It was one of those strong friendships that was built not over time, but quickly, and to a feverish intensity.

Patrick Dennehy and Carlton Dotson arrived in Waco at the same time, a year ago, Dennehy a transfer from the University of New Mexico and Dotson from Paris Junior College in Texas.

	Dotson

	Dennehy

They came from very different places.

Dennehy grew up in the middle class suburbs of San Francisco. Dotson was raised in a cinderblock house in Maryland farm country.

In Waco, somehow, they found common ground.

"I thought they were really close friends, that's what it seemed like to me," said Clayton Shields, a roommate of Dennehy at New Mexico. "You know, they were constantly high-fiving each other and acting silly; playing around, goofing off. The whole thing seemed like total enjoyment."

Fellow students at Baylor have said that Dennehy and Dotson were virtually inseparable. They would party together, go fishing together, argue with each other.

But some of the people closest to Dennehy say they knew very little about his burgeoning friendship with Dotson.

"I just heard Carlton's name with this incident going on right now," said Dennehy's mother Valerie Brabazon on July 2. "That's the first time I ever heard of Carlton. I didn't know what he looked like until I pulled his picture up on the Internet. I really don't know him."

"I think that their closer friendship was more recent," said Dennehy's girlfriend Jessica de la Rosa. "They're just starting to grow a little bit closer in their friendship."

Daniel Okopnyi, one of Dennehy's closest friends from home, saw the Dennehy/Dotson relationship up close.

"When I was out there and I would hang out with Patrick and the other basketball players, Carlton's relationship was apparently pretty good," said Okopnyi. "I mean they were friends. I wouldn't say they were really good friends, or best friends, or anything like that. But they were friends and it's hard to get.

	“	I thought they were really close friends, that's what it seemed like to me. You know, they were constantly high-fiving each other and acting silly; playing around, goofing off. The whole thing seemed like total enjoyment. ”
		— Clayton Shields, former roommate of Patrick Dennehy in New Mexico

"Patrick's a quiet guy. It's hard to get him to talk to you, and they were good friends. Apparently his girlfriend trusted him very much, as I talked to her and didn't really think nothing of it. I mean, when I met him (Dotson) was a good guy and I talked with him and we were just acquaintances. We went and partied and stuff like that with Patrick and I never thought anything bad of him, ever really. I mean I never had any doubts about him. I honestly thought he was a good friend of Patrick's."

The friends, though, apparently had a volatile relationship.

Thomas Crum, who in May coached both Dennehy and Dotson in the New Mexico Games, told the Dallas Morning News that the two men had a heated argument over the use of Dennehy's 1996 Tahoe, the truck that was recovered in Virginia after his disappearance.

And Okopnyi says he gradually came to suspect that Dotson was not as fond of Dennehy as he'd thought.

"We pulled up to a gas station and Patrick got out to go and put gas in the car. (Dotson)mentioned something about Patrick being slow, or something like that. He's like, 'You know, Patrick is kinda slow,'" said Okopnyi. "And I said, 'No, I don't know, why don't you tell me.' And he's like, well he's a smart guy, he's just kind of slow.

"I mentioned it to (Dennehy). He said to disregard it. But that was one thing that kinda bothered me."

Far more alarming to Okopnyi were the threats Dennehy said he and Dotson were receiving.

"People were going to his apartment and he thought that they were taking items such as clothes. Stuff just started appearing missing and I told (Dennehy) it seems pretty serious," Okopnyi said. "He had mentioned that 'Dottie' had a shotgun because there were threats being made to them. I said, 'You know what, you need to forget this.' This is really bad.

"He said that they needed it for protection, that they had to protect their stuff and I said are these threats being made directly to you? I asked him, not in those words, and he said no. He made it very clear that the threats were being made to 'Dottie' and he made it clear to me that he had to help Dottie because he was his friend. He had to protect him and get his back."

At the time of Dennehy's disappearance, he and his friend, from opposite ends of the country, were again moving in opposite directions. Dotson's scholarship was revoked and his wife had left him. Dennehy, ineligible in his first year at Baylor, was presumably looking forward to getting back onto the court.

Now Dotson stands accused of murdering his friend, whose stepfather recently shared his impressions of Dotson.

"He seems like a nice, outstanding kid," said Brian Brabazon, Dennehy's stepfather. "He's just another regular kid who wants to make it in life as maybe a basketball player. I know he's passionate about basketball. I've never had any reason to believe he's lying to me. He seems pretty forthright and respectful."

Jeremy Schapp is a reporter for ESPN.