myspace Prank Leads to Teens Suicide

Did an Internet prank lead a St. Charles County teen to take her own life? Her parents say their daughter was driven to her death by online attacks led not by other teens, but by adults. No law was broken, there was no real crime, but it is all a real tragedy.

"She was our baby. We absolutely miss every single second of her," says Tina Meier as tears fall down her face.

Tina talks about Megan's laughter like she can still hear it. "She just had an unbelievable, hysterical laugh, where she would just not breathe and then she would giggle, then it would turn into this high pitched squeal," Tina says.

And there was her smile, wide and happy, the smile of a girl about to be 14, about to get her braces off. Not a girl about to end her life.

"She thought life was wonderful," Tina says.

Tina admits her daughter had battled depression and ADD, and was on medication to help with both. But a new school, new friends, and a new account on MySpace, strictly monitored by mom and dad, were making life better.

"I thought we were as vigilant as we could be as parents with all the things in place, and even with that, no matter what I did, I still couldn't protect her."

"The computer rules were that it was going to be a private MySpace page. We were going to have the password only, she wasn't going to have the password, all the computers in our house had passwords, so none of the children could get on," Tina says. "I had to be able to approve all the content on that page, and I had to approve who was going to be added to the page."

"She got this email from this boy named Josh Evans," Tina explains.

Josh was cute and asking to be added to Megan's list of "friends" on the page. Tina reluctantly let him have access to her daughter's account. They were friends first, then they called each other boyfriend and girlfriend. But they never met. Then Josh got mean.

"Megan gets an email on her MySpace from Josh saying that he didn't know if he wanted to be friends because he heard she wasn't nice to her friends," Tina recalls.

That was one night. Tina comforted Megan, telling her not to worry about it. The next day more messages appeared from Josh and other people.

Tina had to take her younger daughter to a doctor's appointment, and even though there were strict rules about Megan not being online without supervision, she left without making sure Megan logged out. Tina called back a few minutes later to find her daughter in tears over the things being said about her. She told Megan to log off, but Megan didn't. When Tina came home, Megan said she felt like she was under attack from everyone, even from Tina, who was furious her daughter did not do as she was told.

Megan ran upstairs to her room. Tina and her husband Ron began talking about the problems with the online account. Less than 20 minutes passed.

"And I just got this horrible feeling in my stomach," Tina says. "I just took off running upstairs and opened her door and I found her."

Megan hung herself in her closet.

Weeks later, a friend told the Meiers that Josh Evans never even existed.

"That's the biggest tragedy of the whole thing," says Ron. "An adult did it."

The Meiers say a neighborhood family created Josh to see if Megan would say bad things to him about their own daughter. There is a police report, where the neighbors admit it.

"I believe that it's no different than somebody handing her a loaded gun," Ron says.

"How could you do that to somebody?" asks Tina. "A child!"

The police report was filed by that neighbor and it accuses the Meiers of property damage. The Meiers say when they found out about the internet hoax, they did lose their tempers, damaging the family's property. They say they are responsible. But they want to know who is responsible for Megan.

"We went to the St. Charles County sheriff's department, the prosecutor, the FBI got involved," Ron says. "But in the end they had to say there's nothing they could do."

"We were hoping and praying that something would come, some justice would come. We had to keep quiet about it because everybody said keep quiet, keep quiet and let justice prevail. Well, this is where it's gotten us."

Justice never came. Megan never turned 14, never got her braces off.

Since they can't change their past, they want to change the law.

"Because there is not a law that it can fit into people are saying, 'Sorry, go change the law yourself. Put it in Megan's name, then maybe it won't happen to another family.' So I guess if that's what we have to do that's what we're gonna have to do. I will take every last breath I have to fight for Megan's name," Tina says. "The law needs to be changed so it never happens to a family again."

Ron struggled speaking about what happened. "I think every parent, man, husband, father, tells themselves, 'No one's going to hurt my family.' It happened."