Michelle Carter, the young woman accused of encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself, texted a friend that his death was “my fault”, a court heard.
The now-20-year-old has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after her 18-year-old boyfriend Conrad Roy III was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014.
Carter’s school friend Samantha Boardman testified that Carter had taken responsibility for his death over text message.
“It’s my fault,” the text allegedly said. “I could have stopped him but I told him to get back in the car.”
Boardman also said Carter was scared she would get in trouble when she discovered the police had access to Roy’s phone.
“I’m done,” Carter wrote in one text displayed in the court room. “His family will hate me and I can go to jail.”
Conrad Roy III.
Two other friends also took the stand and said Carter had messaged them saying she was on the phone with Roy as he died.
“I was talking on the phone with him when he killed himself… I heard him die,” Carter texted to Olivia Mosolgo days after Roy’s death, Mosolgo testified.
Carter texted another friend expressing her guilt.
“I’m the only one he told things too. I should have gotten him more help,” she wrote.
On Tuesday, prosecutor Maryclare Flynn accused Carter of “playing” a grieving girlfriend.
“She used Conrad as a pawn in her sick game of life and death,” said prosecutor Maryclare Flynn.
“She knew her plan to get attention would work because she pre-tested it.”
“Two days before Conrad committed suicide, she did a dry run, texting several girls that Conrad had gone missing while simultaneously testing Conrad, telling him to get the gas machine.”
The judge heard that Carter sent 40 text messages to Roy urging him to get back in the car and kill himself when he said he was scared.
“She put him in the car that night,” Flynn added.
After Roy’s death, Carter organised a baseball tournament in his memory, but hosted it in her hometown instead of Roy’s, the court heard.
When Roy’s best friend Thomas Gammell suggested moving the game to Roy’s home, Carter refused and made sure she was still getting credit for the memorial.
“Ok awesome thank you! You’re not taking credit for my idea, right?” she texted him.
Carter’s defence attorney Joseph Cataldo said she is not to blame for Roy’s death.
“Conrad Roy was on this path to take his own life for years,” he said. “It was Conrad Roy’s idea to take his own life; it was not Michelle Carter’s idea. This was a suicide, a sad and tragic suicide, but not a homicide.”
The case continues.
