The XX Factor

Alleged Murderer “Hiccup Girl” Says Fame Made Her Do It

I’ve been following the bizarre tale of “hiccup girl” Jennifer Ann Mee ever since she was charged with murder last fall. To recap: Mee made a splash on morning talk shows a few years back because she hiccupped 50 times a minute for over a month (it turns out that she has a kind of Tourettes syndrome). She made all the morning shows again in October because she was charged with first-degree murder for the death of Shannon Griffin in Florida . Mee says she didn’t shoot Griffin herself, but allegedly lured him to a meeting place where he was killed.

She’s back on the Today Show this morning, defending herself to the coffee-drinking public. How did that sweet hiccupping high school freshman turn into a jailbird? Mee says that the fame monster made her do it:

Every time I walked into school… ‘Oh, there goes the hiccup girl’… ‘Oh, look at Jennifer, let’s be friends with her.’ That was still very overwhelming to me. People that I’d never thought I’d even talk to came up to me and acted like they wanted to be my friend…I basically let it all go to my head and just started to do what I wanted to do.

This might sound absurd, but Slate ‘s own Chris Beam made a convincing case earlier this year about why overnight celebrities get into so much trouble . Mee didn’t rise to the level of notoriety that say, a Susan Boyle did, but she clearly suffered from the delusion that her local celebrity made her invincible: “Because I was quote-unquote famous so young I thought nothing would happen to me,” she told the Today Show . I’m guessing the continued national attention to Mee’s case isn’t helping her with those delusions of grandeur. Clip below.