Mississippi Slayings Ignite Suspicions of Gay Activists : Courts: A black youth goes on trial Monday in deaths of two white homosexuals. Motives, stereotypes challenged.

It’s dark at night out on the northern edge of town. A stagnant bayou lies beside abandoned railroad tracks, and silence hangs like moss from the trees. When Marvin McClendon rode out to Laurel’s outskirts last October with two men he didn’t know--two gay men whom he said had picked him up on the street near his home--it’s safe to assume someone wanted no witnesses to what was about to transpire.

But because McClendon emerged alone from those dark woods, only he can testify to what led the three to that spot. What is known is this: Ever since that night, when the hulking high school student admits he shot Robert Walters and Joseph Shoemake in the head, this southern Mississippi town has become an unlikely national battleground over the issue of gay- and lesbian-related violence.

Did McClendon, a 16-year-old with a reputation as a troublemaker, take them to the woods for the purpose of robbing them, as the police allege? Or did the men lure the youth there to force him to have sex, which is what he contends?

Yet another scenario is posited by gay rights organizations across the country, which have been closely monitoring the case. Citing previous allegations of death threats against gay men and lesbians in the rural county and national statistics that show that dozens of homosexuals are murdered annually, they contend that the two dead men possibly were targeted solely because they were gay--a possibility authorities immediately dismissed.

The organizations have asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate local officials’ handling of the case.

Whatever version of events is true, the case invokes inflammatory stereotypes that threaten not only to increase tensions between homosexuals and heterosexuals but also between blacks and homosexuals. Walters, 34, and Shoemake, 24, were white, while McClendon, his lawyer contends, is being prosecuted only because he fits the stereotypical image of the “big, menacing black male.”

” . . . If they had picked up a white boy in an affluent neighborhood in north Laurel and taken him up there and the boy shot them, that little white boy wouldn’t be in jail,” said the attorney, J. Ronald Parrish.

McClendon’s trial begins Monday. To counter the “racism” that he says works against his client, Parrish plans to paint a portrait of Walters and Shoemake as predatory gay pedophiles out cruising for sex.

Officials of gay rights groups say they are outraged that a Jones County circuit court judge is allowing testimony about the two men’s sexual orientation and that he allowed tests for HIV--the virus that causes AIDS--to be performed on their blood. The judge will decide during the trial whether the test results may be entered as evidence.

“It’s a complete travesty of justice,” said Jim Key, spokesman for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center. “The HIV tests have absolutely no bearing.” Dist. Atty. Jeannene Pacific agrees. She’s argued that the AIDS issue is being introduced solely to inflame jurors.

But Parrish argues that the tests are relevant. Suggesting that one of the men was HIV-positive, he said: “If he knew he could inflict death on a person that he has sex with, then a jury’s entitled to know that’s what his state of mind was.”

In his construct of what happened that night, Parrish said his client, fearing he would be raped, “had a right to do what he did.”

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The prosecutor’s case against McClendon is straightforward. He was carrying a .22-caliber pistol. No matter how he wound up in a secluded spot in the two men’s vehicle, prosecutors allege, he killed them for their cash. The case is bolstered by McClendon’s admission that he killed the men, and by their empty wallets, although several gay groups question why--if robbery was the motive--he left behind a gold watch and diamond ring.

McClendon’s defense is more complicated. He contends that Shoemake and Walters pulled beside him in their Chevrolet Blazer on the night of Oct. 7 and asked if he knew where they could buy marijuana. When he told them no, he said, they asked if he’d like to make $20.

The men drove for 3 1/2 miles to a semirural area north of Laurel.

On the way there, McClendon told police, the driver made it clear that the $20 would be in exchange for a sex act. When they parked, he said, “both turned around and grabbed me by my legs. He said the driver, using a racial epithet, said “Now . . . you going to get it.”

McClendon has not explained why he was carrying the pistol. But he said he had it hidden behind him on the seat “because I had a feeling that they were going to try something.”

After repeatedly asking them to let him go, he said, he panicked and shot the driver in the head. He shot the passenger when he thought he saw him reach under the seat. After pulling the two men from the car, he said he scattered the contents of their wallets, threw the pistol as far as he could and drove the Blazer back into town.

An anonymous tip led authorities to McClendon four days later.

Immediately after the killings, gay rights groups came to Laurel to meet with authorities and demand a thorough investigation.

Jones County was already the focus of national attention because the owners of a lesbian retreat south of Laurel had complained for months about death threats and harassment.

The murders drew attention because they “added fuel to the fire,” said Bea Hanson, director of client services for the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. “All of a sudden it was like a fearful premonition come true.”

Parrish charges that the groups came to Laurel because they wanted to capitalize on the murders in order to to advance their cause.

“What they were expecting and hoping to find was a big old redneck with maybe a scruffy beard, a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth and a rebel flag on the back of his pickup truck,” he said.

When the shooter turned out to be a black teen-ager claiming self-defense, some previously vocal gay rights activists backed away from the cause, he said.

Spokesmen for GL Friendly, a Biloxi gay rights organization that had been outspoken about the case early on and had been instrumental in getting national groups involved, have been unavailable for comment the past week.

Leaders of the group held press conferences shortly after the murders at which they suggested that crimes against gay men and lesbians were not being adequately investigated and alleged that Sheriff Maurice Hooks had rebuffed them.

Also, the owners of Camp Sister Spirit, the lesbian retreat near Laurel, insist that the sheriff has ignored or mishandled numerous complaints they have made.

He denies the allegations, maintaining he has investigated every complaint from the retreat.

Three people accused of firing weapons near the retreat or otherwise trying to intimidate those staying there have been arrested, although none have been convicted, Hooks said.

“I’ve tried to explain to the people down there that this is a rural community and people shoot guns,” said Hooks, suggesting that the guns were fired by hunters or target shooters. “Gunfire in Jones County is not unusual at all.”

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Before the shootings, Laurel’s small gay community had led an ideal life, said John McGlothlin, a friend of the dead men. “Mississippi has the image of being real backwards and everything--and to a large extent it is--but for some reason Laurel is not like the rest of Mississippi.”

Shoemake and Walters moved in a crowd that was openly but not flamboyantly gay. McGlothlin and Billy Joe Murray, Shoemake’s lover, said no one was ever harassed. “You can’t live in a small town like this and people not know about you,” McGlothlin said. “As long as we didn’t shove our sexuality down their throats . . . we were fine.”

McGlothlin and Murray criticized organized gay groups for distorting the case.

“To me, any murder is a hate crime, but I don’t think they were targeted for their sexuality at all,” Murray said.

There are signs, however, that the tolerant atmosphere here is changing. McGlothlin is a student at the University of Southern Mississippi in nearby Hattiesburg. Since the murders, he said, word has gotten out that he was a friend of the dead men. He has had people follow him on campus saying: “ ‘Hey, faggot, why didn’t you get killed too?’ ” he said. And he’s overheard people refer to him saying: “ ‘That’s one of the Laurel faggots.’ ”

In Laurel, however, more people now--because of the murders--know about the sexual orientation of the dead men’s friends than ever before, and no one has made an issue of it.

Friends of Shoemake and Walters deny that the men were aggressive predators, as McClendon has portrayed them.

“I think they stopped at a stop sign and McClendon approached and forced his way into the car,” said Murray, noting that the men carried $500 between them. The money was never found.

McGlothlin agreed. Shoemake, in particular, looked down on cruising in public places, he said. “There was a place and a time to do such things if you were inclined to and in a position to, but not in the street,” he said. “That’s what bars are for. That’s what exclusively gay get-togethers are for.”

But even if they were out cruising for sex, he said, they wouldn’t have picked up McClendon. Furthermore, McGlothlin, a former teacher’s aide, had taught McClendon in junior high school and said he had once pointed him out on the street to Shoemake, telling him that his former student was “bad news.” He described the youth as a bully who got his way with fellow students and teachers through intimidation.

“Even supposing that they were out (cruising for sex), which they weren’t, they wouldn’t have fooled with him,” he said.

Shoemake and Walters, who officials said were both were legally intoxicated at the time of their death, had spent the evening drinking and listening to music with friends at the house Shoemake shared with Murray. At about 11 p.m. Shoemake and Walters left to look for a neighbor, a man named Michael, who lived on the next street.

“We knew he was gay and new in town, and they wanted to see if he wanted to be introduced to the rest of us,” McGlothlin said. “Maybe he’d like to meet more people of his kind.”

In statements to police, the party-goers said they had joked about “going to get something Mexican” and picking up “a cute one.”

Parrish, referring to the comments and to Michael’s Mexican heritage, said: “They weren’t talking about going to pick up a taco.”

He made it clear that he plans to put the men’s lifestyle on trial, portraying it as repulsive and promiscuous, more suited for San Francisco or New York than Laurel.

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The case is coming to trial at a time of heightened awareness of violence against gay men and lesbians.

Gay activists note the similarities between the case and the killing of a gay man in another part of the state. The defendant in that case also claims he killed in self-defense while warding off a sexual attack.

In December, the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project released a report that showed 151 homosexuals had been killed because of their sexual orientation in 29 states from January, 1992 to early December, 1994.

What’s more, the report said, only 51% of the deaths had resulted in an arrest, compared to a 65% clearance rate for homicides overall. Hanson said the difference is caused in part by less thorough police investigations.

Nearly 60% of the cases involved what the report termed “overkill,” a gratuitous level of violence, sometimes involving mutilations and dismemberment.

While the judge’s decision in this case to allow HIV testing and testimony about the victims’ sexual orientation has infuriated gay rights groups, such rulings are not unusual, said Sharen Shaw Johnson of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.

A 1992 article in the California Law Review details a number of cases in which provocation has been used by defense attorneys to win lenient sentences for defendants accused of murdering homosexuals. The article argues that the defense amounts to judicial affirmation of homophobia and should not be allowed.

Parrish, however, is undeterred.

A white man who has photographs of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in his office along with a photograph of himself in a Confederate uniform with a rebel flag draped across his shoulder, Parrish sees no irony in his allegation that racism is the reason why his black client has been charged.

He says he will not allow gay groups to carry out a “lynching.”

“It’s a tragedy when anyone is killed for any reason,” he said. “But McClendon is a victim too. He was victimized by what these organizations have done in this case and because of the failure of the district attorney’s office to have the guts to tell it like it is,” he said.