Lori Drew Pleads Not Guilty In MySpace Suicide Case

Lori Drew, the worst person on the internet and the evildoer behind the MySpace hoax that arguably drove 13-year-old Megan Meier to suicide, has plead not guilty to charges of "internet fraud and conspiracy to inflict emotional distress," reports the L.A. Times. (For those of you who missed our exhaustive Meier coverage, Drew and an 18-year-old accomplice created a fake MySpace profile for a "Josh Evans" to torment Megan because of some slight towards Drew's daughter. After being rejected by Josh, Megan, who had a history of emotional problems, hung herself.) According to the Wall Street Journal, "The theory of the case seems to be that when Drew registered on MySpace she agreed to certain terms of service that required her to, among other things, provide 'truthful and accurate registration information' and 'refrain from promoting information that' she knew was More »

Megan Meier: Just Your Average, Small Dog-Loving, Depressed, Bipolar, A.D.D. Suburban Babi

The New Yorker becomes the latest media outlet to reexamine the Megan Meier suicide this week, and despite this topic not exactly being underexposed, it's a thoughtful, texture-rich story about a girl who sounds so insanely normal you sorta wonder how the fuck you would go about raising yourself as a teenager. (Ooooh, answer: stealing your kids' mood-altering meds, duh.) Not innately insecure/nerdy/un-self-confident, Megan was a daddy's-little-tomboy (she fished, threw frogs, etc.) who had a sassy attitude tempered by a very kind streak — "for years she had served as the self-appointed guardian of a blind boy at her school, leading him through the hallways between classes." But her angst over her chunky legs began in kindergarten, and by middle school she was taking Celexa, Concerta and Geodon (a bipolar disorder drug.) More »

Feds Take On Megan Meier Case, Hope To Charge Evil Mom With Crime

There may be a small hope for non-vigilante justice for Lori Drew, the Missouri mom who started a fake MySpace account under the disguise of a cute boy to befriend, then abruptly begin tormenting, 13-year-old Megan Meier — who responded by hanging herself. (Lori's daughter had had a falling-out with Megan.) The US attorney in Los Angeles — where MySpace is based — is issuing subpoenas in the case in the apparent hope of charging Lori Drew with fraud under a 2005 telecommunications law. Of course, I'm not a lawyer or a pedophile. There are probably some First Amendment concerns here, not to mention some privacy concerns, with the thought of charging Lori Drew with fraud for merely creating a fake MySpace account. The precedent could be fucked; I'm sure there are ramifications and complications that aren't occurring to me; curious to wonder what had sparked the interest of prosecutors all the way in LA I found an earlier piece in the Los Angeles Times on the neighborhood's reaction to the tragedy. More »

The Suicide That Proved We Are Still A Nation Capable Of "Shock"

In the 13 days since we first heard word of the case of Lori Drew, the mother whose Myspace hoax drove 13-year-old Megan Meier to suicide, pretty much every major news outlet seems to have covered — including Doctor Drew himself, who appeared pretty disgusted by the whole thing on Monday night's Anderson Cooper 360. Today the New York Times weighed in, and it quickly shot to the top of the newspaper's Most Emailed list. The story itself hasn't gotten much more complicated since — Megan had been fighting with her formerly close friend; she switched schools and cut off the friendship; the friend's mother set up a fake MySpace account under the guise of a cute boy named Josh and went to work befriending Megan only to suddenly de-friend her with random assertions that she was a "shitty person" without whom the world would be a better place; it all checks out; it all ended up being in a police-penned account Lori Drew herself gave an officer. What has changed since the world learned about the story, according to the Riverfront Times, are the lives of Curt and Lori Drew: More »

Why We Named The World's Worst Parents

So, you know how we named the alleged "Worst Parents In The Universe"? Well we're not supposed to do that again until we get our hands on some "proof" or some shit, because of some Gawker Media corporate directive made obviously not by me. But, truth be told, I think the diligent reporter who broke the story of how a couple of residents of suburban St. Louis Myspace-tormented 13-year-old girl Megan Meier into committing suicide should do the honors, as do a lot of readers of his newspaper and a lot of nerdy reporter types who read Romenesko. And while Steve Pokin has not really said much about why he decided not to name the parents, his old editor offers a fleshed out defense of the decision to excercise (ahem) discretion to this end in the Romenesko comments:

It's easy for some blogger in New York City (who likely doesn't have to deal with these kinds of decisions and their real-world impact) to shoot his or her mouth off.

I resent that! Though it's true. More »

And The Second "Worst Mother Named 'Lori Drew'" Award Goes To...

Now that people have outed Curt and Lori Drew as the likely adult perpetrators of a vile MySpace hoax that led a depressed 13-year-old girl named Megan Meier to hang herself in her closet, we thought we might as well alert you to another inept parent named Lori Drew! This Lori is the leader of a Rhode Island high school's boycott of a book called When I Was A Loser: True Stories Of Barely Surviving High School, in particular a story by Will Clarke called "How to Kill a Boy That Nobody Likes." More »

Are The Parents Who MySpace-Tormented Megan Meier Into Killing Herself Ready To Atone? Um...

This is Megan Meier, who is now dead. She hung herself at age thirteen after the parents of one of her former classmates used MySpace to create a character named Josh Evans, who spent a few months flirting with her before abruptly turning on her and calling her a "slut" and a "bad person" etc. etc. And while we generally try to do this job without actually performing what might be termed "fact checking" — you know, because sometimes actually talking to people makes them harder to villify! — we felt compelled, in this case, to attempt to call Curt and Lori Drew, the Missouri couple fingered by internet sleuths as the perpetrator of the torment. Not surprisingly, the phone rang and rang. More »