Michelle Carter, took an in-depth look at the now-infamous case, which raised national questions about mental health-and whether one teen can be held responsible for the suicide of another. The 2019 HBO documentary, I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. It's always gonna be that way if u don't take action,” she reportedly texted him on the day he died. “You keep pushing it off and say you'll do it but u never do. In the weeks leading up to his suicide, Roy exchanged several texts with his 17-year-old long-distance girlfriend, Michelle Carter, who encouraged him to end his life.
#MICHELLE CARTER TEXTS GENERATOR#
The honor roll student, who struggled with social anxiety and depression, had killed himself by attaching a hose from a portable generator and filling his car's cab with carbon monoxide. As the defense's psychiatrist points out, if Carter is deemed an unreliable narrator of her own story, why do we choose to believe her in some moments and not others? And the answer seems to be, "Because we need to blame somebody.On July 13, 2014, authorities discovered the body of 18-year-old Conrad Roy III in his pickup truck, parked outside a Kmart in Fairhaven, Massachussetts. There was a time when he got out of his car and said he was scared to continue, but she reportedly told him to get back in even though there are no text messages to support this other than a self-flagellation text from Carter to a friend several weeks later. The problem with this analogy is that it removes all agency from Roy, whose behavior comes perilously close to the abusive boyfriend who warns, "If you leave me, I'll kill myself." The Commonwealth's case rests on the belief that because Carter had text messages spurring Roy on, he would be alive if not for her.
Any crime of passion could be filed under the label of "tragedy." If a mentally ill person stabs you with a knife, the mentally ill person still has to go into an institution of some sort. I will note, however, that tragedy does not absolve guilt. To fail in this role is "criminal" and so if a man is a victim of his emotions, it's because the emotional caretaker, a woman, did not live up to her "duty."
They are deemed "witches" and the term "bewitched" means "under control." This perception is a dark and insidious twisting of the already problematic perception that women must always bear the role of nurturer and caretaker, and always reducing them to wife and mother. Both Roy and Carter were on anti-depressant medication, but where are their psychiatrists in all of this? Roy's parents say they just assumed Carter was a regular girlfriend (Carter and her parents declined to be interviewed for the documentary), but if he's a minor, why is Carter responsible but not them? Or why aren't Carter's parents responsible for their daughter? The burden appears to lie with Carter because her actions were apparently malignant rather than simply negligent, but this in turn reveals even greater failings on the part of our society.Īs the documentary wisely points out, we have a long tradition of blaming women, especially when it comes to the mental illnesses of others. When you start pulling back you see a system of failures. Carter needed the love and adoration that felt in tune with the popular media she consumed like The Fault in Our Stars and Glee. Roy needed an audience for his suicidal tendencies. The immediate tragedy is that these two mentally ill teenagers found each other and fed each other's worse impulses. When you look the case holistically, you can only see layers upon layers of tragedy. If you're not careful, she or women like her will get you to kill yourself via text message as well.īut when you start spending time with the case and talking to people who have looked through not just the text messages but spoken to Carter's associates and examined her social media presence, a more nuanced and difficult portrait emerges. Now there's a narrative, and it's one our society clings too far too often and too quickly: it was the evil woman who used her powers of seduction and coercion to get an innocent young man to kill himself.
If we blame Carter and can point to text messages where she encouraged Conrad to commit suicide, then she is to blame and justice can be served. The texts with Carter offer an avenue of blame. He was young with his whole life ahead of him and a family that loved him. Conrad Roy III is dead and he shouldn't be.