Mail: Internet troll who targeted McCanns found dead in hotel room

My friends, this was taken from Sky News:

http://news.sky.com/story/1349512/inquest-opens-into-brenda-leyland-death

Thanks, Pedro, I'd missed that one.

Inquest Opens Into Brenda Leyland Death
Police tell the hearing there "did not appear to be foul play" involved in the 63-year-old's death.

The inquest into the death of a woman accused of directing online abuse at the McCann family has heard how the first post-mortem examination could not establish a cause of death.

Brenda Leyland was found dead at a hotel outside Leicester two days after she had featured in a Sky News report on internet "trolling" of Kate and Gerry McCann.

Further tests are now being carried out to try to work out how Ms Leyland died.

The 63-year-old, from Burton Overy, Leicestershire, had been accused of posting thousands of online messages directed at the McCanns.

Sgt Kevin Taylor, of Leicestershire Police, told the inquest he was on duty on Saturday when he received a call to go to the Marriott Hotel in Enderby, where paramedics told him there "was a deceased female within the room".

Sgt Taylor said the hotel room was immediately made secure and that his initial assessment was that there "did not appear to be foul play".

Ms Leyland was formally identified by a relative at the Leicester Royal Infirmary the following day.

Senior Coroner Catherine Mason said: "I am not in a position to conclude this today. This is because the cause of death is still not known and police inquiries are still, rightly, ongoing."

The inquest was adjourned until 18 December.

Courtesy of Tony:

http://thehoundingofthemccans.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/how-not-to-be-sweepyface-online.html

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2014/10/07/how_not_to_be_a_sweepyface_online_mallick.html

How not to be a @sweepyface online: Mallick
The death of Twitter troll Brenda Leyland shows the perils of online cruelty.

By: Heather Mallick Columnist, Published on Tue Oct 07 2014
The story of the death of a Twitter troll called @sweepyface is so fascinating and morally educational that it constitutes a modern fairytale, although not the kind you read to kids at bedtime. Unless your children were raised on the Brothers Grimm and are already aged and toughened Twitter trolls in which case, go right ahead, they’ve seen worse.
Anonymity permits people to create two faces: a cheerful public one and a secret malevolent one. This has always been true but online media have made it easy as pie. Call it a hate pie. Here’s how it was sliced and served this week.
In 2007, a British couple, Kate and Gerry McCann, both doctors, went on a vacation to Portugal and their tiny daughter Madeleine was kidnapped in the night and likely murdered, although her body has never been found. They had left a door unlocked while they dined with friends and Madeleine and her twin siblings slept. The police investigation was faulty and a possible suspect has since died.
It is hard to imagine how the McCanns’ lives could have been made worse. But they have since been hounded by weird conspiracy theorists on social media, a campaign fed by inaccurate newspaper reports that have won the McCanns libel payouts, not that it has helped. The online messages gathered and sent to Scotland Yard for investigation are astoundingly cruel. People physically stalk the McCanns, post doctored photos of them in chains and nooses, and call for them to be waterboarded. The McCanns are helpless.
@sweepyface had joined in the online malevolence, for years tweeting messages like “my hate for Kate and Gerry is justified,” “Q ‘how long must the Mccanns [sic] suffer’ answer for the rest of their miserable lives’.” Calling a McCann defender on Twitter “an old biddy with huge teeth who tells lies on social media,” she had blended in with a strange crowd.

It is generally assumed that Twitter trolls are drug-addicted or mentally disturbed men, recent court cases having revealed them as such. But @sweepyface was Brenda Leyland, 63, divorced mother of two, an unemployed but well-educated woman living in a cozy house in a pretty English village. Neighbours were astonished to hear that she had been sending such vitriol for years, obsessively posting thousands of #mccann hate messages from 7 a.m. to midnight.
After being approached by a TV reporter, Leyland went to a local hotel and suddenly died, possibly by suicide.
Britain is a foreign country — it is sometimes very foreign indeed — and it’s hard to translate social mores. But in a brief video interview, Leyland had appeared to me to be fairly hardcore, a granular sort of person. It has since been explained that she was what Brits call “middle-class” and Canadians call “rich,” meaning that she was — and crucially saw herself as — a “county” type who drove an SUV and rode horses, bridled at questions, crisply declined comment, and saw the McCanns as grubby social upstarts.
The interview was a class crash, or digital secrecy meeting wild-and-free TV journalism, or chickens coming home to a sordid roost, call it what you will. But two people talked in low tones in the street about cruelty and one of them died.
The McCann hate campaign was unusual in that it was fuelled by something more than the usual misogyny or racism. It was a shared experience, an orgy of loathing. There was something “medieval” about the entire story, the Telegraph wrote intelligently, as though the McCanns, Leyland and the reporter were serially being put in the stocks for a mass public stoning. It’s hideous to watch Leyland tell the reporter, “I’m entitled” and suddenly realize she would now herself be “McCanned.”
Leyland didn’t grasp that law against libel or urging violent attacks applied to her, just as troll defenders don’t see that the McCanns have legal rights beyond simple humanity or that the polite reporter is as horrified as anyone.

Who could have predicted that going online would make people so lonely, without loyalty to the larger group that is society while nailing themselves to a hashtag? Online, people are red in tooth and claw. We call it freedom but it’s a kind of tyranny too.
@sweepyface was a freak and yet she was so typical. You would have been happy to have a cup of tea with her in her tidy garden, but inside she was slashing away with knives out of some strange need. I do think there’s a @sweepyface in all of us but the point of this sorry tale is to recognize the creature and silence it.
hmallick@thestar.ca

you welcome bb1.

I give that article two thumbs up.  Excellent and so very well said. 

Thanks for posting it, Tony.

No doubt that paper will get trolled when the haters see it.

They are too thick not to.....

A reminder from:

http://davidbretisagod.forumotion.co.uk/t967p135-investigation-into-mccann-internet-trolls-launched-by-police

of just how much harrassment and stalking the McCann family have had to suffer from haters and hounders.

http://thestalkingworldofbennettbutler.blogspot.co.uk/

That is only a small part of it too.

Tigerloaf has picked on something interesting here:

http://www.stopthemyths.info/viewtopic.php?f=115&t=7129&sid=d6d683f124132663571d005b24ae02a3

Re: The dishonesty of the anti/haters
Postby tigerloaf » Wed Oct 08, 2014 9:56 pm

In what alternative universe is Twitter (the vast proportion of its content is visible to anyone in the world) "a closed, self-contained system"?

In what alternative universte do people believe that there is no public viewing of Twitter and that it has no social/antisocial effect other than on those who are "members"?

Is it possible that these people are so STUPID they don't realise that the world and its wife can see the hate and ignorance they spew 24/7 on Twitter? That almost all their FB posts are in the public arena, too?

One thing #mccann has amply proven; that if the howling 'masses' are left unmoderated, to do exactly as they please, they turn into savages very quickly. Their Free Speach rapidly turns into depraved hate speech; Sweepy wouldn't have been allowed to carry on like that on any forum, 'anti' or otherwise. One can only assume that those that don't find anything wrong with the abuse she was posting on twitter and FB, have become so inured to it, they simply do not know how ugly it is any more.

Social media is fine for instant news of earthquakes, wars or Ebola; for anything else, it's like a glimpse into Hell. But the owners don't care as long as the $$$$$$ keep coming in.

It's like an alcoholic who cannot stop from 'just another drink' when s/he is already plastered?  No self control.  

I would not be at all surprised to find out that many of them have addictions of one sort or another.

As with any addiction, the addict cannot take responsibility for their actions.

This contains quite a lot of background on her. LL
http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/Likeable-Sociable-and-Smart.-So-Why-a-Troll/2014/10/08/article2467728.ece

Thanks, LL.

How utterly, disgustingly disrespectful can the haters and hounders get?


Should we organise a memorial service
Post stillsloppingout Today at 10:24 am

No, you shouldn't. Ms Leyland has a grieving family, and the last thing they need is a bunch of conspiraloon attention-seekers using her death for their own ends.

Have they not done enough damage already, FFS?

And why, pray tell, are the hounders claiming that those depraved lunatics that inhabit the assorted controversy sites, and periodically indulge in some internecine blood-letting, have anything to do with those who support civil rights and the rule of law in European democracies?

They're all Amaral supporters, each and every degenerate, crazed, one of them.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/Likeable-Sociable-and-Smart.-So-Why-a-Troll/2014/10/08/article2467728.ece


A neighbour commented: "Deep down it must have hurt that he cut his mum out of his life. Whether that made her anti the McCanns, who seemed to have a very loving, supportive and happy family, we will never know. We were friends but grew apart because she was a one-way ticket. She could be quite nasty and was very controlling.

"When Madeleine first went missing she used to go over to her home village all the time. She used to go to the local pub and the shops telling everyone what she thought about the family. It seemed very odd behaviour."

It might be a good idea for the assorted forkers, haters, numties and hounders to wait for more information before piling yet more agony on Sweepy's family with their faux-grief and conspiraloon nonsense.

big true:

"Ms Leyland has a grieving family, and the last thing they need is a bunch of conspiraloon attention-seekers using her death for their own ends.

Have they not done enough damage already, FFS?"

http://davidbretisagod.forumotion.co.uk/t976-sykes-take-on-murder-suicide-or-natural-causes

Instead of apportioning blame and shrieking for heads on poles, maybe Brenda's so-called internet friends could afford her a little space and try grieving for her demise, not spend hours trying to blame all and sundry. If they had not fed her all the bullsh*t regarding the McCanns, the conspiracy theories that had the Queen, the Pope, the police, government, celebrities etc IN IT to hide the truth about the missing girl, maybe she would be alive today, maybe not.


Quite.

If this article:

http://www.newindianexpress.com/world/Likeable-Sociable-and-Smart.-So-Why-a-Troll/2014/10/08/article2467728.ece

which originated in the fairly respectable Daily Telegraph is correct, then 'Sweepy' was actually in the habit of travelling to the McCanns' home village of Rothley to shout abuse:

"When Madeleine first went missing she used to go over to her home village all the time. She used to go to the local pub and the shops telling everyone what she thought about the family. It seemed very odd behaviour."

What do the faux-grievers imagine that is, besides some pretty nasty stalking? It's a pity she hadn't come to police notice then, it might have nipped this in the bud - it's way past time the police did something about these lunatics.

It might be a very good idea for those whipping up stupid conspiracy theories to wait and see what comes out at the full inquest, remembering that the deceased's computer will have been taken for examination. They may have some nasty shocks coming.

And that aside, they have absolutely NO respect for the deceased's family, in trying to hi-jack this for their own ends.

There is a certain amount of illogicality in that Telegraph article.

On the one hand they say "No one in the neat village of Burton Overy, Leics, suspected that Mrs Leyland had a cruel bone in her body" but then later 'a neighbour' says "We were friends but grew apart because she was a one-way ticket. She could be quite nasty and was very controlling. When Madeleine first went missing she used to go over to her home village all the time. She used to go to the local pub and the shops telling everyone what she thought about the family. It seemed very odd behaviour."

'Nasty and controlling' versus 'not a cruel bone in her body'?

Yes, I see what you mean, Anna. I suppose it could be argued that there is a different between being a bit odd, and not awfully likeable, and going out of your way to pursue a vendetta against total strangers?

I remarked right at the start of this that it is like an internet version of the vicar's wife being found out as the author of poison pen letters.

"The first casualty of war is the truth" still holds good.

Good to see you here Anna.

If your eyesight is up to reading all of those nearly 5,000 tweets, Sweepy was utterly vicious to the young woman she so foolishly imagined was a witness in the case; she was pleased at the thought of intimidating her. I've only seen a handful of her FB posts; again, there was glee in inventing stories about the McCanns to entertain the other haters.

I shudder to think what else the police will find on her computer, and I am deeply sorry for her family having to face all this, plus the inevitable media circus and the nonsense coming from the conspiraloons.

Sadly, if the family, coroner or anyone deviates from the latest scripts invented by the conspiraloons, they too will be targets for abuse, 'research', and accusations of being IN IT.

My betting is that her computer will also hold 'Justice for Hollie Greig' yada, yada, yada, and several yards of 'you're a child abuse supporter' ready to be cut and pasted onto suitable Twitter feeds. Could be several metric, not sure if they still use yards....I tracked one for several days in connection with another story who started Tweeting at precisely 7am every morning, and stopped at precisely 7pm every evening - in between she tweeted at approximately two minute intervals - I defy any normal individual being able to do that unless they were loading Twitter from some sort of ticker-tape machine...they are.seriously.insane.

I would say that's a given, Anna - most of these people are obsessed with child abuse, and weaving bizarre conspiracies around it. Only the kind that involves politicians and ageing celebs, though, not the low-life kind that's on their own doorsteps, as in Rotherham and elsewhere.

I noticed a long time ago that their idea of 'news' is never anything like wars, plagues, finance or politics, it's always some kind of squalid tragedy involving sex, preferably the illegal or perverted kind. It is, IMO, a most unsavoury obsession.