Michelle Carter, 18, is accused of pressuring her online boyfriend, Conrad Roy, into committing suicide.
Text messages sent between the pair appear to show her talking him through his doubts and helping him devise a plan to run a generator inside his truck to poison him with carbon monoxide. Carter is even accused of by directing him to go back in his truck after he exited it when he became frightened.
“I think your parents know you're in a really bad place... I honestly feel like they can accept it"
She also, according to court documents, continuously badgered him to commit suicide after he tried to put it off, right up until the minute he took his own life.
Prosecutors claim that, just days before his death, she sent him a text which read: “There is no way you can fail… You’re strong.
“I love you to the moon and back and deeper than the ocean and higher than the pines, too, babe forever and always. It’s painless and quick.”
Carter also convinced him that his suicide would not afflict his parents with emotional distress, saying: “I think your parents know you're in a really bad place. I'm not saying they want you to do it but I honestly feel like they can accept it.
“They know there is nothing they can do. They've tried helping. Everyone's tried, but there is a point that comes where there isn't anything anyone can do to save you, not even yourself.
“Everyone will be sad for a while but they will get over it and move on. They won't be in depression. I won't let that happen. They know how sad you are, and they know that you are doing this to be happy and I think they will understand and accept it.”
Roy was found dead July 13, 2014, inside his pickup truck in the parking lot of a Fairhaven Kmart - just as he had been advised to do by his online girlfriend.
Prosecutors say he used a generator to kill himself with carbon monoxide fumes.
At one point prior to his suicide, Carter texted Roy: “Do you have the generator?”
“Not yet LOL,” he replied.
“WELL WHEN ARE YOU GETTING IT?” she texted back.
Here is part of the couple’s disturbing text exchange (which can be read in full here), sent just days before Roy’s untimely passing:
CONRAD: Okay. I'm gonna do it today.
CARTER: You promise?
CONRAD: I promise, babe. I have to now.
CARTER: Like right now?
CONRAD: Where do I go?
CARTER: And you can't break a promise. And just go in a quiet parking lot or something.
CONRAD: Okay.
CARTER:* Go somewhere you know you won't get caught. You can find a place. I know you can. Are you doing it now?*
The text messages provide a chilling insight into the pair’s secretive relationship, which prosecutors say began in 2012 and was maintained mainly through texts and online messages.
Even Roy’s best friend, prosecutors say, was unaware of it.
After Roy’s death, Carter claimed that she had no knowledge of her boyfriend’s plan and hosted a suicide awareness fundraising event in her hometown.
She also sent comforting messages to Roy’s grieving mother.
However the text messages have now revealed that she did not only knew of Roy’s plan, but that she actively encouraged him to go through with it.
“It’s okay to be scared and it’s normal. I mean, you’re about to die. I would be concerned if you weren’t scared, but I know how bad you want this and how bad you want to be happy,” prosecutors say Carter told Roy days before his death.
“You have to face your fears for what you want.”
Following the release of the text messages, Carter’s family released a statement insisting that she is “not the villain the media is portraying her to be” and is a “quiet, kind, and sympathetic young girl”.
They claim that she was ‘brainwashed’ by Roy into helping him.
Michelle Carter is currently on trial for the involuntary manslaughter of Carter Roy III.