Electronic Kill Machine

Role Playing

There came a time during the summer of 2002 when Ant became quiet, Jim later said.

"Really quiet." Almost reserved. He had turned completely inward.

When the money didn't seem do anything to stimulate him anymore, and the toys he bought became boring, Anthony went in search for a new incentive to get up every morning.

"It was like this role playing game," Jim said. "That none of us"—Lally and Weir, especially—"were all that interested in."

At one point, Jim went over to Ant's apartment and, "I counted like twenty-five spiral-bound notebooks in where he was writing all these stories."

Those stories would be Ant's new reality. He'd take "thirty to forty people at a time," Jim explained, and head out into the woods. "They'd all sit down together. They all had ranks."

It was an imaginary world Ant had created, all by himself.

"It was like this weird cult type of thing ... really pretty messed up."

What Jim learned as the summer passed and he asked Ant about the game was that he had created this "gothic, dark world, in which he was the leader ... people would come to him and ask to be part of this world ... part of another world."

Ant's version of Dungeons and Dragons.

Some of Anthony's pawns would go into the woods, Jim said, early in the morning and sit in the same place until midnight.

All under Ant's orders.

"Ant had crazy manipulation powers."