http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/28 ... ei=5087%0A

Megan Meier died believing that somewhere in this world lived a boy named Josh Evans who hated her. He was 16, owned a pet snake, and she thought he was the cutest boyfriend she ever had.

Josh contacted Megan through her page on MySpace.com, the social networking Web site, said Megan’s mother, Tina Meier. They flirted for weeks, but only online — Josh said his family had no phone. On Oct. 15, 2006, Josh suddenly turned mean. He called Megan names, and later they traded insults for an hour.

The next day, in his final message, said Megan’s father, Ron Meier, Josh wrote, “The world would be a better place without you.”

Sobbing, Megan ran into her bedroom closet. Her mother found her there, hanging from a belt. She was 13.

Six weeks after Megan’s death, her parents learned that Josh Evans never existed. He was an online character created by Lori Drew, then 47, who lived four houses down the street in this rapidly growing community 35 miles northwest of St. Louis.

That an adult would plot such a cruel hoax against a 13-year-old girl has drawn outraged phone calls, e-mail messages and blog posts from around the world. Many people expressed anger because St. Charles County officials did not charge Ms. Drew with a crime.

But a St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman, Lt. Craig McGuire, said that what Ms. Drew did “might’ve been rude, it might’ve been immature, but it wasn’t illegal.”

In response to the events, the local Board of Aldermen on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure making Internet harassment a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail.

“Give me a break; that’s nothing,” Mayor Pam Fogarty said of the penalties. “But it’s the most we could do. People are saying to me, ‘Let’s go burn down their house.’”

St. Charles County’s prosecuting attorney, Jack Banas, said he was reviewing the case to determine whether anyone could be charged with a crime. State Representative Doug Funderburk, whose district includes Dardenne Prairie, said he was looking into the feasibility of introducing legislation to tighten restrictions against online harassment and fraud.

In seventh grade, Megan Meier had tried desperately to join the popular crowd at Fort Zumwalt West Middle School, only to be teased about her weight, her mother said. At the beginning of eighth grade last year, she transferred to Immaculate Conception, a nearby Catholic school. Within three months, Ms. Meier said, her daughter had a new group of friends, lost 20 pounds and joined the volleyball team.

At one time, Lori Drew’s daughter and Megan had been “joined at the hip,” said Megan’s great-aunt Vicki Dunn. But the two drifted apart, and when Megan changed schools she told the other girl that she no longer wanted to be friends, Ms. Meier said.

In a report filed with the Sheriff’s Department, Lori Drew said she created the MySpace profile of “Josh Evans” to win Megan’s trust and learn how Megan felt about her daughter. Reached at home, Lori’s husband, Curt Drew, said only that the family had no comment.

Because Ms. Drew had taken Megan on family vacations, she knew the girl had been prescribed antidepression medication, Ms. Meier said. She also knew that Megan had a MySpace page.

Ms. Drew had told a girl across the street about the hoax, said the girl’s mother, who requested anonymity to protect her daughter, a minor.

“Lori laughed about it,” the mother said, adding that Ms. Drew and Ms. Drew’s daughter “said they were going to mess with Megan.”

After a month of innocent flirtation between Megan and Josh, Ms. Meier said, Megan suddenly received a message from him saying, “I don’t like the way you treat your friends, and I don’t know if I want to be friends with you.”

They argued online. The next day other youngsters who had linked to Josh’s MySpace profile joined the increasingly bitter exchange and began sending profanity-laden messages to Megan, who retreated to her bedroom. No more than 15 minutes had passed, Ms. Meier recalled, when she suddenly felt something was terribly wrong. She rushed to the bedroom and found her daughter’s body hanging in the closet.

As paramedics worked to revive Megan, the neighbor who insisted on anonymity said, Lori Drew called the neighbor’s daughter and told her to “keep her mouth shut” about the MySpace page.

Six weeks later, at a meeting with the Meiers, mediated by grief counselors, the neighbor told them that “Josh” was a hoax. The Drews were not present.

“I just sat there in shock,” Mr. Meier said.

Shortly before Megan’s death, the Meiers had agreed to store a foosball table the Drews had bought as a Christmas surprise for their children. When the Meiers learned about the MySpace hoax, they attacked the table with a sledgehammer and an ax, Ms. Meier said, and threw the pieces onto the Drews’ driveway.

“I felt like such a fool,” Mr. Meier said. “I’m supposed to protect my family, and here I allowed these people to inject themselves into our lives.”

The police learned about the hoax when Ms. Drew filed a complaint about the damage to the foosball table. In the report, she stated that she felt the hoax “contributed to Megan’s suicide, but she did not feel ‘as guilty’ because at the funeral she found out Megan had tried to commit suicide before.”

Megan had mentioned suicide several times, her mother said, but had never attempted it, and no one who knew her, including her doctors, felt she was suicidal.

On the advice of F.B.I. agents who did not want the Drews to learn of their investigation of the hoax, Ms. Meier said, her family said nothing publicly about the case for a year. Today, the Meier and the Drew families continue to live four houses from one another on a winding suburban street.

“There are no words to explain my rage,” Ms. Meier said. “These people were supposed to be our friends.”

Quite a piece of work, this Mrs. Drew. Just, wow.

What a cunt, she should get her ass beat by the girl's parents

While I do hope Ms. Drew gets what is coming to her, where were the girl's parents throughout this whole "online relationship" thing? They just let their 13-year-old kid have an online relationship with someone they've never even met?

i imagine they didn't know about it. i'm not sure the story directly addressed it. but them not knowing is just as bad.

You're right, there is something wrong even if they didn't know about it, but it seems they did:

Wow. Just wow. This woman knew a young teen was depressed and suicidal and then has the presence of mind to engage in a cruel mind fuck on her. Like you said PD, quite a piece of work. I'm thinking a nice curling iron in her cunt would shut her up for a while.

What she did was pretty malicious. However, many of us have participated in malicious things online as well. I doubt any of us ever intended for someone to die because of it, as I'm sure Ms. Drew did not intend (maybe she did, who knows). Of course, now people in this thread will deny that they have ever been mean for the purpose of entertainment online, where it is so easy to anonymously fuck with people.

What she did was mean spirited but it certainly should not be a crime. You don't see men going to jail after breaking up with their partners and tellling them the world would be better off without them, even if they subsequently commit suicide. I realize it is not the exact same thing, but the differences in the actual situation don't change the outcome.

We might find it is even harder to hunt down people being mean over the internet than it is to hunt down music pirates.

I think the issue is that she was 47 and the girl was 13, and she knew that.

If it had been another teenager, this wouldn't be a story.

I guess that is an issue, but I'm not comprehending how it changes everything?

what a fucked up woman to do that do anyone, nevermind a depressed teenager....i don't see a crime here, but if i was a family member of the girl who killed herself, i would fucking beat that woman to near death

Purposes of Internet (not a dump truck):
1.) amatuer interracial pr0n
2.) finding people who will repsond to your views about the lastest sell out by coporate whore bands from Seattle
3.) harassing people using terms like "noob" and "teh ghey" and finding new ways to incorporate the N word into your WoW screen name.

So, good luck enforcing that one.

My current WOW character's name is "Farrakhanftw".

that's really fucked up.

POTD.

wow, what an evil woman, she should be beaten
but as has been said the parents let there 13 year old suicidal (well at least severly depressed) child carry on an internet relationship for over a month...if my child was in that state of mind he would not have un supervised computer access, remember the girl killed herself thinking a 16 year old boy had dumped her, she clearly had other problems, but that being said no adult should drive a 13 year old child to that point ever.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314620,00.html

Missouri prosecutors will not file criminal charges in connection with the suicide of a teen who had been dumped by a fictitious boy on MySpace, officials announced Monday.

St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas announced at a news conference that there wasn't enough evidence to press criminal charges in connection with the death of Megan Meier, 13.

Meier of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., committed suicide last year after being dumped by "Josh," a boy created under the direction of Lori Drew, the mother of one of Megan's former friends, who wanted to know what the girl was saying about her daughter online.

"Their purpose was never to cause her emotional harassment that we can prove," Banas said. "There's a difference between what people think or what we may believe the reason was that they created this, it's what we can prove and what a jury would believe."

Banas said statements from the neighbor and two teens who participated in the fictitious account couldn't meet criminal standards for the state's statutes on harassment, stalking or endangering the welfare of a child.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation lead the investigation after the U.S. Attorney's Office was contacted by the Meier family, Banas said.

Meier's parents have contended her suicide was the result of the neighbor's MySpace harassment.

"There's no dispute that Mrs. Drew was aware of the creation of this MySpace," Banas said. "It was done by a young person that was in the employ of her — an 18-year-old girl along with her younger daughter — and the sole purpose by all parties that were involved in this was has been to find out what Megan was saying about this 13-year-old daughter of Mrs. Drew."

Megan's mother, Tina Meier, said last month she didn't think anyone involved intended for her daughter to kill herself.

"But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old, with or without mental problems, it is absolutely vile," Tina Meier told the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, which first reported on the case.

Tina Meier said law enforcement officials told her the case did not fit into any law.

"You have a lot of facts that have gone out across this country that are a misstatement of facts, of things that occurred that actually didn't occur — some being true, some not being true," Banas said.

This is a big part of what's wrong with how people are raising their kids these days. Guess what? People grow up and friends grow apart, which is what happened to this little girl and her friend. Her mother should have explained this to her and comforted her - not unleashed a revenge attack on the other little girl. WTF?

by the way, more on the sequence of events:

They should have taken that girl's body down and reattached the belt to Ms. Drew's ankle so she has to drag the corpse around for the rest of her life.

That would be a fitting punishment.