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Hi. This is Conrad Henri Roy III
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
reporting to you about what's going on
through my mind,
what's going on through my head the last few days.
I'm 18 years old,
and I still haven't recovered from social anxiety,
depression.
It's controlling me.
I am who I am.
I need to be comfortable with my skin.
I just need to get the cobwebs out,
turn the gears.
The gears need to be turning.
Turn them gears.
That's what I gotta do.
A woman from Massachusetts allegedly encouraging
her boyfriend to commit suicide.
I do not want another mother to ever feel the way I do.
It was an apparent suicide. Apparent being the keyword.
We wanna try to find out what happened.
Conrad was constantly texting Michelle,
but he hid it from everyone.
Sixty thousand items are pulled from her phone.
People just hated her.
- She's a terrible person. - To me, she's evil.
But the question became was it criminally wrong?
She is not forming a criminal intent.
She was dealing with her own mental health issues.
[man] Ms. Carter, please stand.
[Ashleigh] I've never seen anything like it.
Was it suicide or murder?
I just remember thinking like why?
The world definitely will be missing out without him.
Sorry. I can't take this.
[dramatic music playing]
[Ted] Fairhaven, Massachusetts
is a community near one of the largest
fishing ports in the East Coast.
It's a nice seaside community.
I would say a working class community
where a lot of people work on the water.
It's a great place to be in the summer.
My kids always had access to the beach and,
you know, fun activities, sailing, boating.
Just a really beautiful little town near the ocean.
[Ashleigh] It's about 10:00 PM on July 12th.
Lynn Roy is settling down for the night.
She's a single mom of three.
And she's a little bit nervous because her 18-year-old son,
Conrad, had gone out earlier to a friend's house
and she hasn't heard from him since.
[Lynn] He said, "I'm going to see my friend, Aryanna."
I said, "Are you gonna come back for dinner?"
He's like, "I'm not sure."
[Ted] About 10:30 in the evening,
she sends him a text wondering where he is.
She doesn't hear back so she asked Conrad's sister,
"Hey, have you heard from him?
Do you know where he is?" And the sister said,
"No. I haven't seen him. I haven't heard from him."
But she said to her mom,
"I did get this text from a girl
who is also looking for him."
Camdyn was getting a text message,
and it read, "Do you know where your brother is?"
I was like... She's asking where Conrad was,
but he said he was going to his friend Aryanna's house.
And my like mom was thinking at the time like,
"Oh, like you don't wanna like mess up anything for him,
really cause anything like...
'Cause he's at like a friend...
That's a girl's house."
So I just said, "He's at my dad's house."
I wished I would have...
[sighs] I don't remember if I picked up the phone.
I tried calling him. He didn't answer.
And then I just said, "I'm going to bed right now."
It's like... At that point, it was probably 11:00.
I woke up in the middle of the night,
a couple hours later and I messaged him
and I just said, "When are you coming home?
It's really, really late."
The next morning, Lynn wakes up
and she surprised to see that Conrad still isn't home.
His mom was calling me.
She called me starting at like 5:30 in the morning.
And she actually thought that Conrad was at my house
because that's what he had told her.
And then when I told her he wasn't there,
that's kind of when I got a weird feeling.
I just like felt something was wrong.
Honestly, I had this feeling that went through my body
that I've never felt in my life.
And I feel like it was his soul going through me.
It was the most chilling feeling I've ever had.
That's when I called the police.
[police dispatch] And what is your son's name?
- [Lynn] Conrad Roy III. - [police dispatch] All right.
What kind of truck does he drive?
[Lynn] A Ford 250. It's a diesel, big black,
and it's got a bunch of stickers on the back.
[police dispatch] All right. I am gonna send
an officer out to take a report.
[Lynn] Okay.
My name is David Correia, former police officer
with the Fairhaven Police Department.
All I knew over the radio was I was to take
a missing person's report. When I got there,
I talked to Lynn Roy
and she told me what was going on,
that he suffered from depression.
And that made me realize that I was gonna have
to step up my game on this one.
Conrad Roy was born in New Bedford,
St. Luke's Hospital, September 12th, 1995.
My mother was there and Conrad's father.
We were not married at the time
so it was kind of uneasy in that way,
but we were very committed.
We eventually, got married and had two more children.
I work as a nurse
and Conrad's father is a tugboat captain.
Just ordinary working parents trying to raise our kids.
When I think about my brother,
I think of a funny, like happy, like smart.
He was really smart.
He just had a really funny,
kind of sometimes sick sense of humor,
but I got him. He was goofy like that.
Conrad wanted to be a Major League baseball player
for the Boston Red Sox.
That was like his dream.
But as he got older, he wanted to be a captain.
And that was like when he started working with my dad.
My grandfather, he's a tugboat captain,
and he kind of just like brought that down to my dad,
and that kind of passed down to my brother.
[Robi] By all accounts,
Conrad was a normal teenager until 2011
when his parents divorced,
and it turned his world upside down.
The breakup was hard on all three of the kids,
but especially on Conrad who was,
like many kids,
struggling with depression and social anxiety.
[Lynn] He just started having trouble sleeping
and couldn't focus.
He had a lot of... a lot of knowledge
in his head and just...
He was clouded by his anxiety.
He can be the happiest person in the room
but he had so much going on in his head at once,
and so he was struggling a lot.
[Lynn] You wanna do your best as a parent
to be there and support him.
We felt we were doing the best thing.
We took him to a few psychiatrists.
He was treated, and his diagnosis
was anxiety, depression.
[Aryanna] The next couple of months
was where he was super positive.
Taking his medication like he was supposed to.
Seeing a therapist like he was supposed to.
[Ted] But in October 2012,
he attempted to kill himself
by overdosing on Acetaminophen.
He contacted a friend and told him,
"Hey, this is what I did."
[Aryanna] He was at his dad's house,
and that's when I called his mom and she said,
"No, I haven't heard from him.
Like what's going on?" And I said,
"I feel we need to get over there."
Aryanna saved his life,
possibly, by alerting his mom.
His mom got the authorities involved.
I think we were all in shock.
It seemed like a major cry for help.
[dramatic music playing]
[Lynn] I was scared. Scared to death.
He told me that he would never do that again.
And then, of course, I said, "Promise me,
you will never do that.
If you ever feel that way, you have...
You need to talk to me."
And then it was the winter of 2013,
he seemed like he was doing better.
I thought he was, you know,
just feeling better about himself.
Mrs. Roy told me that the day before he went missing,
he had actually gone for a walk with her on the beach.
[Lynn] We walked at the beach, and we talked,
and we shared some clam cakes.
He wanted to be with me and his sisters that day.
I remember like just like laughing with him,
like enjoying ourselves like with him.
[Camdyn] He just went back home
and he's like heading out the house.
He said bye.
And that was the last time we saw him.
[dramatic music playing]
At the time he left the house,
he was driving a black Ford F-250 pickup truck.
Mrs. Roy gave me the plate number,
she gave me his cellphone number,
and everything that I would need to try and find him.
[police dispatch] To all cars in station,
this is for a missing 18-year-old boy.
Male party is driving a black Ford pickup
250 diesel truck.
Male is gonna be a Conrad Roy.
[David] I started actively searching for him
by going over to Fish Island in New Bedford
where the Roys keep their tugboats.
I started there and then I worked my way back east
into Fairhaven going along the waterfront.
While police begin their canvas of the area,
family and friends are also out looking for him.
Everyone is desperate to find Conrad.
There's a McDonald's that he would always go to,
and so I went there.
Looked around in the McDonald's parking lot
and then just kept going towards the Fairhaven Bridge.
While I was looking for him, I was just a mess.
I was super scared, anxious. I was nauseous.
Kind of seemed like the world was just like still
and just like nothing was happening
and time wasn't moving.
[dramatic music playing]
I'd just come out of the parking lot
of the Seaport Motel, and as I looked to my right,
I see going south on Middle Street
a black Ford F-250.
The vehicle takes a right-hand turn
into the Kmart parking lot.
While following that truck,
he sees another black F-250 in the parking lot.
I looked, and it was the plate number
of the Ford F-250 that I was looking for.
I didn't see that there was anybody
inside of the truck
until I walked up to the truck.
I've seen what he looks like. It's his vehicle.
[sighs] At this time, I'm 99% sure that it's him.
He was lying askew in the front seat.
His glasses were slanted on his face.
His hat was cocked to one side.
It wasn't natural.
[sighs]
[dramatic music playing]
I called it in that I had found the vehicle.
And I called the fire department.
[Ted] Officer Correia wants to enter the car
but he is also being smart.
He wants to make sure that he doesn't expose himself
to anything dangerous.
My name is Wally Therrien.
I was in charge of the shift that morning
that the incident happened.
When I thought it was safe to open the door,
I opened up the driver's door of the car.
So I checked for a pulse or carotid artery,
and he had no pulse.
He was obviously deceased.
[Ashleigh] It is a really sad moment.
Everybody had hoped that they were gonna find Conrad alive.
He had no trauma on his body,
but then they noticed a gasoline-powered
water pump in the backseat.
And it was evident that it was a suicide.
We came to the conclusion that what had happened
was he used the pump to asphyxiate himself
with exhaust gases.
[dramatic music playing]
[Lynn] Conrad's father was looking for him
and he was in touch with the police.
And they had called him first.
Then he called me and he said "Are you alone?"
And I said, "No. I've got the girls with me."
And he was like, "It's not good."
He said he passed. He's not here.
He's not with us.
[sighs]
[Camdyn] And my mom was in the passenger seat
just like hysterically crying.
She couldn't say anything for like a little bit
'cause I don't know how you tell your 13
and 11-year-old daughter
like their big brother has passed away.
So she was like keep on saying,
"He's gone. He's gone."
[Morgan] And we were just like crying the whole car ride.
I didn't like know what to feel,
because my mom was like that...
I've never see my mom like that before.
[Aryanna] I was actually driving
over the Fairhaven Bridge
when they told me the news.
Lynn was a mess and she just kept saying,
"He finally did it. He did it."
I don't know really remember too much after that.
[Lynn] I try not to think about that day.
The worst day of my life.
[dramatic music playing]
In Massachusetts, there is a law
where any unattended death needs to be investigated
and authorities need to sign off on it.
I'm Chief Michael Myers
of the Fairhaven Police Department.
It was an apparent suicide.
But obviously apparent being the key word,
our protocol is to obviously handle
any death investigation as thorough as we possibly can.
I'm Sgt. Gordon and I was an investigator
for the Conrad Roy case.
It's not very common that we see people
of that age take their own lives.
As a result of that, I dug in a little deeper.
The most important thing that was actually taken
from the scene that day was Conrad's cellphone.
Many cases today are solved through things
located and found in cellphones.
Every suicide is tragic,
but this would prove to be more awful
than anyone imagined.
And what was in that phone would end up
being pivotal to this case.
When I opened the phone and started going through
the phone is when it came to light that there was
something we need to look into a little further.
I'm Det. Glenn Cudmore
with the Fairhaven Police Department.
I was made aware the case by interacting
with Det. Scott Gordon.
Our desks were across from each other,
and Det. Gordon was looking through the phone
and he started reading out loud the text messages.
There was only one thread there,
whereas, most of us,
we open up our text message thread
and we have everyone we talk to on a daily basis.
It appears that he had taken the time
to delete everyone else thread's messages,
but there was thread messages,
text messages between Conrad Roy
and someone named Michelle Carter.
[dramatic music playing]
[Ashleigh] These texts are really alarming.
This person clearly knew
that Conrad was thinking about suicide,
and yet seem to be encouraging him.
Who is this Michelle Carter?
[dramatic music playing]
My name is Maryclare Flynn.
I'm an assistant district attorney in Bristol County.
What I said to the detectives
was we need to find out who this girl is,
and we also have to make sure that we don't tip
the Roy family off to an investigation
that might mean nothing in the end.
Through social media and different things
that we could look at,
we were able to identify her, her family.
Michelle Carter appeared to us
to be just a young girl
from Plainville, Massachusetts.
[Ted] Plainville is a town south of Boston.
It's a typical New England bedroom community.
Michelle Carter is a senior in high school
at King Philip Regional High School
where she's an honor student.
She plays sports.
I'm Ed McFarland.
I'm a friend of the Carter family.
Michelle came in through the softball program.
I could always count on her showing up.
She was very loyal. She has a younger sister,
and her parents were the typical very helpful type.
You know, the father would help out coaching,
the... You know,
the mother would do the snack shack,
and the other type of supportive things.
I remember when I saw the senior class
of [indistinct] she was named
"student most likely to make you feel good
about your day."
[Ashleigh] But detectives still don't know
how Michelle and Conrad knew each other.
Plainville is about an hour's drive from Fairhaven.
Plainville is upper middle class.
Fairhaven is more blue-collar.
And, in some respects, they're worlds apart.
When we spoke with people in the early stages
of the investigation,
we kind of just tried to figure out
what was her role on his life at that time.
[Robi] Police felt it was just a little too soon
to go to the family.
They still had a funeral to prepare for.
It was just a little too soon to start digging around
and asking them if they knew who Michelle Carter was.
At the autopsy, the medical examiner
finds no evidence of drugs or alcohol
in Conrad's system but confirmed
that he had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Authorities believe that the time of death
was about 8:00 PM
the night before he was found.
On July 18th,
five days after Conrad Roy was found dead,
friends and family attended a funeral
and a wake to say goodbye.
[Camdyn] At the wake,
it was the longest line I've ever seen.
That just shows like how many people cared about him.
And I just wish... I remember thinking,
like I wished he saw like this many people here,
you know?
[Ashleigh] Afterwards, the detectives
finally interview Conrad's family.
And his mother and sisters surprise the detectives
by bringing up Michelle Carter's name unprompted.
Now, the cops know the family was aware of her,
but they didn't know the extent of the relationship
until Lynn made an important discovery.
[Lynn] I ended up finding a notebook.
And I found this letter that he wrote.
Everyone in this life that he loves.
All of us, me, his dad,
the girls.
He wrote if everyone's happy that he's gonna be happy.
And he'll be smiling down.
And, um...
And then he wrote something to her.
[Ted] Detectives are also given
several suicide notes that Conrad had written,
and one of those suicide notes was to Michelle Carter.
[Lynn] He never told me he was dating anyone.
He was more low-key.
He held a lot of... a lot of...
a lot of it in.
There was just so much hidden.
[dramatic music playing]
[Jan] The story of Michelle and Conrad
actually starts before 2014.
It starts in 2012 when the two teenagers
were on separate family vacations
and they met each other.
[Camdyn] Almost every February vacation,
we try to go to Florida
to visit our great aunt and uncle.
And one year while we were there,
my great aunt introduced us all
to her friends and their family.
And their granddaughter Michelle
was my brother's age.
[Ted] They meet, and the first thing
they do together is go on a bike ride.
And they had a great time.
After they get back from Naples, Florida,
they start communicating.
And they do what a lot of teens do now,
they communicate through texts.
[Rebecca] Many Gen Zers will engage
with their friends over text predominantly.
There's less of a pressure there in the relationship too
so that I can really let my guard down let's say
because I'm using my phone or my computer to talk to
rather than having to stress myself out
to talk to you in person.
What starts benign but flirty stuff
starts to get a little more involved.
But they only actually hung out about five times.
The first time I met Michelle was in 2013.
It was in the summer.
It was at his baseball game.
She seemed like a nice girl and she had a nice family.
I could see him texting her all the time,
and her name would come up on his phone.
I didn't think anything of it.
Realizing that Conrad and Michelle's relationship
was almost entirely via text messaging,
the police asked the family for permission
to search Conrad's devices.
We wanted to get his computers.
We wanted to get anything that we could
that could potentially shed more light
on this relationship.
The family eventually found some videos
on a computer that he had made of himself.
[Camdyn] I was just looking at mom's computer,
then I saw this "I" movie,
and it was Conrad.
And that was like a month before he passed away.
I rushed and got my mom,
and we were just like...
It's the first time I heard his voice
since he passed away.
Hi. This is Conrad Roy.
I'm gonna talk to you about social anxiety.
For me, social anxiety
feels like it's overwhelming my life.
You know, it's bunch of bull [bleep]
I am who I am.
I need to be comfortable in my skin.
And in order to be comfortable with my skin,
I'd have to just be happy with myself,
of who I am,
Conrad Henry Roy III.
I want to recover from this,
and I feel like I haven't recovered from it yet.
I feel like I still have a long way to go
to recover from this social anxiety,
this feeling of insecurity,
feeling of neglect towards myself.
[Lynn] It was June 13th when he did that video.
It was exactly a month before he passed away.
The way he talks in that video,
I think he's telling himself, "Yeah, I'm gonna do better."
What I'm doing is looking at myself so negatively,
looking at myself minuscule,
little particle on the face of this Earth.
But I have a lot to offer someone.
I'm introverted, nice and caring,
with some benefits.
I'm a nice kid.
But it just comes to point where I'm just...
He just wanted to be better. Like he wanted to live.
And you could like see it in that video.
And now I wanna take steps to control it.
If I keep talking, keep talking,
it's gonna get better.
And when it gets better,
I start to feel better about myself.
I just need my confidence.
Just the ability to move forward and move forward.
It was very evident that he was a very sensitive
young man that was going through a lot
of similar things that a lot of teenagers go through,
and, unfortunately,
Michelle Carter ended up on the end of that phone.
When detectives looked at the text
that Michelle sent To Conrad,
the text make it clear she had been texting him
repeatedly before he killed himself
to go ahead and do it. Don't back out.
This is your time.
The text messages towards the end,
you know, eventually went strictly
towards pursuing Conrad to commit suicide.
And she asked for assurance
that he was deleting the messages.
She was trying to make sure
that they weren't available to be seen.
[dramatic music playing]
[Maryclare] We knew that there was a phone call
after the last text message.
He calls her for approximately 38 minutes,
and then she calls him back for another 42 minutes.
[Ashleigh] That last phone call happened
right about the time
authorities think that Conrad died.
That means that Michelle was probably
on the phone with him as he passed.
One would wonder why Conrad did not delete
the text messages with Michelle.
He deleted everything else. Why not Michelle?
[Scott] I truly believe that that was left intentionally.
I mean, he didn't leave the text thread with his mother.
He didn't leave the text thread
with his sisters or his father.
He just left the text thread with Michelle.
Did he want evidence that somehow
she encouraged him to kill himself? Maybe.
And despite their suspicions,
the detectives still don't wanna bring up
the text messages with Conrad's family.
[Glenn] For quite a period of time,
the Roys were kind of kept in the dark
purposely from us
in regards to the evidence we had in front of us.
We felt it was necessary to keep it
as quiet as possible because we didn't know
if it was gonna be criminally charged or not.
After he passed,
all summer long she sent me messages
telling me how much she loved me
and thought the world of me.
[dramatic music playing]
She really comforted me.
Like made me feel like I was the best
I could because he confided in her.
I even told her, "I'm so glad that my son
had someone like you in his life that,
you know, really cared about him."
[dramatic music playing]
So even as Michelle was comforting Lynn,
some of Conrad's friends felt like Michelle
was making herself a bigger part of Conrad's life
than she really was.
We're reading Facebook posts,
and that's when I came across Michelle's post,
and it was like, "I love you so much.
You were there for me. You were my rock.
I'm sorry I couldn't be yours."
We were all like,
"Did everybody see like this girl's post?
Like who is this crazy girl?"
And then that's when I was like,
"That's the girl Michelle from the funeral."
At Conrad's funeral, Michelle was making a big scene.
She's just crying, sobbing quite loudly.
We still call her the "grieving widow"
to this day.
During the bereavement process or at a funeral,
when the death is incredibly emotionally charged, right,
it can be a way to get a bit more quick type of attention.
[Ashleigh] Two months after Conrad's death,
Michelle Carter organizes a baseball charity event
in Plainville called Homers for Conrad.
And a lot of people were there taking pictures
and posting them on Facebook.
We see more Facebook posts and see Michelle
had come up with the idea to do
a fundraising softball tournament
with the proceeds going to help in suicide prevention.
[Camdyn] My family, we had a team.
Conrad's best friend Tom and his teammates all had a team.
Then there's like some of Michelle friends.
The strange thing about that is Michelle
organized it for her hometown instead of Conrad's
hometown which is an hour away.
One thing nobody realized at the time
is that the detectives were actually there watching.
[man] The main purpose of me being there was I placed
an undercover phone call into Michelle phone
when she was in plain view at Homers for Conrad.
We knew from subscriber information
from the phone company that it was in her mother's name.
So we couldn't take the chance that we were actually
reading messages from someone that wasn't Michelle.
And she answered the phone.
So, at that point, we've checked another box.
This is Michelle Carter on the other side of this phone.
[dramatic music playing]
Detective Sergeant Patello and I went to her school
in the Plainville area to try and locate her
to have a quick conversation with her,
but also our main goal that day was to retrieve
her phone for the... For forensic analysis.
We had brought a handheld recorder.
And when we started talking to her,
let her know that we were recording the interview.
[detective speaking]
[Michelle speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Michelle speaking]
[detective] Mmm-hmm.
[Michelle speaking]
So right off the bat, they know she's not being
entirely truthful with them.
And they present her with a warrant.
They confiscate her phone, a phone that has God knows
how much evidence on it.
It is a shame that they only had an audio
recording of this happening because you can really
only imagine the look on her face.
The plan the next day was for the family
to contact me so we could speak with Michelle.
Ultimately, they contacted and said that they obtained
a lawyer and they wouldn't be speaking with us.
[Ted] Police did what is called an extraction
of the phone.
It's where they use a device that pulls everything out,
even stuff that's been deleted.
And about 60,000 items are pulled from her phone,
texts, videos, messages, years of data.
At first, Conrad would text her
about his feelings of wanting to kill himself,
and Michelle often tried to dissuade him
from doing that or thinking those things.
There's certainly a point in time where it went
from nurturing and caring to malicious and mean.
[Ted] She tells him, "Why don't you drink
some bleach?
Why don't you hang yourself?"
She really starts pushing Conrad
and really starts gnawing at him that,
"Hey, you gotta get this done and you gotta get it
done now."
[Maryclare] They come up with the water pump idea.
And not only does she help him with all of that,
she explains to him, "Oh, it'll be easy.
All you have to do is get into your car.
It's gonna take about 20 minutes.
It'll be painless.
It'll be quick."
I had must have read over a thousand text messages.
Scott did the same.
We all felt pretty strongly that without her
interaction in his life, he truly would still be here.
Pretty much everybody who read the texts all agreed
that what we're reading was pretty disturbing.
There was no doubt that it was wrong,
but the question became was it only morally wrong
or is it criminally wrong?
[dramatic music playing]
Three months into this investigation
and the police pretty much know that Michelle Carter
encouraged Conrad Roy to take his own life.
But it's no slam dunk, and so they can't rush
into this arrest.
I'm Dana Curhan.
I'm an appellate lawyer.
I was brought into this case to work
on some of the pretrial motions.
There are probably about 30 states that have a statute
that prohibits encouraging somebody to commit suicide.
Massachusetts is not one of them.
So the problem is they look and there's no...
There's no specific statute telling them
that this is prohibited.
So despite the fact that there is no law,
in February 2015, a grand jury decides
to indict Michelle Carter on involuntary manslaughter.
After the grand jury indicted that afternoon,
it was a Thursday afternoon, I had to sit down
with the Roy family for the very first time
and put those text messages in front of them.
And it was heartbreaking.
[Lynn] It wasn't real.
I don't know. I just couldn't believe it.
I don't know what it's like to have someone go
in your mind like that.
But she went into a vulnerable young man's mind
and twisted his mind thinking that he was better off
not being here.
She manipulated my son in the worst way possible.
I just remember like thinking like,
"Why?" I just don't know why anyone would want like
my brother to pass away.
Michelle Carter turns herself in the next day,
and she's released on $2,500 bond,
and she's ordered not to text anyone except her parents.
And over the next couple of months,
this story takes off.
A woman from Massachusetts
allegedly encouraging her boyfriend
to commit suicide through text messages.
She was an honor roll student previously
at King Philip High School.
[woman] The state plans to enter more than 20,000
texts as evidence.
[dramatic music playing]
[man] Good morning. Today is June 9th, 2015.
[Ashleigh] With her parents watching, Michelle Carter
pleads not guilty and she remains on bond.
And her attorneys make it crystal clear
that they are going to fight this until the end.
We are dealing strictly with words.
We have a person who was not present
when he made his own voluntary decision to take his own life,
and she did not do anything physical in nature.
Can you tell somebody to kill themselves,
and is that First Amendment or is that a crime?
And that became a huge debate.
[Jan] Michelle was portrayed as this evil villain.
She garnered no sympathy in the public.
Michelle, unfortunately, made a face.
Just made a momentary face.
And that image was captured and has become symbolic
of her.
Everybody looked at that and said,
"Oh, there's a girl who just doesn't care."
And I don't think that was particularly fair.
[reporter] She's a terrible person.
I can't believe how indifferent
she was to his life.
It's disgusting.
[Ted] She became sort of this national pariah.
I mean, people just hated her.
To me, she's evil.
Why can't she be held accountable when she was
sitting there purposely texting this young man
and telling him to kill himself?
Because this case is so unique and unprecedented,
it is really hard to say what it's gonna take
to convict Michelle.
The whole world is watching.
On June 5th, 2017,
Michelle Carter's trial begins.
[man] Michelle Carter from Plainville,
Mass on trial, accused of involuntary manslaughter.
This is one of the first trials to rely on text
and a digital trail that teens leave.
And, in many ways,
it's setting a precedent for future trials.
[Ted] The charges in the case are read.
[judge speaking]
And the defense then calls Michelle Carter to the stand.
This is the first time anyone has heard from her.
[judge speaking]
[Michelle speaking]
[judge] Has anyone promised you anything or threatened you
in any way to make you forego your right to a jury trial?
No.
Michelle Carter elected to waive
her right to a jury.
She gets to say, "I want you, the judge,
to be the decider of the facts and the law,
and ultimately make the decision
on whether she's guilty or not."
I think when
you have a jury looking at a case,
they do look at moral culpability
and not necessarily legal culpability.
The advantage of going before a judge without
a jury is a judge can make a dispassionate decision.
Once that was decided, rather than starting
to select the jury, the judge said, "Okay,
tomorrow morning we'll start hearing evidence."
[Ashleigh] This was riveting.
No one knew what was gonna happen.
[dramatic music playing]
Who would do this and why?
We suggest the evidence will show that the defendant
was a very needy person who craved attention
from anyone, quite frankly.
[Ted] The prosecution goes right at Michelle Carter.
Here's this young woman who not only wanted
her boyfriend to kill himself but she wanted to ride
the wave of what would come after that,
where she would get attention,
people would feel bad for her,
and her friends who may have ignored her before
might actually give her some love.
[Dr. Robi] Who thinks like that?
A normal person doesn't think,
"You must die in order for me to be popular."
I think she had a love of herself
beyond everybody else.
I think it was a very disturbed form of narcissism.
She put him in the car that night.
I think the prosecution really pushed this as,
you know, this is this evil person.
We don't know why she would do a thing like this.
And she needs to be punished.
Your Honor, this case is a suicide case.
It is a suicide, it is not a homicide.
[Ted Daniel] The defense really stuck with two arguments.
She may have been repugnant and what she did may have been reprehensible,
but it wasn't criminal.
And they also really delved into Conrad's state of mind,
and they looked at his past mental health history.
A long, long history of suicidal...
suicidality, suicide attempts, suicidal ideation,
finally caused, caused his own death.
[Dana Curhan] He was the one that set this whole scheme into motion
and drove himself there and put himself in the vehicle,
and essentially he took his own life.
[Lynn Roy] The prosecutors wanted me to talk about what type of person he was,
what he had to live for.
Of course, with your child,
you're always going to think they're like the best thing in the world.
Well, he really was. [chuckles softly]
He just...
took whatever was given to him, so he really didn't complain much.
- He did the best he could. - Was he close to his sisters?
[Lynn] Very much.
[Ashleigh Banfield] As Lynn testifies,
she mentions her son's suicide attempt back in 2012.
And she also mentions the friend of Conrad who saved him at the time.
[Maryclare Flynn] Did you find out that he had told somebody
that he had done that?
- Yes. - [Flynn] And what did you learn about that?
-[defense] Objection. -[Judge Lawrence Moniz] Sustained.
[Banfield] The defense actually succeeded in stopping Lynn,
from telling the judge about Aryanna Taylor,
who saved Conrad on his first attempt.
[Taylor] They were comparing the time I called Lynn, who called the ambulance
for when Conrad consumed the over-the-counter medications.
At the time, I really didn't know what was going on,
but just in case, I got him help.
And Michelle knew exactly what was happening
and she did nothing to help him.
Aryanna's actions in 2012 were very different than Michelle's actions in 2014.
And unfortunately, Michelle was the only one who knew
that Conrad was suicidal that second time.
In July of 2014, did you have any concerns about his mental health?
[Lynn] I knew he was a little depressed, but I thought it was, he was doing...
great.
I mean, he just, you know, graduated from high school,
got his captain's license. I thought everything was moving forward,
not backwards. So...
[Rebecca Berry] Some people are very good at internalizing that pain,
and putting on a different type of front, let's say.
Many will say, "I don't want to burden my mother.
I don't want to let my friends in on my pain, because I think that they can't handle it."
[Lynn] We had a really close relationship.
But he held a lot inside.
Because he didn't want to hurt me.
He was trying to protect me.
[sighs softly]
[Joseph Cataldo] He never complained to you
- about a girl by the name of Michelle Carter, did he? - No.
[Cataldo] He never told you that anybody was trying to convince him
- to do something he didn't want to do? - No.
[Cataldo] Nothing further, Your Honor.
[Judge Moniz] Thank you very much. Please step down, Miss Roy,
thank you very much for your assistance.
Does the Commonwealth have another today?
[Katie Rayburn] I do, Your Honor, thank you very much.
[Banfield] The defense didn't really go after Lynn hard,
because no one wants to be seen as attacking a grieving mom.
But then, Conrad's sister Camdyn Roy took the stand
and she testified about her experiences, the night her brother died.
[Flynn] Did he seem upset to you?
No, he was just like, "I'm going to Aryanna's. Bye."
- [Flynn] Was that the last time you saw your brother? - Yeah.
That night, I got a text from Michelle Carter.
And she was saying, "I'm Conrad's girlfriend now. Do you know where he is?"
[Dr. Robi Ludwig] So that breezy text with the IDK and the ha, ha, ha,
came in after Michelle was on the phone with Conrad
right around the time that he died.
And when you think about it in those terms, it really makes your skin crawl.
[Flynn] Michelle tried to say she didn't really know where he was.
Which of course, we knew that wasn't true
but she was trying to create an alibi for herself,
again showing her state of mind.
[Camdyn] Now we can just see how it was just
her, like, manipulating all of us, basically.
[Banfield] Next up for the prosecution
is a young man named Tom Gammell,
and he's one of the people who's closest to Conrad.
We determined that Tom Gammell was best friends with Conrad.
That they had known each other throughout their lives, played baseball together.
[Scott Gordon] Tom said, he really didn't know anything about Michelle,
or that there was even any type of relationship that existed.
[Flynn] So, Tom became important because of the baseball tournament,
Homers for Conrad.
[Rayburn] Is there any contact information
- for who's running this Homers for Conrad? - Yes.
- [Rayburn] And what was the name? - [Gammell] Michelle.
[Rayburn] Did that name mean anything to you at that time?
- No. - [Rayburn] So what did you do?
[Gammell] I contacted her.
The prosecution sought to demonstrate that Michelle was just focused on herself.
That the event had nothing to do with Conrad at all,
but more to do with her effort to be seen as popular.
I was curious as to why the tournament was being held in Plainville,
and not in Mattapoisett.
Why were you curious about that?
'Cause all of Conrad's family and friends are from Mattapoisett.
[Rayburn] And how did she respond to you when you suggested
that maybe it should be moved to be more convenient for his friends and family?
She wasn't willing to move it.
[Rayburn] On August 27, 2014 at 12:47 p.m.,
do you recall getting a text message that I actually just sent to the judge but...
"Okay, awesome, thank you! You're not taking credit for my idea right? Lol."
- Do you recall getting that? - [Gammell] Yes.
She wanted to make clear that she was getting credit for all this.
[Flynn] She did not hide anything. This was really not about Conrad Roy.
She's not even talking about Conrad Roy any more.
She's talking about what she's going to get out of it.
- [Rayburn] Now, were there some photographs taken? - [Gammell] Yes.
And at some point, did Miss Carter ask that her photograph be taken
- with some of the teams? - Yes.
[Rayburn] How would you describe Miss Carter's demeanor
throughout Homers for Conrad?
[Gammell] Um, she seemed very happy.
I remember, it just seemed, like, off.
'Cause it was supposed to be, like, honoring Conrad.
And it was just like, Michelle was like,
laughing and like, goofing off the whole time.
[Banfield] When the defense takes over, they really press Tom
about the claims that he'd never heard of Michelle
before the Homers for Conrad situation,
and then they produced Facebook messages to contradict this.
Isn't it true that on October 10, of 2012,
that Michelle Carter reached out to you?
And had a Facebook conversation with you?
[Gammell] I believe so.
[Cataldo] About when Conrad had tried to kill himself in 2012,
when he was just out of the hospital in early October.
Okay, yeah.
[Cataldo] And she said, "I know,
but he told me he was going to kill himself last night. Is he okay?"
So the defense showed that there was a time when Michelle actively cared
about Conrad's well-being.
And the prosecution cannot deny this.
It's actually a really good move by Michelle's defense team.
Then the prosecution pivots
from a person who barely knows Michelle,
to some people who know her all too well.
On June 7, the prosecution sets aside time for some pretty important witnesses,
who let us into Michelle's world, and those are Michelle's classmates.
The first one to testify is Alexandra or Ali Ethier.
Michelle met Ali at a summer camp.
And what you find out is, yeah, they had a text relationship,
but they didn't really hang out a lot.
Other than camp-related activities,
had you ever spent time with Michelle Carter?
No.
Prosecutors painted a portrait of Michelle as this needy teenager,
who was desperate to improve her social standing at any cost.
So, when she began to text you on July 12, 2014,
what was your reaction?
Um...
I was kind of surprised.
[Banfield] When Michelle texted Ali, out of the blue, on July 12,
it was the same day that Conrad died.
And even though they barely knew each other,
Michelle is immediately sharing intimate information with her.
At the same time that she is texting Conrad,
pushing him to kill himself, Michelle is also texting Ali,
saying, "Hey, you want to be good friends? Ha ha ha."
[Rayburn] Do you remember the time on July 12, at night,
where there was inquiry about whether or not you had a boyfriend,
- you remember that? - Yes.
And you recall whether or not you asked her if she had a boyfriend?
Um, yeah.
[Rayburn] And what does Michelle Carter send you at 10:21 p.m.?
[Ethier] "Thank you, that's nice of you.
And well, I actually do have a boyfriend right now,
but he's going through a tough time."
And is there further information there?
Again now on... July 12, 2014, 10:30 at night.
She says, "Ha ha, yeah. But idk, he's in a bad place right now."
[Banfield] At that same time, 10:30 p.m. on July 12,
while Michelle is texting, "Ha ha, he's in a bad place," to Ali,
Conrad has already died.
And it seems Michelle knew this.
[Daniel] And then all of a sudden, the next day, Michelle drops this bomb,
that Conrad has committed suicide.
And Michelle tells Ali that she was on the phone with him
at the moment that Conrad died.
[Rayburn] Can you read your response back?
[Ethier] "Honestly, I don't mean it this in a bad way but I feel like
you should talk to someone about it, you know?
Because I can't really help considering I don't know you very well,
and I certainly don't know the situation very well."
For Michelle to be telling her something of that magnitude was,
was really strange for her.
And this is part of the prosecution peeling back the layers,
that there may be an ulterior motive here,
that Michelle was doing this for attention.
Then, the defense wants to humanize Michelle.
And when they get their chance to question Ali,
they ask about a text that Michelle sent to Ali.
Wasn't there a text just three minutes before that,
where she stated to you, "Yeah, he told me everything.
I'm the only one he told things to,
which is why I feel so at fault because I should've gotten him more help.
I just never thought he would actually do this."
- Do you recall that? - Um, yeah.
[Banfield] The defence did their best to spin the content of these text messages
and try to make it seem like Michelle really cared about Conrad.
And that might play well to a jury's emotions,
but the question is, was it going to affect the judge?
So, please state your full name and spell your last name for the record.
Olivia Leigh Mosolgo. M-O-S-O-L-G-O.
[Daniel] The prosecution calls another classmate.
Livy, like several of the other witnesses,
tells the court, "Yeah, I knew Michelle, but we weren't really that close."
But she knew that Michelle has been dealing with mental health issues.
At the age of 14, Michelle was given Prozac, to deal with depression.
She expressed having anxiety.
[Daniel] Livy did explain that Michelle had confided in her
some serious information about her life. That she had an eating disorder.
[Flynn] When you say eating disorder, did you ever see her weight go up and down?
Yes.
[Flynn] Now, at some point,
- did that affect her ability to play softball? - Yes.
[Flynn] And your call, what it was that
she could not play on the softball team with you?
I believe it was sophomore year.
[Jan Ransom] Michelle struggled,
and she had even been placed into a psychiatric facility for some time,
in the month before Conrad's death.
[Ludwig] Michelle suffered from anorexia nervosa,
which usually means that there's a distortion in how someone sees themselves.
They see themselves as fat when they're thin.
And she wants to take control of that reality, even though it's distorted.
As Olivia's testimony continues, the prosecution again
tries to build on its theory that Michelle was absolutely desperate for attention.
Now, when you were back at high school with Michelle,
is it fair to say that she expressed to you that she felt like she had no friends?
- Yes. - [Flynn] Could you read that to us please?
[Mosolgo] "Stop telling me how wonderful and beautiful I am
and how I'm such a funny girl,
because beautiful girls get invited to parties,
and their friends call and wanna hang out."
"They don't spend Friday nights alone,
and funny girls don't lock themselves in their room to cry."
[Daniel] You realize Michelle had a ton of trouble herself.
We also know from Livy's testimony
that Michelle had a softball friend named Alice,
prior to her relationship with Conrad.
They played on the same team. It was a travelling team, a competition team.
Um, and they became good friends.
But, at some point during that relationship,
Alice, her parents, specifically her mother
became concerned with the way Alice was acting.
And she texted you that she was talking to her therapist about Alice?
- Yes. - [Flynn] But she also texted you
that she was obsessed with Alice.
Alice's mom worried that Michelle was a little too needy.
That she was texting too much and trying to get too much into Alice's life.
And that ended up ending that.
[Cudmore] Michelle was very upset, very distraught.
Tried to rekindle that friendship, um, in different ways,
Including even sending a letter to the house with a fake name on it.
But the mother was smart enough to pick up on that and intercept it.
[Bayfield] This whole episode with Alice seems to be
like another example of Michelle's intensity driving people away.
But on top of that, the prosecution's getting at something deeper.
And implying that the whole breakup with Alice was so upsetting to Michelle,
that she hoped Conrad's suicide would actually move Alice to rekindle,
bring the friendship back. But, Alice did not,
and the relationship never recovered.
May I direct your attention to July 20, 2014.
A text that was sent at 11:59 p.m. If you could read that text.
[Mosolgo] At the end of the day, I just really miss him.
He was who I talked to until 3 a.m., and now he's just gone.
But his mom called me today, she found a suicide letter he wrote to me.
He didn't write one to anyone else.
His mom said, I was the most important person in his life.
[Lynn] We found out after he passed,
she told him to write a note to her,
which is even more disturbing.
The way her mind thinks.
It's all like, in her plan,
to just, you know, make off that she's a grieving girlfriend.
She definitely loves attention.
[Banfield] Michelle's attorneys again tried to flip the script with the texts,
this time between Michelle and Olivia.
And they tried to drive home the idea that Michelle didn't even need Olivia's attention,
because she already had it.
[Cataldo] Fair to say that you and Miss Carter texted throughout that time period,
- many times. Fair to say? - Yes.
[Cataldo] And sometimes you would say, "I love you Michelle."
Isn't that fair to say?
[Mosolgo] Yes.
[Ransom] Prosecution next called Alexandra Lexie Eblan to the stand
and Lexie described her relationship with Michelle
as more of like a in-school friend.
[Rayburn] Other than texting, would you guys ever hang out
and just like go out on a Friday night.
Not usually. I don't...
I can't remember a time that we did.
[Ransom] Another piece of stunning testimony was
two days before Conrad's death,
Lexie said that she received a text message from Michelle,
who said he was missing.
- [Rayburn] What did she say? - [Eblan] "I'm losing all hope that he's even still alive."
Do you then just ask, "Seriously??"
- [Eblan] Yes. - And how does she respond, please?
[Eblan] She says, "Yes, he's been missing since Wednesday night."
That's two days before Conrad died.
So, Conrad was fine.
Conrad was not missing and Michelle knew that,
because Michelle was texting with him all throughout the day.
She completely made it up.
She had done what we termed in the investigation, a dry run with her friends,
to see what kind of reaction she would get from them,
as a result of telling them that he was gone.
[Flynn] So at that point, she's getting what she wants.
That's why she continues to goad him. In the days following.
"Why haven't you done it yet? You said you were going to do it."
[Camdyn] She already told her friends, like, "Oh, I don't know where he is."
Like, they're going to be,
like, empathetic towards her. And, like, "Oh Michelle."
It was like, he was just like a pawn in her game.
Prosecution hands the witness over
and the defense repeats it's strategy
of trying to show that these young ladies already adored Michelle.
And they really lean in on the text messages where Lexie says,
"Thanks Michelle, love you."
But you've got to wonder if that's enough
to distance Michelle from the ghastly dry run
that the prosecution had pointed out.
Next up, a powerful witness for the prosecution.
Sam Boardman is about to take the stand.
[Cudmore] Sam Boardman, she was the big one.
And after that is when, you know, the mood changed at that point.
The prosecution calls a number of Michelle's acquaintances
and they described how they never considered her a friend.
It would seem pretty difficult to be in a position of
hearing people that you believe was your friend,
testifying to the opposite.
But Michelle just continues to stare at the witness stand blankly.
She didn't look sad or she didn't look hurt.
She didn't look like she thought that she did anything wrong.
[Ransom] Among the witnesses that were called to testify for the prosecution,
Samantha Boardman proved to be the most crucial.
Out of all the young women that Michelle had wanted to be her friend,
she wanted most to be closest to Sam.
In her eyes, Sam was, "Amazing and beautiful."
But, Samantha testified that Michelle did not understand boundaries.
Other times, during the academic school year,
during these thousands of text message,
where there were times when the defendant would text you and you would be late,
- or take a while for you to text back? - Yes.
And what, how would her reaction be if you took a long time to respond to her?
She would often, repetively, repeatedly texted me,
until I responded.
[Rayburn] And what would you generally describe,
sometimes to be the length of the defendant's text messages to you.
Very lengthy.
[Rayburn] I'm going to ask you to read that text message, please, aloud.
[Boardman] "Yeah, I have school friends that all say they love me,
but that doesn't mean [bleep] when no one ever asks to hang out with me.
So when someone actually makes an effort to talk to me,
and hang out and stuff, it makes me so happy and I actually feel important.
Like when I look back on my high school career,
I'm honored to say that I got the opportunity to be friends with Sam Boardman.
And I'll be honest, I cried when you said you wanted to help me,
and hang out and stuff. It just meant so much to me.
Like, I finally found a friend."
[Rayburn] For the summer of 2014,
did you have any plans to spend time with her over the summer?
Um, I believe I saw her once that summer.
And probably the most explosive text that Michelle Carter sent,
was about the night that Conrad committed suicide.
Could you read that for us? From the defendant to you.
"I wasn't supposed to let that happen and now I'm realizing I failed him.
Sam, his death was my fault. Like honestly, I could've stopped him.
I was on the phone and he got out of the car
because it was working and he got scared.
And I [bleep] told him to get back in, Sam."
[Ransom] That moment, the courtroom fell quiet.
There was this chill.
[Lynn] She told him to get back in.
I don't know, I just couldn't believe it.
In that moment where she said, "Get back in the truck."
She could've said like, "Oh get out." Or something like that.
And, like, that single sentence could have, like, saved my brother.
[Flynn] That changed the case for us, because there's two phone calls.
Now, those were phone calls, so we had no idea of what was or wasn't said,
other than the fact that she told us in those subsequent text messages to Sam.
[Curhan] This was certainly a complex legal issue.
She said, "Get back in the car." But he didn't have to do it.
She didn't compel him to get back in the car by force.
She didn't have the ability to force him back into the car.
She just told him to.
[Banfield] During cross examination, the defense does what it can,
to minimize the impact of Sam's testimony for the prosecution,
but that's not going to be easy.
And you just went over various text messages
with the district attorney's office,
and they put it up on the big screen, right?
- Mm-hm. - Would you agree with me that was probably less.
- Far less than 1% of all your conversations with Michelle. - Yes.
They go on to expand the list of things that Michelle and Sam had privately discussed,
all in an attempt to show how deep and varied the relationship was.
But frankly, mopping up the venom
that was the, "I told him to get back in" text,
that is an uphill climb.
Throughout the course of the trial, it drew national attention,
and so, you had media from all across the country.
It was always, you know, huge media presence outside the courtroom.
It was a media circus. There was helicopters...
I'm still trying to figure out why you have a helicopter at a courthouse.
The town police had to assist us on escorting the family.
It was kind of hard to deal with.
There's one particular text from the trial that, um, really catches the eye
of some uber fans of the blockbuster TV series, Glee.
And BuzzFeed pointed this out.
After Conrad's death,
Michelle texted Sam, "I had it all planned out."
I had it all planned out.
[Bayfield] Almost word for word.
This text matches something that the character, Rachel said,
right after her boyfriend, Finn died.
I don't know, something different.
- Maybe something better. - I don't think that that's possible.
[sobbing] He was my person.
[Banfield] After actor Cory Monteith passed away,
his character on the show also died, Finn.
Lea Michele had played Rachel, on screen.
But the two were also couple in real life as well.
And the diehard fans of Glee started to wonder,
"What is Michelle Carter's deal with Glee and Lea Michele?"
We saw in looking at her phone
that there was like a lot of images of Lea Michele.
She clearly had an obsession with that program.
It's just so eerie to emulate someone in mourning.
And the timing of Monteith and Conrad's death is just so chilling.
[Camdyn] He passed away close to the same day that Conrad did.
And it was kind of like, um... Could be why
she was trying to, like, get him to do it maybe on that exact day.
So they think maybe that could've been, like,
correlated with her love for Glee.
[notification sound]
[Banfield] So, amid this whole media circus,
After three days of calling witnesses, the prosecution finally rests.
And on its face, you know, it looks good.
They've laid out motive,
they've showed the depths to which Michelle wanted Conrad to die.
But it is by no means a slam dunk.
This is a very unique case,
and manslaughter's not an easy charge to prove.
The outcome of this one is impossible to predict.
The next day, on June 9, the defense calls it's first witness.
Mattapoisett police officer Justin King.
And were you employed by them back in 2014, specifically February 19?
Yes, I was.
[Ransom] In calling the police officer,
the defense seemed to try to highlight the fact that Conrad was dealing with other issues.
Particularly in his family life.
I responded to an assault call, sir.
[Cataldo] And who were you trying to find?
We attempted to find the person that had been assaulted.
[Daniel] It turns out, that officer had responded to Conrad's dad's house,
about five months before Conrad's suicide.
And that was for a domestic violence case.
That night, Conrad had called 911,
alleging that his father had punched him.
[Cataldo] Okay, and did you make any observations of him?
Yes. His face was swollen red and he had some lacerations to his face.
[Banfield] In his police statement,
Conrad said that this was all about an incident
where his dad wanted him to wash some pots and pans.
He didn't do it when he was asked, it got physical.
Conrad's dad was arrested that night.
But it is really important to know that he was never charged for the crime.
The defense was clearly trying to show that
that could have contributed to him wanting to kill himself.
On Jun 12, the defense calls it's most important witness in this case.
Dr. Peter Breggin.
And he becomes, essentially the star witness for Michelle Carter.
[Banfield] Dr. Breggin has a very impressive résumé.
He is a Harvard-trained doctor with decades and decades of experience, and he is also
an outspoken critic of having antidepressants prescribed to teenagers.
[Cataldo] And what have you spoken before the FDA on? What subject?
[Peter Breggin] Um, a number of different subjects.
Um, the adverse effects of antipsychotic drugs,
the adverse effects of stimulant drugs.
Dr. Breggin sought to lay out
the way in which Michelle's exchanges with Conrad changed over the months.
You started reviewing Facebook communications,
- Starting in... - Between Miss Carter and Mr. Roy in October 2012?
Yes.
He says, "Yeah I tried to kill myself." And she says, "Why didn't you tell me?"
[Ludwig] Dr. Breggin is painting Michelle in a whole new light,
using the texts between her and Conrad
to show that Michelle was actually trying to help him.
And help him to stay alive.
It's a radical change in perspective.
He talks about hanging himself that night.
And she says, "You're not going to..."
"Conrad stop."
[Banfield] Michelle Carter's defense team is now questioning Dr. Peter Breggin.
An expert witness,
who's introducing some evidence that shows Michelle really tried to help Conrad.
This is the kind of stuff that the judge hasn't heard much before.
[Breggin] She's a helper.
Her whole life is helping, everybody says.
She's the... Just about everybody. She's the biggest helper.
He noted that the tone of her messages were kind,
that she sought to try to get him some sort of psychiatric help.
This is from Conrad to Michelle,
on October 8, 2013 at 4:50 p.m.
- [Cataldo] All right. - He says, "I feel hopeless."
She says, "Do you still feel the same way you've been feeling?"
"Yeah, it's bad."
"Did you get a new psychiatrist?"
"He cancels my appointment all the time."
"Yeah, you need to get a new one fast!!!"
And she says, "Try my best every day
to think of ways to help you,
and I just wish you knew how much you mean to me."
[Daniel] Dr. Breggin also talks a bit about
that Michelle had...
been on antidepressants.
April 1, Michelle says
that she's talking to the doctor about starting Celexa and why.
Because it will help her eat more.
Breggin said that the medication that Michelle was taking, which was Celexa,
affected the frontal part of the brain,
which deals with empathy, decision making, the ability to love.
[Daniel] Dr. Breggin centers his testimony on his theory,
this involuntary intoxication.
Due to the antidepressants that she was on.
[Cataldo] In terms, Doctor, what is involuntary intoxication?
Well, by definition,
it's an intoxication, which means
that the neurochemistry of the brain has been disrupted.
And that this intoxication is observable through thoughts, behaviors, activities.
[Cataldo] And in terms of your opinion that she became involuntarily intoxicated,
are you able to pinpoint about when she became involuntarily intoxicated?
Yes, on July 2,
she begins...
to help him go to heaven.
She begins to give him advice and she'll encourage him.
Dr. Breggin says, Michelle has this diminished mental capacity,
and in her mind,
that she actually believes that she's helping Conrad,
when she starts making the suggestions about killing himself.
But at this point, she has an involuntary intoxication,
where she is not forming a criminal intent, "I'm going to harm him."
She's not doing something that she thinks is criminal.
This is bad.
She's actually going ahead and going to help him do it better,
the way he wants, to reassure him he's going to heaven.
[Flynn] Katie Rayburn did the cross examination,
so she had done tremendous amount of research
in his prior case testimonies.
July 10. where you're telling us, she's involuntarily intoxicated,
she can't decipher between right and wrong,
she goes to see her therapist.
And you would agree with me, the therapist describes her appearance
as good eye contact, well groomed, correct?
- Yeah. - [Rayburn] All right.
- Short-term memory intact, judgement good. Correct? - Mm-hm.
[Rayburn] Her attitude is cooperative and pleasant
- and her thoughts logical. Correct? - [Breggin] Yes.
And you're now telling us that she didn't know right from wrong at that same time.
Well, actually, she thought she was doing absolutely the right thing.
Prosecutor Katie Rayburn says, "Hey, can you show me
in the list of mental health issues that people may have, where this exists?"
[Rayburn] This is the DSM-5, for the record, I'm handing the witness.
Could you please grab the section in that book
that covers involuntary intoxication for me.
Oh, there's no involuntary intoxication here, it's a legal term.
This is a huge deal.
Involuntary intoxication is not a psychiatric term,
even though Dr. Breggin tries to apply it in that way.
Katie Rayburn, with that one question,
basically decimates Dr. Breggin's whole theory on Michelle.
Fair to say, you're not board certified in psychiatry, correct?
[Breggin] I never took the boards.
[Rayburn] You had no longer, or if ever had medical privileges or a hospital?
Breggin did some very helpful things for the defense.
Like, he gave context to Michelle's life, and Michelle's actions,
certainly regarding her own mental health.
And the theory that she really did think she was helping Conrad.
That was interesting,
but the prosecution poked a lot of holes in his presentation.
[Ransom] Dr. Breggin was the last witness in the case.
At that point, the defense rested,
and the defense and prosecution presented their closing remarks.
Then, on the day of the decision,
the atmosphere in the courtroom was tense.
[Daniel] So the trial ends, and now it's all in Judge Moniz's hands.
He's got to decide, whether or not a crime was committed here.
And this is a crime that can carry up to 20 years in prison.
It took three days to get a verdict.
Finally, we hear from Judge Moniz.
[Judge Moniz] The law does not require that any explanation, as to a verdict, be given.
Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that some explanation
of my verdict is warranted.
[Flynn] There was as they say, that, the hush in the courtroom.
And it was just very tense.
You know, you have all these people wondering what's going to happen,
and then he starts reading his decision.
[Judge Moniz] This court first finds,
that the Commonwealth has proven beyond a reasonable doubt,
that the actions taken by Miss Carter as to the period from June 30 to July 12,
constituted wanton and reckless conduct by her.
The Commonwealth has not proven, as to that time period,
that said reckless or wanton behavior caused the death of Mr. Roy.
He's saying, Commonwealth has met it's burden in certain things, but,
that doesn't meet the threshold. And it sounds like he's going to acquit her.
[Judge Moniz] He's secured the water pump.
He's located his vehicle in an unnoticeable area,
and commenced his attempt by starting the pump.
To be honest, the verdict, to us, was a bit of a rollercoaster ride.
At one point, it seemed like he was going in our direction.
Then it seemed like he was going in the defense's direction.
However,
he breaks that chain of self-causation
by exiting the vehicle.
When Miss Carter realizes that Mr. Roy has exited the truck,
she instructs him to get back into the truck,
which she has reason to know is or is becoming a toxic environment,
inconsistent with human life.
That's when it took the sharp turn.
And...
It was going to go very badly for Michelle.
[Judge Moniz] This court does not find,
that the intentionality necessary for such wanton and reckless conduct
is obviated by Dr. Breggin's theory of involuntary intoxication,
and that the court did not find that analysis correct.
Miss Carter, please stand.
This court,
having reviewed the evidence and applied the law there too,
now finds you guilty,
on the indictment.
Charging you with the involuntary manslaughter of the person Conrad Roy III.
I just remember being kind of shocked and still for second
and having to digest it. And then just being relieved.
There was kind of, like a sigh of relief,
from, like me and my family, because we thought that, like my brother got justice.
So the judge had determined that,
all the text messaging that had taken place,
that didn't quite hit the mark for manslaughter.
But the moment that he stepped out of that truck and in her own words,
she told him to get back in the f-ing truck.
That was the crime.
What a shocking verdict! I mean, guilty of manslaughter,
for texting and telling Conrad things over the phone.
When you're not even there.
So this is a very powerful precedent, obviously.
Michelle and her parents have never really spoken out about their reaction,
but you can only imagine how scared they are. Right?
Their daughter's facing 20 years in prison.
[Flynn] With the court's permission,
I'd like to read the impact statement of Lynn Roy, Conrad's mother.
[Judge Moniz] Certainly.
In that sentencing, Lynn provided an impact statement
describing the pain and the anguish that she and the family had been through,
after losing Conrad.
[Flynn] "There is not one day that I do not mourn the loss of my beloved son.
Everyday, I strive to be a better mother
to his sisters, and a better person for him.
I want him to be proud of me and how I'm handling everything.
I'm trying to be there for his sisters in the best way that I can,
with all of my pain that we will carry with us until eternity."
I just wanted...
my son to be recognized.
And for, you know, his life to matter.
I don't know how she can live with that,
knowing what she did.
[Ransom] The prosecution sought seven to 12 years.
But Michelle only got 15 months.
[Morgan] When I found out how short her sentence was going to be, it kind of hurt me.
I'm not saying she deserves like, life in prison,
but she, like, deserves, kind of like the hurt that she put on my brother.
Ultimately, Michelle only ends up serving
12 out of 15 months that she was sentenced to.
On January 23rd, 2020, Michelle Carter was released from prison.
[Flynn] She was released early
because she didn't get into any trouble while she was incarcerated.
She'll be on probation until August of 2022.
[Lynn] I don't know if someone like her can feel that emotion of guilt.
If she didn't feel it that night,
that he died, I don't know how she could feel it now.
I don't believe that people change.
I suppose one day, I'll have to forgive her for myself.
But I'm really not at that stage, like, you know.
I really pray that she feels...
remorse, badly. I'm not sure if she does, though.
[Ransom] This case is one that you don't ever forget.
And to see it play out the way that it did...
It's a case that is in many ways haunting.
There were no winners.
Conrad is dead and Michelle went to jail,
and they both just badly needed help.
I think that there is this compelling cultural script
of the evil, beautiful, young woman,
who annihilates and eliminates this poor boy.
Without looking a the reality behind that imagery.
And the reality is, Michelle was a sick girl.
She wanted to be respected, she wanted to be popular.
And I think in her mind, someone needed to die and in this case it was Conrad.
Conrad Roy was one of the most intelligent,
kind-hearted people I've ever met in my life.
And the world definitely will be missing out without him.
In Massachusetts, we're still in the process of trying to get a law in my son's name.
Conrad's law would explicitly make it a crime,
if someone knows a person is suicidal,
and then encourages that person to commit suicide anyway,
or provides the means to do so.
There is, however, a medical exemption.
[Lynn] This year, for the first time, I just wrote a letter to him.
It was the first time that I could really express and...
my feelings, towards-- About him.
Because child loss is traumatic, very traumatic.
It takes so much out of you.
Um...
And just writing that felt really good.
Really good.
Think about him everyday.
I feel like he's always with me.