This post deals with the subject of suicide and domestic violence and may be triggering for some readers.
Michelle Carter was 20-years-old when she was convicted for involuntary manslaughter after she coerced her boyfriend Conrad Roy to end his life.
After thousands of texts between the pair were examined in court, it was determined that Carter played a significant role in Roy’s death.
“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,” she texted her 18-year-old boyfriend, Conrad Roy.
On July 13, 2014, Roy’s body was discovered in his truck in a Kmart carpark in Massachusetts.
The story of Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy is the subject of HBO’s new documentary, I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth vs. Michelle Carter, directed and produced by Erin Lee Carr.
Watch the trailer for HBO’s documentary ‘I Love You, Now Die’ below. Post continues after video.
The documentary is divided into two parts: the prosecution and the defence. Here are three pieces of information we learnt from the second half of ‘I Love You, Now Die’.
Conrad Roy’s family life
Mattapoisett police officer Dennis Tavares spoke during the trial, recounting attending to the Roy family household after Conrad Roy had been “physically assaulted”, subsequently seeing his father, also named Conrad Roy, be arrested.
In Conrad Junior’s witness voluntary statement form, he wrote his dad “punched me repeatedly and pinned me down. I couldn’t get up.”
“At first it’s kind of embarrassing but it doesn’t really matter because I know what happened that night,” Conrad’s father says in ‘I Love You, Now Die’.
“I know things got out of control and we both fought each other. And I’d do it again, just like that.
“You know, sometimes you say, like my father said to me, ‘If you ever take a swing at me you’re gonna get it… Make sure you don’t do that ever again.’
“And I just felt like, I had to do the same thing.”
Conrad Roy’s parents went through a tumultuous divorce while he was in high school, which is also thought to have contributed to his struggles.
Michelle Carter's mental health defence shown in 'I Love You, Now Die'
The defence side of the trial had a distinct focus on Michelle Carter's own mental health, and the effects of the medication she was taking.
Dr Peter Breggin is a psychiatrist who was initially asked to determine the impact Roy's antidepressant medication had on the state of his mental health. However Dr Breggin then became involved in investigating the effects of Carter's medication as well, specifically Prozac, which she was taking whilst also suffering from a severe eating disorder.
"She should’ve never been given Prozac, because she was bulimic and that would increase the power of Prozac over her, and not long after her first exposure she (tried to kill herself).
"Now, at the same moment, Conrad Roy, whom at that point she thought was a sweet boyfriend without any problems, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a serious suicide attempt."
Dr Breggin claims the drugs left Carter "involuntarily intoxicated", that could see her be sometimes "hypomanic" and in a "delusional state".
However another psychiatrist in the documentary disagrees with this. Dr. Anne Glowinski says: "Involuntarily intoxication is a diagnosis that I never use, and that most of the colleagues that know I don't use, but that is used in forensic psychiatry—so, without any consensus by our profession that it's even real."
Michelle Carter's obsession with Glee
Michelle Carter had an obsession with the popular US TV show Glee, starring Lea Michele and Corey Monteith who were a couple on-and-off the screen.
"I think she connected with Lea Michele on a kind of profound level that went beyond what a normal teen identifying with a star, you know, may feel like," Esquire journalist Jesse Barron says.
In her messages to and about Conrad Roy, Carter would often borrow lines from Lea Michele's character, Rachel Berry.
"You were my first love, and I wanted more than anything for you to be my last," Carter messaged Roy one day, in what is an exact line said by Lea Michele on Glee.
Monteith passed away from a drug overdose in July 2013.
In 'I Love You, Now Die' Barron recalls Glee's tribute episode for Monteith, saying "Lea Michele sings a song in his honour and everyone’s devastated because the character has died in the show... Carter then introduces that to Conrad in October 2013, she says 'I want you to know how much I love you and what it would be like if you weren’t here'.
"The idea that she would be the person in Glee who had a boyfriend who was the quarterback who had tragically died, I think was more real to her than it probably is to most people."
In her messages about Conrad after his death, Carter would also use quotes the actress had said in real interviews about Monteith.
"I literally lived every day of my life feeling like the luckiest girl in the whole world. I just thought he was the greatest man," Michele told talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres about her late boyfriend.
Carter texted a friend about Conrad after his passing: "He was the greatest man I ever knew and I literally lived every day feeling like the luckiest girl in the world."
'I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth vs. Michelle Carter' is now available on FOX Showcase.
If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner or in Australia, contact Lifeline 13 11 14 for support or beyondblue 1300 22 4636.
For more on this topic:
- 'I Love You, Now Die'. The 5 things we learnt from the first half of the Michelle Carter documentary.
- The content of the deadly text messages that have landed Michelle Carter in prison.
- Michelle Carter encouraged her boyfriend to take his own life in 2014. Now, it's judgement day.
- 'I Love You, Now Die' is the new documentary everyone is talking about.
Top Comments
She committed deliberate murder. She should rot in a dark hole for the rest of her life.
It’s insane that she is found guilty of manslaughter for text messages but his parents who failed to get him help after previous suicide attempts (that she had no pathing to do with), or the father who assaulted him, aren’t held responsible at all.
Obviously her actions were unethical but do we really hold teenagers responsible for saving other teenagers? Isn’t that the job of the adults in their lives?
I hope this gets overturned on appeal, after watching the documentary I can’t help feeling she was just as sick as he was, and made a terrible mistake when put in a situation she had no chance of managing. 20 years in jail for a suicidal teenager who failed to stop another suicidal teenager from dying is incomprehensible.
She got 15 months, not 20 years. This case is definitely a grey area but to me what clinched it was when she told him to get back into the car after he told her he was scared. Everyone in this case has to share responsibility but if she hadn't said to get back into the car and then later text that she was scared of being punished for telling him to commit suicide, I don't she would have been convicted.
But she didn't "fail to stop him" she encouraged & urged him to commit suicide.
We don’t even have evidence of that though. We actually just know he spoke to her for 40 seconds before he died. But even if she did, he still created the situation then actively got back into the car. If I tell you to drive fast you have a choice whether to do it or not, which is why I can’t get a speeding ticket for it. And she was suicidal herself. If she thought dying was a good option for her, wouldn’t she logically think it was helpful to encourage him to do the same? I just can’t see her as more culpable than his parents who didn’t know where their suicidal teen was. The legal standard is that you have to prove that he wouldn’t have died except for her actions and there’s at least a 50% chance he would have gotten back in that car himself.