Sean Hoare Dead: News Of The World Hacking Whistleblower Found Dead In London

First Posted: 7/18/11 01:09 PM ET Updated: 7/18/11 02:02 PM

Hoare first made his claims in a New York Times investigation into the phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World. Photograph: Hazel Thompson/Eyevine

Sean Hoare, a former reporter for the News of the World who was the first to go on the record about Andy Coulson's alleged knowledge of the phone hacking there, has been found dead, according to the Guardian. He was found by police at his London home.

Hoare was known to have problems with drugs and alcohol, and the police said that they were not treating the death as a suspicious one, though they did not reveal what caused Hoare to pass away. But it still comes as a grim coincidence during a period when the phone hacking scandal is escalating seemingly every day.

Hoare first outed himself as a phone-hacker in a September 10 New York Times article. He said that he used to play Coulson—who became the top communications aide to Prime Minister David Cameron, and was later arrested for his alleged role in the hacking operation—recordings of hacked voicemails when the latter was the editor of the News of the World. Coulson, he told the paper, "actively encouraged me to do it." After the article was published, Hoare was questioned by police.

He spoke again to the paper last week, after the scandal had turned into a full-blown crisis.