Host of the Sundance Film Festival and the Alpine events of the 2002 Winter Games, Park City is an Old West mining town turned international ski destination. Just 30 minutes outside Salt Lake City, but since its earliest days, Park City has maintained a world of its own. In this temperance state, Park City's Main Street is lined with bars. Writers, artists and film producers commuting from LA make their homes here. For each, it's easy to forget that they live in Utah.

It isn't just out-of-towners who come to Park City, lots of Salt Lake locals make it their regular weekend getaway, people like Doug Koehler. A gay man in a Mormon world, Park City was Koehler's personal escape. The one place he could be himself and not worry about repercussions. All that changed one Friday night when he walked into the Saddle & Spur Saloon. Unlike the fern-bars and tourist spots on Main Street, The Saddle & Spur was a real Old West bar, populated by cowboys who worked the hobby ranches of Park City's Hollywood elite, cowboys like David Thacker and Clint Crane. On the night he met Thacker and Crane, Koehler played a little pool, drank a little beer and sniffed a little cocaine. It was just another fast-paced night in this racy ski town.

The following morning, Park City locals woke up to more than the usual weekend hangover. A paperboy making his rounds discovered a dead man in a condo parking lot, his hands in his pockets and a bullet hole in his head, right between the eyes. It was Doug Koehler. The death stunned Park City and the fact that he was gay, left many wondering if the killing had been a hate crime.

After interviewing witnesses from the Saddle & Spur, investigators tracked down Thacker and Carne. During questioning, Crane fingered Thacker as the triggerman. Thacker had shot Koehler after an argument. Thacker's statement added yet another wrinkle to the story and confirmed Park City's fears. The argument that led to Koehler's death was, according to Thacker, the result of sexual advances Koehler had made on the cowboy. Prosecutors, unsure how the combination of drugs and homosexuality would play before a Utah jury, arranged for Thacker to plea guilty to First Degree Manslaughter. They counted on a 20-year sentence, but hadn't counted on the conservative Mormon judge who would preside over the case.

Judge David Young, who claimed to be a descendant of Mormon leader Brigham Young, had a record of rulings based less on his law books and more on the Good Book. At Thacker's sentencing hearing, the judge suggested that Koehler incited Thacker by supplying him with drugs and by making unwanted sexual advances. Thacker received a scant six-year prison sentence. To Park City, it looked as though the state was condoning the murder of a gay man. Hundreds of protestors rallied on the courthouse steps. For Park City locals, the ruling only increased the ideological distance between this ski town and the rest of the state.