects abandoned it on a dock near a lake in the town of Winter Haven.
After they were taken into custody, homophobia was introduced as the motive for the murder and robbery.
Several more witnesses also were interviewed Friday night, and it was during one of those interviews that Brown’s admission was revealed.
“William Brown told (a witness) that Ryan Skipper was messing with him, that Ryan Skipper was a homosexual, so (he) killed him,” Judd said.
So much for the official story. […]