Using the name "Josh Evans", the trio were said to have duped Megan into believing that "Josh" had the hots for her. However, the flirting soon turned into abuse and "Josh" incited a barrage of hate posts from other users that drove Megan to take her own life. The Meiers were not aware that "Josh" was fictitious or that their neighbour knew about the deceit until six weeks after their daughter's death last October.

St. Charles County prosecutor, Jack Banas, has asked the county's police department to find out who is behind the site, which has the offensive title of Megan Had It Coming. The Drew family have not commented publicly, but Drew's attorney, Jim Briscoe, denied that his client had any involvement. "I can categorically say that she did not write it," Briscoe told foxnews.com. The author of the 3000-word post says the blog is an attempt to tell the other side of the tragic story that has ruined the lives of two families and turned an unwelcomed spotlight on a once quiet middle American neighbourhood.

Megan Had It Coming includes the assertion that Megan was a "total psycho and everyone knew it", that she was a "total bitch to everyone around" and that "she had it coming with all the shit she did". The I'm Lori Drew post asserts that it was Megan who first "coordinated a MySpace attack on my daughter" using friends' accounts because her parents had banned her from the social networking site for making a fake profile that she used to "bully a classmate".

On Monday, Banas, after re-investigating the case, found that there were no grounds to charge Drew, her daughter or Drew's 18-year-old employee who has been named as Ashley Grills. He also said that contrary to earlier police reports, Lori Drew - who was 48 at the time - did not instigate the Josh Evans profile, nor did she use the fake profile to communicate with Megan. While she knew about the ruse, she was apparently unaware that the girls had used the Josh profile to attack her neighbour's daughter. "Our daughter died, committed suicide, and she still didn't say a word," Megan's mother Tina Meier said after the announcement that there would be no prosecution. "I still feel what she did is absolutely criminal."

And that mitigating statement appears to have done nothing to quell the angry mob - most of it based in cyberspace - that has been going after Lori Drew and her family ever since the story broke in local newspaper last month. Sarah Wells, the blogger who first outed Lori Drew as the neighbour involved in the MySpace hoax, is unrepentant, despite the new claims.

"I don't regret naming Drew," she said in an email response to a series of questions. Despite the collateral damage that Drew's daughter would suffer as a result of her mother's public humiliation, Wells also said she did not think it would set a good example if Lori Drew's actions were "accepted". "I think it is probably a good thing for [the daughter's] development to see her mother pay the price of public scorn for her actions, if no other price ... to know that society is disgusted by such acts," she wrote in her email.

As the story gain more attention, internet avengers took matters into their own hands. They plastered photos of the Drews and Ashley, their addresses, phone numbers and email details over the internet including on sites like People You'll See in Hell and Rotten Neighbors. Local businesses that advertised in Lori Drew's coupon book business have also been harangued and targetted with boycott threats.

"It's fair for people to say to Drew's clients, 'sever your ties to her or we won't want to do business with you as long as you are associated with her'," Wells said. The Drew's lawyer, Jim Briscoe, told the the NBC's Today show on Tuesday that the bad publicity has forced his client to close her business and caused her daughter to drop out of school. A series of physical attacks on the Drew house - including a brick throwing incident and a paint gun attack - has cast doubt on whether the family could continue to live in the community, Briscoe said.

The suburban street where the families live, Waterford Crystal Drive, has been transformed into a real life version of Wisteria Lane, the fictional street in the TV series Desperate Housewives, with neighbours taking sides, the nation's press trawling the neighbourhood for leads and an increased police presence following the attacks.