Slain witness mourned by cyber-world `family'
BY JENNIFER LEBOVICH AND JENNIFER MOONEY PIEDRA
jmooney@MiamiHerald.com

Every night, Dorthy Jean McReynolds and her husband sat side-by-side, playing a computer game set in a parallel universe.

Here, in this cyber-world, they transformed themselves into warrior-like characters who could command spaceships, build outposts, conquer vast territories and explore new solar systems.

And through this passion, they formed friendships with people they've never met in real life.

Now, just over a week after 40-year-old Dorthy McReynolds was gunned downed in her Hollywood home, the couple's gaming friends are mourning her death around the globe.

Friends from as far away as Iceland, Holland and England have sent bouquets of flowers to Kentucky, where there will be a memorial service today. Hundreds have mailed sympathy cards to her husband and children and posted condolences on the game's website to remember the woman known to them as Beachie88.

''Touched doesn't even describe how I feel,'' said her husband, Kenny McReynolds, 44. ``I cried so hard when I saw how much people cared.''

As more people create and lead alternative lives on the Internet, either in games or in other online avatar communities, experts say that, in some cases, they become more attached to virtual friends than to those they meet in real life.

''You have the rise of all these new virtual environments as a new way of making connections,'' said Janet Sternberg, associate chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York. ``In some cases, people are grieving online about people they know online.''

Four years ago, McReynolds and her husband became hooked on EVE Online, which has more than 170,000 subscribers cruising hundreds of imaginary star systems.

While playing the game, Kenny McReynolds, a transmission mechanic in real life, morphs into an industrialist named Fordfan who conducts mining and building expeditions. His wife, who before she died was manager of a Hollywood check-cashing store, served as his assistant, collecting minerals and materials.

They created images of themselves: Beachie88 has dark eyes and cornrows pulled back into spiked ponytails; Fordfan fashioned himself into a beefy, square-jawed, Terminator-like hero.

They'd play for hours every night on two different computers, sometimes until 4 a.m., Kenny McReynolds said. But to them, the game was just as much about forging friendships with other players as it was about competing against them.

One of their closest friends in cyberspace, Andre Goyette Jr., lives near Detroit. He never met Dorthy Jean McReynolds or her husband, but spoke to them on a computer microphone nearly every night.

Family, NASCAR racing, work -- there was no topic off limits, Goyette said.

''We talked about life in general, what people talk about everyday,'' said Goyette, 30, who works the night shift at a hotel.

Goyette, who began playing the game with the couple about a year ago, had plans to visit the McReynolds in August with his 5-year-old daughter.

''They're the closest things to my family,'' he said, his voice cracking.

When Goyette -- known as Najenna online -- learned that McReynolds had been killed, he posted a message on eve-online.com alerting other players of the news.

He told them how, shortly after 8 a.m. on May 7, a man broke into McReynolds' home and shot her in the head. The gunman then fired at her 19-year-old daughter, Kelly Brooks, wounding her in the leg.

McReynolds died May 10, and her family donated 11 of her organs to transplant patients. No arrests have been made in connection with her death.

McReynolds' family is preparing to say goodbye to her this morning during a funeral service in Barboursville, Ky. Goyette wishes he could attend.

''I was going to go down and attend the funeral, but I couldn't scrape the money together,'' said Goyette.

Jaroan Hartman, aka Skulllford, also hoped to make the trip. But the 31-year-old construction welder says there is no way he could afford traveling from his home in Holland.

''It makes me so sad when I think about what happened,'' said Hartman, who met the McReynoldses in the game about seven months ago. ``I know them better than I know my own neighbors just because of the game.''

EVE Online players have written cards and poems to Kenny McReynolds, who has also received numerous phone calls from his online friends.

''My phone is still ringing off the hook,'' he said. ``Everyone is pretty tore up.''

More than 35,000 people have read the online thread about McReynolds' death and, as of late Thursday, more than 500 had written their own messages of sympathy. And while the posts will stay on the site, the character Beachie88 may live on in cyberspace if her husband chooses to keep her alive. ''She was a mother to all of us,'' one player, Potus, wrote on the site. ``I will try not to dwell on how her life ended, but on how she lived and the good times we had.''

AleXinO Gardon, another player who refers to the online game community a ''big family,'' wrote: ``Real life is too real sometimes.''

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