Tragic power of a girl over lovestruck boy
Suicide-by-text recalls similar ‘puppet master’
There was something so familiar in the stories about Michelle Carter, the young Massachusetts woman sentenced this week to two and a half years in prison (15 months of which she will serve, the rest suspended) for involuntary manslaughter in the death of her then-boyfriend Conrad Roy.
Carter, who was 17 at the time and is now 20, goaded and badgered the 18-year-old Roy unto suicide.
As Roy kept talking about killing himself by inhaling carbon monoxide in his truck, then backing off actually doing it, mostly out of concern for his parents and siblings, Carter grew impatient.
“I thought you wanted to do this,” she told him in a text. “The time is right and you’re ready, you just need to do it! You can’t keep living this way. You just need to do it like you did last time and not think about it and just do it, babe. You can’t keep doing this every day.”
“I do want to,” Roy replied, “but like I’m freaking for my family. I guess…”
“Conrad,” Carter snapped. “I told you I’ll take care of them. Everyone will take care of them to make sure they won’t be alone and people will help them get thru it.
“We talked about this, they will be okay and accept it. People who commit suicide don’t think this much and they just do it.”
A little later — these exchanges were on the day before Roy’s body was found — dawn was approaching and he was losing his nerve.
“Do u wanna do it now?” Carter asked.
Roy suggested it was too late: “Idkk it’s already light outside. I’m gonna go back to sleep, love you I’ll text you tomorrow.”
“No?” Carter said. “Its [sic] probably the best time now because everyone’s sleeping. Just go somewhere in your truck. And no one’s really out right now because it’s an awkward time.”
Eventually, he promised he’d do it, and she asked, “Like right now?” He asked, “where do I go?:(”
“And u can’t break a promise,” Carter said. “And just go in a quiet parking lot or something.”
At one point, Roy actually got out of the truck as it began to fill with lethal fumes, but, the pair now talking on mobiles, Carter smartly told him to “get back in.”
He was found in the truck, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning, on July 13, 2014, in a parking lot in Fairhaven, Mass., about 100 kilometres south of Boston.
This was apparently the first case of its kind in the United States, and I couldn’t recall one like it in Canada.
But then I remembered Melissa Todorovic — the “puppet master,” as Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian Nordheimer called her — and that what was familiar was the awesome power of the teenage girl over a lovestruck boy.
As Carter exhorted Roy to take his own life, Todorovic urged her boyfriend, David Bagshaw, to kill Stefanie Rengel, a beautiful 14-yearold girl Todorovic had never met yet considered her greatest rival because she’d been kind to Bagshaw when they were younger.
Bagshaw was four days from turning 18 when he lured Stefanie out of her house on New Year’s Day, 2008. He stabbed her six times and left her to die in the snow, then headed off to his reward — sex with Todorovic, who was six days away from her sweet 16.
When he reported in to her right after the deed was done, Todorovic immediately called Stefanie’s cell, to make sure he wasn’t kidding.
As Roy had been hesitant and kept trying to put off killing himself, so had Bagshaw been trying to stall.
Once, he complained that he couldn’t do the job because he had no mask or gloves.
“Cut f---ing leotards,” Todorovic replied.
As Carter nagged Roy to get on with it — this after originally urging him to seek help — Todorovic had been pressuring Bagshaw for months in more than 3,300 messages and calls — threatening to withhold sex, threatening to have sex with other boys — to kill Stefanie.
The Massachusetts judge, Lawrence Moniz, found that neither Carter’s age, level of maturity or her purported mental illness ( she had an eating disorder) mitigated what she did. “She is a bright young lady,” the judge said, “did well in school and I am satisfied she was mindful of the actions for which she now stands convicted.”
Similarly was Todorovic bright, conventional and a model student and daughter.
And her judge, Nordheimer, found that she was the driving force behind the murder plan.
“Put simply,” he said, “the puppet master is not less blameworthy than the puppet. Indeed, I would suggest that the master is more culpable.”
Todorovic was sentenced as an adult to the maximum sentence available under the law for someone under the age of 16 — a life sentence for first-degree murder and no chance of parole for seven years.
A deeply shamed Bagshaw pleaded guilty to the same charge and was also sentenced to life in prison, with no ability to apply for parole for 10 years.
Nordheimer noted the difference between him and his former girl: He was capable of empathy and remorse; she was not. Carter will remain free until lawyers have exhausted her appeals.
Conrad Roy was an aspiring tugboat captain with a beautiful, wide-open American face. He was battling depression.
CARTER, WHO WAS 17 AT THE TIME AND IS NOW 20, GOADED AND BADGERED THE 18-YEAR-OLD ROY UNTO SUICIDE. — COLUMNIST CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD