Michelle Carter was 17-years-old when she played a “sick game” that cost 18-year-old Conrad Roy III his life, according to Massachusetts prosecutor Maryclare Flynn. Carter was charged with manslaughter. She is alleged to have texted messages to Roy, her boyfriend, encouraging him to kill himself after he had second thoughts.

Flynn opened Carter’s jury-waived trial today with the contention that Carter, now 20, urged Roy to commit suicide through dozens of telephone calls and text messages. A judge will decide her fate in the case.

July 2014, Carter and Roy had a 47-minute phone conversation while he sat in a truck.

He shared reservations about killing himself when Carter reportedly told him to get back in the truck. Roy used a generator connected to the exhaust system of a truck to commit suicide. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The following day, Roy was discovered dead in a Kmart parking lot outside of Boston.

When Carter was indicted in 2015, her attorney tried to get the charge dismissed. A juvenile court judge denied his request, so her attorney appealed to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). A year after Roy’s death, the SJC ordered Carter to stand trial. The court stated that a grand jury, in Bristol County, had probable cause for indicting her, determining that her verbal conduct had a coercive quality.

The ruling found that Roy’s willpower to cope with his depression was overwhelmed by Carter’s conduct. Justice Robert Cordy, who has since retired, noted in his ruling that Roy would not have gotten back into the truck or poisoned himself if not for Carter’s pressure, admonishments, and instructions.

In 2012, Carter and Roy met in Florida and lived in southeastern Massachusetts just 35 miles apart, but they saw each other in person a few times.

The majority of their communications were by telephone and text messages.

Defendant’s actions after boyfriend killed himself

Carter didn’t call Roy’s parents or authorities when he died, according to Flynn. She allegedly wanted attention and sympathy from being a grieving girlfriend. Carter’s attorney, however, presented an entirely different view of his client.

Joseph Cataldo, representing Carter in her defense, said Carter urged her boyfriend to get help. He was reportedly depressed following his parents' divorce and after having been verbally and physically abused by his family members. He researched suicide methods online and had suicidal ideation for some time.

Carter allegedly rejected idea of Romeo and Juliet

It was Roy, according to Cataldo, who told Cater that the couple should be like Romeo And Juliet, teen lovers who killed themselves in Shakespeare’s same-name play. Carter rebuked the idea, saying she didn’t want them to die.

Cataldo said it was a sad and tragic suicide, but not Carter’s idea and not a homicide. Carter’s judgment may have been clouded, he stated, by medications for her mental health struggles.

Lynn Roy, Roy’s mother, was the prosecution’s first witness. Hours before her son killed himself, the two had walked on the beach. During that time, according to her, he displayed no signs that he was going to hurt himself. After she noticed that her son’s truck was missing, she called police

Following her son’s suicide, Roy’s mother also stated that Carter sent her text messages expressing sympathy, yet Carter did not mention knowing anything about plans to commit suicide. His mother did acknowledge that there was tension in the relationship her son had with his father.

Roy’s sister, Camdyn Roy, was 13-years-old when he died. Her testimony was similar to her mother’s: Roy wasn’t sad when they were at the beach.

Carter also texted her sympathetic messages, yet did not indicate the two were in contact.

The worst evidence against Carter is a litany – dozens – of text messages that the prosecution contends pushed Roy to kill himself.