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."