Justice has been served in the case of a sick woman who encouraged her teenage boyfriend to kill himself via phone calls and text messages in 2014.
On Friday, a Massachusetts judge convicted Michelle Carter, 20, of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging then-boyfriend Conrad Roy to take his own life.
Carter, who pleaded not guilty, waived a jury trial and took her chances with a bench trial.
Carter was 17 when she instructed the 18-year-old to commit suicide by sitting in his car and inhaling carbon monoxide.
At one point, Conrad panicked and got out of the vehicle.
“I could’ve stopped him.” Carter bragged to a friend in a text afterward. She said Conrad “got out of the car … he was scared.”
Carter texted that she “told him to get back in.”
“This court finds that instructing Mr. Roy to get back in the truck constituted wanton and reckless conduct,” said Judge Lawrence Moniz before announcing the verdict.
Muniz described the lack of empathy exhibited by Carter when she callously instructed him to lock himself in the car “knowing of all of the feelings he [had] exchanged with her, his ambiguities, his fears, his concerns.”
In a series of text messages, Carter pushed Conrad to kill himself after he showed signs of reluctance:
Carter: “So are you sure you don’t wanna [kill yourself] tonight?”
Roy: “What do you mean am I sure?”
Carter: “Like, are you definitely not doing it tonight?”
Roy: “[I don’t know] yet I’ll let you know”
Carter: “Because I’ll stay up with you if you wanna do it tonight”
Roy: “Another day wouldn’t hurt”
Carter: “You can’t keep pushing it off, tho, that’s all you keep doing”
In her opening statement, Prosecutor Maryclare Flynn argued that Carter “used Conrad as a pawn in a sick game of life and death for attention.”
The prosecutor read multiple text messages sent by Carter to her friends telling them she stayed on the phone with Conrad while he took his own life.
On July 21, Carter texted a classmate that Roy’s mother told her that detectives were examining Conrad’s text messages.
“They have to go through his phone and see if anyone encouraged him to do it,” Carter texted. “I’m done. His family will hate me and I could go to jail.”
Carter broke down and cried before the judge announced his verdict on Friday.
She faces 20 years in prison at her sentencing hearing.
