Around the same time, Megan started to use the Internet, under the supervision of her parents. Sitting on the family's brown floral couch with her father, or nestled next to her mother in the family's office in the basement, the eighth-grader browsed through her friends' websites and chatted about school.
When a boy messaged Megan on MySpace and asked to be her friend, she excitedly agreed. The two talked online for about six weeks, her parents said.
On Oct. 16, Josh told Megan he'd heard that she was a terrible friend. The two fought. Tina, who had to leave to take Megan's younger sister, Allison, to a doctor's appointment, ordered Megan to get off the computer.
She didn't. The messages grew nasty, according to an FBI transcript.
The final message isn't included in the transcript: "I remember it said something like, 'The world would be a better-off place without you,' " said Ron Meier, 37, who works as a machinist.
That evening, as her parents were downstairs preparing for dinner, Megan hanged herself in her closet. She died the next day.
In the weeks that followed, the Drews comforted the Meiers. They said nothing to them about the fake MySpace account.
They prayed at the wake and consoled sobbing community members at Megan's funeral. They invited the Meiers to birthday parties and had Allison over to bake holiday cookies. They asked the Meiers to hide Christmas gifts in their garage, away from their own children's prying eyes.
It was last Thanksgiving weekend when the Meiers said they learned the truth from a neighbor who had figured out that Lori Drew had devised the online relationship with Megan. In a fit of rage, they hacked up one of the gifts they were storing -- a Foosball table -- with an ax and sledgehammer. Tina and Ronald dumped the pieces onto the Drews' driveway.
"I heard this god-awful screaming," said neighbor Kristie Kriss, 48. "It was Tina. When I heard what happened, I couldn't believe it."
When the Drews complained to the authorities about the loss of their Foosball table, the story became public. According to a sheriff's department report, Lori Drew said "she wanted to 'just tell them' what she did to contribute to the Meiers' daughter's suicide." Drew told the officer that she, with the help of a temporary employee, "instigated and monitored" a fake profile prior to Megan's suicide, "for the sole purpose of communicating" with the girl.
