Free Kill the Ones You Love by Robert Scott Page B

grandiosity and paranoia.
    Gabe had been playing Perfect World constantly on the computer in 2009; but by that point, his real world was anything but perfect.

CHAPTER 14
    To what depths Gabe had descended into paranoia can be ascertained by his remarks to his wife in January 2010. He began telling her that Bob Kennelly was trying to poison them. Gabe said that Bob was putting rat poison in their food and was also wiping it on their plates.
    By this point, Gabe was so delusional that he later claimed that he absolutely knew he was being poisoned. He said he purposefully imbibed the rat poison, knowing that it would kill an ordinary person, but that he was no ordinary person. According to Gabe, because of his extraordinary powers granted by God, he was able to heal himself.
    Around that same time, Dillon Hogan, Bob Kennelly’s son-in-law, had dinner with Robert and Robin at their house. Robin told Dillon how Gabe was claiming that he could run through the trees of the forest at night, at full speed, and see God and hear His voice. Gabe claimed he never hit a tree or stump because God was guiding him. Robin was so alarmed by this that she said she thought that Gabe was psychotic now.
    James Anstey was equally alarmed. He later said, “He was no longer the Gabe I knew. He thought he was some kind of superhero. He spoke of scams in Las Vegas and all kinds of crazy things. He was totally irrational. Something inside of him had broken.”
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    Around that same time, Gabe went to visit his old boss David Grover at his restaurant the Kozy Kitchen, in North Bend. Grover recalled, “Gabe stopped by the restaurant with his wife and daughter. In the beginning, he was very cordial, as he always had been. He was a lot thinner than I remember him being.
    â€œAs the conversation went on, he told me he knew I was a good person, and he said he knew that because of my smile. He went on to talk about some kind of mission he was on. He said that if there were any people who were giving me problems, he would help me out on that. He added that he was on some kind of military mission and there were other people in the area helping him out. It was like secret agent stuff, black ops kind of things.
    â€œHe had always been honest with me in the past, so it was hard to discount these stories, but it was all very odd. I hadn’t seen him in six or seven years and I asked him what he was doing back in town. Then I said to him, ‘Oh, right. Your mom lives around here.’
    â€œHe said he wasn’t seeing her or her boyfriend. ‘They’re bad people! I love my mom very much, but I can’t be around her.’”
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    In January 2010, Gabe and Judy Ward, who lived in Virginia, met each other in a Skype chat room. That was the first time she had seen his face. She recalled, “On Skype, we never talked about his real life. It was all about either the game or working on a website and getting it up and running. He just seemed like a caring person.”
    Around that same time, Gabe began going over to his stepsister Isabelle’s house more often. Now married, she and her husband, Robert Hayden, lived in the Bandon area. Isabelle recalled, “Gabe began stopping by once a week. I started noticing there was a big change in him. It was the way he would talk and preach to us. His conversations were more intense and his stories were more wild.
    â€œHe started talking about God giving him missions. He was preaching about a lot of things he could do. He said he was in special operations—secret agent stuff. It got progressively worse. It got to where I didn’t even want to come to the door when he showed up. But I’d open the door because it was Gabe.
    â€œHe would just ramble on and on, and I couldn’t follow what he was saying. I would just nod my head. I felt like he was trying to recruit us for whatever trip he was on. He acted like he was some kind of prophet. His