Girl Whose Texts Drove Her Boyfriend To Suicide Given Two-And-A-Half Years Behind Bars

Keep Reading ↓

An 18-year-old Massachusetts woman who encouraged her boyfriend to kill himself in a number of text messages and told him to ‘get back in’ a truck filled with toxic gas, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

Michelle Carter was convicted in June on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. The Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz said her final instruction to Conrad Roy III caused his death.

Carter was tried as a youthful offender, so the judge had a few options for sentencing and could have committed her to a Department of Youth Services facility until she turns 21 on August 11.

‘I have not found that her age or level of maturity or even her mental illness, have any significant impact on her actions. She is bright young lady, did well In school,’ Moniz said before her announcing Carter’s sentence. 

‘And I am satisfied that she was mindful of the actions she delivered.’

Before the sentencing announcement, several family members of the victim provided heartbreaking statements that shared how much he is missed and called for Carter to be sentenced to the maximum prison time.

‘I will never be an aunt to Conrad’s children, he was my best friend,‘ his sister, Camden, told the judge while on the stand.

The victim’s father also cried while reading his emotional statement to the judge.

‘We all felt he was heading in the right direction and over the worst of it,’ his father said of his son’s depression. ‘He had such a bright future and Michelle Carter exploited my son’s weaknesses.

‘She used him as a pawn and she has not shown any remorse. Where was her humanity? How he could she behave so viciously?’   

The judge could have also combined a DYS commitment with an adult sentence, or gave her an adult sentence of anything from probation to the maximum 20-year term but opted with a lighter sentence.

Carter was 17 when Roy was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014.

In dozens of text messages, Carter told Roy to follow through on his talk of taking his own life. ‘The time is right and you are ready … just do it babe,‘ Carter wrote in a text the day he killed himself.

‘You can’t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don’t get why you aren’t,’ Carter wrote in one text.

Both teens reportedly struggled with depression. Carter had been treated for anorexia, and Roy had made earlier suicide attempts.

Roy’s aunt, Kim Bozzi, asked the judge to sentence Carter to the 20-year maximum in her victim impact statement.

‘Twenty years may seem extreme but it is still twenty more than Conrad will ever have,’ her statement reads. I believe she should be kept far away from society. Take away the spotlight that she so desperately craves.’ 

While Carter’s father said his daughter made ‘a tragic mistake,’ and asked for probation and continued counseling.