Mystery, mayhem, and death followed Michael X all the way back to Trinidad.

Hacked to death and left in shallow graves, the bodies of Gale Benson and Joseph Skerritt were found at Michael X’s house. Whispers of black magic and rumours of espionage rippled through the island.

How could a young, wealthy British socialite like Gale Benson end up buried alive in the Caribbean? And why would Michael X want her dead?
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Intimate and explicit images of A-list celebrities – that’s what the world woke up to on the 31st of August 2014. “The Fappening” saw thousands of leaked celebrity nudes dumped onto 4chan, Reddit, and Twitter. It gave unprecedented access to the most overtly private images anyone could imagine – but how on earth did it happen?

This week on ShortHand we’re taking a deep dive into the grubby world of AnonIB and leaked-nude “collectors”: users who hoard and circulate explicit images without the subject’s consent – celebrity or not. So how do these images come to be online? And how do we stop it from happening?

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Malcolm X was a true revolutionary, Michael X was an imposter.

This con man realised that politics was a lot easier than poetry and rose to the top of the British Civil Rights Movement. All the while violently exploiting the Windrush generation he claimed to be fighting for.

John Lennon and Leonard Cohen were his biggest fans. They donated thousands to Michael X's projects that never actually happened. The press hung on his every word, quoting him as the most powerful black man in Europe.

By the time Michael X's ego unravelled, it was too late for socialite Gale Benson to escape from his web. They would both pay the ultimate price for his lies.

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