Miscellaneous
Hey, folks! I talked at length about the 'Boogie House' giveaway going on on my site right now, and I promised I would provide the link to it so you can get in on all the free giveaway action! The giveaway ends July 30, so enter today for a chance to win a SIGNED copy of the first Rolson McKane Book. Click here to enter... Now, on to the episode. From 2012-2014, Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy III texted each other thousands of times. They met, as it were, through absolute happenstance. In 2012, both families were vacationing in Florida, when Carter and Roy met. Turns out, they lived less than an hour away in their hometowns in Massachusetts. Still, being high school students, they rarely saw each other, and instead fell into an intense online relationship, trading FaceBook and text messages. Roy’s parents separated and then divorced. Roy fell into a deep despair and then tried to commit suicide. It was Carter who helped him through these difficult times. Carter encouraged Roy to receive treatment for his depression. His past battles resulted in four failed suicide attempts. Carter herself struggled with emotional issues. She fought depression, too, as well as eating disorders and extreme insecurities. She often cut herself when she was overly distraught. She craved the attention of more popular girls in school and became despondent over their lack of personal attention. Then, after a time of being Roy’s sort of personal sounding board, in which she kept him from veering to the dark side of his mentality, she then took up the cause of convincing him to kill himself. Why, exactly, she shifted is up for speculation. However, the evidence points to a perceived complex on Carter’s part regarding her insecurities of being unpopular. This is where the story gets a little bizarre, so bear with me while we delve into it. Of all the thousands and thousands of messages passed along between Carter and Roy, several happen to relate very closely to the TV show Glee, which ran from 2009-2015 and followed the exploits of high school students with a propensity for leaping into song. Okay, a little backstory: So, one of the show’s stars, Cory Monteith, died of a drug overdose in 2013. He was dating co-star Lea Michele at the time. The show, to give Monteith a proper memorial, filmed an episode devoted to the young star. The episode, entitled “The Quarterback,” aired on October 10, 2013. Carter, it appears, seemed to have drawn inspiration from this series of events, up to and including the idea that she take on the “grieving girlfriend” role after his death to elicit sympathy from other people in the classroom. In the wake of Roy’s death, Carter communicated with several friends, and a few of the text messages have an eerie closeness to the script from “The Quarterback” episode of Glee. Here’s one example. It’s a text message to friend Samantha Boardman six days after the death of Roy. I had it all planned out. He was gonna graduate Fitchburg and then when I graduated the college I'm going to, we would live happily ever after on the ocean somewhere, with our son Conrad the 4th. He knew too I didn't have to tell him. Now it's gonna be something different, maybe something better, but I just don't think that that's possible. He was my person. And another text the next day, this time to a different friend, but the wording and message is ostensibly the same. I just had it all planned out with Conrad. Now I have to do something different, maybe something better, I just don't think that that's possible. He was my person you know? Now, here’s the script from Glee. Rachel: I had it all planned out. I was gonna make it big on Broadway and maybe make a Woody Allen movie. And then when we were ready, I would just come back and he'd be teaching here and I'd walk through those doors and I would just say "I'm home" and then we would live happily ever after. Will: That's a good plan. Did you tell him? Rachel: I didn't have to. He knew. Will: And now what? Rachel: I don't know, something different. Will: Maybe something better. Rachel: I just — I don't think that's possible. He was my person. Play the video: https://youtu.be/9bMuEQxwkR0 Here’s another one. In a text to Boardman mere days after Roy’s death, Carter said: He was the greatest man I ever knew and I literally lived every day feeling like the luckiest girl in the world when I had him. In a December 2013 interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Michele had this to say about Monteith: I was so happy. He’s such a private person, and 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. A final example. In the same conversation with Boardman, Carter writes: One of the hardest parts is feeling like I'm gonna forget everything. And I don't want to. I can still hear his voice so clearly. And the corresponding lines in Glee. Rachel says to Will: I can still see his face and I can hear his voice so clearly. Do you think that I'll ever forget it? Because I'm afraid that one day I will. Though a few others deal tangentially with Glee, the vast majority of text messages, especially the ones on the days of July 13 and 14, are harrowing for completely different reasons. July 12, 2014 He parked his truck in a KMart parking lot. Conrad Roy III got out of the truck, trying to back out of the suicide attempt, when Michelle Carter -- an hour away at the time -- told him to get back in and finish the job. This moment, the judge concluded, is what made Michelle Carter’s actions a crime. The trial took a week. Carter waived the right to a jury trial. The defense argued that Carter’s reaction to antidepressants had affected her to a dangerous extent. Dr. Peter Breggin, who testified for the defense, “said Ms. Carter was ‘intoxicated’ by antidepressants, which she first started taking at 14, causing her to become unhinged at times and to show intense anxiety, irritability and psychoses.” Carter, 20, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and will be sentenced August 3. She faces up to 20 years in prison. The defense team is suspected to appeal the decision to a higher court. Controversy The ACLU argues that words alone cannot be responsible for someone else’s actions. NYT: “This is saying that what she did is killing him, that her words literally killed him, that the murder weapon here was her words,” said Matthew Segal, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which raised concerns about the case to the state’s highest court. “That is a drastic expansion of criminal law in Massachusetts.”