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MATTAPOISETT, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Holidays haven't been easy for the father of Conrad Roy III. The teenager committed suicide in 2014 at the urging of his friend Michelle Carter, who texted Roy to kill himself multiple times. Though Carter was later found guilty on involuntary manslaughter charges in a nationally publicized court case, Roy's father, Conrad Roy Jr., still finds it hard to go through the holidays without his son.
Roy Jr. was on Facebook this Father's Day when he received what he considered a gift from his son. A hardhat that Roy had lost at sea the same year his son died had been found, more than 2000 miles away in the Portuguese Azores archipelago.
The missing hat started its journey in 2014 on Roy Jr.'s head, during a hauling trip in New Bedford Harbor with his son for the family's marine towing company.
"I walked outside on a windy day, and it just blew off my head, we were underway with the barge and I just couldn't go back and get it," he said.
A woman walking on the beach in the Azorean island of Sao Miguel at around 11:30 AM on Sunday, which was Father's Day and her friend let Roy Jr. know. His mood immediately brightened when he saw the message:
"I just thought it was a gift from my son, it was Father's Day...it just felt like he was sending another sign to me," he said.
The woman who found the hat, Sandra Machado, said in a Facebook post that she looked up Conrad Roy III's case, and thinks the encounter with the hat was fated, for "other people like me to know his story and to not let him [be] forgotten."
Roy Jr. plans to take a trip to the Azores to recover the hat.
WBZ's Kim Tunnicliffe (@KimWBZ) reports:
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