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MySpace Suicide Case Postponed until October
June 26, 2008, 10:41 AM PDT
LOS ANGELES -- Attorneys for a Missouri woman accused of
orchestrating a deadly MySpace hoax that drove her daughter's 13-year-old
classmate to suicide agreed today to postpone her criminal trial until Oct. 7.Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, has pleaded not guilty to a four-count indictment returned May 15 by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles. She was not present in court today, having signed a waiver of appearance. She is free on $20,000 bond. Her trial was originally set for July 29. Dean Steward, Drew's attorney, told U.S. District Judge George Wu that he needed the delay to file a number of motions concerning the indictment within the next few weeks. "I am looking forward (to it)," a smiling Wu replied. "There should be interesting motions on this one." Within the next week or so, Wu is expected to issue an order delaying the trial. The trial itself is estimated to take up to four days. Wu also set a Sept. 4 hearing date so attorneys can argue in court about the merits of the motions. Drew is accused of setting up an account on the social networking Web site MySpace.com, along with others, to pose as a 16-year-old boy, "Josh Evans," in 2006. MySpace is owned by Fox Interactive Media Inc., headquartered in Beverly Hills, which is how the charges came to be filed in Los Angeles. Pretending to be Evans, Drew and others allegedly expressed a romantic interest in the girl, and then spurned her, saying, among other things, that the world would be better off without her. Megan Meier hung herself in October 2006, shortly after receiving that message. Drew, who lived four doors down from the girl, is charged with conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information about the victim in violation of MySpace's terms of service. Both charges carry five-year prison terms. Drew's indictment has raised eyebrows in the legal community, as the laws she is charged with breaking are normally used to prosecute hackers and identity thieves. In April, an 19-year-old employee of Drew's, Ashley Grills, told ABC's "Good Morning America," she created the bogus MySpace profile, but said Drew wrote some of the messages. She said it was Drew's idea to contact Megan over the Internet to find out what she was saying about Drew's daughter. The two girls were once close friends but had a falling-out, she said. Grills also told "GMA" she wrote the message about the world being a better place without the teen, but did so to end the fake online relationship because she thought the ruse had gone too far. The girl's death was investigated by authorities in Missouri, but no charges were ever filed. Copyright © 2008, KTLA Photos 
Lori Drew, 49
May 15, 2008 More Coverage   
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