Home » Latest » U.S. » Dramatic text messages read in court as Boston College student appears before judge | ABC News

Dramatic text messages read in court as Boston College student appears before judge | ABC News

4

InfoSearched 65 0 U.S.

7.5

SaveSavedRemoved 0

A South Korean student flew back to face a courtroom reckoning over 18 months of text messages that prosecutors say pushed her boyfriend off a parking garage roof.

Inyoung You, 21, stood silently beside her defense attorney in Suffolk Superior Court on Friday, November 22, 2019, and pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Alexander Urtula, her 22-year-old Boston College boyfriend. Urtula jumped from the roof of the Renaissance Parking Garage in Roxbury on May 20, 2019, hours before he was scheduled to walk at his own BC graduation. Assistant District Attorney Caitlin Grasso spent the arraignment reading aloud the couple’s private texts, laying out what prosecutors describe as a sustained campaign of abuse that eroded Urtula’s ability to choose otherwise.

• You, who had returned from South Korea to face the charge, pleaded not guilty at her Suffolk Superior Court arraignment on November 22, 2019.
• Prosecutor Caitlin Grasso quoted texts in which You told Urtula to “go f—— kill yourself” and said she wanted to “bash your head against the wall.”
• Days before the hearing, a PR firm representing You released a separate set of text excerpts meant to show her pleading with Urtula not to jump in his final minutes.

Prosecutors Add Statements To Record

Grasso told the court that over the course of their 18-month relationship, You engaged in systematic physical, verbal, and psychological abuse designed to overwhelm Urtula’s free will. The texts she read weren’t isolated outbursts — prosecutors framed them as a pattern, with You repeatedly demanding Urtula die or threatening to hurt herself as leverage over him. That pattern, Grasso argued, is the basis for charging You with involuntary manslaughter rather than treating Urtula’s death as an isolated tragedy disconnected from the relationship.

“Go f—— kill yourself.”

The graphic language read into the record on Friday was deliberately chosen by prosecutors to establish intent and control, not just cruelty in the abstract. Urtula died just hours before he was set to receive his diploma, a detail that gave the arraignment its grim framing — a young man who by all appearances was on the verge of finishing his degree and moving on with his life.

The Defense’s Counter-Narrative

Before You ever set foot in the courtroom, her team had already tried to shape the story. A PR firm representing her released a different slice of the same text history days ahead of the hearing, showing You allegedly begging Urtula not to jump in the minutes before his death. That release was a preemptive attempt to complicate the prosecution’s narrative of pure manipulation, suggesting a more complicated, two-sided exchange than the excerpts Grasso read in court.

You stood silent through the proceeding, offering no public statement as her attorney entered the not guilty plea on her behalf. Whether jurors eventually see the full run of messages — not just the fragments selected by either side — will likely determine how this case is ultimately decided.

A Case Built On Digital Evidence

What makes this prosecution unusual is its foundation: thousands of text messages exchanged over a year and a half, now serving as the primary evidentiary record in a manslaughter case. Courts have historically leaned on physical evidence or witness testimony in cases tied to a death; here, the alleged crime lives almost entirely inside a phone’s message history, which is why both sides moved quickly to control which portions of it the public — and eventually a jury — would see first.

The arraignment closed without a trial date set, but with both sides having already staked out competing versions of the same conversation. Suffolk prosecutors have the graphic excerpts read into Friday’s record; You’s team has the messages it released days earlier showing her allegedly pleading with Urtula not to jump. Whichever version a jury credits will decide whether Alexander Urtula’s death gets treated as a suicide shaped by depression or one directly caused by the person he was texting until the end.