Bellamy/Home

John Bellamy is a man who has accumulated a number of names over the years. Originally born in 1930 as John Belmont, he was too young to serve in World War II and instead went to work in a factory to support the war effort. When the conflict ended and industry returned to normal, he went off to MIT to study computer science and fell deep into the emerging hacker scene. What started as harmless pranks across the MIT campus turned into computer hacking. Belmont was caught breaking into an MIT mainframe computer to change the grades of his classmates and was expelled.

Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, John Belmont was a prolific New York City phone phreak and computer hacker going by the handle DARKSTAR. He was involved with a number of relatively famous hacks before getting busted. One of his friends ended up being an FBI informant and Belmont spent approximately eighteen months in jail for a brief but harmless takeover of the New York Times telephone answering machine. After getting out, Belmont's antics as DARKSTAR became more involved, political, and dangerous. In particular, he became a bit of a thorn in Richard Nixon's side for a while. DARKSTAR's successful takedown of the White House's telephone systems as part of the 1971 May Day Protests was national news, briefly, before the Nixon administration suppressed the story.

DARKSTAR was hard to ignore, even among the dead. John Belmont was sired by a New York City Nosferatu and took his last breath in 1975. His sire was involved with Gerard Rafin's efforts to create the special Nosferatu SchreckNet, which piggybacked on the regular, mortal Internet. John Belmont, DARKSTAR, or whatever he was called, could eventually become an ally to that cause.

To keep his new existence consistent, John Belmont, and therefore DARKSTAR, died on April 28, 1975. It was about that time that John Bellamy and the hacker SUNRISE first made their appearances. Some believe they're one and the same.