The problem that you continually ignore is the strength of evidence that the marginalia isn’t a forgery. Even if there’s only a 70% or 80% or 90% likelihood of it being genuine then there is a 70% or 80% or 90% chance that the ID actually happened. You’re looking at it by saying “I don’t think that ID happened therefore the marginalia must be a forgery.”
The absence of corroboration for the ID leaves us with questions that we would like answering of course, but with so much written evidence no longer available is it really so surprising that we have none? Surely it’s possible that the actual logistics of the ID could have involved very few officers who were told to keep quiet? The people at the Seaside Home could have been told that the ID was related to another case so they would see nothing worth talking about. Consider…more people believe in a conspiracy to assassinate JFK than believe in Oswald alone (I don’t) but those millions of people all believe that such a huge, wide ranging conspiracy was kept under wraps with no one blabbing, so how much easier would it have been for no corroboration to seep out about an ID that took place 130+ years ago involving very few people?
Couldn’t the fact that others don’t mention the ID, at least in part, arise from the outcome of the ID? We have Swanson’s reason for the failure to get an ID that would have stood up in court (that the witness wouldn’t ID a fellow Jew) but perhaps this was an assumption on his part based on a misinterpretation and that the witness was so unsure about it that he would send a man to his death? Either way the reality was, in terms of bringing the killer to justice, the ID was unsuccessful so Smith could have seen the episode as one of ‘another suspect bites the dust?’ One of many leads that led nowhere.
Finally we have to ask why would Swanson lie in an entry in a book that wasn’t intended for public consumption? He was there and he appears to have been an honest and conscientious man.
The absence of corroboration for the ID leaves us with questions that we would like answering of course, but with so much written evidence no longer available is it really so surprising that we have none? Surely it’s possible that the actual logistics of the ID could have involved very few officers who were told to keep quiet? The people at the Seaside Home could have been told that the ID was related to another case so they would see nothing worth talking about. Consider…more people believe in a conspiracy to assassinate JFK than believe in Oswald alone (I don’t) but those millions of people all believe that such a huge, wide ranging conspiracy was kept under wraps with no one blabbing, so how much easier would it have been for no corroboration to seep out about an ID that took place 130+ years ago involving very few people?
Couldn’t the fact that others don’t mention the ID, at least in part, arise from the outcome of the ID? We have Swanson’s reason for the failure to get an ID that would have stood up in court (that the witness wouldn’t ID a fellow Jew) but perhaps this was an assumption on his part based on a misinterpretation and that the witness was so unsure about it that he would send a man to his death? Either way the reality was, in terms of bringing the killer to justice, the ID was unsuccessful so Smith could have seen the episode as one of ‘another suspect bites the dust?’ One of many leads that led nowhere.
Finally we have to ask why would Swanson lie in an entry in a book that wasn’t intended for public consumption? He was there and he appears to have been an honest and conscientious man.
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