Legal News

MySpace: ?You’re the Kind of Boy a Girl Would Kill Herself Over?

By Dan Slater

A couple big revelations in the MySpace suicide trial, about to head into its fourth day in Los Angeles federal court:

Prosecutors have charged Lori Drew, a Missouri mother accused of taking part in a hoax that allegedly led to the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, of violating the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.

Yesterday, Ashley Grills, who was testifying under a grant of immunity, said Drew was directly involved in creating the bogus MySpace profile of a 16-year-old boy that was used to lure Meier into an online relationship. Grills, a longtime family friend of the Drews and an employee of Drew’s coupon distribution business, testified that she, Drew and Drew’s daughter, Sarah, were trying to figure out a way “to expose Megan” for rumors she’d allegedly been spreading about Sarah. Here’s the L.A. Times report.

Grills, 20, said she was the one who came up with the idea of the MySpace account, but that Drew agreed and “thought it was funny.” Grills testified that Drew was present when Grills sat at the computer and agreed to the MySpace terms of service, though they did not read them. Grills said she and Sarah thought they might get in trouble for fabricating the MySpace account, but that Drew told them “it was fine and people do it all the time.”

Much of the above testimony had already come out in prior reports on the case. But then Grills, according to the NYT, testified that Meier wrote the following shortly before taking her own life: “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over” — a reference to the fictitious Josh Evans.

The message had never been revealed by Grills until this week. “It was something I didn’t want to remember,” testified Grills, who said she had been hospitalized for depression after the suicide. “I pushed it out of my mind.”

Drew’s lawyer, Dean Steward, went after Grills’s credibility, according to the NYT. “Don’t you kind of have to say stuff they want to hear?” he said to Grills, motioning to prosecutors in a reference to her immunity agreement.

Also, under Steward’s cross-examination, Grills said she thought she sent the final e-mail telling Megan that the world would be better off without her from an AOL instant messaging service, not from the fake MySpace. In comments to a reporter outside the courtroom, Steward, noted the LAT, suggested that the revelation was a blow to the government’s claim of jurisdiction.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 21, 2008 (boomark / email).