A body discarded in a field. Cold weather. Signs of torture.

So far, seven people have been charged with the murder of Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old Black transgender man who was tortured and murdered in western New York state last month. It was a case that Capt Kelly Swift of the state police’s bureau of criminal investigation said was “one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated”.

Some similarities between the deaths of Nordquist and Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who was brutally attacked, tortured and left to die while tied to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998, are becoming apparent. Two men were eventually convicted for Shepard’s murder, and his death became symbolic of anti-gay hate and helped fuel the LGBTQ+ rights movement.