A character in BBC One drama, Sherlock, Dr John Watson writes about a previous case, Death by Twitter.

23rd May

Death by Twitter

When Ceylan Hassan died, it seemed to be a simple hit-and-run. She'd been to the shops and was crossing the road outside her house when she was hit by a bus. It wasn't nice but it didn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary. Until her brother came to see us, asking us to read her last few tweets.

Neither me or Sherlock have Twitter accounts (all those accounts are fake) but we did have a nose occasionally. And the brother, Frank, was right. Ceylan's last four 'tweets' were pretty interesting.

"I know he's coming for me"

"I know he's coming"

"I know"

"I know"

Frank Hassan told us that Ceylan had seemed distracted in the weeks leading up to her death. He couldn't explain what was wrong with her exactly - even after Sherlock did his usual shouty thing. She'd shut down her Facebook account, deleted all her emails and hired someone to fix a couple of extra locks on the doors to her house. It was pretty obvious that she'd thought someone was after her.

CCTV showed that Ceylan had deliberately stepped in front of the bus so the police investigation eventually ruled it was suicide. Again, very tragic but as she hadn't physically been pushed or anything there wasn't anything they could do.

Sherlock was most interested by the fact that she'd closed down her Facebook account. He went through my blog and found someone he believed would know how to uncover her closed account and her deleted emails, just on the basis of how they wrote their comments. A person we knew as theimprobableone. Within half an hour everything Ceylan thought she'd deleted about herself was in Sherlock's inbox.

He discovered everything about her. It turned out she had an ex-boyfriend. A man she'd been out with a few times and had then rejected.

There didn't seem to be anything in the emails until we checked her spam folder. Can you see what I see?

The emails there look like typical spam until you look at the addresses they've come from. And it had been the same on Twitter and Facebook. A constant stream of spam containing hidden threats. It had got inside her head.

I went with Sherlock to find the ex. He'd gone. Done a runner. Sherlock was mad about it. There was nothing he could do. He always regretted never being able to bring the man to justice right up until the day he died.

But, obviously, as everyone reading this blog now knows, all our cases were faked. They weren't real. None of it was real. None of this nonsense is real. It's all just lies. Isn't it?

That's one for you, Sherlock.

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