The Shocking True Story of The Girl from Plainville

The Shocking True Story of The Girl from Plainville

Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re discussing The Shocking True Story of The Girl from Plainville.

For this video, we’ll be looking at the tragic events that inspired Hulu’s 2022 series.

Are you going to watch “The Girl from Plainville”? Let us know in the comments.

In 2017, Michelle Carter was found guilty during the Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter trial. She had been charged with involuntary manslaughter for encouraging her 18-year-old boyfriend Conrad Roy III to take his own life in 2014 when she was still 17. The conflicting narratives in the court, the media, and the families of Carter and Roy made this a polarizing case and fascinated viewers across the country. It brought up issues involving the mental health of teenagers, free speech, and the “dangers” of modern technology. So, what led to these unfortunate events?

​​Michelle and Conrad first met in February 2012 while vacationing in Florida. Each was visiting relatives that happened to live nearby one another. When they both returned home to Massachusetts, they continued talking to each other via text and email. Conrad lived in Mattapoisett, about an hour away from Michelle in Plainville. The two only saw each other in person a handful of times. Their entire relationship existed online.

A significant factor in their relationship was that both struggled with their mental health. Michelle had a history of an eating disorder, while Conrad suffered from anxiety and depression. Before becoming of legal age, Conrad was hospitalized after attempting to overdose on acetaminophen. In June of 2014, Michelle was treated for anorexia at a psychiatric hospital. She suggested that he join her at the hospital, where they could heal together. But Conrad refused.

Between 2012 and 2014, Michelle told her boyfriend to seek professional help for his mental health, but in early July of that latter year, something changed. She began encouraging him to take his own life, after Roy himself had proposed a month earlier that they be like Romeo and Juliet. Carter went as far as to help him plan the logistics; researching methods, suggesting different ways he could do it. And when he showed any hesitation, she continued to egg him on, assuring him that his family would be fine, and that this was the only way for him to be happy.

Conrad sent his last text to Michelle around 6pm on July 12, 2014. He drove to an empty parking lot with a gas-powered water pump, and once he started it, toxic fumes filled the inside of his truck. Michelle was allegedly on the phone with him the whole time. And even though she’d just listened to his final moments, she began texting Conrad’s younger sister Camdyn, asking if she’d heard from him. The inquisitive texts continued into the next day, when Conrad’s mother Lynn called the police. Conrad’s truck was found in the parking lot of a Fairhaven Kmart. Inside, the 18-year-old was deceased, with evidence of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Michelle attended Conrad’s wake and kept in constant contact with his family. She supposedly even asked to have some of his ashes, and to take some of his belongings. Two months after his death, Michelle was involved with a Homers for Conrad fundraiser in her hometown of Plainville, though all of his friends and family were in Mattapoisett.

In September of that same year, Michelle sends a damning message to her friend Sam. She confessed that, at one point, when Conrad became scared and got out of the truck, she told him to “get back in.” This exchange with him was not in their text messages, but over the phone, a call lasting over 40 minutes.

After finding deeply disturbing text messages between Michelle and Conrad, detectives obtained a warrant for her phone. Many didn’t even know the two were dating, so when the text messages revealed a very intense, mentally destructive relationship, it was a shock to everyone. On February 4, 2015, a grand jury found that there was enough cause to charge Michelle for “wantonly and recklessly” participating in Conrad’s death. She was then indicted for involuntary manslaughter.

Investigators and the prosecution discovered Michelle often wasn’t living in reality. She was painted as an attention-seeking teenage girl with no friends, desperate to fit in at school. Classmates she thought of as best friends didn’t think the same of her; instead they found her needy. A few days before his death, she texted multiple friends that her boyfriend was missing, when he actually wasn’t. The prosecution called it a “dry run,” meaning she was testing the waters to see if his disappearance (or death) would get her attention. And it did.

One year before her boyfriend’s death, “Glee” actor Cory Monteith died from an overdose. Michelle’s obsession with Lea Michele, Monteith’s on-screen and off-screen love interest, influenced her behavior and rhetoric when she talked about Conrad. She would text nearly word for word lines from the show, or quote Lea from interviews.

On June 5, 2017, Michelle Carter opted for a bench trial, meaning that instead of a jury deciding her fate, it would be one judge. The controversial trial began the next day. The defense argued that the texts fell under free speech, and that since she wasn’t physically at the scene when Conrad took his life, this is not a crime. However, the court found that her incessant texting created a “virtual presence.” The defense also hired psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, who claimed that Michelle experienced “involuntary intoxication” from taking antidepressants. However, his claims weren’t found credible.

On June 16, Judge Lawrence Moniz found Michelle guilty of involuntary manslaughter. He ruled on the basis that once she instructed Conrad to get back inside the toxic vehicle via phone, Michelle’s “wanton and reckless encouragement” led to his ultimate death.

Though convicted, Michelle went home on bail. And on August 3, she was sentenced to two-and-a-half-years. Only 15 months of those were to actually be served in jail, with the remaining time suspended, plus five years of probation. However, at the request of her lawyers, Judge Moniz granted a “stay,” allowing Michelle to (once again) go free during the appeals process.

Carter began serving her 15-month sentence on February 11, 2019. However, she was released early for being a model inmate on January 23, 2020, meaning she only served 11 months and 12 days of her 15-month sentence. She is set to remain on probation until August 2022.

This unprecedented case garnered nationwide attention and has been source material for both fiction and nonfiction projects. In 2018, Lifetime aired their TV movie, “Conrad & Michelle: If Words Could Kill,” starring Bella Thorne and Austin P. McKenzie in the title roles. The most notable documentary on the case is the 2019 HBO documentary “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth V. Michelle Carter.” And on March 29, 2022, Hulu will premiere their new series “The Girl from Plainville,” based on Jesse Barron’s 2017 Esquire article of the same name.