Michelle Carter Charged With Encouraging Boyfriend Conrad Roy To Commit Suicide

Michelle Carter has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the 2014 death of her boyfriend Conrad Roy.

Michelle Carter Charged

It was determined Wednesday that Carter would be charged with involuntary manslaughter for encouraging Roy to commit suicide, reported MassLive.com.

Prosecutors, who had been seeking the formal charge, had argued that Carter used text messages to pressure Roy to carry out a plan to end his life, and even offered him suggestions on how to do it. Furthermore, prosecutors contested that Carter lied to police and Roy’s family about where he might be during and after his suicide.

“You always say you’re gonna do it, but you never do,” Carter complained to Roy via text when he expressed trepidation about going through with taking his own life. “I just want to make sure tonight is the real thing.”

On July 12, 2014, Roy parked his pickup truck in a KMart parking lot, and turned on a gas-powered water pump he’d set up inside the vehicle. He eventually died of carbon monoxide poisoning and was found the following morning.

After Roy’s death, Carter revealed to a friend that she could be held partially responsible. “[If the police] read my messages with him I’m done. His family will hate me and I can go to jail,” Carter texted a pal.

Carter also admitted to a friend, “Like, honestly I could have stopped it. I was on the phone with him and he got out of the car” because the carbon monoxide from the pump was working. Carter added to the friend that she “told [Roy] to get back in.”

Carter’s attorney Joseph P. Cataldo, who had been hoping to get the manslaughter charge dismissed, had argued that Roy “brainwashed” his client into encouraging his own suicide.