Blood Among Friends

Northport is a village on the north shore of Long Island, in Suffolk County, New York, about an hour and a quarter's drive from New York City and a few minutes from the water. It began as the farming settlement of Great Cow Harbor, had only eight houses in the 1830s, took the name Northport in 1837 and grew on shipbuilding. By 1860 it had a thousand people. In 1967 the Long Island Lighting Company opened the Northport Power Station, whose four 600-foot stacks became a landmark visible from Connecticut. The village bought the waterfront and made Northport Memorial Park. The hosts put the population at 7,259, the median age at 48.3, the town at 92.5 percent white and 72.6 percent religious, 60 percent of them Catholic, with a median household income of $112,316, and describe violent crime as a third of the national average.

In the early 1980s a group of teenagers from comfortable Northport homes spent their nights in Cow Harbor Park and the woods above it, taking acid, mescaline and angel dust. details of the account remain covered until revealed His parents, Lynn and Dick, were both teachers at Northport Junior High School; they married in 1965 and kept a summer home in Greenwich, New York. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He smoked marijuana in the fifth grade, joined a house burglary in the seventh, was labelled emotionally handicapped by the school district's Committee on the Handicapped in April 1982, and by 1984 was the leader of a crowd of younger teenagers who bought drugs for him and looked up to him. this part of the story is covered for now He also led a loose high-school Satanist group called the Knights of the Black Circle, which had perhaps sixty members and jackets with the name on them.

A week before his sixteenth birthday his parents went to family court and a judge sent him to South Oaks Hospital in Amityville. He was diagnosed as manic-depressive and treated with lithium, and a psychiatrist there suggested he had Phaedra syndrome, a condition in which a person seeks failure to lessen the expectations placed on him. details of the account remain covered until revealed He once smeared ketchup on his wrists and called her upstairs to look. He talked his way out of the hospital by telling the doctors he no longer believed in Satan.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Gary Lowers was a quieter boy, teased as an outsider in junior high, who put up a front to fit in with the burnouts. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He beat Gary, took back five packets and demanded fifty dollars for the rest. Gary promised to get the money from his parents and never did. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Police called it a Satanic ritual. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed They built a fire, burned Gary's socks, cut the sleeves off his denim jacket and burned those, and then cut clumps of his hair when the fire died down. Gary said he was getting bad vibes and that they wanted to hurt him. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Gary was stabbed between 32 and 36 times, his eyes among the wounds, and his body was dragged into the undergrowth and covered with leaves and branches. Albert Quinonez, who was tripping and said he could not move, watched and then ran home.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He told one that Satan had appeared as a black crow and approved the killing. He took Richie Barton into the woods to show him the body, where Barton saw maggots on the remains and ran. He asked Barton to help him bury it. this part of the story is covered for now Gary's parents were not alarmed at first because he often disappeared for days.

On July 1st an anonymous teenage girl telephoned the police and said she knew where a dead body was and who had killed him. On July 4th, during the search, a dog unearthed the body: by then a pile of bones in a denim vest, running pants and Nikes, with no flesh left for a fingerprint. details of the account remain covered until revealed Eight officers surrounded the car. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He was pronounced dead. No note was found. this part of the story is covered for now

Albert Quinonez was granted immunity and testified. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it A drug counsellor, Philip Quinn, testified that chronic users cannot separate fantasy from reality. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now A girl said the park felt spooky because Gary had died there. The hosts note that the story was reconstructed at length by Rolling Stone and by Newsday reporters Rex Smith and Thomas Mayer.