The tragic suicide of Missouri teenager Megan Meier was a top news story in 2006 and 2007.
Meier was the victim of a prank that involved a classmate’s mother, Lori Drew, who set up a fake MySpace account and pretended to be a boy named Josh, who befriended Meier online.
Drew apparently wanted to know whether or not Meier was gossiping about her own daughter and became close with her under false pretenses. “Josh” eventually said “he didn’t want to be [Meier's] friend anymore, that he had heard she wasn’t nice to her friends,” according to Fox News. “Josh” continued to post messages taunting Meier, even calling her “fat” and a “slut.”
Meier hanged herself in her bedroom, and six weeks later, her parents found out about the fraudulent MySpace account.
In May 2008, Drew was indicted on three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, and one count of criminal conspiracy.
