MURDER BY TEXT MESSAGE

Michelle spent months encouraging her boyfriend to take his life... then he did

- Emma Levett

Do you believe a person can commit a crime through words alone? This was a question put to prospective jurors during a 2017 trial that would send shockwaves through the US and the world.

It was an important question because there was never any suggestion that Michelle Carter was at the scene of the killing she was charged with.

Instead, it was argued, she had encouraged her boyfriend, 18-year-old Conrad Roy III, to take his life via text message.

The couple only met in person a handful of times. Michelle, a baby-faced blonde from Plainville, Massachusetts, lived an hour away from Conrad. They'd become friends in February 2012 while both visiting family in Florida and stayed in touch on their phones in the two years before Conrad's death.

Calls and texts were the primary ways Michelle and Conrad conducted their relationship and police would later discover 317 pages of their often deeply disturbing correspondence.

Michelle was aware of Conrad's struggle with depression because in October 2012 he made his first attempt to kill himself. He failed, vomiting the liquid painkiller he'd taken, and when he woke up, he sent a text to Michelle.

“Do you even care what's happening to me? he wrote.