The youth never revealed his whereabouts for that month because he was interested in selling movie rights linking his disappearance to Dungeons and Dragons or another intellectual fantasy game, [David] said. Dear also refused to reveal where he found Egbert, but had said the disappearance had no relation to the game.

The Times goes on to say, that like many youths of his technical interest and ability, the young Egbert was attracted to the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkein, author of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings." He had joined a group called the Tolkien Society and frequently played the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. The game, which is supervised by a dungeon master, pits players against obstacles, wizards and monsters, and the players often assume characters like those in Tolkien's fantasies. The game, meant to be played on paper, centers on escape from fantasy prisons.

After his disappearance, Egbert attended Wright State University for a term but dropped out and was working in his father's optometrist business at the time of his death. David said Egbert had decided to quit working for his father and enter David's computer consulting business.

DAYTON, Ohio - While investigators were searching steam tunnels beneath

Michigan State University (MSU) last year for James Dallas Egbert III, the

teenage computer whiz was trying to kill himself in a town far away, a close

friend has told reporters.

Egbert died Aug. 16 of a bullet wound in the head that police say

apparently was self-inflicted.

His death came almost a year after the month-long disappearance that became the subject of national attention as police and Texas investigator William C. Dear speculated he had been trapped in a real-life version of the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons.

Instead, the Huber Heights youth had botched a suicide attempt, reportedly in New Orleans, and was living and working unaware of the stir.

The youth's parents, James and Anna Egbert, yesterday confirmed a report in today's editions of the New York Times and the story told in Dayton to the Associated Press by Egbert's 23-year-old Washington, D.C., friend, who asked to be identified only as David.

"We want to turn a tragic situation into something positive," said the elder Egbert, who has set up a scholarship fund to establish a clinic for gifted but troubled children through Wright State University in Dayton.

The youth never revealed his whereabouts for that month because he was interested in selling movie rights linking his disappearance to Dungeons and Dragons or another intellectual fantasy game, David said. Dear also refused to reveal where he found Egbert, but had said the disappearance had no relation to the game.

Dear persuaded the Egberts to keep silent about the circumstances of their son's disapperance. For a year they have been besieged by newspapers, television reporters and would-be agents for a film. The Egberts told the New York Times they hope that once the full story is told they can escape the notoriety that they say has tortured them.

David said he wanted to "demystify" the Egbert story to assure a movie would never be made.

"There really isn't anything movie-worthy about it," he said. "It is not sensational. It doesn't involve Dungeons and Dragons or anything weird like that. It was a different sort of life, but it was nothing worth writing about."

According to the New York Times, the publicity that came to plague the family grew out of bizarre theories pursued first by the Michigan State Police and then by private detective Dear when Dallas was reported missing from his MSU dormitory Aug. 15, 1979.

The Times goes on to say, that like many youths of his technical interest and ability, the young Egbert was attracted to the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkein, author of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings." He had joined a group called the Tolkien Society and frequently played the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. The game, which is supervised by a dungeon master, pits players against obstacles, wizards and monsters, and the players often assume characters like those in Tolkien's fantasies. The game, meant to be played on paper, centers on escape from fantasy prisons.

There was speculation that Dallas might have run into foul play while engaged in a real-life version of the game, or that he might have got lost or trapped.

The Times reports that he left a note in his room that said, "To whom it may concern: Should my body be found, I wish to be cremated." The note was treated as an element in the game.

Officials at MSU - where Egbert was a sophomore computer science student - had searched the maze of steam tunnels beneath the campus in case the youth had been acting out a Dungeons and Dragons game.

David said Egbert ran away from Michigan State last August because he was feeling grade pressures and because his roommate had moved out after hearing Egbert was homosexual.

"He told me he discovered he didn't like living alone," David said. "He was an occasional recreational user of drugs. When he was alone under the influence of one or the other, which he didn't do very often except on very rare circumstances, he was rather self destructive."

The troubled teenager "left town directionless. He left town on the first bus, found himself in another town, didn't think he wanted to die there, wandered around the streets that night and took a night train," David said.

Egbert checked into a motel, flushed his identification down the toilet and took a cyanide compound with root beer.

"He was very surprised to wake up the next morning in a strange town farfrom Michigan," David said.

The Times identified the city as New Orleans, and said Egbert wandered around for a few days before answering a notice for oil field laborers in southern Louisiana.

"What happened is reasonably ordinary," David said. "He went on his own. Nobody from Michigan knew where he was at any time."

While the search for Dallas was underway, Dear broached the idea that Dallas's story could be sold for a motion picture. Dr. Egbert (he is an optometrist) told the New York Times that he had begun to think of something like a documentary.

When Dallas was working in the oil field, "he just happened to get drunk one night with some friends, and he told them he wasn't operating under his real name and that his family didn't know where he was and they convinced him to call," David said.

"And he called and his family referred him to Dear and he told Dear where he was and Dear came out and picked him up and that's it."

Dear, who gets $500 to $700 a day plus expenses for his company's services, gave an account to the New York Times of how he retrieved the youth.

He said that when Dallas called, the boy had been weeping and an older man said in the background, "Cool it man."

In a second call, Dear said, the boy gave elaborate instructions about how to approach the building where he would be found. Dear said he found Dallas in a grim, drab building used by transients.

David reported to the Times that Dear excited Dallas about the prospects for a movie script, and Dallas had helped Dear persuade the Egberts.

David described Dallas as "ridiculously impulsive," someone who tried mescaline and acid but "mostly liked getting high with other people. Or drunk with other people or both.

"Dallas never really acted in thinking how other people are going to be affected by his actions, particularly when his actions were taken under the influence of drugs," David said.

He said the youth had seemed optimistic in the weeks before his death.

"For the first time he was getting along with his family. There had been problems in the past, but now his family was finally resigned to letting him head out on his own and he was very surprised and happily pleased by that," David said.

"He was not having a very successful life in other respects simply because he was too young. Every time he came to Washington, we'd head out to the bars every single night," he said. "There was absolutely nothing for him here in Dayton. There was no one he could get with."

After his disappearance, Egbert attended Wright State University for a term but dropped out and was working in his father's optometrist business at the time of his death. David said Egbert had decided to quit working for his father and enter David's computer consulting business.

"He wanted to move to Washington because he loved that freedom of time and movement," David said. "Then he went out in search of a good time and he was not successful in finding it."