Where I am in all this!

[Stephen Thomas]

The point is, does the diary start on the first page or have several pages been torn out before the document starts. There have been other fake diaries written in original books [ eg hitler] but as these books have been partly used, ripping out the used pages, then writing in the book is usually a sign of a fake.

Stop making sense Miss Marple.

[RivkahChaya]

And what happened to this Forger, Psycologist, Ripper and Maybrick expert? Out there collecting all that money is he? No he aint. I dont know who has made all the money from it, but it seems to be people who came on the scene well after it had been reported.

I'm not sure what you are talking about, but someone made money when the book went to press, and it was sold at least once. If the original forger didn't make as much as he hoped, that isn't evidence that it isn't a forgery. A lot of enterprises fail. Businesses fold, people lose money in the stock market. Just because someone didn't make a pile of money off of it, doesn't mean that wasn't the forger's intention.

Of course, it's also possible (I don't believe this, just mentioning it because it's still more likely than the idea that the diary is authentic) that the diary started out as a private joke or prank which got out of hand, like the Cottingley fairies, or the Fox sisters rapping on tables in the dark.

So, I ask again, what is the point of going to so much trouble to forge that book? Which still defies its critics.

I don't know where you get that idea. The diary itself does not defy critics; it practically leaps right into their rhetoric. The only thing defying critics are gullible people who refuse to be logical. And maybe some disingenuous self-styled "experts" in quackery trying to make a buck.

[Ashkenaz]

Maybrick No. Possibly Kominski.

[miakaal4]

Kosminski was docile whilst in the asylum a short time after the murders. I believe he is only suspected because of the classist, and bigoted attitude of Anderson. Who seemed to have all the usual Christian arrogance and superiority that Victorians used as the excuse for their gunboat diplomacy.
I think that none of the police had any real idea who the killer was, and their memoirs based revelations were all about saving face and reputation.
I also believe that the killer wore different clothes, especially hats, and may also have worn wigs, or dyed his hair to further confuse discriptions of himself.

[DVV]

Miakaal, you will find several examples of police officials without personal theories and solutions. Let's be fair.

[Wickerman]

I still think it was you who wrote the diary, Jon. It was definitely someone who puts a rogue letter e in places it has no right to be.

If you recall, you used to spell 'post' (as in casebook post) with an e at the end - poste - just like our little faker does in the diary, with the horrible 'poste haste'.

Come on, own up and we can call it case closed.

Love,

Caz
X

Yeh, this is just my unconventional way of trying to boost sales. The more I trash it, the more gullible people might go out and buy it, royalties don't ya'know!

Regards, Jon S.

[miakaal4]

Did Sir Jim kill 8?

As anyone who has studied the Diary will know, it is a maze of short sentences and hopeless verse. However, there are some intriguing one liners that are not clear enough to allow one to know what the author is refering to. One example could mean that as well as the 5 London and two Manchester killings, he did his last in Liverpool.
In the diary he writes; "I feel strong, strong enough to strike in this damn cold city, (Liverpool) believe I will."
In the next paragraph he starts with; "Am I not a clever fellow, the bitch gave me the greatest pleasure of all."
He then starts a new sentence talking about seeing his wife and her lover together. But that is not the first time he had seen them, so could he have been referring to another victim?

[RivkahChaya]

Or the forger could be making crap up as he goes along. The diary doesn't even read like it was carefully written-- I don't think whoever forged it wrote in out on something else first, edited it carefully, then recopied it. I think sometimes he just wrote total junk thinking the less sense it made the crazier it would make the fictional author seem.

That isn't really how crazy works, though. When people talk about a "method to madness," that phrase means something. The "crazy" of an addict in withdrawal is different from the "crazy" of a schizophrenic, which is again different from the "crazy" of a sociopath. Sometimes the diarist sounds like one thing, sometimes another, and sometimes more like Hollywood crazy, then something you'd see in a real mental patient.

The fact that a self-styled graphologist says the handwriting shows signs of psychopathology is meaningless, especially since the particular graphologist has no training in psychology or psychiatry.

As far as I know, no psychiatrists, neurologists, or clinical psychologists with Ph.Ds, who are the sort of people qualified to diagnose mental illnesses, or other behavior problems, like addiction, have examined the diary. If one did, I'm sure any actual diagnosis would be tentative at best, since qualified people don't like to stake their reputations on so little information. However, those people are very qualified to detect fakery. They see malingerers, who are trying to scam the welfare system, or the justice system, and one of the hallmarks is an odd collection of symptoms that don't add up to a single diagnosis. There are even safeguards against this written into the personality tests given as one screening device in the beginning stages of diagnosis. I'd give examples of the kinds of questions that act as safeguards, but the post is already too long.

Just one note: keeping a diary in the first place is something people with schizophrenia, OCD, and the group I personality disorders tend to do. It is not something addicts tend to do. Addiction can be secondary, or incidental to another problem, but someone whose primary problem is drug-seeking is not usually concerned with introspection, or details, or much else but drug-seeking. Sociopaths don't tend to keep diaries either. They tend to keep visual mementos of things, for their own use, but they tend to have exaggerated self-importance, and don't see a need either for introspection, or to have to explain themselves to other people. People with other types of disorders often don't have the patience for keeping a diary.

However, even if you could find some doctor who could identify a single pathology in the diary's author, you then have to ask whether the pathology matches JTR's MO.

I do not see the forger putting any kind of that forethought into the final product. Authors of fiction about serials usually do better research. The forger isn't even a very good writer.