If Only Someone Had Said Something At The Time

Strangling, alcoholism, stalking, knives, doxxing, theft, drugs, arrests, harassment, libel, urine, impersonation, entrapment, assaults, copyright infringement, MI5 warnings, pornography, rape. Then the mass targeting of government officials. In terms of a resume, it doesn't look great, as it was phrased in wonderful British understatement by our friend behind the scenes at Middle Temple.

We publish what follows in the public interest – not to litigate a dispute in the town square being victims of obvious libel – but to encourage a broader debate about more stringent vetting of those who court public trust or pass off academic training of one kind of another in order to abuse either; be they barristers, police officers, politicians, or any other position involving a solemn duty of care.

"Michael randomly started strangling people"

After being sent our original article, a small group of Reiners' former schoolfriends voluntarily emailed our public legal email address, stating it, "confirms what all of us suspected for a while and could see happening over many years."

One of them wrote for the others to tell their story despite the severe threat of retaliation.

I am very aware of how far Michael would be willing to take things in order to ruin someones life just to try and boost himself.

When we first met michael at secondary school, he was a classic class comedian. Naturally funny, no one laughed at him, we all laughed with him and he seemed very intelligent. We all played xbox together a lot - Halo, COD, Battlefield etc, so when he says he was raised in the Xbox LIVE community this is very true. He even had a decent youtube channel putting a lot of his gameplay online and some of the videos got 200k+ views. At around year 10/11 (15/16 years old) - a few people from our school sort of naturally went to the next level from Xbox LIVE lobbies. Instead of just trash talking kids from around the world and being trash talked yourself, Michael began spending more time on Twitch, and other forums, and made the leap to 4Chan. A few of us browsed 4chan also as you do at that age and all I can say is for most of us, we got it out our system and quickly realised its bat-shit crazy and most people that lurk there are degenerates. Michael appears to have never left, and instead got very deep into the internet community.

I believe through Twitch he met a girl called "Beckii Cruel" (Beckii Flint) who essentially was this young girl who did youtube dance videos and for some reason it was huge in japan, he spent a lot of time in her forums, even befriended her brother Ryan and he even played on Xbox with us at one point. At this point as a group we had already started to disassociate with michael, we went back to just playing Xbox. But we still were friends and he would tell us about Beckii and he mentioned a man called "Eugene Sloupski". A Canadian man who also spent a lot of time in Beckii's forums. Michael was obviously not fond of him - can't lie I think the reason for this was that he wanted more attention from her and he probably thought Eugene was a creep and in his way. He was a middle age man drooling over a 16 year old girl doing dance videos. However...Michael essentially devised a plan to destroy this mans life. I have no proof of this other than the things michael told us he did to this man, and he did show us photo evidence of some of the things he used to destroy this mans life.r

Michael essentially created fake profile on FB - he still has many of these and they've expanded, like literally entire families of people who are all fake. I don't know whether he completely made this person up, or just stole the profile from someone halfway across the world - but he created Rebcecca "Becca" Hartlot. He used that account, posing as an underage girl to befriend eugine, lure him and entrap him.

Michael then turned it romantic by literally photoshopping (because this was well before AI) underaged pornographic photos of this made up Rebecca girl and sending to Eugine to get nude photos back. Those nude photos were then sent to Eurgines house including his parents in order to destroy his life and turn him into a predator. Michael showed us at school some of these photoshopped photos that he used and that was the last we heard of the story from Michael.

Once we got to 17/18 and in "college" at the same school, we very much actively started to involve ourselves less with Michael. We all went through the classic drug phase, smoke a bit of weed for 6 months etc and again...all of us got it out our system and realised it was daft or not to obsess over it. Michael didn't - he started doing harder drugs like DMT and making such weird, indepth injokes with other people out of school that he started hanging with and none of us could make any sense of anything. We all drew the line after a few incidents however:

At a music festival we all went to at some stage Michael randomly started strangling people? With full body weight like he was gauging for a reaction.

In the common area he stole a craftknife from one of the lessons and jokingly threatened one of us with it for stealing his seat - we jokingly laughed...until michael jumped on the person and held the knife about an inch away from his throat.

Thats when we thought fuck this guy hes down a bad path. There is a reason why most of us from school are still good mates, but none of us are friends with Michael.

And even while at uni I remember after a few years we all met up at one of the local pubs we used to go to [redacted] in Horncastle. Michael was going and we brushed it over, hoped Uni would have set him straight. On arrival before even saying hello he pulled out his wallet and was offering pills to people. Like seriously? We're off to the pub for a few casual drinks and you want to do pills?

In terms of women he was ALWAYS obsessive. Making such weird, creepy comments towards them it was difficult to be around. I remember his first GF he exclaimed he fucked her inside a pillow fort and took her virginity, he seemed to enjoy gloating about it a lot at school and it was difficult to laugh about.

We always found it strange how someone as depraved as Michael managed to get into Cambridge - he failed his A-levels first time and had to reset the year - which a lot of us were thankful of. But even still, he then managed to get into Cambridge and he studied this strange BS subject about history and architecture - our only guess was that we believe his father studied at Cambridge and was able to get him through the back door. I doubt he has any ability to actually design a house - more just talk about them in a ridiculous way.

And we were even more surprised when we saw he wanted to get into Law - we all said the same thing - "jesus christ, the law was made specifically to protect others from people like him and now hes going to be representing it", like the time he disappeared from school and the literal police had to come and search the whole of lincoln for him. Turns out he skipped school with a few outsiders and just spent the day doing drugs - this guy was going to be a lawyer.

"I feel a sense of responsibility"

It wasn't long after publishing when we received another voluntary unsolicited email sent to our public legal address, which echoed the same story – from his "closest confidante" and former artistic partner who stated he had "watched him turn into this man over many years and feel some responsibility."

I have been very close friends with him for 15 years, with this friendship deteriorating over the past 2 years as his behaviour has veered more towards vile than what I have always assumed to be shock humour in his endless and voratious quest for attention and fame. I have watched him turn into this man over many years and feel some responsibility. Over the past year I have mostly ignored him and not even spoke on the phone but I'm sure he assumes this is due to [redacted]. I should add that he has [redacted] and extensive access to my personal information so anonymity is essential. His dad is quite well off from teaching at [redacted] University and has a nice house in [redacted].

It's mostly accelerated over the last 3 or 4 years, since people started giving him attention on twitter. It was in discord that he was spamming whilst doing his weird feeder rp soapbox shit.

Unfortunately despite the massive kick your article will be to his ideal career (politics of some sort), he revels on the idea of being publicly known as evil and horrible.

I think he's suffering from some sort of alcoholism-based brain damage, he lives in an imagined world these days. When I last saw him [redacted] ago it was like he wasn't there. 

He's obsessed with the idea of being outed as being horrible, evil and disgusting. Any attack on him in this way fuels him. I think a lot of what he does and says is just to serve this and in my opinion he isn't much of a risk to others physically. He rides on the laurels of attending Cambridge (not for law, for art history) and is extremely dependant on the idea of appearing intellectual and competent. Desperate emulation of fantasy. To be the hero or anti-hero and with that neglecting the effort it takes to build and maintain society.

I was getting sick of him posting his porn shit in the discord I made that I left it 6 months ago. I'm not online really at all for over [redacted], no proper social media account (and even before, I would remake accounts every few years), my boss is based and I'm not worried about anything this interfering with my work life - I've told them about Mike and my thoughts on him. They know him as Crazy Mike.

I mostly just feel a sense of responsibility as we initially bonded as young lads trying psychedelics in Lincolnshire, which I moved on from and he replaced with the drink, that he turns into a lifestyle which I believes emboldened his behaviour (James Bond is how he sees himself when drunk).

I also could have called him out more for it but simply couldn't be arsed with his usual "it's aristocratic" explanations that could go on for hours.

I'm sure you know but he has a bunch of alt accounts that he's maintained for many years, one is called Eve that's all about being fat (on twitter). He also has a Facebook account for a girl called Rebecca Hartlot that he used to set up a guy called Euegene Sloupsky that was harassing his gf at the time (Beckii Cruel, she was a Japan popstar or something from the isle of man, now does social media stuff?). He harassed her for the longest time. He ended up sharing nudes of the guy (he was 27 at the time), he was creeping on beckki in some way back in 2010/11ish (Eugene, not Mike - Mike's stint with harassing her was maybe 2016/17)

Eugene is a bit of a Chris Chan type character. He's also a creep but he's pissed off with Mike these days too for kicking him off a discord.

Fake accounts are his thing. He did the first one in a sort of righteous way to humiliate this guy back in 2012, but I'm pretty sure he's used it to scam people since.

The drinking started in 2013. He often goes at it for up to a week and then won't for a few weeks/months. The extreme binging probably started in 2014/15? When he was in Cambridge and started making up concoctions like "blue milk".

He was always obsessed with Beckii cruel for years and years but I always saw that in a first love hangup way. He had a girlfriend called De** for a long while, not sure why that ended. Then he was harassing this girl called Dam**** for a bit. When he started banging on about the obese women thing a few years ago and acting more and more cracked out I just didnt want to hear anything about it. I always assumed any woman chosing to be with him must be mad.

I have seen videos of Sydney rolling around in the street and down steps unassisted. It was explained to me that she has a medical reason for bruising incredibly easy. Mike accessed some sort of medical insurance or doctors website whilst she was there, using her info and he [redacted] a page showing 15x ish medications she was supposed to be on, I believe one of these made me believe the story.

Of all the women he has harassed and abused, this one I actually believe his explanation. There was nothing calculated about the aftermath and [redacted], he was still in a state. It's entirely possible it could just be excuses and lying but from knowing him so long it's hard to believe he had the capacity to fabricate anything at that point.

That's not to say he didnt treat her like shit and wasn't a horrible person in general at the time, but it's the messiest instance to investigate. I think it's between May and August 2023? He wasn't charged i believe. I don't know what court or station he would've gone to, he was living on a street called [redacted] Gardens in South Kensington at the time. No drugs involved as far as I know. I think she stayed in a hotel somewhere for a week, then went back and stayed with him for a week and then flew back.

"The neighbours found her without pants, crying in the corner"

Another source who reached out to our legal account provided multiple screenshots of a private conversation which narrated "Moby's" arrest in 2023 by the Metropolitan police in South Kensington. They claim Sydney ("custardloaf") was found "crying in the corner" by Indian neighbours, half-naked, and in a state of extreme distress.

Worse still, the messages claim "Moby" disposed of a phone, then threatened the same neighbours with a knife after "practicing his stabbing methods."

"He keeps talking to me about raping women"

This of course tracks with a fourth source – another extremely close friend of Reiners whose real-life identity is known to the R and reached out on Discord – who also distanced himself after feeling the friendship had led him to a "dark place."

yeah i was chatting to my mate last night who’s close with mike and even he was saying it’s gonna get to a point where mike and the work you’ve done is taken seriously, and the minute he gets into government in some capacity he will be outed for being obsessed with fat women
he keeps talking to me about raping women
he always played it close with this horseface girl when he dm’d her telling her he was gonna skin her a while back
the only time i recall him mentioning anything like this i messaged [girlfriend's name] to ask what was going on and she said there was nothing happening but she deleted her messages which i found quite odd

"He choked me and suffocated me"

Sydney ("custardloaf," apparently also known under the username "Maxim"), who appears to either have retreated from public life, or changed to a more anonymous online identity, publicly made these accusations on X and Instagram. Presumably due to the extensive campaign of retaliation leveled against her.

We asked two GPs to study the images of Sydney's bruising to validate the claim she had a condition which caused her to bruise easily. The verdict was unanimous: highly unlikely.

• The bruising appears bilateral and clustered over knees and thighs;
• Some lesions have central clearing and color variation (red → purple → yellow-green), implying different stages of injury;
• The distribution and size are typical of repeated blunt trauma or impact through clothing, not medication-induced capillary fragility.

It's unlikely any medications she was on had any of these effects and platelet diseases which might cause easy bruising are incredibly rare.

"Moby" publicly boasted of his real-life identity, home address, and employer to strangers.

The same "pseudonymous" account began posting strange public messages about being the "Lincolnshire Strangler." This is eerily reminiscent of the unsolved 1994 "Grantham Strangler," in Lincolnshire (in his 60s today), and of course, Peter Sutcliffe, who was nicknamed the "Yorkshire Ripper." (where Reiners is from).

It is also reminiscent of the recent case of James Morton in 2017, who was jailed for 12 years for strangling a girl to death; and the 2025 case of Fenton Woods, who was jailed for nearly three years after strangling his girlfriend.

The public harassment of Sydney under false accounts continued, linked to articles posted on the Critic written by Reiners. Messages deliberately targeting her online to destroy her reputation and source of income, as retaliation for whistleblowing:

The same tactics have been deployed against the Restorationist™ and our writers, but with escalated intensity.

At this point, various anonymous online aliases are known, which operate in tandem to mass-report anyone speaking up:

• Rebecca "Becca" Hartlot
• Hamish Owens
• Utterblax
• Mike Re
• Moby
• Moby Dick
• Moby Requiem
• Eve
• fhesdj
• Alice
• Scarecrow
• Special Needs Wizard
• Charlie Cole
• Palo
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Predation Fantasies Are Not "A Bit Of Banter"

It's a sad reflection Hope Not Hate's article on Michael Reiners and his incel doxxing group is a very interesting read. It contains details of their accusations against Reiners gathered in June 2025 before The Restorationist™ had even launched, which were sent to our inbox for his personal attention.

In a screenshot they publish, Reiners is documented sending grinning invites for an unauthorised "Rest(oration) Stop" Discord server to one of their sources explaining "we are going to peel your skin off if you don't comply" with lurid sexual commentary. No-one had any idea of this at the time. It's unclear who "we" are in this context, but Reiners has a habit of grandstanding himself as a messianic leader of one mysterious group or another, most absurdly as being a Stephen Miller-esque character predestined to "save England."

Reiners posted AI-generated images of female users of X, occasionally in school uniforms, and posted demands that they show their breasts or urinate.

These repulsive images were directed at influencer Jess Gill, and included "an apparent fantasy of being urinated on by teenagers," as well as:

....forcing a pregnant woman to mop up and drink yellow liquid from the floor at gunpoint. Another depicts the two men forcing a young-looking female character to urinate while crying.

This theme continues with members of his Signal doxxing group, one of who posted "My Little Pony fanfiction," which:

involved incest and rape between characters that are canonically considered children within the narrative of the show.

And:

his appreciation of “loli” anime, an abbreviated form of “lolita” that indicates sexualised child-like characters. 

Most worryingly, the researchers at Hope Not Hate noted something which also alarmed us deeply – children. Reiners and his "associates" seem to be linked by the same illicit sexual tastes.

the group’s internal Signal chat also includes children. HOPE not hate has identified two members of the group that are under the age of 16

One of these usernames claims to be fifteen, and publicly expressing disturbing fantasies about "foids" and unusual rhetoric for a teenager:

We picked up on this, and know of at least two other older male figures in his wider circle who are American. Dean-Smith and "Roko" (another disturbed incel type) appear to share the same interest. A younger male writer from the R in his twenties was sent this AI anime pornography to assess his "arousal" by it. Reiners' modus operandi clearly meets the criteria for grooming. In this case, it is to discover fellow "appreciators" of disgusting pornography of very young teenagers distorted to look exceptionally obese.

There are much wider implications to this escalating type of behaviour and its connection to the use of AI models to generate explicit fetish imagery which becomes more depraved. This week, 24 year-old Jonathan Wesley Peternel, the son of Life Church Lead Pastor Nathan Peternel, was arrested on charges related to distributing extreme pornography via Snapchat.

The Indiana Citizen notes he hid in plain sight:

Investigators reported finding more than 200 files of suspected child sexual abuse material, including what they described as “sadomasochistic child abuse” and “photorealistic AI-generated photos of nude pregnant toddlers.” 

[They] also discovered chat logs suggesting Peternel was distributing explicit material in a Snapchat group called “Diddy Disciples.”

The extreme scenario of the most infamous case – Ted Bundy – is instructive here. The fantasy preceded the crime: he developed a chronic inner imaginary life involving abduction scenarios due to a deep resentment toward women. His strong need for control, masked by intelligence and charm, was fueled by early exposure to violent pornography. Before any known assaults, he engaged in yoyeurism, peeping, and stalking during his early twenties. His early attacks in 1973 involved blunt-force violence where victims survived. He transitioned to murder by targeting a very specific victim type, with a specific "wounded victim" ruse, and used his knowledge of the law to choose public places with witnesses to reduce suspicion. Murder became a means, not the goal; part of the fantasy’s “closure.” He did not “snap”; he progressed through a predictable escalation in which fantasy was rehearsed, tested, refined, and finally consumed him.

The pattern is well established:

fantasy → rehearsal → testing → refinement → compulsion → collapse.

Across criminology, forensic psychology, and behavioural science, escalation in serial and predatory offenders is not controversial. It’s one of the most stable findings in the field.

Offending is reinforced by outcome, not intent; Success without consequence strengthens behaviour. Escalation happens because what once produced arousal, relief, or control no longer does — so intensity increases (Bandura; Akers; behavioural reinforcement models).

Persistent violent fantasy is the engine: early acts are attempts to externalise fantasy safely and behaviour escalates as fantasy demands fuller enactment (Burgess et al.; MacCulloch; Ressler & FBI BSU).

Early violence is emotional, chaotic, and reactive. Later violence: is planned, controlled, and goal-oriented. Perpetrators re-offend to the relieve mounting internal pressure of an unsustainable feedback loop. Murder emerges not from rage, but because it completes the offender’s internal script or story they tell (Canter; Douglas; Felson).

The issue at hand is clear – these horrors could have been averted if someone noticed something and spoke up instead of playing it down and not making a scene. This year, many people have spoken up about Michael Reiners. The Nursing and Widwifery Council dismissed him for gross misconduct; close childhood friends disconnected themselves and reached out to the press; The Restorationist™ expelled him. The Homeland Party expelled him. Major right-wing media blacklisted him; Hope Not Hate sounded the alarm about him. What he hear now is the Bar Standards Board are processing multiple complaints about him.

Reiners' loyalty was not to the truth, and his dishonesty grows bolder with his infamy – promoting false claims such as he was a "founder" of this publication as he copies and pastes articles from the Substacks of others. His aim was to so thoroughly discredit the source of the accusation the truth would no longer matter in the fog of deceit; it would be obscured behind a blizzard of malicious lies. If the other is "guilty," then reasonable doubt, as in a court of law, must leave the accused, innocent. The malicious thinking only a corrupt law student could conceive or adopt.

One thing is clear. A demonstrable escalating pattern over 12 years does not resolve itself. It will not end with us and we will not be the last to deal with the spiraling criminal urge. The new small, growing team at the R is simply glad to see the back of him.

The source of the fantasy character assassination "dossier" on Coppen was ex-girlfriend of 6 months in 2008 Jenni Lea-Jones (nee Davies), a failed actress from Wales who has spent 17 years repetitively stalking his travel history, divorce records, and family. Jones is keen for her second attempt at anonymously causing malicious personal damage to go unmarked.

These testimonies are reprinted in the public interest in the specific context of Mr Reiners' extensive unsolicited messaging representing himself as a "barrister of England & Wales." The Restorationist™ did not seek out, solicit, or contact any of the individuals above; nor was any incentive offered or given for their testimonies. All were offered voluntarily, unsolicited, as willing journalistic sources to our publicly available email address for legal inquiries. Basic identity verification was carried out to validate the information.