‘I was on the phone talking to him when he killed himself,’ Michelle Carter texted to woman

TAUNTON — In text messages sent to her peers in 2014, Michelle Carter described herself as a teenager whose friendships ended at the doors of her school, leaving her friendless, lonely, and feeling worthless.

“Yeah I have school friends that all say they love me . . . [but] no one ever asks to hang out with me. No one ever calls me or texts me,’’ Carter texted to Samantha Boardman, according to testimony at Carter’s involuntary manslaughter trial Tuesday. “It’s always me who has to do it.’’

Carter, who Bristol County prosecutors allege cajoled Conrad Roy III to kill himself as part of a “sick game of life and death’’ solely to improve her social standing, described the importance she placed on having a vibrant social life.

“So when someone actually makes an effort to talk to me and hangout and stuff it makes me feel so happy and I actually feel important like I’m worth something,’’ Carter wrote.

To another acquaintance, she wrote: “Stop telling me how wonderful and beautiful I am. Beautiful girls get invited to parties and their friends call and wanna hang out . . . I have like no friends. I am alone all the time.’’

At the same time that Carter was seeking friendships, authorities allege she was using her power of persuasion to recklessly convince Roy, 18, to follow through with plans to kill himself, and even ordered him to get back into his truck when he had second thoughts about suicide.

Moreover, Carter allegedly listened to Roy on her cellphone as he breathed in a fatal dose of carbon monoxide, and never alerted authorities or his family who might have been prevented him from ending his life on July 12, 2014, in a K-Mart parking lot in Fairhaven.

But the defense contends that Roy’s death was the result of his own internal emotional challenges and that the Mattapoisett man searched the Internet repeatedly for ways to commit suicide. Carter’s sometimes imperious notes to Roy were a side effect of the SSRI medication she was taking for impulse control, her defense lawyer said.

During the second day of testimony in Carter’s involuntary manslaughter trial in Bristol Juvenile Court, both aspects of Carter’s text messages were introduced before Judge Lawrence Moniz, who is presiding at the jury-waived trial.

Moniz will tour the parking lot where Roy died and at least one other site Wednesday afternoon.

Boardman also provided a text message Carter sent to her with a deeply disturbing revelation. “I could have stopped him but I told him to get back in the car. I knew he would do it all over again,’’ she wrote to Boardman. “I couldn’t have him living the way he was living any more.’’

Just days after Roy’s suicide, Carter texted a woman she barely knew claiming to have been apparently admitting she listened as Roy died.

“I was on the phone talking to him when he killed himself,’’ Carter allegedly texted Ali Eithier. “I heard him dying.’’

Eithier said she first met Carter at a summer camp where Eithier started working as a counselor in 2014. She said she did not know Carter well, and was surprised when the then-17-year-old Carter began texting her without being invited by Eithier to do so.

Four days after she got the first text from Carter, Eithier said Carter began discussing Roy and his death writing her that she had a boyfriend that she did not name, but did note that “he’s in a bad place right now.’’

Carter also wrote the text where she admitted listening to Roy as he died, prompting Eithier to suggest that she see a therapist “considering I don’t know you very well.’’

Carter replied: “I have a therapist already, haha. I already have a therapist. I talked to her about it yesterday.’’

In another text, Carter portrayed herself as Roy’s confidante who tried to help him. “I’m the only one he told things too. I should have gotten him more help. . .’’

Eithier was followed to the stand by Olivia Mosolgo, who was familiar with Carter, having met her when they were in seventh grade. They both later played on the same softball team.

Mosolgo testified that on July 20, 2014, two days after Roy committed suicide, Carter again acknowledged in a text that she was on the phone as he died. “. . . I was talking on the phone with him when he killed himself . . . I heard him die,’’ Carter wrote.

During testimony Tuesday, Roy’s mother, Lynn Roy, said her son overdosed on an over-the-counter pain prescription in 2012 and was hospitalized. But over the next two years, his mental health improved, he graduated from high school, and he earned a maritime captain’s license. Conrad Roy moved in with his mother in 2014, after his relationship with his father became strained, she said.

Choking up during her testimony, Lynn Roy recounted the day her son died. In the hours before he was found, he had gone to the beach with her and siblings, showing no signs of distress, she testified. When the family returned home, Roy said he was going to a friend’s house. Lynn Roy casually asked if he’d be back for dinner.

“I don’t think so,’’ he replied.

It was the last time she saw her son alive.

After his death, Carter sent Lynn Roy supportive text messages and never mentioned how she was in communication with her son in the days before his death.

“You didn’t fail him, not even a little bit,’’ Carter wrote in a text message to Lynn Roy, who was blaming herself for her son’s suicide. “You tried your hardest, I tried my hardest, everyone tried their hardest to save him. But he had his mind set on taking his life.’’