Broken Lives on Waterford Crystal Drive

It was the falling out between the two teens, she said, that made her do it. She wanted to see what Megan was saying about her daughter.

More than a year after Megan's death, on November 13, 2007, a lengthy account of the online ruse was published in the St. Charles Suburban Journal. Several million mouse clicks later, the small, middle-class suburban community of Dardenne Prairie, where the Drews and Meiers live just three doors apart, has been shaken to its core. The mainstream media and the blogosphere, with its countless anonymous voices, have stoked a firestorm of outrage — first, over the fact that the Drew family was not named in the Journal story, and later, over the cruelty of Drew's deception.

"Lori Drew is very much responsible for Megan Meier's death," wrote one blogger at Hits USA, "just as though she had shot or stabbed her."

Though the Drew family went un­­named in the Journal story, some key details mentioned in the article — specifically the fact that Tina Meier, a real estate agent, was the person who sold the Drews their home on Waterford Crystal Drive — enabled readers to track down numerous details about the family.

One of those details included the name of Lori Drew's advertising business, The Drew Advantage. A comment left on the business' profile at yelp.com called the MySpace deception a "crime worthy of being stoned to death."

When a weary Ron Meier, seated at his kitchen table, hears the Drews' home address, cell phone numbers, their business clients' contact information and other details are available with a rudimentary Google search, he says simply, "That's awesome." He later adds, "All that information needed to be out there a long time ago. They need to make their life a living hell. It won't be the hell my family lives with the rest of our lives, but it will be part of it."

The Drews could not be reached for this story. A knock on the family's front door went unanswered and the only sound inside came from a yippy dog. Their home phone has not been disconnected, but it rings endlessly. Neighbors say they haven't seen the family in days and have no idea as to their whereabouts. A person answering the phone at Coldwell Banker Gundaker in O'Fallon, where Curt Drew worked as a realtor, said Drew was no longer with the firm and quickly hung up.

The venom directed at the Drew family has drawn deep concern within law enforcement ranks, and police patrols in the neighborhood have increased since the story broke. "They'll basically end up doing the same thing to that family and their daughter that they did to Megan," says Lt. Craig McGuire of the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department. "We are concerned about the threats being made on the Internet. It's fostering an atmosphere of vigilantism that causes us a great deal of concern."

John McIntyre, who lives in a house across the street from the Drews, does not share the sheriff's concern. "Personally, I wish someone would throw a bomb in their house. I don't want to hurt the kids, but both the parents were on the Internet doing it," McIntyre says, his hand resting on the blond hair of his toddler-age daughter. "I read something that said that lady didn't kill Megan. But she's 47 and Megan was 13. The lady knew what she was doing. She knew how to push buttons."

The fact that there is currently no crime with which the Drews can be charged is particularly galling to many. In response, Dardenne Prairie's mayor, Pam Fogarty, and the city's aldermen last week passed the strongest measure they could against Internet harassment, making it a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. Fogarty says she hopes people will write their legislators and push for stronger state and federal laws.