Please understand that I have no interest in “exposing” Linda Mack. SlimVirgin is, however, another matter, given the role she has played in facilitating massive distortions not only about me but many, many others in her role within Wikipedia.

From 1988-1990 I was a philosophy graduate student at King’s College, Cambridge, England. Like most colleges at Cambridge, King’s had its own student pub, just off the dining hall, within which students would congregate at the end of their days’ studies. Within the pub, intersecting social circles formed, broke apart, and reformed. One such circle was of philosophy grad students. I was located on the periphery of that group.

Within our college was a fine American fellow named Julian, a Yale lad who was doing some advanced graduate work at Cambridge. One day Julian and I had a pint and he told me about his work, which was in an area related to some work that had interested me two summers earlier. I knew just enough to follow him as he described his research program, which struck me as being quite leading-edge (it had something to do with using neural networks to discover patterns in speech). I remember being struck by Julian as being extremely bright, mature and thoughtful. Whatever is the antonym of “frat-boy,” that was Julian, in a way that made quite a vivid impression on me.

There was another student, a Canadian woman named Linda who was also on the periphery of this social circle, but at opposite edge of the periphery. She tended to come to the pub in beautiful gowns that would not be out of place in a Dickens novel. I would describe the energy between us as intense, but I never could tell if she liked me, or intensely disliked me (probably the latter). Halfway through the term she started speaking with an English accent that seemed pretentious, but she explained that she had had one English parent (her mom, I think), and had grown up switching between English and Canadian accents (an explanation that is more reasonable than it sounds: I can believe it). Over time, I believe we all learned to tread carefully around her, as she was not open to the normal jibing and sparring that to the British passes as camaraderie: people mentioned her name with a gentleness that told me I was not alone in recognizing she was perhaps a bit brittle.

One evening near the end of that first autumn term, likely in late November or early December, a dozen or so of us were eating together in the dining hall. I said something that upset Linda. I remember thinking, she had either misunderstood what I had said, or was reaching for an interpretation of what I had said that was stretched, in order to justify being upset. She glared at me, the women around her waved me off, and I backed away from the table, making a mental note that there were more landmines hidden around that psyche than I had anticipated.

Some time later, in the adjoining pub, another friend found me and said, “Linda’s really upset at what you said.” I walked back in to the dining hall to apologize again: she was still there, sulking, with Julian and another gal keeping her company. She glared at me again and looked away: Julian and I caught eyes, I raised my hands apologetically, he nodded as if to say, “I’m on it, it’s OK,” so I slipped away.

That was on a Friday night, I believe. By Monday the word was that Julian and Linda were dating. I confess, it seemed like an odd pairing, but judge not lest ye be judged.

Not long thereafter, a handful of days it seems, but a matter of a couple of weeks at most, the term drew to a close. Linda and I had kept our distance, but Julian and I had a pint by the window of the empty pub on a very bright afternoon. I recall a bit of what we spoke about: he mentioned his father, who was deceased, and told me a bit more about his background. We said our good-byes, as we were going different directions for Christmas.

I left that day. The next, Julian Benello went to the airport, got on Pan Am 103, and was killed over Lockerbie, Scotland. I learned of his death a few days later, reading the list of deceased in some newspaper in Europe. Years later I heard later that his work was indeed leading-edge, and that his research colleagues included his name when they published what became a seminal paper in their field, in tribute to his memory. There have not been many people who in their mid-twenties have made a deep impression on me in a matter of a few hours spent together, at most. Julian surely did, and beyond all the expected sadness at his passing, at his murder, I have always carried the additional regret that I had not gotten to know him better that autumn.

When I returned to Cambridge in early 1989, Linda was there in mourning: her Gothic costumes seemed, at last, appropriate. But now she was the center of attention, and over time, became invested with a new kind of bustling self-importance. We did have opportunity for a few civil words over a pint, and she spoke of “the families” and “our negotiations” as though she were emerging in a leadership role, and of meeting with news bureaus and intelligence agencies. We lads said nothing (what man can judge what a woman might be feeling in such circumstances?), but this persisted for enough weeks, then months, until some of the women at college began to snicker at it as being inappropriate, and her mourning went from being met with condolences, to humoring, to (when she emerged as a leading voice within the “Families of Pan Am 103″) it all being judged rather ghoulish. My last recollection of Linda was of her telling and retelling her involvement to a circle of undergraduates while keeping her distance from the rest of us who knew the players. In the end, her presence at Cambridge faded amidst talk of meetings in London and DC, and when I asked about her some months later, I was told she had moved to New York, and was dedicating her life to “revealing the truth about Pan Am 103.”

That is the last I heard of Linda Mack.

Out of the corner of my eye I have been following the brewing discontent about Wikipedia, its iron authority cloaked in “neutral point of view,” the growing sense among many that over a range of issues it has been hijacked by some sort of cabal whose power flows from the involvement of two super-users, SlimVirgin and Jayjg, that this discontent has breached the levies, and that the response has been some kind of critic-witch-hunt within Wikipedia, led by SlimVirgin. I have reviewed Daniel Brandt’s evidence that SlimVirgin is Linda Mack, and found it conclusive enough to decide to write this story, so that those who have been the targets of her abuse of power could round out the understanding they seek to attain.

Linda Mack is not a bad person, and if I had had a chance I would have reached out a hand in friendship myself. I ask that no one hate or abuse her: she is someone who fell in the deep end and never came out. On the other hand, SlimVirgin is a tyrant for whom (judging from the protection she affords Gary Weiss) the past is clearly not the past, and the prejudices and interests driving her behavior should be exposed. I hope this has made some minor contribution to that effort.