Woman disavows blog on girl's suicide

ST. LOUIS — A woman linked to an online hoax played on a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide and has been vilified for it may be the subject of a deception: Someone on the Internet is posing as her and blogging about the case.

Lori Drew's attorney said Friday that Drew is not the writer. The St. Charles County Sheriff's Department is investigating who is behind the blog postings on Blogger.com to see if a crime has been committed, a spokesman said.

The Drew family thinks the postings are an effort to damage its reputation after the suicide of Megan Meier.

"Any Internet message that purports to be a member of the Drew family is being managed by an impostor and undoubtedly is being done for the purpose of further damaging the Drews' reputation," the family said.

A blog titled "Megan Had It Coming" surfaced more than two weeks ago. Last week, the person writing the blog claimed the messages were being written by Lori Drew.

The blog lays out Drew's would-be motives for getting involved with the MySpace hoax against Meier.

Lori Drew's lawyer, Jim Briscoe, said they have contacted Google, which owns Blogger.com. "We have contacted Google, telling them that was an impostor," Briscoe said.

A Google spokesman said the company is reviewing the impersonation allegation.

Meier thought she was corresponding over MySpace with a boy named "Josh Evans" online. The boy never existed.

Instead, Lori Drew, her 13-year-old daughter — a onetime friend of Meier — and an 18-year-old who worked for Drew helped create the hoax.

When messages from the fictional boy and others on the Internet turned cruel, including one stating the world would be better off without her, Meier hanged herself in October 2006.

Drew, a mother of two in her 40s, has denied saying hurtful things to the girl over the Internet, and prosecutors have said they found no grounds for charges against the woman.

Details of the case emerged last month, and the story drew international attention.

Since then, the Drews have been besieged with negative publicity, and Meier's death prompted her hometown of Dardenne Prairie to adopt a law that deems engaging in Internet harassment a misdemeanor.

Now, elected officials said the law's first use could be to prevent possible harassment against the Drews.

"I would say that would be a possibility, that they could be the first," Mayor Pam Fogarty said Friday. "A law is a law is a law. You can't discriminate."

Briscoe said the Drews have not asked police to look into the blog postings.

St. Charles County Prosecutor Jack Banas said he heard about the postings through the news media and asked the sheriff's department to investigate.