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Acquiring A Victorian Diary

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  • It doesn't surprise me that a certain person has failed to understand what I've been saying on this forum for the last year or so. My posts are only read in order to pick out small parts in order to go on an irrelevant ramble.

    I have never argued that Mike's affidavit must be true in its entirety. He could be lying about lots of things.

    In saying that I don't necessarily believe that Mike concocted the Diary, this does not mean that he was not involved in concocting it with other people. He and Anne might have jointly concocted it (with assistance from Tony), just as Mike says in his affidavit. But it could also mean that Mike was part of a small group of people who drafted the text of the diary in 1990 or 1991 (or earlier) and his role was confined to obtaining a Victorian book in which to write the diary. His 1995 affidavit might have been deliberately written to protect others involved. I don't know. But what I do know is that Mike attempted to obtain a Victorian diary with blank pages in March 1992 and the only reason I can think for him doing this was in order to forge a Victorian Diary (either him doing it or someone else).

    The idea is criticized on the basis that no-one in their right mind would have handed total control of the Diary over to Mike yet those same people say that Mike was given total control of the Diary by the person or persons who found and stole it from Battlecrease!!!!

    And it's ironic because, if a group of people did give Mike control, they were absolutely right to do so because he contacted the right people and ensured that money was made from the Diary!

    For all I know the people who drafted the text of the diary were dead by March 1992 i.e. like Tony Devereux and Mike found himself with a text that he or he and his wife or he and others simply needed to incorporate into a Victorian Diary.

    I have no idea why anyone thinks I might have a problem with Mike lying in his Jan 1995 affidavit. I've never claimed it must all be true. I have asked to be told what parts can be shown to be false, which is what seems to cause a problem for the Diary defenders.

    Frankly I don't care a jot for the "evidential value" of Mike's affidavit. I've never placed any reliance on that. I have, however, noted that Mike did obtain a small Victorian diary as he claimed in his affidavit and the timing of 11 days fits perfectly with the time that he would have had to forge the JTR diary if he acquired a Victorian scrapbook at the end of March. The rest of his affidavit could be true or false but those facts point strongly towards him being involved in a forgery.

    Comment


    • I am amused that the notion that Mike could have contacted Doreen Montgomery before the forged JTR Diary came into existence is pooh-poohed, yet the same person doing the pooh-poohing has no problem in accepting that when Mike contacted Doreen he did not have the JTR Diary in his possession and had only briefly seen it. Some versions of the story don't even have Mike seeing the diary, only having been told about it.

      I have to repeat what I have said before. On the basis that Mike had in his possession a rough draft of the Diary text, all that needed to happen was for it to be written out into a Victorian book or diary which, I assume we all agree, could easily have taken less then two weeks.

      For that to happen Mike needed to spend money on a Victorian book/diary and on ink. One can easily imagine that he didn't want to do this without being confident that someone would be interested in a diary supposedly written by Jack the Ripper. On 9th March 1992 he was told that someone was interested so that the process of obtaining the diary could begin.

      He had given a false name and had not arranged a date when he would produce the diary so, while under a certain amount of time pressure, he had not boxed himself into a corner. He just needed to find a blank Victorian book or diary and it would not take long to produce a Jack the Ripper diary.

      We know for a fact that he did, at this time, take steps to obtain a blank Victorian diary. We know that in his 1995 affidavit he linked this action with his and his wife's attempts to forge the JTR diary. We know that in his affidavit he managed to state a time period of 11 days which fitted perfectly the actual time available to forge the diary.

      Whether it happened in this way or not there cannot be an objection that such a scenario is not possible or credible simply because the forgery had not occurred on 9 March 1992.

      Comment


      • A forensic document examiner might be able to analyse handwritten text or signatures to see if someone has been attempting to mimic someone else's handwriting (due to hesitancy in pen strokes), although the fact of the matter is that this is very difficult to do and forgeries of signatures cannot always be detected by any means, but to assume that such an examiner is able to tell whether handwriting on a document has been disguised is almost certainly a false assumption.

        Comment


        • Now that we are all agreed and in harmony that Mike's acquisition of a Victorian diary was to enable the creation of a forged a Victorian diary, it only remains to decide for what purpose he wanted such a forgery to be created.

          While theoretically possible that, after having seen what we now know of as JTR Diary, he wanted to produce his own version, this just seems very unlikely, especially as it would mean there would then be two JTR Diaries in existence.

          As I have already mentioned, the fact that Mike said it took 11 days to create the JTR Diary in his affidavit, which perfectly matches the amount of time there would have been available, seems to me to be important. The idea that he took this period of time from the time it took him to negotiate ownership of the diary strikes me as very weak and unlikely. While the time it took to write the diary might well have stuck in his head I really can't see him remembering the negotiating time and then, three years later, applying this to the time it took him to write the diary.

          No, if he wanted to forge a Victorian diary, the overwhelming probability is that it was the Maybrick/JTR diary, i.e. that diary which he was the first person to ever produce in circumstances where the existence of such a diary had never been mentioned in over one hundred years.

          Comment


          • When I said "Perhaps some people think one can look into someone's eyes and see the truth there. It doesn't work like that.", I thought that was an uncontroversial statement.

            But, hey, it seems that some people DO think they can look into someone's eyes and see the truth there. Even worse, they seem to think of themselves as a judge and jury!

            I really don't know how anyone thinks they can compare an informal questioning of Mike Barrett with a formal cross-examination under oath by a professional barrister in front of a judge in the context of full production of evidence.

            But even in criminal jury trials one still cannot look into someone's eyes and see the truth there. Many professionals involved in criminal trials will tell you that the role of demeanour is overrated and there have certainly been plenty of miscarriages of justice. Defendants in criminal trials in this country don't actually need to testify in the witness box yet juries as still expected to come up with verdicts based on all the evidence, regardless of whether they have ever heard the defendant speak.

            The ultimate authority on criminal trials in this country is the Criminal Court of Appeal which can overturn a jury decision without even hearing witnesses.

            Overall, the arrogance of someone who thinks that their own instincts or thoughts about a person to whom they have spoken cannot possibly be wrong is truly breathtaking.

            Comment


            • Here is the question I asked of James:

              If the timesheets do not accurately record who was working at Battlecrease, both Rigby and Coufopolous could have been working in Battlecrease during week ending 21st July couldn't they?


              Had I wanted to ask if Rigby and Coufopolous could have been working in Battlecrease on 17th July I am sure I was perfectly capable of doing so.

              That was NOT my question. I was asking specifically about week ending 21st July because the timesheet for that week shows that Eddie Lyons was working in Battlecrease on both the Thursday and Friday of that week (not to mention the subsequent Monday and Tuesday).
              Last edited by David Orsam; 01-08-2018, 01:33 PM.

              Comment


              • Another question I asked of James:

                And if that is the case then is it possible that this was the week that Eddie found something which he threw into a skip (as recalled by Rigby)?

                Well if Rigby had done some unrecorded work at Battlecrease on Thursday 16th July and, on that day, Eddie threw something into a skip it would be possible.

                Rigby doesn't have had to have been there on Friday 17th July when Rawes spoke to Lyons for this to have been the case.

                It doesn't even have to have been connected with any conversation Rawes had with Lyons, I'm just trying to establish when Rigby could have remembered Eddie throwing something into a skip. So (if the timesheets are unreliable) it could have happened on Monday 20th July or Tuesday 21st July.

                Comment


                • We are told that Paul Dodd recalls a conversation with Rigby who was worried that he might be implicated in theft and volunteered information that Bowling and Lyons knew something about it.

                  But where is this recorded? Where do we find out where Paul Dodd has said this?

                  How do we know it's not someone on this forum misremembering something?

                  Where is the evidence?

                  Comment


                  • I see that it is nonsensically stated that if Colin Rhodes were to confirm in writing that he has produced all the timesheets I might say that Colin's signature was faked.

                    This is utterly ludicrous.

                    I have never made any such point about any of the evidence. At no time have I accused anyone of faking evidence.

                    Is this an attempt to deflect from the embarrassing fact that Colin Rhodes has never confirmed that he has produced all the timesheets showing work at Battlecrease?

                    Comment


                    • Previously we have been told that the timesheets show that 9th March was the only day when floorboards were lifted, even though the timesheets do not, in fact, show any such thing and it is only inferred from the timesheets that this is the case.

                      Now we are told that "According to Colin Rhodes and the timesheets he supplied" this is the case.

                      Well I've been following this saga as closely as anyone and I've yet to see any such statement from Colin Rhodes.

                      But, hey, I've come to expect a slow drip drip drip of information on this forum (some real, some imagined) so perhaps he now has but one day it would be nice if someone could actually post or publish the complete evidence in this case rather than constantly referring to private conversations and unpublished documents which we hear about for the first time in response to a point made on here.

                      Comment


                      • I have to repeat that I asked questions of James Johnston specifically to find out what Rawes' state of knowledge was but he left the forum (ran away in my opinion) without answering them.

                        I have said that Rawes might have had a conversation with Lyons on 17th July 1992 but, in recalling it later, added elements to that conversation on the basis of things he might have discovered subsequently.

                        Playing the game of "there is no evidence that Rawes knew anything about Feldman's investigation" is pointless because we don't have any evidence either way as to what Rawes knew or did not know.

                        He did not give the same account on different occasions because on one telling he said that Eddie found "something", in another account it was "a book" and in another account it was "a diary". That's the point I am making. A discovery of "something" could have been built up in his mind to become a diary after he learnt of Feldman's investigation.

                        And of course Rawes was asked about it because he was obviously asked questions by the police which led to his statement. The point is that could have he recalled what was previously an innocent conversation which had suddenly became suspicious in his mind from what he had learnt from Feldman, either directly or indirectly.

                        It's what I wanted to ask James about because he spoke to Rawes so it's no point anyone else jumping in with comments although I appreciate some people cannot contain themselves from saying pointless things like "we don't know this" and "we don't know that".

                        Comment


                        • I fail to see why Eddie Lyons might have worried about James Johnston being "suspicious" if he didn't agree to an interview. Why should he care what James thought of him?

                          He was under no obligation to agree to any interview with James, or any other researcher, and could simply have said he didn't want to waste time and speak further about it, having already spoken to the police. It would have been a perfectly understandable and reasonable position to adopt.

                          I have no idea whether Lyons denied meeting Robert Smith or not. It's not something that James mentioned in his posts, it doesn't feature in his essay and James refused to publish the full transcript of his interviews, so how can I possibly know?

                          In fact, in my post #206 in this thread on 7 December I asked James:

                          "what did Eddie say when you asked him about whether he found a book under the floorboards which he threw into a skip? And did he agree that he said he had done this when speaking to Robert Smith in June 1993? Was he asked to comment on what Brian Rawes claimed he had said to him in July 1992?"

                          No answer was forthcoming.

                          Once again, it seems to be another disgraceful example of a drip drip of information known by some people in private which is only publicly revealed when it suits a particular purpose. It does not assist in conducting an orderly debate.

                          If Lyons denied meeting Robert Smith then we need to see the transcript of where he said this. Until I see it I do not accept it.

                          But it doesn't help the Diary argument at all. Why is it accepted that Lyons is telling the truth about the floorboards being lifted if, at the same time, he point blank denies meeting Smith and Barrett? On the one hand we are told that he was forced to accept that he was at Battlecrease when the floorboards were lifted because others would remember it (even though no-one else seems to recall him being there) yet he lies about the meeting with Smith even though Smith would be in a position to contradict him.

                          It's all very selective in my opinion. Eddie's answers are posted in this forum when they support the Battlecrease provenance and are thus assumed to be honest answers but those which show him to be lying are not posted!

                          My point was a very simple one. If he was lying in his interview with James could he not have been lying when he said that he remembered the floorboards being lifted in Battlecrease? Might he, indeed, have been playing a little game with James?

                          For all we know, James irritated the hell out of him so he just told him a load of lies.

                          Comment


                          • Now I would have thought that the most important point I made in the first half of my post was in respect of WHY Eddie Lyons suddenly blurted out to Brian Rawes in July that he had found an important diary at Battlecrease in March. It's a question crying out to be answered.

                            Surely this has not been dodged.

                            And what about Robert Smith's explanation for it? Doesn't that need to be dealt with?

                            And then perhaps next of importance is the date of the APS shop conversation. Could it have been in, say, March 1993? Or could it have even been in December 1993? Either way, this would have been after Feldman's investigation and thus possibly influenced by it.

                            But I'm sure the great news is that we will soon all find out who Vinny Dring is.

                            Comment


                            • Caz appears to have hit a nerve.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by MrBarnett View Post
                                Caz appears to have hit a nerve.
                                Or the other way round.

                                Comment

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