A Letter to Lucy Connolly
Some questions
On 31st October 2024, Lucy Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison, “the particulars of the offence being that “on 29 July 2024 she published and distributed written material on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) which was threatening, abusive or insulting with the intent thereby to stir up racial hatred or whereby, having regard to all the circumstances, racial hatred was likely to be stirred up thereby.”
Suspicions about the nature of the case were heightened following ongoing investigations by Miri AF. The possibility of Lucy Connolly’s story being in some way faked was raised.
On 30th May 2025 I filled in an online form on the UK Government website asking for confirmation of the prison in which Lucy Connolly was held and requesting her prisoner number.
On 28th June 2025, in a discussion with Miri AF and Leo Biddle I publicised the fact that I had made this request.
On 3rd July 2025, (34 days after submiting my enquiry), I was sent a prisoner number and a form with a signature from Lucy Connolly stating that she was willing to disclose her location to me. The email was twice labelled in red,
‘CLASSIFICATION:- Sodexo - Highly Restricted.’
At the bottom it stated: This e-mail, attachments included, is confidential. It is intended solely for the addressees. If you are not an intended recipient, any use, copy or diffusion, even partial of this message is prohibited. Please delete it and notify the sender immediately. Since the integrity of this message cannot be guaranteed on the Internet, SODEXO cannot therefore be considered liable for its content.
I wrote to Lucy Connolly on the 8th July. A few days later on the 12th July, comedian Alex Belfield (who had himself been released from jail on June 12th 2025) published a tweet making Connolly’s prisoner number public and inviting people to write to her.
The following day, 13th July, two of Lucy Connolly’s twitter associates also volunteered her prisoner number to anyone who would like to write to her.
Miri Finch asked, “Why not ask people to write months ago, rather than waiting until she’s about to be released?”
What follows is the letter I sent on the 8th July to Lucy Connolly in HMP Peterborough asking for clarity on subjects that have provoked suspicion:
Dear Lucy Connolly
Thank you for accepting my request to contact you. I hope you are well and managing with your current circumstances. There have been mixed reports of the conditions you are held in. Is it clean and are the other prisoners treating you well?
I am writing to you because many people, myself included, have taken an interest in your case. It seems that you have been given an unnecessarily harsh sentence. As you are well aware, we are living in strange times and people are understandably cautious of believing media narratives. As you had a prominent and popular online presence and now have a high media profile, certain questions have arisen which I hope you don't mind answering. I pose these questions from a journalistic standpoint with a view to ascertaining the truth. They are intended to give you an opportunity to explain any apparent anomalies that might otherwise cause doubt. Given that your fundraiser has accumulated more than £150,000 in donations I hope you will understand the public interest.
Your twitter account is recorded as publishing 26,600 tweets between December 2023 and your arrest on August 6th, 2024. How were you able to tweet an average of at least 105 tweets per day during these 8 months? Were you the only person responsible for this output? Did any other parties produce any of the tweets from your account?
Why did you attend your trial and appeal by videolink and not in person?
Other than with childcare.co.uk did your childminder service have an online presence?
Are your parents and siblings campaigning for you? Have they attended court proceedings? Have they spoken with the media? If not, why not?
Prior to your initial trial were you able to meet with Liam Muir in person? (Liam Muir was Lucy Connolly’s legal representative when she entered her guilty plea in 2024).
Why did you use Democracy 3.0 as the platform for your crowdfunder given that it has such a small online presence and makes no great effort to publicise its campaigns?
Where and when did you marry Ray Connolly?
I apologise for the nature of the questions but I hope you are able to provide clarity and can understand why people have concerns. I wish you well and have sympathy for your situation.
Best wishes,
Francis O'Neill
The letter was received by the prison on the 9th July. As of the time of writing I have yet to receive a reply.
Thank you for reading and many thanks to my paying subscribers.
You can help me to write more frequently by
1. Subscribing monthly here on substack
2. Making a one-off contribution via BuyMeaCoffee
3. Contributing in either way via bank transfer to Santander, account number 00758982, sort code 09-01-36, account name F X ONeill (please use your email address as a reference if you’d like me to acknowledge receipt).
Your support enables me to write these articles and is very much appreciated. Thank you.
If someone is said to have been imprisoned they leave the public mind. I once corresponded with Fr. Daniel Berrigan, said to be serving a sentence for spreading blood on military equipment and official draft records. He answered. I'm a tad embarrassed about this as at that time I was so naive as to not understand that anytime someone occupied a high perch as a protester, that person was likely controlled opposition. He probably wrote to me from the comfort of his home somewhere.
So too when people are said to be dead, they leave the public mind and can walk about freely. Some might think that journalists would report their continued existence, but journalists do no such thing. Their indoctrination in the field, called education, requires that they hold no opinion on things, so that they have turned off curiosity and do not question authority.
Judi Bari was said to be an EarthFirst! protester blown up in her car in California in 1990, suffering severe injuries, and dying of breast cancer in 1997. I looked her up in a people search engine which said she's alive and well and living in Santa Clara, her home beforehand. There is apparently no attempt to hide her, not even in witness protection, a widely misunderstood service. She left the public mind as a minor player after her faked publicity.
Janis Joplin was said to have died in 1970 at age 27 of substance abuse. She was said to have been one of the greatest entertainers of her generation. I could barely tolerate her highly energetic non-musical girations. I found in the public record photos of two separate individuals said to be Joplin, most likely twin sisters, easily distinguished from one another. She wore big hair and large glasses as a disguise. She's still alive, I'm convinced, her death foreordained by alleged faked bad habits. I've found many other fake deaths in the entertainment business. No one believes me, of course, just as precious damned few will believe that Lucy Connelly was not really imprisoned.
If I was in prison, and received such a friendly letter, I’d write back immediately: “Great, how’s next Tuesday?”