End Game

On December 28, 2017, a 911 call alerted authorities in Wichita to a murder and a hostage situation. Five minutes later the police responded. But there was no murder, no hostages. It was just another instance of online gamings favorite form of real-life revenge about to go horribly awry.

- Brendan I. Koerner

“The death of my son has changed every iota of my being,” Lisa Finch said, reading from the speech she’d spent weeks writing by hand on ruled paper. “I am astonished by the transformation that has been brought to me. I have a different idea of myself. I have been basically forced to alter everything I do. I do not recognize the person I was before. That person is now a stranger from long ago.”

Her heartfelt rumination soon segued into a stinging critique of Wichita’s police, whom she largely blames for what happened to her son. His death last December, in bizarre circumstances that made headlines around the world, turned Finch into an advocate for holding cops to account when they make fatal errors. Her scrappy campaign for justice has rattled her city, a place where the police are far more accustomed to being admired than scrutinized.

As she spoke at length about her rage and anguish, Finch conspicuously failed to mention the nihilistic Angeleno who has been widely vilified for his role in her son’s death. She goes out of her way to avoid letting this young man’s name cross her lips, even though he has become a global symbol of all that’s rotten in gaming culture. She has never tried to learn about his extensive history of using the internet to sow real-world mayhem. All she knows is that his idea of a prank randomly smashed apart her family on a frigid winter night, and that she’s been adrift in a haze of grief ever since.

The man who called the Glendale, California, police department at 1:52 pm on September 30, 2015, said his name was Alex. In a quiet, almost childlike voice, he stated that he’d placed several backpacks containing bombs inside the news studio of KABC-TV, adjacent to Griffith Park. The bombs would be remotely detonated in 10 minutes.