Woman who publicly "trolled" the McCanns, "Found Dead"

The thing is, I have read most of the tweets and they were not even really trolling. The McCanns are not even on twitter and she sent no messages to them directly too them. In fact if it wasn't for these do gooders compiling this dossier they would probably not even know how must vitriol is directed towards them.

The whole thing is fishy in my opinion. I think a lot of people are angry over the fact despite a lot of evidence pointing to the McCanns involvement in maddies disappearance, they have gotten away Scott free. Not only that, they have done so with the help of the UK government and the protection of the media.

originally posted by: sayzaar
I feel for this womans family. Many people still feel strongly that everything to do with maddys dissapearance is odd indeed. The Mcanns story is suspect at best yet the authorities and the media protect them. WHY ?
How were the Mcanns going to pay for the legal action against this woman, and others ? from the 'find maddy fund' no doubt, funded by the public but appears to be unnacountable to them.
A documentary was made recently by a team of researchers who made public the things the media would not publish so the public did not know about. It was eye opening to say the least. I can't remember the site i found it on or i would post it here. Hopefully someone else will know the one i mean and link it. Once you see it you'll realise why people want answers from the Mcanns.

I would really be interested if you could find the link to the documentary. I found a few... is it the one claimed banned by the Mcanns?

I didn't even know about this case until I read an article earlier about the woman being dead.
Will be doing some looking into it. There's no way a child just disappears. The truth always comes out eventually.

This reminds me of a case that was out not that long ago. A boy disappeared from Indiana or something. He was just an infant and under his fathers care at the time. Truly a suspicious case.

A lot of times, parents or at least one of the parents are always at fault when a child just... Disappears. Maybe this woman knew that, and wanted them to confess to their crimes? A lot of times, someone who has a point and they voice it on the internet, they are called a 'troll' because no one wants to acknowledge another viewpoint or even question their own. Of course, I don't know what this woman was posting to the couple, like I said I just found out about the case today.

a reply to: Believe_nothing

Was there really a need to publicly shame this woman? Why? She never sent any of the messages to the McCanns directly.

I'm sorry but I'm completely confused. I thought I grew up in a country where you could voice your opinions, however ridiculous, as long as you weren't forcing it upon someone. She may be misguided, distasteful and unsympathetic, but she has NOT broken the law as far as I'm aware. It's her bloody opinion.

She can post about it everyday for all I care, as long as she's not personally hunting down the McCanns and subjecting them to harassment, which is a crime.

Once again, why was she on Sky News? Why do we even know of her? Why was she picked out of the millions of people hurling abuse and profanities EVERYDAY on the Internet? Why should anybody be picked out? The public does NOT need to know.

Close the twitter account, ban the IP address and get on with it.

Society is truly ill at the moment. All unity is rapidly falling apart. You extrapolate this down the line and not before long it won't be the 'twitter trolls' but the 'conspiracy theorists' who undermine justice, government and democracy.

There's ways to deal with this without having to publicly shame someone, so we can all feel better about ourselves as we partake in some sick and twisted act of self-righteous ego-boosting.

Not long now my brothers and sisters. They almost have us at the point where you'll be scared to simply voice an opinion that goes against the majority, however harmless, for you'll be upsetting the majority's rights and therefore your rights become negligent. This is the route we're choosing to take to deal with these issues, as always, whenever history allows.

a reply to: Lyxdeslic

I would read about it here www.mccannfiles.com...

Lots of unanswered questions, inconsistancies and suspicious actions from the outset.

a reply to: Believe_nothing

First of all, she has NOT got the right to say as she damned well pleases, because there are in fact laws against verbally or textually abusing someone, and these internet laws extend from the fact that it is in fact illegal to walk up to a person and slag them off to their face.

Now, as for this womans allegedly stoic response to media questioning, the response she had to the initial contact is one thing, but she was unmasked, forced into the light by media attention. For all we know, she her self may have become a hate target of epic proportions. Perhaps the abuse she had aimed elsewhere, came back at her in such a way that she could not cope? Perhaps some people close to her removed themselves from her life, because they could not believe her awful spew, or associate with anyone who would say those horrid things to a family who will never be whole or healed. Perhaps she could not cope with the backlash that we do not see, that has no electronic record. Perhaps she was so terrified of being attacked for her bloody heartlessness, that she decided to shuffle off so to speak. One can only bloody hope.

As for anonymity, and this goes out to CJCrawley...

No one who has been paying any attention to events in the last ten years, has ANY legitimate expectation of anonymity, either here, or anywhere else on the entire internet. Hackers and government goons can find out who you are without too much difficulty if you have no specific data security measures to make their lives difficult, and even if you do, unless your skills are better than theirs (doubtful, because to be that good, you pretty much have to be either government SIGINT yourself, or a hacker of some sort) your efforts mean nothing in the face of the forces ranged against your anonymity.

Its a bloody myth, a legend... hell, these days its a joke, which is why I do not care who knows my name on here, or anywhere else I go online any more. Its pointless even trying to fool myself that anonymity exists on the net in any meaningful way, and I am surprised that this is not the prevailing understanding held by the majority of others too!

PRSIM, and its many tendrils, the NSA, GCHQ... anonymity while attached to the net is a total joke.

That being said, I would be very interested to know how the papers got hold of this vile cows name in the first place. Not that I believe that she ought to be any different than the rest of us with regard to how well she is protected by the anonymity provided by the internet, but I am pretty sure that someone would have to have been up to some very illegal stuff to actually reveal her identity.

This is a terrible story. Internet trolls hide behind anonymity, so must be quite shocking for her when the national press turned up and exposed her for her offensiveness. These morons who act offensively on the internet thinking they'll get away with it, receive no sympathy for me.

Regards

a reply to: TWILITE22

I have found the videos on this site which can be viewed in 4 parts. The banned one is also here.
I find it odd that this woman was harassed by the media for her views but they do nothing to the makers of these videos. Seems they don't want to bring attention to these. I wonder why ? Hmm !

www.richplanet.net...

All I know is the McCann's have spent a lot of their time shutting down those who question the official line. The troll who died fled her house after she was threatened by police and the McCann's.

www.leicestermercury.co.uk...

Then there's the fact that Gerry McCann called for an example to be made and referenced this woman specifically.

www.heraldscotland.com...

So this whole thing is incredibly sketchy. It could be innocent parents desperate to return to normalcy and lashing out at disinformation.

Evidence points to not only a cover up of the actual facts but a campaign of generating public hatred for the McCann's to avoid the conspiracy theorists ever going after the government. Murdoch was the biggest force in spreading the story that the McCanns are guilty and we know how honest that guy is. Classic conspiracy stuff. Very very sketchy.

www.theweek.co.uk...

a reply to: sayzaar
Hey thanks I've not paid attention to this case of course heard about it so it should be interesting

I hate the Madeline case. Because at the root of it, there's an innocent girl.

This woman, from my seeing, hasn't broken any law. She's voicing an opinion on a social media outlet. Like millions do daily. I'm sure she's not the only one to speak about the McCann's on twitter. Why was she harassed by the media so much? I haven't seen her tweets but she was doing nothing wrong.

Granted, with such a high profile case i'm sure any twitter post with Madeline's or the McCann's name on it is monitored to some degree but all she's done is type out the opinion of many others across the world. Not that i agree... but did she really do anything lawfully wrong? It wasn't directed at them she was sharing her opinion to whoever chose to read it.

I'm confused about this and i'll be keeping an eye on it. Did she know something?

I'm no McCann fan, like they have many.

Still...what on earth would them, or anyone for that matter, gain from killing this woman?

Was she a threat? If the McCann's as so powerful, tell me...why would they have someone from sky news...approach their intended victim on television for all to see...make her a public figure for a week before killing her? If they wanted to kill her, couldn't they have her tracked down and killed in a more covert fashion? Why would they deliberately make a circus show out of killing someone who was IN THE BLOODY NEWS in connection with them? Surely, if they did kill her, they foresaw the allegations of murder, coverup, conspiracy - they've been plagued by this stuff for some 7 years already and they're allegedly out courting yet more controversy? I'm all for conspiracy theories but this is absurd.

Seriously...if this is a plan conceived and executed by the McCann's and co...then why the hell is it so hard to catch them out after having apparently off'ed their daughter? If this is the extent of their foresight, planning...they're a pair of clowns and it should be quite easy to catch them.

Because...if they really killed this woman - they're the most idiotic people on earth. This is a bad turn of events for the McCanns - they'd absolutely nothing to gain from bumping her off, in fact - her existence was actually gaining the McCann's some sympathy from some people...this woman spouting her hatred was probably good publicity for them.

So she said mean stuff to them...her and thousands of other folk. It has been said by many and will be said again...over and above saying mean things to them this woman posed zero threat to the supposedly most powerful family in all of the universe.

Please.

She thought she was anonymous, when she realised she'd been foolish she got embarassed if you ask me and wanted to hide from the media storm.. I bet she had creepy paparazzi idiots hanging about taking pictures of her buying milk and a paper in the morning, etc...ran away, felt trapped and decided the only way out was to take her own life.

I might be wrong but I'm going with the simplest, most realistic and less stupid version of events here and I'm sticking with it.

As for the McCann's...only a matter of time before the truth is exposed, I think it goes deep into the upper echelons of high-society. I've stated my views on the McCann stuff before in other threads so I ain't defending these two...I just think them offing some random woman who's being protrayed as a nut in the media is the dumbest thing they could possibly do...and dumb they may be, but that dumb? I ain't convinced.

As a reply to my own post - I realise that sky tracking this woman down and confronting her may have been done outwith the knowledge of the McCanns.

They saw her on tv and said...that's her, the bitch! She's one of the people who said mean things to us.

Like the many people over the years who on tv, the internet, in the newspapers and even shouted at them in the street have said...the ones we allowed to live. The McCann's have been heckled and confronted numerous times about unanswered questions, etc...so it's nothing new.

And if a sky news reporter can track down sweepyface and confront her yet the McCann's can't...it kinda lays rest to allegations that they have a biased media in their pocket.

** To add **

People seem to think this sky reporter guy just tracked her down and confronted her...but really, he was just doing what these guys do...read:

Read The Deleted Tweets Brenda Leyland Sent About The McCanns Before She Died

Here's a quote from that article - the same or a similar quote can be found on numerous other reportings of this confrontation...

"Reporter Martin Brunt went to her home in Burton Overy, Leicestershire, to ask if she was worried that a dossier of evidence of her allegedly abusive tweets had been handed to the Crown Prosecution Service. She said “no”."

So, he was following up on allegations that a dossier of information about her had been handed over to the crown prosecution service - that seems like a legit reason for him to want to interview her if you ask me, especially it being the McCann case and all.

You can read archives of her tweets by following a link in the above article. In all fairness, she doesn't seem overly nasty - I think the sheer number of tweets - up to 50 a day at times...is what was causing the problem. There's taking an interest then there's scary, stalker, unhealthy obsession type stuff like this. If someone tweeted about me 50 times a day I'd most likely seek some kind of legal advice in the very least. It's a sad turn of events but she played with fire...she expected anonymity and instead she got fame by the shedload.

Shame.

originally posted by: samerulesapply
they're the most idiotic people on earth.

I'm not saying they did but let's face it - they were stupid enough to leave their kid unsupervised in a foregin country!

Jus Sayin...

The twitter troll named sweepyface clearly knew nothing. This kidnapping took place in Portugal and the woman is British. It seems like just a case of a local woman hating on them after deciding they did it.

As I linked above there are shady British government cover up allegations. Supposedly the cover up is related to foreign relations with Portugal or to frame a certain man living there. If you look into it it's very hard to notice any consensus or clear info.

What is highly suspected is that the British government wanted suspicions cast on the McCanns (the link is in my earlier post). What is definite is that Murdoch's news outlets came at the McCanns over and over blaming them for murdering their child and such. The twitter troll probably just got sucked in by the Murdoch sensationalism. We know older people love his networks and newspapers.

a reply to: samerulesapply

Judging from some of her Tweets (just skimmed through them) it seems she has actually done some research and has some interesting points of discussion and is highlighting (unlike the British media) the inconsistencies in their story and version of events.

She also Tweeted this

s3-ec.buzzfed.com...

I'm not defending this woman's actions at all, I don't know her or her motivations so have no idea of her mindset, but the McCan's and Maddie case stinks to high heaven. It is dodgy as hell and this is not merely an ordinary couple who had their daughter abducted on holiday.

There is much, much more to this story.

But it's been done to death on ATS....

Sorry to hear about this woman's death.

I doubt if the McCann's had anything to do with it though, although it would not surprise me if this woman had become the object of harassment by people who object to harassment via twitter or in other anonymous ways on the internet.

Well meaning people can sometimes be quite bloody minded about some things, to the point of being even more savage than those they accuse of savagery.

The McCanns themselves have heard it all. I can't see them singling out this woman for attention, among an ocean of Kate and Gerry haters online, unless she was a serious threat to their livelihood or to custody of their children.

I must say that there is an odor of yellow journalism about the fact that this woman was even approached by the press. It seems like the sort of story that would be beneath Martin Brunt. Could this woman be being used as a further test case of sorts in the long war that has gone on between the press and the McCanns?

The McCanns have been very successful in legal actions against the press. Is twitter a new frontier for them, of legal action?

Incidentally, the police in this case appear to be ignoring a very consistent series of cadaver dog alerts in the McCann's Praia da Luz apartment, given by the very dog whose alerts in another case were used by them to discover a murder victim's body. Martin Brunt would be better employed, in my opinion, asking the police why they are being selective about which cadaver dog alerts they are willing to take as a guide in investigations. The police, in the Madeleine case, seem to be acting very arbitrarily on the issue of the cadaver dog alerts.

It is that sort of thing that has disturbed many of the critics of Kate and Gerry, perhaps this unfortunate woman among them.

originally posted by: paraphi
This is a terrible story. Internet trolls hide behind anonymity, so must be quite shocking for her when the national press turned up and exposed her for her offensiveness. These morons who act offensively on the internet thinking they'll get away with it, receive no sympathy for me.

Regards

have you read her texts? If not how do you know they're offensive? Is being offensive a crime? it's interesting now that the same paper (daily mail) that broadcast her name and put up a misleading example of OTHER people's tweets next to Brenda Leylands are now stating she didn't send anything abusive.
did you know she invited the reporter in to explain her views but that interview has been ignored and the footage of her seeming cold and unrepentant is the only footage Sky chose to show?

unless you make a credible threat of violence to someone it may be unlikely that police would go ahead with prosecution, this is from the CPS

"Communications which do not fall into any of the categories above and fall to be considered separately (see below): i.e. those which may be considered grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false.
As a general approach, cases falling within paragraphs 12 (1), (2) or (3) should be prosecuted robustly where they satisfy the test set out in the Code for Crown Prosecutors.

On the other hand, cases which fall within paragraph 12(4) will be subject to a high threshold and in many cases a prosecution is unlikely to be in the public interest."

so we may end up with something that is not eventually classed as an offence, which members of the public went to police and papers with ( NOT a complaint from the Mccanns), Sky news and the Daily Mail misleadingly label this woman as an offender of some kind before anything was decided by police and she took her own life . So basically she commits no offence and is singled out instead of the other people on that list, probably because she was a lone woman with no support network in this country.

that's just not right, even if she said she hated the McCanns. Seriously, someone says she hates the MCCanns and other people send a file to operation grange which is supposed to be there to find a missing child?!

a reply to: ipsedixit

They actually single her out specifically in an article shortly before she died. Check my earlier posts in this thread. They called her twitter handle out specifically in the article.......

The story in The Independent characterized the internet abuse of the McCanns as including threats of death and torture.

www.independent.co.uk...

An 80-page dossier containing hundreds of tweets, Facebook posts and messages posted on online forums was handed to the Metropolitan Police by members of the public sickened by the abuse in recent months. Many posts suggested that the McCanns should be tortured and killed. Madeleine’s younger siblings, nine-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, have also been subjected to threats.

Where I live, threatening death is an incident that could get one arrested. I'm not sure if anyone, among the files collected in this case, was threatening to kill the McCanns or simply saying that it would be good if they were tortured and killed.

I think the fact that this kind of comment is still going on in a case more than seven years old is the responsibility, to some degree at least, of the authorities investigating the case. Many people believe that the case has not been handled properly.