Utah | Gordon Ray Church was brutally murdered for being gay. Now, filmmakers are telling his story.
It was November 22, 1988, and Church was a 28-year-old Southern Utah State College student on his way to meet friends for dinner. But first, he told his friends, he was stopping at a 7-Eleven for a pack of cigarettes.
His friends waited, but 2 hours passed and Church never showed, which was unlike him.
It was only later they'd learn why he missed dinner: While at the 7-Eleven, Church met recent parolees Michael Anthony Archuleta and Lance Conway Wood. The 3 men initially went cruising in Church's white Ford Thunderbird, ending up in Cedar Canyon.
There, Church was raped against the hood of his own car, bound with tire chains and thrown in the trunk, then driven nearly 80 miles north to a secluded area of Millard County known as Dog Valley. Archuleta and Wood then attached battery cables to Church in an attempt to shock him, sodomized him with a tire iron to the extent his liver was pierced and beat him to death with a tire jack and tire iron before burying him in a shallow grave. And when asked why they did it, Wood said it was because Church was gay.
The brutal crime may have gone undiscovered for some time if Wood hadn't confessed to police officers several days later. He's currently serving a life sentence and Archuleta is on death row.
Still, Church's case pre-dates the Matthew Shepard case, in which 21-year-old University of Wyoming student Shepard was beaten to death because he was gay. The 1998 crime was the catalyst for hate crime legislation protecting the LGBTQ+ community.
Because Church's murder came before this legislation, it was never prosecuted as a hate crime, and some feel his case has been lost to the annals of criminal history.
But now, a new documentary is telling his story: "Dog Valley," a film about Church's case, is making its Cedar City debut at the Red Rock Film Festival on Nov. 4 at 8:20 p.m. and Nov. 7 at 3:15 p.m. Tickets are available at redrockfilmfestival.eventive.org.
It's also on its way to receiving a wider audience — the Red Rock Film Festival will be the documentary's 6th film festival, "Dog Valley" director Dave Lindsay said, and his company recently signed a distribution agreement with Lucky 27 Media.
The documentary trailer below contains uncensored homophobic slurs and graphic accounts of violence.
Telling Gordon's story
Lindsay has been in the film business for more than 20 years, he said. His film and video production company, Avalanche Studios, focuses mostly on business-related productions but has also done several "passion project" documentaries over the years.
Lindsay said he heard about Church from his producer Chad Anderson, who initially began researching Church's case with the idea that he'd write a book about it. Eventually, he brought the story to Lindsay, who took it on as a documentary project.
“(The documentary) just takes the viewer down to this low, dark, horrible place of what two people could do to another person. And then we try to come back out of that in the end by showing that there are some good things that can come out of this horrible story.”----Dave Lindsay, director.
The film took about 3 years to produce because it was self-financed, Lindsay said. It includes interviews with the policemen who investigated the homicide, Church's college friends and boyfriend, members of Archuleta's family and Wood himself. The Church and Wood families declined interview requests for the film, as did Archuleta.
The documentary itself strikes a fine balance between honoring Church's life and acknowledging the gruesome details of his death. Of particular note are the interviews with Church's college friends and boyfriend; Lindsay devotes ample screen time to their poignant and grief-filled comments, with the subjects describing Church as a kind, gentle soul taken far too soon. Through them, viewers are told of Church's love for his family, his devotion to his friends and his hopes for the future.
Lindsay also starkly faces the reality of Church's death; the documentary's re-enactments, while not graphic, are chillingly effective. Lindsay said these scenes were particularly hard to film because the actor who portrays Church is a gay man himself and the crew filmed in both Cedar Canyon and Dog Valley.
However, the documentary also highlights Utah S.B. 103, which was passed earlier this year and created more stringent hate crime laws.
"(The documentary) just takes the viewer down to this low, dark, horrible place of what two people could do to another person," Lindsay said. "And then we try to come back out of that in the end by showing that there are some good things that can come out of this horrible story."
He also said he hopes the documentary helps people show more love to the LGBTQ+ community and have discussions about hate crimes.
"This is a story that needs to be shared," he said. "This is a topic that needs to be discussed."
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde