Brad Abrahams: Neural Deceleration

Brad Abrahams (IG) (X)

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“I came here to add commas and stab people, and I’m all out of commas.”
- Joseph Cantrell

In my practice as a documentarian, I humanize my subjects regardless of how dark, disagreeable, or fantastical their views. Telling their life history or traumas, while showing how they live now as a person, gives context and a new understanding of their beliefs. In the lives with sadder outcomes (like my film about David Dees), these pieces can function as cautionary tales, pinpointing when and where things start to spiral. Writing this particular story though, with an exhaustive amount of context at my disposal (a 1000 page online “life journal”), just left me feeling confused and hopeless. 

It started at the sprawling Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. It was 5:30 PM on February the 23rd, 2023, and a Microsoft employee - we’ll pseudonymously call him David - was clocking out for the day. He stepped out into the dark and drizzly evening, looking forward to unwinding with his wife for the rest of the night. 

In a stroke of bad luck, he missed the walk signal at the corner of 156th Ave. NE and NE 28th Street, just south of Microsoft Building #27. As he waited for the light to change, he heard a man shouting in the distance. As the shouting grew closer, it sounded more like unhinged ranting and raving. He tried to ignore it and mind his own business, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the stranger walking briskly towards him. Before David could turn to face him, he felt a rapid succession of searing pains in his neck, head, and torso. He was being stabbed. 

He fell backwards, hard onto the pavement. The stranger continued to stab and stab as David instinctively tried to shield himself with his feet and hands. A witness said David’s screams sounded like a dying animal. A truck driver who was stopped at the intersection said he saw the stranger “stabbing the shit” out of him. He and another driver jumped out of their vehicles and yelled at the stranger to stop. This was enough to scare him off, sending him running down the street. The whole incident lasted just 10 seconds.

First responders arrived quickly. David had been stabbed 12 times, and there was blood everywhere. Surprisingly, he was still conscious, and was able to describe his attacker to the police before being rushed to the hospital. He said it was a white male, 5’9”, in his mid to late 20s, dressed in a dark hoodie and black pants. The man was a total stranger. 

Around this moment, his wife received a notification on her phone. It was an automated alert sent from David’s Apple Watch, letting her know he had just taken a hard fall. She tried to call, but there was no answer.  To add to the oddness, it said his coordinates were in Seattle, which was the location of the hospital they drove him to. He was admitted in critical condition, with a fractured skull, brain bleed, nerve damage in his hands, and other injuries. 

It wasn’t hard for police to find the attacker. A literal trail of blood led them to his nearby apartment, where he’d barricaded himself in. After breaking down the door, they found him trying to trash the evidence: namely, a knife and gloves covered in blood. He was identified as 26 year-old Joseph Cantrell, and he was also a Microsoft employee. He was charged with one count of attempted second-degree murder and one count of first-degree assault.

‘SUP WORLD

Surprisingly, the story was just a blip in the headlines, not even making national news. This may partly be on account of Microsoft scrubbing all references of Cantrell from Bing and DuckDuckGo News at the time (and still to this day). I guess an employee stabbing a fellow co-worker wasn’t a good look for the company. I was about to find out other reasons they may have wanted to keep this out of the news. 

After seeing a few of the local news stories with frustratingly brief coverage, the documentarian in me wanted to know who Joseph Cantrell really was, and what his motives for such a gruesome surprise attack were. It didn’t take long to find his website - an element none of the news outlets mentioned - and things were about to get a lot stranger. The now offline site opened with his bio:

“'Sup world! I'm Joseph Richard Cantrell, a currently calculated 27.79957357 year old straight white male programmer with a passion for flash lighting the electron torch of mutual prosperity. I am merely an extraordinary man and nothing more.

My evolved cells, their DNA, and everything else in my body have their roots in my family. To get here, my grandmother emigrated from Germany to the U.S.A. during Adolf Hitler's bolstering of Nazi Germany in the 1930' s. After marrying my grandfather she gave birth to my late mother, Patricia Ann Cantrell. I only remember seeing my alleged father less than ten times total, but my mother was always there for me.”

It goes on to reveal he was prescribed adderall for ADHD at age 5, and had been on it for most of his life since. He grew up with his mother in Columbus,Ohio, before attending Georgia Tech, where he graduated with a Bsc in Comp sci. From here the bio shifts into a hyper-detailed quantifying of his life, with tidbits like:

- I have spent 84 days of my life playing Modern Warfare 2 and 50 days playing Borderlands 2 on Xbox 360

- At age eleven, I once wrote 90,000 words of a novel called Krelzor's Quest, similar to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team.

- I once ate a luxury dessert of a baker's dozen original glazed Krispy Kreme donuts in one sitting.

- I hate Star Wars, High School Musical, college football, and the show Friends.

After a long and highly technical musing on the nature of space-time and the universe, he ends with a tract about ADHD, as well as hinting at his mother’s substance abuse during pregnancy:

“My various neurotransmitter release rates decelerate over time due to a prenatal genetic alteration by alcohol and tobacco, but in my neural disturbances, I've danced and conversed with processions of rainbow "ghost" women to keep me company through the occasional derivative misty night. From age five to age twenty-six, I called this attention deficit hyperactive disorder, A.D.H.D. Now, I've grown to call this part of myself  Neural Deceleration Disorder, N.D.D.”

Elsewhere on his site he exhaustively lists his favorite video games (including Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite, and Kirby’s Adventure), TV Shows (a lot of anime, with Death Note at the top, South Park, Futurama, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and Scooby Doo), favorite movies (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Friday the 13th VI, Halloween 4, Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Garfield A Tale of Two Kitties, and Scooby Doo on Zombie Island - big sequel fan). His favorite novels include Harry Potter, The Stranger by Camus, and Huxley’s Brave New World. 

Besides being an avid gamer, Joseph was a homebrew game designer. On the games section of his site, nestled among some innocuous shooters and platformers were a few more questionable titles that cracked open the window to his psyche. I’ll start with the most brazenly edgy first. It’s titled ANNE FRANK SIMULATOR:

“This parodic game entails Anne Frank dodging the Holocaust and collecting points along the way. In a single night, I created this to reach the limits of American free speech. Although controversial, I reiterate this game was made in good fun akin to the likes of Robot Chicken.”

Apparently, as Anne you’d have to resist being shoved into microwave ovens. The link to this game was broken, but not so for the others. Next was PROPHET LAUNCHER:

“Aim to offend yet test devotion to the pillars of humanity's most sacred in this endless, speedy 2D shooter parody.  As the final prophet of this world, annex the souls of the endless legion of old prophets and use them to enhance your own power.  Begin with the first prophet Jesus, the crossed man sent to destroy your old testament to faith and die for your sins. “

You play as either a male Columbine-styled shooter or large breasted woman shooting up Jesus, Mohammed (who is really just Osama Bin Laden with a suicide bomb), the Star of David, Buddha, Hitler, and what I can only describe as a pagan marijuana wizard:

Next is an even more crude-looking and simplistic game called UNTRUMPABLE, where you play as Donald Trump dodging fake news and collecting truth. You control Trump's face flying around the screen frantically dodging the CNN logo, a missile with Kim Jong Un’s face, the Twitter bird, and a USPS van branded with Biden and Xi’s face on it, all while collecting falling diamonds and money. 

The last one is more interesting. It’s a first person 3D exploration game called FOR MY ASPECT, which he describes as a loose metaphor for his ADHD. The rest of the description reads: 

“awaken high atop a lodge on Fluorescent Mountain during an excursion to Alaska.  Play through the eyes of Scipione Matella, a rich, novice novelist searching to regain his sense of surroundings. Scipione brought a PC, a cat, a flashlight, and some rations to travel light. Experience beautiful Alaskan vistas and slay your personal demons.“

Browsing the site of this attempted murderer felt eerie and haunting, like I shouldn't be there. He covered his life in such candid and vulnerable minutiae, though it wasn’t yet enough to connect the dots towards murderous intent, or to call his life a “cautionary tale”. But I was soon to discover this was all just a trickle of info about Joseph, the flood was about to come. I (and others) found a hidden link to a text file on his site, posted to the day before the crime. 

secret-journal-wall-trump-card-v2/JosephCantrell.txt

The file is a 234,000 word - or 1000 page - life journal. The first paragraph reads:

“This was originally a document detailing my drug use and my thoughts on or during their effects like the dream journal my mom bought me when I was a kid.  However, it is now my overall life journal and literary practice.  It should be freely and posthumously published to help humanity or whatever.  I'm sure it will help someone in the future given the challenges I've faced with abnormal genetics of decelerating neuron firing rates.”

The first 20 pages detail every single substance he’s experimented with, starting at 19 years old. Some are the familiar suspects like Amphetamines, LSD, Mushrooms, Cocaine, MDMA, Meth, and heroin. But it was the amount of obscure research chemicals he lists that was truly impressive. This is just a partial sampling:

25I-NBOMe, 2C-T-2, 2C-E, 5-MeO-MiPT, DOM, DOC, 25B-NBO, 3-MeO-PCP, DCK O-PCE, 2-OxO-PCE, 3-HO-PCP, 2F-DCK, 4-HO-MET, TMA-2, ETH-LAD, 2-FMA, 4-AcO-DMT, 3-Fl-PCP

Of all the substances, amphetamine sulfate (aka adderall) was his true love, glowingly described by him as:

“This is the gold standard and my ticket to life with Neural Deceleration Disorder. rainbow women and even a white light and full body orgasm at high doses.”

He disliked meth the most:

“This drug feels like a dirty poison flowing through one's veins like alcohol's bodily feelings. the roads here all lead to the dominion of Adolf Hitler, his wife, and his Nazi regime of no remorse.”

He liked to use LSD and DMT to enhance his weightlifting, claiming they made him able to lift twice as much weight. 

He similarly lists his favorite snacks: Reese’s pieces and peanut butter cups, sour skittles, krispy kreme, hotdogs. Restaurants: Golden Corral, Wingnuts, McDonald’s, IHOP. He also lists his workouts and supplements, and the 10 different tricks he taught his dog Breezy to do. 

After the tediously thorough lists, the life journal chapter begins with this entry:

“February 1995: My mom Patricia Cantrell and alleged dad Bonnell Love have sex in a motel room, conceiving me”

It follows with the stark admission that his Mom drank and smoked heavily while pregnant with him, and that his father was estranged from them even before Joseph’s birth. Several times he calls her a racist, with pride. He writes of her alcoholism - which led to her license getting suspended after causing an accident while drunk driving. Without a car she lost her job at the Piggly Wiggly, and wouldn’t find another job for 10 years. As a result they’d go for months at a time without electricity at home. When she finally got a new job, the lights came back on. She told Joseph this was his birthday present that year. This poverty also meant she couldn’t afford proper treatment when she was diagnosed with cancer. She died at 54. 

The more recent the journal entries become, the more off-kilter they get. He talks about getting a kick out of dressing up as Hitler for Halloween. He details how he jerks off for hours at a time. There are about 100 references to his STDs. And as his amphetamine use becomes more extreme, paranoid delusions start to take hold in his mind. 

“July 2022: - These past two years, it's felt like an enemy has sat outside my door the entire time I've been in these two motels.  I want to learn guitar, but my thoughts instantly turn to the swarm of enemies I picture on the other side of both walls and standing outside my door.  I do believe I'm becoming more paranoid.  “

He thinks that movies are making direct references to his life. Even movies made before he was born, like Scarface. He was terrified of Jews, black, brown people, and especially Indian immigrants. He journals about team meetings at Microsoft, where he exclaimed disparaging things about his Indian colleagues. Yet still, Microsoft kept him employed… allegedly even after seeing the games section on his website.

He was a believer of replacement theory, and woven into these fears were an insistence that members of these groups were gang stalking him. For example:

“The black and latino gangs intend to screw me out of my money with deceitful corporate practices like tampered vending machines and IT departments dedicated to programmatically and periodically severing my internet connection. They also want to screw you out of my time by pointing you in the wrong direction in stores. They also want to goad me into being sued, jailed, or killed because my pain is only a pawn for their amusement.”

He became convinced these “black and latino gangs” wanted to give him and other people with ADHD diseases like STDs and Covid 19, as well as hitting them with cars, and telling him mean things in passing like “You're crazy", "You're a crazy person", or "You're a violent person".

There were hundreds and hundreds of pages to go, but I couldn’t subject myself to much more of this. I decided to jump to the end, to the days leading up to the attack. February 15, 2023:

“My cousin called me an asshole, analogous to amphetamine hole, which is characteristic of my birth disorder and the neural and visual holes in response to amphetamine treatment. I'm sure the U.S. military government pumped him full of methamphetamine and told him to keep quiet. My family is compromised, and I can't count on them to help me.  They're basically Nazis.  The Nazis had families who helped them. Hitler had a wife.

I’ve never been more justifiably paranoid in my life. After everything I've written here describing my history, where do I go to stop people from hurting me?”

And finally, on the afternoon of the attack, after extreme sleep deprivation from stimulants, there’s this last lament:

“I love Patricia Cantrell. My mother was the only person in the whole world on whom I could truly rely. I love my dog Breezy, my ex-girlfriends ESi and Taylor, forever. I pray to live in peace. I wish I had impregnated ESi or Taylor, gotten my act together, settled down in a house, and lived in peace making art. However, my history sucks. Even though I don't believe in God, I hope and pray everyone does better for each other.”

An hour later he left his apartment and stabbed a stranger to the brink of death. He is currently awaiting trial after pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

* I originally told a version of this story on the Qanon Anonymous Podcast. It has been adapted for text here.