Amy Elk - Voice Actress

Nique’s Eulogy

Amy — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:07:36 +0000

As promised, here is the eulogy I gave at my sister’s memorial service.

zOMG! A Morning Show!

Amy — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:00:40 +0000

I’m way behind, I know. This one’s been in the can for 2 weeks now!

Plea For Help

Amy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:59:13 +0000

The world knows about the tragedy in Utah. A man’s wife goes missing and for 2 years, he is the one and only suspect. With no body, it seemed like the police could do nothing to take this man into custody. Tragically, this man chose to take his own life, along with the lives of two innocent children. He didn’t want his ‘missing’ wife’s family to care for the 2 little boys.
For those not aware of it, an equally scary and similar situation started in Lawrenceville, GA in July 2011 and continues now, 7 MONTHS later. Nique Leili, mother of 3 girls, 2 of them minors, went ‘missing’. The situation wasn’t reported by the only witness, her husband, for 2 days, and even then it was only after Nique’s father reported her missing to the police. 1 week later, her body was found in the woods less than 2 miles from her home by a volunteer search party comprised of her family, friends and 19 year old daughter. The one and only suspect was named by police – he was her husband, Matt Leili. There is a taped 911 phone call of a domestic violence report less than a month before Nique was murdered.
The police say they are still investigating. While the Medical Examiner’s report could not definitively determine the cause of death, they know she was either strangled or asphyxiated. 3 years prior to her death, Nique’ had tried to leave Matt, and he pushed her against the wall and placed his hands around her throat. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened in July.
Meanwhile, Matt Leili has been to court to fight against visitation in regards to the girls & their mother’s family. He has ignored the judge’s orders to take the girls to be evaluated by a counselor, and refuses to let them speak to school counselors. The “memorial” service he held at his house was little more than a poolside barbecue, where the girls were not permitted to cry, and were wiping sweat off of their father like they were his personal harem. There are reports he and the girls will be moving out of Georgia next week. Valentine’s Day is next week, and that would have been his and Nique’s 14th wedding anniversary. GCPD needs to do something NOW. This waiting game needs to stop, in the name of safety for 2 young girls.

Nique’ Leili was my sister, and my friend. She was a wonderful mother and sacrificed everything for them. Now we ask that the authorities step in where she left off and protect her daughters from the man that likely killed her.

Characters Welcome

Amy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:14:13 +0000

Amy sends some overdue thank yous and discusses character voice work

Reclaiming My Voice

Amy — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:25:51 +0000

Amy returns from the trenches and reclaims her voice on the mic!

Facebook Comes Through For Murder Victim’s Family

Amy — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:15:50 +0000

UPDATE! After my last email, I received the following from Facebook yesterday:

Hi Amy,

Thank you for providing us with this information. From further investigation and verification, we memorialized your sister’s account. This sets the account privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in Search. Additionally, the profile will no longer appear in the Suggestions section of the home page. The Wall will remain, so friends and family can leave posts in remembrance.

Please note that her account should no longer be removed from the site, but will remain memorialized. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Lauren
User Operations
Facebook

HOORAY!! I am leaving this post up, but editing out the disparaging remarks about Facebook. They did come through in the end, after all. I would like for them to restore the rest of the people on her friends list, but since I have posted Nique’s Facebook posts here, it seems a bit of a moot point now. Besides, she only had 28 friends on Facebook, and we all know that in real life she had ten times that many. Overall, I am viewing this irritating battle as a positive thing. It spurred me to make publicly available to all of her friends and family a tiny piece of her personality that was posted on Facebook, to give the world a tiny glimpse of the lovely lady we have lost. Had this never happened, it would have just been available to the 28 people she was friends with, and everyone else would have been left in the dark.

————————————————————————————–
I awoke one morning several weeks ago to find my murdered sister’s account had been hacked, and all of her friends and family deleted and blocked. At this time it was still possible to view her profile by accessing it by ID; we just could not see anything on it.

I contacted Facebook, and the following series of emails transpired. Please pass this along to all of your friends. My hope is that given enough attention, Facebook will pay attention and reinstate my sister’s account.

—–Original Message to Facebook—–
From: amyelk3@gmail.com
To:
Subject: My Personal Account is in a Special Memorialized State

email address: niqueleili@mnncommunications.com
Yes/No: No
full name: Nique Leili
date of birth: 1-11-1967
url: Unknown
additional info: Hello, My sister was found murdered on July 16, 2011. People have been leaving very nice messages on her wall, and I hadn’t asked her account be memorialized yet because I liked seeing her in my friends list when I logged in. I awoke this morning and her account had been deleted.
If her husband, Matthew Leili, requested the deactivation, I ask on behalf of her family that you please reinstate it and place it in a memorialized state. He is the only named suspect in her murder, and if he deactivated her account, it was only to hurt us, her family.

Here is but one of a hundred or so news articles about her death:

http://www.11alive.com/video/1066080805001/0/Police-release-911-call-from-Nique-Leili

Please reinstate her account. Her daughter, Alexandra Page and I derived a great deal of comfort from being able to read her wall, and now that has been ripped from us as well.

Thank you,
Amy Chatham Elk

First response from Facebook, feels like forward motion:

Hi Amy,

We are very sorry to hear about your loss. Per our policy for deceased users, we have memorialized Nique Leili’s account. This sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in Search. Additionally, the profile will no longer appear in the Suggestions section of the home page. The Wall will remain, so friends and family can leave posts in remembrance.

Unfortunately, we cannot provide login information for the account. This is strictly for privacy reasons. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Lauren
User Operations
Facebook

My response to Facebook, which went unanswered:

Hi Lauren,

Thank you for getting back to me. I’m afraid that I still cannot see Nique’s wall, and I was one of her 28 confirmed friends. I fear that her account may have been hacked and all of her friends removed and/or blocked. This would have happened sometime on Sunday evening or very early Monday morning.

Is this something you can check into for me? If her account was hacked, can you determine the IP address that it came from?

Thanks,
Amy

And the follow up, because I am a squeaky wheel:

Lauren,

Did you receive my earlier message? I suspect that my sister’s account may
have been hacked and all of her confirmed friends removed and blocked. Can
the Facebook security team please look into this for me? If it is possible
to determine who did this, possibly by IP address, it could be important in
the investigation into her murder.

If you or someone on your team could please get back to me on this matter,
my family and I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you,
Amy Elk

The response I got this time. Note that at this point Facebook added me back to my sister’s friend list, but no one else.

Hi,

Thank you for providing us with this information. The problem with your sister’s account should now be resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Lauren
User Operations
Facebook

Again, felt like forward motion. Not quite what we wanted, but something:

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Amy Elk wrote:

Hi Lauren,

I notice that I am the only one on Nique’s confirmed friends list as of
right now. She had 28 friends at the time of her death. Is there a way that
everyone on her confirmed friends list can be reinstated, since the blocking
and unfriending was clearly done after her death?

Thanks very much for all your help.

Amy Elk

UNTIL…Two hours later I found I had been deleted again. Apparently somebody has nothing better to do than to watch the internet for ways to make other people miserable. (Oh right I forgot – that’s what the internet excels at!)

My response:

Lauren,

Sorry to be a pest, but her account has disappeared again. I appreciate your
attention in this matter.

Thanks,
Amy

This is the response I got from Facebook. This whole thing is very “There’s a Hole in My Bucket, Dear Liza.”

Hi Amy,

Thank you for providing us with this information. From further investigation, it appears that a verified immediate family member requested for Nique’s profile to be completely removed from the site. People will not be able to search for it or view any of its information.

Please note that we cannot provide login information for the account. This is strictly for privacy reasons. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Lauren
User Operations
Facebook

I sent the following email this evening in a last ditch attempt to get Facebook to pay attention to what they are supporting:

Lauren,

Yes, as I mentioned below, I am sure a verified member of her family did: her husband, who is the only suspect in her murder! He is not even a Facebook user and only did this to hurt her friends and family. Many of Nique’s family are avid Facebook users and derived comfort from being able to post to her wall.

I would hate to think that in a case like this that Facebook would blindly side with an accused murderer who does not even use their site over the victim’s grieving family. Her daughter, myself, my father, numerous cousins and aunts and uncles, all immediate family, all Facebook users, all hurt by this hateful act.

Please note that I have forwarded this email chain to my attorney. I would thank you to respond to this matter in a more timely fashion, or escalate it as appropriate.

Sincerely,
Amy Elk
Nique Leili’s sister

To The Coward Who Killed My Sister

Amy — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 19:59:05 +0000

You will be caught. It isn’t a question of if; it’s a question of when. It will happen, and you know it. That is why you dwell in shadows and hide behind closed doors. Darkness fears the light, and you, sir, are full of fear – as you should be. It must be Hell to wake up every morning and wonder, “Is today the day? Will they come to take me away today? Will I be spending tonight weeping alone on a cold, hard jail cell cot?” A Hell you most definitely deserve, to be sure, but Hell nonetheless.

You live in fear of every knock at the door, every ring of the phone, every police car and every television camera. Do you see patrol cars on your street and fear that they are there for you? Cower there in your prison that you have created, for another one awaits you. There is nothing left in this life for you but prison. The time you spend in each one is undetermined as of yet, but you spend your days now in a prison of fear, awaiting your prison of justice and pain.

Did you feel like a big, strong, man in control of everything when you took the last breath of life from her? Did it make you feel powerful to throw her body away like a piece of trash? Remember that when you have lost control of your entire world, when you are no longer in control of even the smallest things free men take for granted: clothing, meals, even relieving yourself. Controlling even those simple things will be but happy memories when they come to take you away in handcuffs. That day is coming – slowly, but surely. Every day it’s closer – every day you breathe free air is stolen, and it will be reckoned.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Joy and Sadness

Amy — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:56:43 +0000

I’m switching formats to a written blog for now. The podcast will return at some point…I just don’t trust myself not to say something I shouldn’t in the podcast, and I don’t have time to sit and edit.

So as most of you know by now, my sister was found murdered on July 16 of this year. She was by far my best and oldest friend. Every day when something cool or funny happens, I feel a hole because I cannot call to tell her about it. Even stuff that wasn’t necessarily her thing.

Case in point, this weekend was Dragon*Con. My sister was a math nerd, but not nearly as big a geek as I am. She never got into gaming or general geekery as much as I did, but I would call and tell her about it anyway. Jonathan Coulton was performing at the Variety Playhouse on Friday night, so Chuck and I went to the show, just expecting to have a good time. As I mentioned, geek stuff – not Nique’s thing, so I wasn’t expecting anything at all to back up on me that evening. It’s not like I was going to see an 80′s cover band or anything. (She was a huge 80′s fan having gone through HS in the 80′s.)

Paul and Storm came out to do their “Opening Band” shtick, and I of course squeed and jumped around like an idiot singing along and laughing at lines like “We’re gonna drink all their beer!” Before I knew it, I was sobbing. It was like I was being hit in the head with something that brought me great joy – now that Nique’ is gone, I will never be able to share it with her. She would have laughed unabashedly at Paul and Storm, ’cause let’s be honest – they are frikkin’ hilarious.

It only got worse when JoCo came out. He opened with “The Future Soon” which is probably the song of his that is most important to me. I know the lyrics are silly & about cyborgs and spacelabs, but essentially the song is about a kid that doesn’t fit in, and he is looking forward to the day when he doesn’t feel that way anymore. May as well have been written about my HS experience. I had sent Nique’ a JoCo song at one point – “Code Monkey” – and she loved it. She cracked up at it & said to me “You know, not only is it funny. It’s a really good song!!” like she was surprised that it would be. When he went from “The Future Soon” to “Shop Vac” I just sat there weeping openly in the middle of the concert.

I don’t think anyone noticed. We were off to the side at a table, so we weren’t really sitting that near to the closest people to us. At a glance I appeared to just be singing along with everyone else. It was a bizarre experience – like the things that brought me the greatest joy had become the things that would break me. I knew this already about some things. My kids, for example, but you expect to get emotional over your kids. The fact that now whenever one of them says something ridiculously snarky and cute, I can’t call her to tell her about it, is heartbreaking. Worse, the fact that my daughter most likely won’t remember her at all, or if she does, it will be a vague, hazy recollection with no real feeling attached to it. But again, these are the things I expect to back up on me, so typically they don’t, or at least not as badly. When you steel yourself, things make a loud noise when they bounce off, but they don’t tend to penetrate.

I never expected that geeking out over something my sister and I shared only minimally- which is to say I made her laugh with it once, and she associated it with me- would make me fall apart the way it did.

We stayed after the concert where Paul, Storm and JoCo were all signing autographs. We waited to be the last people in line so that I wouldn’t feel rushed to tell him about it. There is a little more to the story, but in the interest of not inviting douchebaggery towards Jonathan, I won’t go into the details. Suffice to say, he was previously aware of me and my sister, and was unbelievably gracious. He got up & asked if he could give me a hug. (Um, YES?!) I told him how she had loved “Code Monkey”. How if I sent her an IM bitching about having a bad day she’d tell me to go listen to it & chair dance it away. How she was a huge math nerd & that should would have dug “Mandlebrot Set”, and how every bit of joy I derive from his music is now something I won’t be able to share with her. Mostly how important his music was to me, and I thanked him for writing and playing it.

I left in a little puddle of mushy emotional goo and hoped that I hadn’t freaked him out too much. Sunday at Dragon*Con I made sure to find his merch booth to just go and say hi again, and buy his new CD. He told me how it was really moving that I shared that story with him and wouldn’t let me pay for the CD. He signed it, posed for a photo, and gave me another hug.

That was, by far, the coolest thing that happened to me at the con. And folks, I got to meet Wil Wheaton* at this con, so that is saying something. It is so amazing to me to see how kind people truly can be, even when they aren’t asked. I know that one day I will be able to bounce around like a dork at a JoCo show again without it enducing as many tears.

It’s gonna be the future soon. I won’t always be this way.

*Wil was awesome & gracious, and in fact remembered the bumper I had sent him for RFB. However, there was a huge line of people waiting to see him and pay for his autograph, so that meeting was very quick and sadly somewhat superficial. Next time, Wheaton. Next time!

Day 93: Holiday Rambling

Amy — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 11:40:22 +0000

Amy talks about prepping (or not) for the holidays.

Day 92: Cuckoo For JoCo Puffs!

Amy — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:07:09 +0000

Amy tells us all about how awesome it was to see Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm in concert and sings Jeffrey’s praises yet again.