On July 12, 2014, Conrad Roy III committed suicide, running a water pump inside his car and dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. Two months after his death, police confiscated his phone to see if anyone encouraged him to kill himself.
After hearing about this from Roy’s mother, Michelle Carter, Roy’s girlfriend, allegedly texted her friend in a state of panic, saying: “Sam, they read my messages with him, I’m done. His family will hate me and I can go to jail.”
Since then, Carter has been charged with involuntary manslaughter. This week her case reached the Taunton Juvenile Court in Massachusetts.
According to the prosecutors, Carter, now 20, is a desperate attention seeker. She encouraged Roy to commit suicide only so she could gain sympathy from her classmates.
The prosecution proceeded to read several texts that Carter sent to her classmates after Roy died.
To one friend named Samantha Boardman, Carter messaged: “Sam, he just called me and there was a loud noise like a motor and there was moaning like someone was in pain…that’s all I heard.”
“I think he just killed himself,” Carter later texted.
Carter sent a similar to a message to classmate Alexandra Eblan, saying: “He called me, and I heard like muffled sounds and some kind of motor running and he wouldn’t answer.”
“I think he is dead,” she soon added.
In a text to classmate Olivia Mosoglo, Carter wrote: “I was talking to him on the phone when he killed himself. Liv, I heard him die. I just wish I got him more help.”
In the hours leading up to Roy’s suicide, Carter texted her classmates and friends that he was missing. However, Carter was actually in consistent contact with him.
The couple texted back and forth until Roy parked in the parking lot of a K-Mart, where he turned on the water pump. They then talked on the phone until he died.
“Sam, [Roy’s] death is my fault like honestly I could have stopped him I was on the phone with him and he got out of the [truck] because it was working and he got scared and I…told him to get back in Sam because I knew he would do it all over again the next day and I couldn’t have him live the way he was living anymore I couldn’t do it I wouldn’t let him,” Carter texted Boardman.
In this text, Carter was referencing Roy’s previous suicide attempt in the days leading up to his actual suicide. He tried to use a generator to fill his truck with carbon monoxide; however, the generator broke before he could die.
Earlier, Carter had also asked Boardman if there was “anyway a portable generator can kill you somehow.” She told Boardman that Roy had bought a generator, but she didn’t know why.
On July 10, two days before Roy’s suicide, Carter did a “dry run,” texting her classmates and friends that Roy was missing, even though he was not.
According to assistant district attorney Maryclare Flynn, “she begins to get the attention she craved for. So she has to make to make it happen. She has to make him kill himself so that she’s not seen as a liar.”
Eblan, Mosolgo and Boardman, along with classmate Ali Eithier, testified before the court. They all stated that they had sporadic relationships with Carter and did not know her well. Nonetheless, each had tried to console Carter after Roy’s death, encouraging her to see a therapist.
Similarly, Carter expressed self-loathing in multiple texts, saying that she often “pushed people away,” texted them too frequently and apologized too often, ruining her relationships. She also claimed that she had no friends.
A month after Roy’s death, Carter organized a fundraiser for suicide called ‘Homers for Conrad.’ However, she allegedly tried to make the event about herself, texting Eblan: “Hey, I put the ‘Homers for Conrad’ on Facebook. I’m like famous now, haha. Check it out.”
In defense of Carter, her attorney Joseph Cataldo stated that Roy suffered from depression and had attempted to commit suicide before by overdosing on Tylenol. The defense team also asserted that Carter was 30 miles away when Roy died; thus, she could not physically force him to kill himself.
Furthermore, Roy regularly researched ways to commit suicide. Carter, also experiencing depression, had suggested that they get help for their mental illnesses together.
Perhaps the defense’s greatest point was that Carter was on Celexa while she was in contact with Roy. This depression medication can cause irrational thinking, irritability and poor impulse control.
Carter’s trial is ongoing. If she is convicted, she can receive a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
