TORONTO – Dennis and Judy Shepard still receive emails and letters from all over the world, more than 15 years after their son Matthew’s violent murder in a Wyoming field.

“I want to be perfect just like Matt,” the notes from gay youth often read.

But the parents insist their son wasn’t perfect — he was a normal 21-year-old who stumbled and made mistakes. And they hope a new documentary, “Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine,” sheds light on Matthew the person, not Matthew the martyr.

“He was really just like everybody else,” Judy said in a recent interview. “I think it’s really important for young people in today’s world to understand that you can have setbacks in life, but the important thing is to keep trying.”

The documentary opens in select cities across Canada starting Friday. Director Michele Josue, a childhood friend of Matthew’s, said she hoped to reveal the person behind the headlines — by travelling to pivotal locations in his life, interviewing friends and family, and even reading aloud his journals, poems and unsent letters.

“You really get a chance to hear his voice, to hear him narrate about his own life for the first time,” Josue said. “Because Matt didn’t have a voice for so many years. So we’re able to give it back to him just a little bit.”

On Oct. 6, 1998, two men lured Shepard, a gay freshman at the University of Wyoming, from a bar and drove him to a field, where he was tortured and left to die. He succumbed to his severe injuries six days later.

The murder made global headlines and became a rallying cry for the gay rights movement. His story has been adapted into a play, “The Laramie Project,” and he was the namesake for a landmark U.S. hate crimes prevention bill signed in 2009.

Judy said that while the media attention heaped upon her family was difficult at the time, they hoped Matthew’s story would reach other parents of gay children.

“What we really wanted to happen was for parents to stop rejecting their children,” she said. “And we thought if they could hear our story, and how we’ve lost a child not by choice, why would anybody by choice give their children up?”

She said they made a commitment to fight for equal rights on their son’s behalf. Judy and Dennis created an advocacy and outreach organization, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, and they continue to travel the world telling his story.

Dennis added they are uncomfortable with the idea of closure.

“How can there ever be true closure?” he asked. “When do you ever say goodbye? Because you still have the memory. You still have the hole in your heart. You still have the games for four that you can’t play because you only have three in the family. You don’t get the birthday cards, the Father’s Day cards, the Mother’s Day cards.”

“It’s never over,” said Judy. “It just gets different, not better.”

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