George Clooney says a recent 'Daily Mail' story about his fiancee's mother is "at the very least negligent and very possibly dangerous." (Photo: Jason LaVeris, FilmMagic) 
 
 I want to speak to the irresponsibility of Monday's Daily Mail report. I seldom respond to tabloids, unless it involves someone else and their safety or well being. The Daily Mail has printed a completely fabricated story about my fiancée's mother opposing our marriage for religious reasons. It says Amal's mother has been telling "half of Beirut" that she's against the wedding. It says they joke about traditions in the Druze religion that end up with the death of the bride. 
 
 Let me repeat that: the death of the bride. 
 
 STORY: George Clooney slams story of mother-in-law rift 
 
 First of all, none of the story is factually true. Amal's mother is not Druze. She has not been to Beirut since Amal and I have been dating, and she is in no way against the marriage — but none of that is the issue. I'm, of course, used to the Daily Mail making up stories — they do it several times a week — and I don't care. If they fabricate stories of Amal being pregnant, or that the marriage will take place on the set of Downton Abbey, or that I'm running for office, or any number of idiotic stories that they sit at their computers and invent, I don't care. 
 
 But this lie involves larger issues. The irresponsibility, in this day and age, to exploit religious differences where none exist, is at the very least negligent and more appropriately dangerous. We have family members all over the world, and the idea that someone would inflame any part of that world for the sole reason of selling papers should be criminal. 
 
 I'm the son of a newsman; I accept the idea that freedom of speech can be an inconvenience to my private life from time to time, but this story, like so many others, is picked up by hundreds of other outlets citing the Daily Mail as their source, including Boston.com, New York Daily News, Gulf News, Emirates 24/7 and so on. 
 
 The Daily Mail, more than any other organization that calls itself news, has proved time and time again that facts make no difference in the articles they make up. And when they put my family and my friends in harm's way, they cross far beyond just a laughable tabloid and into the arena of inciting violence. 
 
 They must be so very proud. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1megPn2 ||||| George Clooney knows how to get results. 
 
 After the actor penned a ferocious op-ed decrying a recent Daily Mail article about his fiancee's family, the tabloid—long famous for its no-holds-barred approach to the news—found that it had met its match. 
 
 The Mail yanked the story from its website and issued an abject apology to Clooney. 
 
 The piece claimed that the mother of Amal Alamuddin was unhappy with her forthcoming marriage to Clooney for a variety of religious reasons. Writing in USA Today, Clooney said that "none of the story is factually true" and that the Mail had "[crossed] far beyond just a laughable tabloid and into the arena of inciting violence." 
 
 The paper then issued a statement saying that it had launched a "full investigation" into the matter. 
 
 "We accept Mr Clooney's assurance that the story is inaccurate and we apologize to him, Miss Amal Alamuddin and her mother, Baria, for any distress caused," the paper said. ||||| Eternal bachelor George Clooney could finally be settling down — the actor is engaged to beautiful lawyer Amal Alamuddin, sources tell Page Six. 
 
 Clooney has proposed to humanitarian lawyer Alamuddin after dating the British beauty for less than a year, we are told. 
 
 Alamuddin, 36, was spotted showing off an engagement ring as she and Clooney, 52, dined at Nobu in Malibu on Thursday night with Cindy Crawford and husband Rande Gerber. 
 
 A source told Page Six, “George and Amal hoped keep the engagement quiet, but they can’t hide the fact that they are very happy.” 
 
 When contacted on Friday night by Page Six, Clooney’s rep Stan Rosenfield didn’t confirm or deny the engagement, simply telling us, “I do not comment on his personal life.” 
 
 While actor and Syria activist Clooney has in the past dated models, waitresses and most recently wrestler Stacy Keibler, he appears to have met his match in accomplished Alamuddin. 
 
 She studied at Oxford and the New York University School of Law, speaks three languages — French, Arabic and English — and has represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his extradition proceedings with Sweden and is now an adviser to former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the special envoy to Syria. 
 
 After they were spotted leaving a dinner together in London in November 2013, Clooney initially denied he was dating Alamuddin, saying they were working together on a satellite program for Syria. But in February he took her to a screening of his movie “Monuments Men” at the White House, along with his parents, Nick and Nina Clooney. 
 
 Then in March, Clooney and Alamuddin were pictured looking romantic together on a luxury safari vacation watching wildlife in Tanzania, before heading to the Seychelles. 
 
 Clooney, who was married to actress Talia Balsam from 1989 to 1993, told Esquire in December that he wasn’t suited to marriage. He said, “I haven’t had aspirations in that way, ever. I was married in 1989. I wasn’t very good at it. . . . I was quoted as saying I’ll never get married again pretty much right after I got divorced and then I’ve never talked about it since.” 
 
 He added that while some people think it is strange he does not have children, but he is not in a rush to start a family. He said: “Should I go, ‘I got to get me some kids right now!’ and rush out and impregnate someone? Look, what I do know is that I was raised in a loving, happy family. I don’t have any dislike or distrust of that.” ||||| Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe See our privacy notice Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email 
 
 Barbara Coombes was gardening when she snapped. 
 
 She picked up the shovel she had been using, walked into the living room and smashed it over the back of her frail father’s head. 
 
 When the dazed 87-year-old turned towards her, she struck him a second time, before using the blade of the shovel to slit his throat. 
 
 Then, she watched as the father she had grown to loathe bled to death in front of her eyes. 
 
 It was an appalling crime, with an appalling trigger, Manchester Crown Court heard on Wednesday. 
 
 The event that caused her to be overcome by what she would later describe as a ‘black cloud’ was said to have been the discovery of a box. And, inside it, were photos which triggered the most painful memories. 
 
 (Image: Andy Kelvin / Kelvin Media) 
 
 Confronted with indecent images of herself as a child, Barbara Coombes, then in her 50s, recalled how her father Kenneth Coombes had molested her, it was said in court. 
 
 It was claimed that for over 40 years, she was his ‘sex slave’. 
 
 Kenneth, who had served in the RAF in World War II, is of course not here to defend himself against those allegations. He died right there in the living room of the house. 
 
 Precisely what his daughter felt at that moment - perhaps a mixture of horror, revenge, anger and relief - has never been made clear. 
 
 Whatever emotions she felt, these were soon put aside as she set about concealing an horrific crime. 
 
 She managed to roll her dead father up in a carpet, clean up the blood and drag his corpse into the back garden of his semi-detached home at Matlock Road, Reddish in Stockport. 
 
 The next day she ordered a tonne of soil to cover the makeshift grave, spinning a web of lies to conceal the truth of her crime from her family. 
 
 She told her loved ones he had died suddenly from a heart condition. Her brother was informed of the death in a hand-written note she posted through his letterbox. 
 
 Her dad, she insisted, had been taken to hospital and was later cremated. He wouldn’t have wanted ‘the fuss’ of a funeral, she said. 
 
 While the family knew he was dead, although not how, the authorities believed Kenneth was alive. The dark truth of his real fate would remain a secret Barbara Coombes would keep to herself for 12 years. 
 
 While her father was still alive, she had married, but she moved back into the home on Matlock Road when the marriage ended. 
 
 And after his death, despite the body decaying under a tree in the back garden, she continued to live there. 
 
 She slept in a back bedroom, just a few metres from her father’s secret grave. She fraudulently cashed his pension and also a carer’s allowance, handouts which totalled almost £190,000 over the years. 
 
 At one point Barbara Coombes was spotted throwing Kenneth’s possessions away in a skip, but she still wasn’t caught. 
 
 She continued to open her father’s correspondence, even replying in his name. His dentist was told he didn’t want any appointments and his GP, urging him to have the flu vaccine, was also rebuffed. 
 
 Years later, Ms Coombes’ family tried to get their hands on Kenneth's death certificate, but of course it didn’t exist. 
 
 They even asked her whether she had killed him, accidentally, but Ms Coombes put on a show of being affronted and asked how they could possibly pose such an awful question. 
 
 Barbara Coombes skilfully kept the authorities in the dark while fellow residents at Matlock Road knew only that Kenneth had ‘just disappeared’. 
 
 Terry Sever, 70, recalled how strict Kenneth was with his family and told the M.E.N: “If he wanted to watch something on television, she used to have to go out of the room. He was very strict. To my knowledge this man Kenneth just disappeared. I was not that friendly to ask where he went. I just did not see him anymore.” 
 
 Another resident said she ‘assumed’ he had died. She said: “I have lived here for more than 50 years and used to see her walking her little dog. I just cannot believe it because she is such a lovely person. I have known her for many, many years. She lived with her mum and dad and her mum died many, many years ago. 
 
 “I just assumed her dad died many years ago. We used to see them about but then you did not see them anymore.” 
 
 Barbara Coombes’ crime began to unravel in the winter of 2017. 
 
 A housing association officer organised a ‘winter wellness’ visit for Mr Coombes, who would then have been 99 were he still alive. 
 
 Barbara tried to bluff her way out of it but a date was set. 
 
 On January 7 this year, the day before the meeting was scheduled to take place, she walked into Cheadle Heath police station and made a confession which must have shocked detectives: “I murdered my father 12 years ago.” 
 
 She was interviewed by police and then gave a prepared statement in which she said she had been ‘subjected to physical violence from my father from a young age’. 
 
 She said she witnessed her father assaulting her mother on many occasions, and if she tried to intervene he would tell her to mind her own business. 
 
 Her father was said to have cruelly told her he didn’t believe she was his daughter and that he wished she were a boy. 
 
 On the day she killed her father, he had told Ms Coombes to do some gardening and when she went back inside the home she was said to have found those shocking indecent images on the dining table. 
 
 “I felt utterly disgusted and mortified,” she said in a prepared statement. 
 
 She added: “I could feel a black cloud appearing over me. 
 
 “In a haze of disgust and disbelief I picked up a shovel I had been gardening with and walked into the living room where my father was standing.” 
 
 The disbelieving residents of Matlock Road watched as police forensics experts began to dig up the the back garden. 
 
 The body of Kenneth Coombes was uncovered and Barbara Coombes was charged with murder. She was calm and unemotional when she appeared in the dock at Manchester Crown Court on Wednesday, where she was jailed for nine years. She had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at an earlier hearing. The Crown decided not to pursue the murder charge. She also admitted preventing a lawful burial and fraud. 
 
 Defending, Martin Heslop QC said: “This has to be one of the most tragic cases to come to the courts. This now 63 year old lady of previous good character killed her father following 40 years of extreme sexual, mental and physical abuse at his hand.” 
 
 He said Ms Coombes was raped by her father on ‘hundreds of occasions’ and that her father ‘treated her in effect as his sex slave for 40 years’. 
 
 He may have even fathered a child with her, David, who died days after being born, the court heard. 
 
 The QC said on the day she killed her father, Ms Coombes came into the house after doing some gardening and saw a box of pictures, including explicit photographs of her. 
 
 “As a result it’s clear she finally snapped,” Mr Heslop said. 
 
 Michelle Colborne, for the prosecution, said Ms Coombes had suffered ‘a lifetime of abuse, verbal, physical and potentially sexual’. 
 
 Sentencing, Mr Justice Timothy King said Ms Coombes told a ‘series of elaborate lies to cover your tracks’. 
 
 The judge said he believed Ms Coombes would have never gone to the police if it hadn’t been for the visit from the housing officer. 
 
 The judge said he accepted that the impact of the abuse she claims to have suffered at her father’s hands was ‘devastating’, but said although that could explain the killing, it could not excuse it. 
 
 After sending down Ms Coombes for nine years, the judge said: “Some may think that wholly inadequate, others might say it’s far too much given the history of abuse. 
 
 “I have no doubt in the round it is an appropriate sentence.” 
 
 Outside court, Senior Investigating Officer Duncan Thorpe, of GMP, said: “This is a tragic case in which an elderly man has been killed by his own daughter, who then went on to fraudulently claim benefits of over £180,000. 
 
 “She showed absolutely no concern for what she had done and denied everyone the chance to say goodbye, as Kenneth lay buried at the bottom of his own garden, just metres from her own bedroom window. 
 
 “Despite having years to tell someone what really happened, she only came forward when she had no other choice. 
 
 “The impact on the family and friends of all concerned cannot be underestimated. As these tragic events have come to an end I hope that the family can now move forward with their lives.”
– The Daily Mail: so bad that George Clooney is actually responding to one of its articles. The story—which has since been taken down but is still excerpted on other sites including the New York Daily News—claimed that the mother of Clooney fiancée Amal Alamuddin objected to the engagement since Clooney is not Druze. First things first—it's not true; Clooney's future mother-in-law isn't even Druze, Clooney writes in a response via USA Today. But more importantly, the article is dangerous: "It says they joke about traditions in the Druze religion that end up with the death of the bride," Clooney writes. "Let me repeat that: the death of the bride." "I'm, of course, used to the Daily Mail making up stories—they do it several times a week," Clooney writes, and he doesn't usually care. "But this lie involves larger issues. The irresponsibility, in this day and age, to exploit religious differences where none exist, is at the very least negligent and more appropriately dangerous. ... The idea that someone would inflame any part of [the] world for the sole reason of selling papers should be criminal." The Mail, he notes, has never seemed to care whether its stories are actually true. But "when they put my family and my friends in harm's way, they cross far beyond just a laughable tabloid and into the arena of inciting violence." The Mail has now apologized, the Huffington Post reports, and it says a "full investigation" has been launched.