He also lost credibility last summer by claiming that a black Mississippi boy had been lynched for dating white girls, when forensic experts concluded that the boy had committed suicide.

ECONOMIST: Jesse Jackson

The court heard Mackrell's victims had been traumatised by their ordeal with one boy harming himself and writing suicide notes and the girl unable to speak about it.

BBC: Darren Mackrell

Her death comes exactly five weeks, almost to the hour, after the apparent suicide of David Wilson, her record producer boyfriend and father of her infant boy.

FORBES: Country Singer Mindy McCready Dead of Apparent Suicide