Attorney: Mother Unaware of Cruel Messages
By BETSY TAYLOR

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A woman linked to an online hoax played on a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide had no idea MySpace messages to the girl had turned cruel and did not write any of them herself, the woman’s lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Jim Briscoe appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, as did the parents of Megan Meier. Megan, a 13-year-old girl from the St. Louis suburb of Dardenne Prairie, hanged herself last year minutes after receiving mean messages on MySpace.

The attorney said his client, Lori Drew, “absolutely, 100 percent” had nothing to do with negative, nasty comments posted online about Megan Meier, and wasn’t home when they were sent.

“She didn’t find out about it until after Megan had taken her own life,” he said.

Megan, who took medication for depression and attention deficit disorder, thought she had been communicating with a good-looking 16-year-old boy online. It turned out he was fictitious, and the profile was created to find out what Megan was saying online about Drew’s daughter, according to a report from St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas.

Banas Attorney concluded Monday, as federal officials did weeks earlier, that there was no crime to charge anyone with in the case.

It is unclear who created the fictitious account, but a police report said that Drew and her then-18-year-old employee fabricated the profile. Banas said there are different accounts between Drew and the employee about the creation of the profile.

Briscoe said Tuesday that Drew “did not create the MySpace account. She did not instruct anybody to create the MySpace account. She never made any communications through the MySpace account.”

Since the case became public, Drew has had to close her advertising business “because people have been attacking her advertisers and they want nothing to do with her. They don’t want the bad publicity,” he told NBC. He said her friends and neighbors are afraid to talk to her.

“Her daughter has had to drop out of school because of the harassment,” said the Attorney.

Briscoe said Drew did know about what was going on, though she didn’t think mean messages were being sent, and didn’t stop it. “She wished she did. If she could turn back the clock, that’s the part she would do differently,” he said.

The Meiers say the woman has changed her story since Megan’s death. They believe she was home while messages were sent, and said they plan to proceed with a civil case.

Tina Meier told The Associated Press on Monday that the bottom line for her was that the other mother knew about the fake profile, knew Megan was on medication, and let the hoax continue. She said the fake profile was deleted right after the death. Then, she said, the woman didn’t tell the Meiers about what happened.

“Our daughter died, committed suicide, and she still didn’t say a word,” Meiers’ Attorney said. “I still feel what she did is absolutely criminal.”