Det.: Student visited twitter pre-suicide

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- In the last two days of his life, Tyler Clementi visited his roommate's Twitter page 38 times and saved screen shots of two messages posted there. One proclaimed that the roommate saw Clementi "making out with a dude." The other "dared" friends to use a web chat program to watch later.

Jurors learned those details yesterday during the testimony of Gary Charydczak, a detective in the Middlesex County prosecutor's office, in the roommate's criminal trial. The detective said he learned about Clementi's computer use from examining the hard drive of the blue laptop that was found in his Rutgers University dorm room.

He displayed the tweets that he said were saved to Clementi's hard drive under the names "untitled.jpg" and "secondtime.jpg."

Dharun Ravi, 20, faces 15 counts including bias intimidation and invasion of privacy against Clementi, who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010, one day after authorities say Ravi attempted to spy on him.

Prosecutors say Ravi used Twitter first to tell followers that he had seen his roommate "making out with a dude" on Sept. 19, and two days later to "dare" them to video-chat him when Clementi had again asked to have the room to himself so he could have a guest over.

Charydczak also testified that Ravi changed the "dare" tweet later, instead telling friends, "Don't you dare." That alleged change is the basis of a charge that Ravi tried to hinder apprehension.

Authorities say Ravi told friends about the expected dorm-room liaison through other means, including text messages. During testimony Monday, jurors were shown texts he sent to a friend from high school.

In one part of the exchange, the friend, Michelle Huang, texted Ravi: "Watch out, he may come for you when you're sleeping." Ravi responded that he had his computer set to alert him if anyone was in his bed when he wasn't there.

The exchange may help prosecutors show that Ravi had malice toward gays -- a necessary element to persuade jurors to convict Ravi on the bias intimidation charges he faces.