Drug lab being dismantled
Discovery shakes Fort Point neighbors
In a nondescript Boston apartment amid small businesses and artists' lofts, authorities this week found what may have been one of the largest methamphetamine manufacturing operations in the state after the discovery of the body of an admired local artist who apparently moved in a world of clandestine sex and drugs.
Responding to a call from the man's friends, police said they found the body of 29-year-old Kevin D. McCormick in his Congress Street apartment in the Fort Point district, the victim of a heart attack suffered during sex acts. Two people were questioned at the scene, but not detained, police said.
The Suffolk County medical examiner's office confirmed that McCormack died at the apartment Sunday, though the official cause of death remains under investigation.
McCormick, described by friends as a brilliant artist with an electrical engineering and computer science degree from MIT, and his role in the drug operation remained under investigation by police and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
In the Congress Street building yesterday, crews in hazardous materials suits delicately dismantled the drug lab, carting off volatile chemicals and supplies. No arrests have been made in the case.
One federal law enforcement official who has visited the apartment, speaking on the condition his name not be used, said the lab appeared far larger than the dozen or so other meth labs recently discovered around Massachusetts, which have mostly been for personal use.
McCormick's friends and fellow artists said they were stunned by his death and the discovery of the drug lab in his apartment.
''He made these absolutely beautiful and amazing [electronic light] sculptures, like nothing I had ever seen," said Dan Paluska, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an artist who knew McCormick, a 1999 graduate, through a local arts group called the Collision Collective. ''Other people come home and turn on the TV. . . . He would come home and turn on the soldering iron."
On Sunday, EMTs responded to a medical emergency call from the second floor apartment on Congress Street. They found McCormick clad in fetish gear, dead of a heart attack, surrounded by chains, wetsuits, and masks, as well as illicit drugs, police said.
Officers seized marijuana and ecstasy at the scene, said police spokesman Michael McCarthy. Two other people present when police arrived said McCormick had taken ecstasy hours earlier, said a law enforcement source briefed on the investigation. The meth lab was found behind a locked door. The lab was a large room filled with tables, Bunsen burners, beakers, and vials marked flammable, according to a city official who has seen it.
State Representative Brian Wallace, whose district includes the Congress Street apartment and who has been briefed on the investigation, said: ''It was a good-sized lab. . . . Some of the people were shocked at the size of it."
Methamphetamine, which causes an intense and addictive high, is made by processing pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in many over-the-counter cold medicines. The process involves adding heated volatile chemicals such as brake fluid, lantern fluid, and paint thinner. Until the lab is completely dismantled, which authorities said could take several more days, the explosion risk remains.
Those living and working near the apartment were dismayed by the threat. Tom Guevin, 55, who owns a nearby woodworking business, planned to close shop for the day. ''I think I'm going to go, I'm going to get out of here," he said. ''I don't want to be set up next to a potential bomb."
Meth arrived in Boston around 2002, taking root in the gay community. Medical clinics here began treating men with mounting problems: lost jobs, lost homes, and rapidly declining health.
Friends and fellow artists remembered McCormick yesterday as a cutting-edge artist known for his giant, high-tech sculptures aglow with electronic lights.
Dan Taub, an MIT senior, was McCormick's ''little brother" in the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity. Taub said he discussed drugs with McCormick within the last two weeks.
''He said to me personally that he would never use methamphetamine because it is so addictive," said Taub, who added that he had no knowledge of McCormick using any other drugs.
Taub also said that McCormick had given him a tour of the Congress Street place two weeks ago and that he was convinced there could not have been a meth lab there. McCormick and artists were probably using chemicals in their creations, Taub said.
''There was not enough chemical equipment there to produce meth," he said.
Taub described the scene at the apartment as a mix of intellectuals and artists, where MIT undergraduates could often be found tinkering with electronic projects.
One childhood friend said McCormick and his roommates hosted large rave parties about three times a year and smaller gatherings more frequently at the Fort Point apartment, which they called Warehouse 23.
The friend, Tronster Hartley, who went to an all-boys high school in Baltimore with McCormick, said he had attended one of the events in 2002 and had spoken with McCormick in recent years about drug use. ''He was a very creative person," Hartley said. ''Everything Kevin did was a little bizarre."
McCormick worked at Color Kinetics, a downtown Boston company that makes high-tech lighting.
''He was a light artist whose work was greatly admired," Nancy Sterling, a spokeswoman for the company, said yesterday. ''He will be missed by his many friends and colleagues."
Jonathan Bachrach, a research scientist and organizer of art exhibits at MIT, called McCormick ''a pioneer in technology-based art" and said he was well known around the school and in the art community.
In April, Bachrach included a McCormick work in a city-sponsored exhibit downtown. The piece, called ''Corona," was a light sphere that hung in a Downtown Crossing storefront window through June.
''He was one of the best," said Bachrach said. ''He'll be missed."
Maria Cramer, Donovan Slack, and Stephen Smith of the Globe staff contributed to this report. 