One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

How will "people be able to judge" the legitimacy of Barrett's confession if they are not given access to the Barrett/Gray tapes? Wouldn’t these be a highly relevant part of examining “all the salient points”??

It has been admitted--by Diary supporters themselves--that Barrett's affidavit was typed up by Alan Gray. Although Barrett signed it, and supposedly dictated it, it is generally agreed that Gray helped Mike craft his statement and organize his 'evidence.' This was done over many days and weeks, and these long 'sessions' between Barrett and Gray were recorded on audio tape.

The 5 January 1995 confession was one element of this process and is what has been released to the public. But the possibility exists that Gray didn't transcribe or correctly interpret everything that Barrett had told him over these many sessions, or may have missed or misinterpreted other “salient points.” Maybe he even got some of the dates wrong. As I have stated many times, Gray was not a 'Ripperologist' and was not a historian and may not have completely understood all the information that Barrett was telling him. Even the Diary Defenders have conceded this point and have even repeated it back to me as if it is their own unique and original insight. Gray, in his own later statements, even concedes that he didn’t originally understand the immediate relevance of, for instance, Mike’s revelation of the source of the Crashaw quote. There could have been other things that he hadn’t understood.[/SIZE][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia][SIZE=16px]What amazes me about the above post, is that I have recently received a fairly good bullocking for goading Keith Skinner into releasing these tapes for independent assessment. Fair enough. Maybe people don't like my methods or my attitude, but one can hardly argue that I wasn't living up to the standards and spirits of Keith's own philosophy!

From Keith:

“What I do know however is that the point of Jonathan’s series of Diary podcasts is to let people, who may be interested in the 27 year old controversy, hear the voices of key figures involved, at precise moments in time which have been caught on tape. These recordings have not been doctored. There is no hidden agenda to present anything but the facts. What reason would we have for giving a bias Roger?”

Fair enough, but why doesn’t this also apply to the Barret/Gray tapes?

What on earth could be more relevant than hearing Barrett's full confession and discussion of the diary’s origins “at the moment which it was caught on tape” without any ‘doctoring’ or editing? Isn’t Barrett the ‘key figure’? Isn’t my request in the very spirit of Keith’s own statement?

If Caz is so eager for the public to judge the legitimacy of Barrett's confession, using “all the salient points,” why does she not join me in calling for the release of these tapes? If they show Barrett's confession to be poppycock, why not deliver the final death blow by releasing them and allowing the public to hear this popplycock "undoctored," to use Keith's terminology?

Keith Skinner can do what he wants---I have no control over his decisions, and I don't particularly care what he decides. But if a man has supposedly made a false confession (and this is what Keith Skinner and Caroline Brown want us to believe) what competent prosecutor or defense attorney or court of appeals would not want to review the original tape recordings of his statement? To see, for instance, whether he had been coerced, or coached, or, by contrast, whether he had demonstrated legitimate inside information that his interviewer had missed? Wouldn’t this be the most obvious and the most relevant source to review and study?

Of course, I do blame myself for not having kept the tapes I did have, because, sadly, with Barrett, Gray, Dangar, Feldman, and Harris all dead, I can’t imagine there would be any copyright restrictions or other reason why they couldn’t be downloaded to the internet.

I have just been reading this one again, to make sure I understood it the first time.

I asked RJ only recently about his own tapes and never had the courtesy of a direct response to any of the questions I asked him in that post. And now he says he didn't even bother to keep the tapes he was sent, but is still whingeing on about the fact that Keith, who did keep hold of the tapes he eventually managed to obtain, has not responded to his polite [don't make me laugh] request to release them. One can just imagine RJ's reaction if Keith had been similarly careless with this material, which RJ is now claiming to be 'highly relevant' to any examination and understanding of Mike's January 1995 affidavit!

I have to wonder when RJ first read the affidavit and whether he had already ditched his own Barrett & Gray tapes by then, or got rid of them at a later date, presumably judging the material to be of no particular relevance to the affidavit. Either way, it seems he rid himself of one of the means he now claims he did need in order to help him examine and understand the affidavit properly, before he committed himself to a guilty verdict.

The tapes originated with Alan Gray, but I'm assuming he and Melvin Harris had control in the early days over who else got to listen to which conversations and when. I'd be very surprised if Paul Feldman was among the privileged few, and I don't expect RJ to reveal who sent him an incomplete set of tapes and when, but it doesn't take a genius to work out that he could do so if his source is one of those who is no longer with us.

Bottom line, though, is how Mike's affidavit – that was regularly held up as the one document in the entire diary saga which, by its very nature, as 'a written statement confirmed by oath or affirmation, for use as evidence in court', we could all rely on to represent the truth [I'll leave 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' out, to spare RJ's blushes] – now turns out to be utterly useless to any 'competent' prosecutor or defender, in the absence of any supporting or contrary evidence, which may or may not be found in the complete Barrett & Gray comedy box set.

Clue: if this explains why Mike wasn't prosecuted back in 1995, after swearing his affidavit, then the only conclusion RJ is surely entitled to reach, based on his own reasoning, is that Messrs Gray and Harris were the ones holding back any supporting evidence that could have nailed the forgers and killed off the diary.

Sorry folks, I started to giggle when writing that last bit.

Love,

Caz
X

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Posted by Caz,


"I have to wonder when RJ first read the affidavit and whether he had already ditched his own Barrett & Gray tapes by then, or got rid of them at a later date, presumably judging the material to be of no particular relevance to the affidavit. Either way, it seems he rid himself of one of the means he now claims he did need in order to help him examine and understand the affidavit properly, before he committed himself to a guilty verdict."

I've got a new sympathy for Mike and his "Sphere" book now.

[caz]

From the pen Shirley Harrison:

"...We made a return visit to Battlecrease House in June 1997 and sat in James Maybrick's bedroom, now Paul Dodd's living room. It was an eerie experience.

Paul [Dodd] was adamant. The house was originally gas-lit and converted to electricity in the 1920s. It was rewired again when his father bought it in 1946 and again in 1977 when Paul himself had gutted the place and lifted the floor boards. Had anything been hidden, he was sure that he would have found it then.

Work was done on the cellars in 1989 and in 1991 there were repairs to the roof but the workmen had no access to the house for this. Storage heaters were installed in two phases - in Maybrick's bedroom in the late summer of 1991 and in the downstairs flat in 1993. Paul had again undertaken the initial preparation himself.

But once we started pinning down dates, none of the people whose names we had been given appeared to have been in the right place at the right time. The key characters didn't want to talk. It was all very mysterious. Something might have indeed have been found at Battlecrease, but, whatever it was, it was seemingly not our diary and whatever it was had vanished...at least temporarily!..."

Question: what does Dodd mean by having done the prep work himself for the relevant projects? Was it Dodd who lifted the floorboards in March 1992?

Sadly, this doesn't tell us much, because Paul Dodd didn't say he had to lift every single floorboard in the house, or that he checked beneath each one to make sure Jack the Ripper's diary was not sitting in the void grinning evilly up at him. And he made a mistake about the storage heaters in Maybrick's bedroom being installed 'in the late summer of 1991' and undertaking the initial preparation himself. The first floor storage heaters were in fact installed on 9th June 1992, while 'the initial preparation' – the wiring job which did indeed involve the lifting of floorboards – was done exactly three months earlier, on 9th March 1992. The difference between late summer 1991 and March 1992 hardly needs to be spelled out. But pinning down dates has always proved tougher in this Liverpool saga than prising up even the toughest old floorboard.

The rest of RJ's post [which I have not quoted] indicates that he is all too well aware of the gaps in his knowledge, which is safer than jumping to rash conclusions in this instance. I'm sure he would love Doddy to have told Shirley that he had lifted the floorboards himself in preparation for the wiring job undertaken by Portus & Rhodes [on 9th and 10th March 1992], but there's a simple reason why this particular bird should have its wings clipped by a qualified vet before RJ even thinks of taking it out for another flutter.

In June 1993, the Liverpool Daily Post had reported that the diary was set for a court battle because Paul Dodd had lodged a claim to it. 'One theory is that it was found in Battlecrease during 1991 or 1992... Three electricians who worked on the house all deny finding the diary.' The article goes on to say that if it was removed from the house 'Dodd believes he has the best claim to ownership. Dodd's solicitor has written to Smith Gryphon, asking for confirmation within seven days that they won't use the diary without discussing the matter with them...' The article also makes it clear that there was no suggestion that Mike Barrett or Tony Devereux had taken the diary from Dodd's house.

Dodd himself told the Post that it was not about the money but about establishing the truth. He said: 'It must be certainly possible, if not probable, that the diary did come from the house.'

I'll leave RJ to work out whether Paul Dodd would have said or done any of this, and been prepared to throw Colin Rhodes's electricians under the bus, had he remembered helpfully lifting the floorboards for them in preparation for a wiring job the previous Spring.

By 1997, Paul Dodd's memory was coloured by the fact that Mike Barrett had said he had created the diary himself, so it's hardly surprising that he'd have long since concluded that it hadn't been hidden in his house after all - which only leaves the minor mystery of how he could have been so sure, four years after he had gone on record to say it was 'certainly possible, if not probable, that the diary did come from the house'.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Posted by Caz,


"I have to wonder when RJ first read the affidavit and whether he had already ditched his own Barrett & Gray tapes by then, or got rid of them at a later date, presumably judging the material to be of no particular relevance to the affidavit. Either way, it seems he rid himself of one of the means he now claims he did need in order to help him examine and understand the affidavit properly, before he committed himself to a guilty verdict."

I've got a new sympathy for Mike and his "Sphere" book now.

Come again, Al?

I've always had some sympathy for Mike and his Sphere book life raft. He was a thoroughly broken man by the summer of 1994, lost at sea without a Mae West, and there were saucy sharks just waiting to take advantage - and a nibble at his chocolate biscuit [with thanks to Noel Coward and Mrs Brisket].

Love,

Caz
X

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

There's a certain irony is all, if one doesn't take it too seriously, in RJ needing something long discarded to prove a point. A bit of Barrett rubbing off on us ripper ologists.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Incidentally, I'd greatly appreciate those tapes being released in full. Not to prove or disprove anything because let's face it, we're unlikely to change each others minds, but I would like to hear Barrett in his own words without the pressure of an audience. I doubt if there would be any great revelation to be had, but all the same. Maybe one day though, before they're lost forever.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Caz. I think I am correct in stating that a transcript of Barrett’s 5 January 1995 confession has been available on this website since approximately 2000 or 2001. That’s about the time I first started reading these message boards and also when I read Feldman’s book, Harrison’s book, Melvin’s dissertations, Kenneth Rendell’s book, etc. Stephen Ryder might be able to give you an exact date, but Barrett’s two affidavits have been publicly available for a very long time, and I knew about them before I listened to Barrett’s confessional tapes.

I don’t know why you care, for there is no secret meaning to be gleaned from my actions, but until a couple of months ago I was under the impression that I still owned these tapes. I hadn’t even thought about them for a decade. But having recently consulted some old notes, I now realize that I gave them away back in 2007—you’d get a good chuckle if I told you to whom. Why did I do such a dastardly thing? Because having poured over this dreary debate for years, I felt the diary was a colossal waste of time and energy, and had no doubt whatsoever that it was a modern hoax, so I destroyed nearly all my notes, papers, documents, etc. and put it behind me. Having taken a decade off, I only came back “into the fray” about 2 1/2 years ago, about the time the ‘Battlecrease’ craziness resurfaced and you and David B. started to ‘go at it.’

No, I don’t think the Diary Defenders would deliberately or dishonestly keep back evidence, and I am certainly not accusing Keith S. of doing so. What I do suspect, however---since you asked--is that the Diary ‘camp’ has so convinced themselves that the diary is an old, complex, and meaningful document, that they might very well ignore, misconstrue, or trivialize relevant data. A group of fundamentalist Christians from the Bible Belt wouldn’t be my first choice for conducting an objective analysis of Darwin’s Origins of the Species. Sorry, but that’s how I see it. Anyway, the spirit of Keith’s statement about the podcasts wasn’t about what I think, or what you think. It is about making any relevant documentation available to the interested public. Do what thou wilt. I see no point in discussing it further.

[rjpalmer]

As for the Battlecrease Ballyhoo, I don’t care if I convince anyone, but here are my two cents.

As far as I am concerned, the tale of the diary being found under the floorboards at Battlecrease has all the recognizable elements of urban folklore. A bit like the famous tale of the ‘Vanishing Hitchhiker'--it grew and grew in transmission, until people were repeating it as their own experience or near experience. The tale was further contaminated when a whole host of interviewers—not working in unison—began to quiz the electricians repeatedly: Harrison, Smith, Rhoades, Maurice Chittenden, Feldman’s team, etc.

Here is my understanding. Once upon a time, some shadowy figure named Vincent Dring claims to have found ‘a couple of books’—for all I know, they could have been The House at Pooh Corner and When We were Very Young—while doing some work for Paul Dodd (the owner of ‘Battlecrease’). Exactly when doesn’t seem to have been revealed. 1980s? 1990s? It is not entirely clear whether this event even happened. There is another vague tale about some book being found behind a shelf or a cupboard that was torn out by a carpenter. Was this Dring, or was Dring an electrician? Everything is left shadowy.

Others seem to have repeated variations of this story, and much of their testimony is along the lines of ‘I heard it from X who heard from Y that Z may have found something.” In other words, people gossiping. One version reported by Robert Smith has an electrician (whom he names) going into a shop and trying to sell a book and two rings that he had found in a biscuit tin. But it was later determined—evidently by Smith himself--that this shop didn’t open for business until November 1992—which makes it entirely irrelevant, because by that time Barrett had already brought the Maybrick hoax to London. Yet another version has Eddie Lyons finding something ‘’important” under the floorboards at Battlecrease in June 1992---which, again, is at least two months too late, since the diary came to London that April. For all I know, the “important” thing Eddie found under the floorboards was electrical wiring that was exposed or not up to code!

Meanwhile, by the summer/autumn of 1992, the ‘Battlecrease’ rumor had made its way back to the electrical contractor hired by Dodd. Thus, Rhodes quizes his 9 employees about it. They denied finding the diary. He also asked if any of them drank in The Saddle, because by now it was known that this was Barrett’s watering hole. Only one of the 9 admits that he did: Eddie Lyons. But this tends to show that Eddie was an innocent lamb, does it not? If Eddy was up to evil deeds, why admit to being a patron at the Saddle? Why not just say no? But, living in the immediately neighborhood, Lyons admits that he went there on occasion. There is no law against having an occasional pint ‘down the boozer’ and there is no indication that he knew Barrett.

Whatever Lyons’ drinking habits, this was also irrelevant because, once again, the timecards show that Eddies wasn’t present at Dodd’s job site until June. Yet, in order for the Battlecrease provenance to ‘work,’ Eddie was the necessarily link between Dodd’s electrical project and Barrett, since Eddie was the only one who frequented The Saddle. Thus, it was necessary to ‘fit up’ Eddie by backdating his presence at Dodd’s house to 9 March 1992—the day Barrett called a literary agent---even though the documentation shows that Eddy wasn’t there until the project resumed that summer.

“Ike” now claims the Diary camp has obtained a “confession” from Lyons, admitting that he was indeed at Dodd’s house on 9 March. But this is some 25 years after-the-fact, and Lyons still denies having found anything—so it’s more of a denial than a confession.

But think about it. Why would Eddie need to ‘confess’ to having been there, if the documentation showed that he was?

In this context, it is worth remembering that the Diary researchers also obtained confessions from Anne Graham, admitting that she had given the Diary to her husband sometime before August 1991. How could she if it was under Dodd’s floorboards? And they further elicited a confession from Graham that for years the Diary had been safely hidden behind a cupboard at her house on Goldie Street. Further, Feldman’s team obtained an admission from Billy Graham that he had received the Diary from his stepmom clear back in 1950. Again, how could this have happened if the ledger was under Dodd’s floorboards?

All of which demonstrates the skill in which the Diary camp obtained confessions, has admissions, statements, etc., for events that directly contradict one another and for which there is no independent confirmation.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

RJ,

Great post, articulate and to the point. As a relatively neutral observer, I greatly appreciate your input. I realise that you, Caz, Ike and others will never see eye to eye, but it's important that you continue to contribute, otherwise the whole debate becomes preaching to the converted.
And I may cause Lord O to have a trouser/defecation incident here, but I believe that a reasoned, sensible debate of the known facts is possible if we put aside our beliefs and discuss the many permutations in a reasonable way, accept that we disagree and above all respect the knowledge and acumen of our fellow Ripperologists. And in all fairness, despite some hot collars, that's generally what we see.

I'd like to see a truce, a new start, because the last thing we need is for knowledgeable contributers like RJ and Caz to refuse to debate, because, really, isn't that what Casebooks all about?

And I'm on record as praising Ike for his brilliant "Societies Pillar", so it's not like I'm that biased.

That's my rant/ tuppence.

Sat huddled behind the sofa, waiting for the knock at the door from the 'apostrophy' police. It's a possessive 's' you heathen!

[Iconoclast]

And I'm on record as praising Ike for his brilliant "Societies Pillar", so it's not like I'm that biased.

Are you ever going to bank that cheque, Abe? Mrs Iconoclast keeps asking me.

[Iconoclast]

“Ike” now claims the Diary camp has obtained a “confession” from Lyons, admitting that he was indeed at Dodd’s house on 9 March. But this is some 25 years after-the-fact, and Lyons still denies having found anything—so it’s more of a denial than a confession.

Hi RJ,

Polite suggestion, mate: When pasting stuff directly from Lord Orsam's emails to you, remember to remove the inverted commas from my name.

Cheers,

"Ike"

PS Probably correct the font back to Casebook standard while you're at it …

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Are you ever going to bank that cheque, Abe? Mrs Iconoclast keeps asking me.

Cheque? It was the promised fame and glory. The fame and glory!

[Iconoclast]

Cheque? It was the promised fame and glory. The fame and glory!

Honestly, Abe, I'd bank the cheque. It'll be quicker ...



PS "Honestly, Abe" - totally unplanned and yet Very Very Clever so let's pretend I meant it!

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

PS "Honestly, Abe" - totally unplanned and yet Very Very Clever so let's pretend I meant it![/I]

With that level of wit, you could get over to the "Evidence Left Behind" thread.....

[Iconoclast]

With that level of wit, you could get over to the "Evidence Left Behind" thread.....

There are other threads?????????????