How Did Michelle Carter And Conrad Roy From Texting Suicide Case Know Each Other?

The "love story" between Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy III is now an infamously tragic one. While it may have some Romeo & Juliet undertones, the story had an even more shocking, brutal twist: Only Roy would kill himself — at Carter's zealous encouragement.

Carter urged her 18-year-old boyfriend, Roy, to die by suicide through many texts in 2014, which he eventually did after he filled up his truck with carbon monoxide. She supposedly even told him to get back in the truck after he expressed doubts to her, according to a text she later sent her friend.

The case received national attention after Carter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for those texts, and is chronicled in the new HBO documentary "I Love You, Now Die:The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter.” And as the documentary shows, Carter certainly had a view of their ill-fated relationship that didn't exactly match reality.

Conrad Roy and Michelle Carter Photo: Facebook; Getty Images

The two met in 2012 while both visiting relatives in Florida, according to Esquire. They went for a bike ride. They hit it off and stayed in touch. Later, according to the doc, Carter told Roy she fell for him during the bike ride.

They didn’t live close to each other, but they didn’t live far from one another, either. Roy lived in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a small harbor town with a population of about 6 thousand. Carter lived in the suburban town of Plainville, located about an hour north in the same state.

They began a mainly text-based relationship which would last until Roy took his own life in 2014. Over the course of those two years, Carter and Roy only met up about five times in person, but exchanged thousands of texts, according to "I Love You, Now Die."

Journalist Jesse Barron, who wrote a piece on the case for Esquire claimed in the new doc Carter was way more into the relationship than Roy was, adding that she lacked an ability to “apprehend reality.”

“The relationship was much more Michelle’s fantasy and Michelle’s idea than it was Conrad’s," he said in the documentary.

Texts between the pair show that Carter once asked Roy if he thinks they’ll get married some day. In another, she asks if she can be his girlfriend. 

“I want to be able to say I was your girlfriend,” she texted him. 

“Yes you are,” he responded.

“I am? :)” she asked.

“I guess,” he responded.

Barron explained that Roy was “alternately kind of mean to her, kind of sweet to her, kind of negging her, for most of the relationship." 

They texted each other constantly, and according to the documentary, sometimes played word association and free association games over text.

Still, despite the fact that Carter seemed more into labeling their relationship than Roy, they did have a close relationship and it only got more intense with time.

"... If you have a son. I want you to name him Conrad and you can tell him all about me,” Roy wrote to Carter in one text.

Texts revealed in the documentary show Roy shared his deepest and darkest thoughts with Carter as well as his frequent thoughts about ending his life and mental health struggles. "I Love You, Now Die" characterizes their relationship as destructive to both of them with their mental health issues.

A month before Roy took his life, Carter tried to talk Roy into getting help for his suicidal thoughts.

"The mental hospital would help you," Carter texted Roy. "I know you don't think it would but I'm telling you, if you give them a chance, they can save your life."

But weeks later, she began “helping” him in another way: by brainstorming different methods of suicide and then ultimately pushing him, at times relentlessly, to kill himself.

Part 2 of "I Love You, Now Die" airs July 10 on HBO.