Electronic Kill Machine

Best Friend

Jim Morel and his three buddies were recluses: they didn't much travel beyond the comfort zone of their own group, neighborhood, or make new friends. They felt contented with the people they knew and trusted one another with their lives.

Jim's friend, Jason Weir, was actually a pretty bright kid, Jim said. "He, like the rest of us, came from a broken family. He'd done his fair share—like all of us—of crimes, but nothing too major."

In fact, they'd all been busted with smalltime drugs, or had been in trouble, for one reason or another, with the cops.

"The cops knew all our names," Jim said. "I was by no means an angel."

Jim went to high school with Thomas Lally. They were in a special program together. They didn't go to classes with the other kids. There were a certain number of "troubled" kids, Jim admitted, that attended classes down in the basement of the school.

Out of the entire group, Lally was the first of the bunch to seem extreme. Ant would soon take the title from him. But in high school and even right after, Lally was known as the "crazy kid" who would do just about anything.

"He was very obsessed with, like, explosives," Jim remembered.

Lally always wore army fatigues and was into blowing things up for fun.

"He was odd. He did a lot of bizarre things."