Friday nights transported Adam Thomas to a world where he could leave his old skin behind. Only the Game Master made rules, and after that anything was possible.

It was time for RP role playing. A boardless game akin to Dungeons and Dragons, participants make up identities and weave fantastical plots.

Five or six teenage boys regularly “RPed” into the wee morning hours during the winter of 2000-01. Adam, an 18-year-old senior at Redmond High School, joined the group at the invitation of two new pals.

One was Seth Edwin Koch, 15. A sophomore at Redmond High, Seth met Adam in an automotive mechanics class. Whip smart, Seth held his own with an older crowd.

The other was Justin Alan Link. At 17, he exuded outlaw swagger and style. He hadn’t attended school for the last two years, instead working a variety of service jobs to get by.

Within weeks, Adam, Seth and Justin, three teenagers who had led very different lives, would together choose their own horrific story line.

Adam would beat his own mother, Barbara Thomas, with champagne bottles. Seth would sight her head in a rifle scope and fire. Justin, the other teens involved said, urged them to do it and praised them afterward.

It was no game.

*****

The nature of “RP” changed whenever Justin Link joined the game.

Justin wanted only to battle, Seth later told investigators. He ignored the Game Master’s rules and killed characters who were supposed to be friends.

Conflict permeated Justin’s life from early childhood. By his teenage years, observers said wherever he went, strife followed.

Justin was the second child of Central Oregon residents Donald Alan Link and Amella Robin Link.

The two married in 1980, when Donald Link was 35 and Robin Link was 15. They divorced in July 1984, just more than a year after Justin’s birth. The relationship reignited, and the two remarried six months later.

Robin Link, a petite woman at 5 feet 4 inches, in court documents characterized the relationship with her husband as a stormy one.

Between the divorce and remarriage, she said Donald Link attempted to blow up her car with dynamite. He attached explosives to her car and rammed his car into it. When it didn’t explode, he continually rammed her car, pushed it down an embankment and threw rocks through all the windows.

Six months into the second marriage, Robin Link said her husband threatened to shoot her.

She fled from her home with her two young children, unable to take a car or belongings.

She divorced him again, filing restraining orders and seeking child support.

Robin Link married Michael Glenn Matheny after the divorce.

The family moved to Alfalfa, a farming community 16 miles east of Bend, when Justin was 5. They remained there for the next decade.

The family grew to five children. Justin’s mother, now Robin Matheny, in court described Justin’s childhood in the rural area as lonely. He had few neighboring playmates.

Michael Matheny drove trucks throughout the West for a living. Some weekends, he only returned long enough for a shower and change of clothes. Robin Matheny continued to work full-time. Money, the mother testified, was tight.

Father Donald Link described Justin as a timid and quiet toddler. Link rarely saw his children after their early years.

In court testimony, other relatives said Justin as a child followed the lead of other kids instead of acting for himself. He didn’t get in fights or react with inappropriate anger.

(Robin Matheny said the family will not talk to The Bulletin, saying the newspaper prints lies.)

Court records show evidence of troubled times in the Matheny household during Justin’s childhood.

In 1999, when Justin was 16, Michael Matheny pleaded guilty in an agreement with Deschutes County prosecutors to one count of misdemeanor sex abuse. The incident involved a teenage girl. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail with credit for time served and permission to work during the day.

Matheny has been through diversion programs for DUII charges filed in 1989 and 2002, as well.

In the meantime, Justin’s behavior in school started drawing attention.

The boy rode the school bus more than 40 miles round trip daily between Alfalfa and Redmond. The family had no other way of transporting him, so he could not stay after class to participate in activities.

Former teachers and administrators said at times Justin related well to other students and did his schoolwork.

“The difficulty was trying to predict how long he’d be in a good mood,” said Timothy Gleeson, who was principal at the Redmond School District’s Brown Alternative School when Justin was a student there.

Justin never behaved violently while in school, district officials said. Difficulties centered on theft and displays of anger.

By fifth grade, Justin stole small items. When confronted, teacher Maureen Davis testified, he denied responsibility. He used foul language and was blatantly disrespectful to adults, sometimes flipping off teachers, she said.

“We were simply keeping the lid on,” Davis said.

Davis contacted Justin’s parents throughout the year. She wanted a face-to-face meeting but never got one.

“I wouldn’t recognize his mother,” Davis said. “I never had his mother in my room.”

The school district soon afterward moved Justin into programs with one-on-one tutoring at school and home.

Gordon Detzel, a former administrator at the alternative school who dealt with Justin in his middle school years, described him as intelligent and lonely. He didn’t observe him making friends.

“There were not a lot of people that he cared about or was tied to,” he said.

Detzel said Justin connected with other kids if it benefited him, and seemed to enjoy convincing other kids to do things that got them in trouble.

“He got a vicarious kind of thrill out of that,” Detzel said.

Redmond Police Officer Craig Unger wrote a report about such an incident while he was school resource officer for Redmond High School. He had recently investigated a bike theft at Obsidian Middle School. The officer found Justin and his cousin riding bikes. The cousin was riding the stolen bike and Justin was riding the cousin’s bike. Unger said Justin stole the bike and convinced his cousin to ride it so he would not get in trouble.

Gleeson dealt with Justin in his early high school years. He said Justin at times would cross his arms, snap his pencil and refuse to work in class.

The situation came to a head in January 1999.

That month, Gleeson put Justin on a work crew program that allowed him to get his high school diploma. But he was kicked out after he was suspected of stealing beer from a convenience store while en route to a work site.

He returned to Brown Alternative School.

Within days, Justin lost his temper, cursing and smashing Styrofoam packing material. He returned from the principal’s office and told a teaching assistant that he was going to “kick Gleeson’s ass.”

Gleeson confronted Justin the next day. Upon returning to the classroom, Gleeson said, Justin started yelling and cursing. He angrily kicked a chair.

Gleeson ordered a staff member to call police.

“It looked like he was going to blow,” Gleeson said.

The administrator said Justin calmed down when he heard they called police. Officers arrived, arrested Justin for menacing and took him to the juvenile detention center. He was cooperative during the arrest.

The story transformed when Justin relayed it later. He told other teenagers, including Adam and Seth, that he got expelled from school for slamming Gleeson’s head against a desk.

*****

Justin’s family moved during his post-school teenage years to a trailer park along Highway 97 in Terrebonne. The area was almost as isolating as Alfalfa because Justin didn’t have a car.

He held various jobs after dropping out of school at age 15. He pumped gas, stocked shelves, swept floors, and worked at KFC.

Justin stopped by neighboring trailers often. One of those neighbors was Mandy King, three years his senior. She and her then-boyfriend lived near Justin.

Many people found Justin annoying, King said, but she struck up a friendship with the teenager.

“I knew he felt like an outcast,” she said. “People that met him didn’t like him because they didn’t get to know him.”

Justin became a loyal friend. He helped her with household chores. The two bowled, swam in the Deschutes River or just lounged and discussed life.

King said Justin is a caring person who never received a fair shot in life.

“His whole life, he’s done nothing but love, no matter how violent people got or how evil people got,” she said.

King felt Justin took to Adam out of a desperation for friends. She said Justin made bad choices on the day of Barbara Thomas’ death but didn’t want anyone to be murdered.

But in the days before the crime, Justin continued to encounter trouble.

Even before Justin moved to Terrebonne, sheriff’s deputies had questioned him about burglaries in the Alfalfa area. No charges were ever filed. One deputy noted in a report that Justin’s mother interrupted frequently during interviews, making it impossible to glean any information.

The law came knocking at the Terrebonne trailer park door several times during October 2000. Deschutes County sheriff’s detectives suspected Justin in two burglaries, at the Terrebonne Boys and Girls Club and the Dayspring Christian Center in Terrebonne.

The Boys and Girls Club was missing a laptop and a bank bag with $300 in it. Kids were raising the money to go to a leadership conference in Phoenix. The Christian Center was missing computer speakers, a calculator and a bank bag containing $2,500.

Deputies with a search warrant found the laptop and computer speakers in a closet in the Matheny home. Justin said he received the items from another person, didn’t know they were stolen and denied responsibility for the burglaries. Justin was charged with theft, and the case was still pending in juvenile court when he was arrested five months later in connection with Barbara’s murder.

By the end of October, Justin no longer lived with the family. He told detectives he got kicked out of the trailer park. A relative told police Justin had received counseling for anger issues, but it didn’t seem to help.

Without a home, Justin began “couch surfing,” relying on family and friends for a place to sleep.

The swirl of problems followed Justin into the outside world.

Officer Unger wrote a report in October 2000 to inform the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office of what he knew about Justin. It was under the heading of failure by parents to supervise a child.

He said at about 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 17, Justin was loitering outside Redmond High and tried to pick a fight with a student. He was not a student there.

When Unger talked to Justin, the teen told the officer that his parents didn’t care where he lived.

Barry Sargert, owner of the Millennium Cafe, a teen club in Redmond, allowed Justin to hang out there one summer even though he wasn’t enrolled in school, a requirement for admission. Sargert said Justin promised to return to school that fall. But he consistently caused problems at the club that summer.

Sargert recalled one night when Justin left the club with another teen’s shirt. Sargert chased him.

“I said, ‘Hey, that’s not yours,’” Sargert said.

Justin turned to him. “Well it is now,” he replied, then lit a cigarette.

Sargert banned Justin from the club when he didn’t return to school.

The last time Justin showed up was during the week of spring break 2001, just days before the murder. Sargert refused to let him in.

“From now on, you look down when you’re talking to me,” Justin shot back.

“Justin didn’t care about anyone but himself,” Sargert said.

Some teens said they avoided Justin.

They recalled him threatening to beat people up. One remembered Justin spotting a stranger and announcing that he would pummel that one. He lied to get his way. Some considered Justin more talk than action.

“He’s a rude person. Period,” Tera Parcell said.

“It seemed like every time he opened up his mouth something dumb or rude would come out,” she said.

For others, he captivated. At 5 feet 11 inches and 165 pounds, Justin looked more like a young man than a boy. He exuded confidence and blond good looks, walking with a strut and talking with a deep voice.

Teens described Justin as a talker who was the first to take the stage in a room full of people. Laura Burruss saw this when her sons befriended Justin and she allowed him to stay at her house for awhile. The mother witnessed how he entranced groups of teens gathered in her Redmond home.

“Everyone just loved to talk to him and be around him,” she said. “He was a big force.”

Burruss didn’t know that one of her sons started sneaking Justin into the home when she and her husband were at work. She later learned that Justin, homeless, would drink coffee at Shari’s restaurant into the early morning and then get some sleep in their residence.

When she discovered that, she offered Justin a temporary home.

“I tried to let him know there were people out there who care about him,” Burruss said.

Issues arose once Justin moved in. Burruss’ then-husband, Tony Kimbrough, became uneasy.

Their youngest son, who had always been respectful, started questioning authority and talking back. Kimbrough had been around people in trouble with the law before and said he recognized the same attitude in Justin.

Kimbrough decided to tell Justin to leave.

He confronted Justin in the garage. It grew heated. He said he had heard of Justin’s trash talk about liking to beat up adults and dared the 17-year-old to hit him.

Justin didn’t hit him. The teen left.

“It wasn’t that I hated Justin, it was that I loved my son,” Kimbrough said. “I knew where he was headed, and I didn’t want him to take my son with him.”

Burruss later caught Justin and Adam outside her son’s bedroom window, trying to convince him to sneak out of the house.

“Boys,” she said, “Nothing good happens after midnight. Go home.”

Both Kimbrough and Burruss said Justin had so much promise that went to waste.

“He could have had the world if he used it to its full potential,” Burruss said.

Kimbrough testified at Justin’s sentencing hearing in September. That night, his truck parked in front of his house was destroyed in a fire. Prosecutors said the fire is being investigated as arson.

*****

Justin’s lawlessness intoxicated Adam Thomas.

Adam didn’t like school, but he put up with it. Justin didn’t like school, so he didn’t go. Justin did what he wanted. He drank alcohol and smoked marijuana and used methamphetamine.

“Crank,” as methamphetamine is called, produces a high akin to an adrenaline rush that lasts for four to 24 hours, according to the Koch Crime Institute, a think-tank devoted to addressing the drug’s use. Users can experience feelings of increased alertness, anger, fear, agitation, well being, exhilaration or euphoria. When the stimulation goes too high, crank produces panic, paranoia, hallucinations or rage.

Officer Unger said when he talked to high school classes, roughly 75 percent of teens said they had tried marijuana. The answer was different with methamphetamine.

“When I said, ‘How many smoke meth?’ There’s maybe one or two,” he said. “They don’t last in the school system. When you start using meth, you drop out.”

Adam started drinking, smoking pot and sampling meth, mainly with Justin. Sometimes he skipped classes.

Friends started warning Adam to drop the friendship.

Adam ignored the advice. He didn’t want stop hanging out with Justin.

“If I did, I’d just go back to the same old thing,” he told Dr. William Sack, a psychiatry professor emeritus at Oregon Health & Science University who analyzed Adam for the case. “This was new and exciting.”

Another teenager also felt Justin’s pull. He later told investigators he admired Justin’s strength and considered him a role model. He told his mother he felt sorry the teen led such a rough-and-tumble life.

Seth Koch met Justin at the Burruss residence, where they both participated in the role playing game.

The two formed a friendship that weathered the criticism of his friends and parents.

Mother Vicki Koch said after Seth’s arrest, he wished he had listened.

“He said to me, ‘Mom, there’s nothing you could have done at that time to make me turn against my friends.’”

*****

Young Seth Edwin Koch talked of black holes and supernovas more than Harry Potter and cartoons.

Even as a boy, he impressed others with his intellect and photographic memory.

“By 10 or 11 years old, he was way beyond us,” said his mother, Vicki Koch.

As he grew into his adolescent years, Seth was pinned by many as a “most likely to succeed” sort of kid.

To this day, it still stuns that this well-mannered, church-going youth would be at Barbara Thomas’ house the day she was murdered, let alone pull the trigger.

“He totally did not seem like that type of person,” said childhood friend Devin Hansen. “It was a shock to the brain.”

Born in 1985 in Grand Junction, Colo., Seth moved with his family to Redmond during the first years of his life.

Seth’s father, Karl Sauviac, was a Louisiana native with deep Cajun roots. His mother, Vicki, was a tall beauty Sauviac met in the restaurant business.

The couple opened their first restaurant together in Redmond, serving the spicy fare of Karl Sauviac’s childhood.

The marriage ended when Seth was 3. Karl Sauviac returned to Colorado and Seth saw him only a few times after that. Sauviac died of a heart attack when Seth was 9.

“Seth would ask about his dad,” said Vicki, whose last name is now Koch. “He was upset he didn’t remember him.”

After the divorce, Vicki married Jerry Koch. Seth calls him dad.

Vicki Koch continued running restaurants, bringing Seth in as she worked. Seth spent a lot of time around adults, and they adored his sweet, polite manner.

“The problem when Seth was little was he never met a stranger,” Vicki Koch said. “We had to be careful with him. He liked everyone. He trusted everyone.”

In school, teachers recognized Seth’s brightness but thought he didn’t apply it. He brushed off homework starting in seventh grade, particularly in English classes, which he disliked. He performed better in math and science classes. Still, he listened and aced tests.

Vicki Koch said Seth wanted to fit in with other kids. When Seth missed the threshold on the test to enter the “Gifted and Talented” program by two points, he told his mom he deliberately threw the score.

“He didn’t want to be labeled,” Vicki Koch said.

The Kochs did well with Jerry Koch’s business, Guntraders in Redmond. The family lived in a two-story, three-bedroom house enclosed by pine trees in an established Redmond neighborhood.

In 1998, they moved to a larger house on a 4-acre plot of High Desert just outside town.

Seth spent his youth involved in activities like Boy Scouts, martial arts, wrestling and swimming. He enjoyed earning merit badges, his mother said, but he didn’t excel in sports. The Kochs believed he didn’t have the aggression for them. For instance, he never pinned a wrestling opponent, even when he was the stronger of the two.

Activities Seth did enjoy were swimming and Civil Air Patrol. He started both in middle school and continued swimming freestyle in high school.

Civil Air Patrol inspired Seth to talk of joining the Air Force one day. He also liked computers, his mother said, and enjoyed learning about them in high school.

Seth preferred making a few close friends to large groups. School acquaintances described him as shy and reserved.

“He was a quiet kid,” said Vicki Nill, one of his swimming coaches. “He kept to himself.”

However, Seth acted outgoing and zany among pals.

In elementary school, Devin Hansen considered Seth his best friend.

“He had a great imagination,” Devin said. “He made up stories that Legos came alive in the middle of the night.”

Devin also called Seth sensitive. He didn’t like to roughhouse and as a child cried if he got punched on the arm.

Devin and Seth stopped being friends at the end of their elementary years. Devin started running with a bad crowd.

The teen has since cleaned up his act. But he wonders if he set a bad example for Seth.

“If I’d been a better role model, maybe it wouldn’t have happened,” Devin said.

In sixth grade, Seth made a new best friend.

Ed Payne was his intellectual match. Outgoing and take-charge, Ed complemented the mild, eager-to-please teen. They shared the same interest in science and physics and went to swim meets together.

The two joined Civil Air Patrol together. They clowned around, wobbling at the waist when they were supposed to be standing at attention. They called it the “watusi.” Soon, with just a look, one could get the other to dissolve in laughter.

Seth often stayed at Ed’s house for entire weekends. “If we spent more than 12 hours together, we’d know what the other was thinking,” Ed said.

Classmate Chris King said hanging out with Seth and Ed could be intimidating. The group went to see the movie “The Mummy” on Ed’s birthday one year. Afterward, the two critiqued stunts they said violated the laws of physics.

“Seth was smarter than you, and he knows it,” Chris said. “He was always the whiz, you know?”

For parents, Seth was the sort of kid they wanted their children to befriend.

Laura Burruss said when she moved, Seth came over to help without being asked. Another parent said that if Seth drank the last of the milk, he would go to the store and replace it.

Seth even convinced Burruss’ son to go to church camp with him during the summer of 2000. Seth, with his science-oriented mind-set and concrete way of processing information, dismissed literal stories of Creation and other doctrine he learned in church. His mother recalled debating with him about Creation. He could not swallow her answer that some things must be accepted with faith.

But he still liked the church youth group and attended regularly, Vicki Koch said.

“Till I die, I will love the kid,” Burruss said. “I don’t like his actions, but I love the kid.”

As he started at Redmond High, Seth continued hanging out with the same group of kids. He felt unchallenged in the new setting, however, and continued blowing off homework.

“We both mutually agreed that high school was boring,” Ed said.

Early in 2001, the Kochs forbade Seth from the role-playing game, as they felt he was becoming obsessive about it.

But he continued spending time with Justin and Adam.

Seth later told Dr. Linda Grounds, a Portland psychologist who analyzed him for the criminal case, that he tried hard alcohol and marijuana in middle school. He didn’t really party during his freshman year. He spent most of his time practicing for swimming and laying irrigation pipe during the summer of 2000, forgoing drugs and alcohol.

As swim team came to a close during the winter of 2001, Seth and Justin began hanging out more. Seth, Justin and sometimes Adam started smoking pot and drinking alcohol together. To Seth, still sporting a gangly teenage body and braces, the older boys seemed cool.

He was cool by association.

Before spring break, Seth told investigators, he smoked marijuana every day at lunch, returning to class stoned. He sometimes did it at home at night, unbeknownst to his parents.

Friends warned Seth not to spend time with Justin and Adam, and Vicki Koch told Seth he was not allowed to hang out with Justin. But the friendships continued.

“I was smoking a lot of pot then, and they could get me some and I’d smoke it with them, and they had a car and I’d drive with them, so I don’t know what it was that drew me to them, other than that stuff,” Seth told investigators.

In the month before spring break, Seth started stealing alcohol out of his parents’ cupboard and sneaking out at night to meet Justin and Adam.

Vicki Koch noticed the change in her son. That winter, it became harder to get him up for school. He woke up feeling sick in the mornings, appeared worn out and slept until noon on weekends.

She didn’t realize her son was sneaking out and using drugs and alcohol. She had considered alcohol during that time, but it didn’t make sense.

“He never asked for it, even on holidays,” Vicki Koch said.

“When was he able to do this when he wasn’t in school? Otherwise he was home,” she said. “It explains a lot now.”

Seth’s new party choices escalated as spring break approached.

The lives of the three boys would continue to spin away from society’s rules. Along the way, they would meet two girls willing to go along with them.

Read Part 4 in the series.