Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[caz]

I think I'm getting the hang of this Diary Defending business now.

Murphy was telling the truth about having seen the scratches BUT he was lying about the amount of time the watch had been in his possession.

He is both an honest and a dishonest witness and you can choose which bits of his recollection are honest and which are dishonest at your own discretion.

Very good, let's carry on.

Why not, David?

Others have spent years defending the modern hoax theory by believing Mike Barrett one minute and not the next, when it suits their own suspicions, so why is it frowned upon when I do it with regard to the watch?

If the diary and watch were hoaxed together, there has to be an explanation for how and why they became separated and their first known appearances were in April 1992 in London, and a few weeks before July 1992 in Wallasey, respectively - both at a time when independent hoaxers would not have known a thing about a second Maybrick hoax.

The only alternative would appear to be to suspect Albert of dishonestly putting those markings inside his watch, after seeing the first newspaper stories about the diary [but at least four months before Shirley's book was published, with details of which Whitechapel murders Maybrick would claim in his diary], then letting his workmate make the 'discovery', then going back to the jeweller to show off his handiwork, confident that nothing different would be noticed, then paying out good money to have it tested, not once but twice, again confident that his handiwork would pass for being decades older than it actually was.

We are all playing the same game here, David, of deciding who was dishonest, who was squeaky clean and who was dishonest about some things and honest about others.

So it doesn't really help to sit there on your high horse as if you wouldn't dream of joining in. You had the 'hang of it' from the start.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Let's not forget his wife, Suzanne, and his father-in-law, Mr Stewart, both of whom confirmed the watch had been in the family for years.

Hmmm, let's not forget his wife, Anne, and his father-in-law, Mr Graham, both of whom confirmed the diary had been in the family for years.

Oooh, I know. Let's accuse another husband and wife team of hoaxing the watch, shall we?

What fun. Pity there have been no desperate drunken confessions from Murphy, as far as I'm aware, but we can't have everything. Albert didn't confess either, but it has never stopped people pointing the finger.

Love,

Caz
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[David Orsam]

Something appears to have gone wrong with the above chronology of the watch. While a watch was sold in July 1992, scratches linking that watch with Jack the Ripper and Maybrick were not observed until May or June 1993 which, as chance would have it, was only a few weeks after the local and national newspapers had run the story of a diary which showed that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper! What an amazingly well timed discovery.

The only person who claims to have possibly seen scratches on the watch prior to the newspaper stories turns out, we are told, to be a dealer in stolen goods and a liar to boot!! Sadly, therefore, it becomes impossible to believe that he really did see any scratches. His story doesn't make sense anyway. According to a 2017 article by Richard Cobb, Murphy "claimed to have seen the scratches himself and tried polishing them out". Yet, in his written statement, Murphy said that the markings in the watch were "not markings I would have taken notice of". Well either he saw them and tried to polish them out (in which case he took notice of them) or he didn't.

Typically the story of the watch as told by the diary defenders is riddled with inconsistency. According to Robert Smith (2017), Albert Johnson was a "college caretaker" although in a publisher's postscript to an earlier JTR diary book he referred to him as a "semi-retired college security officer". According to Inside Story (2003) he was a "part time Security Guard" at a college in Wirral. Which college was that? It's not easy to establish from the literature but I assume it was the Birkenhead Technical College (possibly also known as the Wirral Metropolitan College?) although Jones in the Maybrick A-Z refers to it as the Liverpool Polytechnic.

Why did Albert pass the jewellers' shop to see the watch in the first place? A Daily Mail story of 23 November 2004 says that Albert was on his way "to deposit savings" in a building society. Smith (2017) says he passed by it "to collect his pension". Johnson himself, in his private notes, says he was "going to collect my wages from bank opposite". One wouldn't want a consistent story to be told would we?

For some bizarre reason we are told that if the scratches weren't on the watch in July 1992 then the "only alternative" is that Albert put them there. Is this right? Was the watch in the personal possession of Albert for the entire period between July 1992 and May 1993 or in a locked safe? Are we sure no-one else had access to that watch?

Because the story of the discovery of the scratches is not suspicious at all. Albert and his work colleagues - presumably either fellow security officers or fellow caretakers - just happened to be having a discussion about whether 18 carat gold existed in the Victorian period - as you do - and as pure luck would have it, what do you know, Albert had an 18 carat gold watch at home. So no possibility of Albert being set up to bring the watch into work. And then when Albert did bring the watch in, the scratches just happened to catch the light while one of his colleagues was looking at it and these scratches which are, we are told, otherwise invisible to the naked eye, could magically be seen. So, again, no chance of one of Albert's colleagues being involved in an attempt to draw the scratches to Albert's attention.

Now here's the good bit. Albert just happened to have instant access to a microscope, as well all do, so that he could examine the watch. This was either in the college's "science and maths" building (Inside Story) or the "Science and Technology block" (Harrison). It's great that Albert and his colleagues had access to a Science and Technology block in a college which means we can certainly rule out those scratches being applied by someone in the college within the Science and Technology block.

When Harrison came to visit Albert at his brother's house it's also good to know that those guys were prepared and Robbie had a microscope on hand so that Harrison could view the scratches. We've all got one at home.

What is most reassuring is that Albert, Saint Albert, the Blessed Albert, had no dubious contacts. The fact that he assigned 25% of his share in the watch to his brother who in turn assigned that share to two men who, we are told by Harrison, waited "menacingly" in the office of a solicitor in order to disrupt a sale of the watch for $190,000 as they were apparently claiming their "percentage of the £1 million Robbie had assured them the watch was worth". Nothing unusual or noteworthy about that.

[caz]

A very reasonable assumption on your part David. We know that Doreen wrote to Mike immediately following their telephone conversation on 10 March so it is a very fair assumption that the only other letter she wrote to him followed a further conversation between Mike and someone at Rupert Crew on 8 April.

Yes, as far as letters between Mike and Doreen were concerned. I have no problem with that, David.

It certainly seems obvious that arrangements were made to meet on that day, hence directions to the office were sent. There is precisely no evidence that Mike called Rupert Crew at any time between 10 March and 8 April - so no reason to use the word "finalised" - and we now have all the correspondence.

But it wasn't just a meeting between two people - Mike and Doreen - was it? Is it reasonable that there was just one phone call between Mike and Doreen on April 8th, during which both parties found they would be free to meet up on Monday 13th [without reference to anyone else?] and Mike revealed during this conversation that he had used a false name originally and gave Doreen his real name? I'm not sure why it matters, though, so perhaps you'd like to explain why you don't take into account the other invitees on the one hand, and Anne [who'd presumably want to know] on the other. How could Mike and Doreen have set the date and time, with Doreen immediately confirming it in writing, unless they both knew by then that all other parties who needed to know would be okay with that date and time? I don't think conference calls were available back then.

If we further assume that Doreen and Shirley were not prepared to meet Mike on a Saturday and that Mike couldn't go during the week because he had to pick up Caroline from school, I wonder if Doreen was puzzled as to how Mike was planning to visit York on 12th or 13th March, both weekdays. Perhaps she figured that he was able to ensure that Caroline would be somehow picked up from school without him.

Perhaps Doreen didn't think it was any of her business? Why would she question someone she had yet to meet, about their childcare arrangements for York? If she even gave it a second thought, she'd have assumed they had a friend or relative who was helping out on that occasion, if it was even clear that Caroline was not going to York too. It wasn't a criminal offence back then to take a child out of school for a holiday, not that a couple of forgers would have worried about that.

I am really not sure what you are trying to prove here, David. There are several perfectly reasonable explanations for the delay: Mike was actually going to York; he was lying about the visit, to allow time to get a response to his enquiry for a Victorian diary; they wanted to wait for the Easter holidays when Anne would be at home with Caroline, leaving Mike free; they wanted to prepare the diary transcript to use for a bit of research [easier to read and more practical to take to the library]; it was the earliest date which all the attendees could make: Mike, Doreen, Shirley and Sally.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

If Anne's reason for wanting the diary placed in a safe in a bank in April 1992 was because she was afraid her husband had nicked the diary, it must be regarded as extraordinary that she waited until February 1993 to ask him if he had done so, in public, with researchers within earshot.

It sounds to me like an embarrassed, impulsive reaction to what those researchers were asking them. By this point there was no going back, but at the same time there had been no whispers about it having been nicked, so she may have felt relatively safe to ask the question, which would presume her innocence as well as her ignorance about where Mike had really got it from. Assuming Anne knew very well that he couldn't have got the diary from Devereux in 1991, and recognised it as a pretty rubbish story, which had been thought up and told by Mike before she could stop him, I can understand why she would seek to distance herself from it, by claiming to be as sceptical as the researchers evidently were.

Her remark did of course look most odd in the light of her 1994 claim to have given the diary to Mike herself, via none other than Tony. But if we disregard the latter as false, does that mean she couldn't genuinely have suspected the diary had been nicked, when she asked Mike in public the previous year if he had done so?

In fact, one might regard it as an absurd notion. Mind you, the police, if they had raided the Barretts' home, would never have found the paperwork relating to an item in a safe in a bank. It was a genius plan on Anne's part to have it hidden but not so hidden that there was not a paper trail back to her husband.

No, what we have here is an insight into the truth, without the gloss later added. Anne wanted to protect the diary not burn it.

How reassuring it must be for you, David, to know the workings of this woman's mind so well, you could have been married to her yourself.

Except that in my experience, a husband only thinks he knows his wife's mind, while a man who claims to know someone else's wife's mind hasn't a chance in hell.

But do carry on. It's all rather illuminating - if only about the way your own mind works.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

For the benefit of those with comprehension difficulties, I might add that the advertisement that was placed in Bookdealer was precisely likely to result in Mike obtaining a bound volume with paper from the period. As I have said, if Mike's understanding was that Victorian diaries did not have dates printed on every page - a very reasonable understanding and one which is in line with many diaries of the period - then his advertisement for a diary from 1880-1890 was going to get him exactly what he was after: a bound volume with blank pages from the very historical period in which the diary was supposed to have been written.

Short of asking for a diary he could use to create a forged Jack the Ripper diary I do not know what else he could have asked for which would have been more likely to produce the desired result.

Once again, you have Mike asking for precisely the kind of 'diary' he would have needed for forgery purposes, and being sent the kind of 'diary' which could not have been more 'useless for forgery purposes'.

I really don't know what to say, except that something is very seriously wrong with this.

Even Amazon doesn't send me dog biscuits when I've ordered a bowl for the cat.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I see that the question is asked "Did the actual forger(s) not know what Mike was like? Did they merely trust him to make the right kind of enquiry to produce the right kind of result?"

Isn't that question redundant if the penman/woman knew what Mike was like and knew he could be trusted to make exactly the right enquiry, but just didn't allow for it to go tits up at the other end?

Has no-one ever considered the possibility that Mike might have been running the show? That the diary was his idea. That the idea of turning Maybrick into the Ripper was his idea. That the idea of taking it to a publisher was his idea. Perhaps he got someone else to do the hard work of drafting the text and doing whatever minimal "research" was necessary for the project but he was driving it all along. One thing we do seem to know about Mike is that he was very imaginative and perhaps it was his imagination that created the diary. So it's not necessarily a question of anyone trusting Mike, it's could just be a question of him doing what he wanted to do.

Of course, David. You must be the first person ever to have considered this possibility - not.

Is this your preferred scenario now? Or no more or less viable than any other Barrett hoax conspiracy theory? And does it compare well with Mike's January 1995 affidavit? Did he claim to have been 'running the show', or to have come up with the idea for the diary, and to make Maybrick the ripper, by himself? Well, not quite.

He did claim he had been trying since December 1993 [just two months after Scotland Yard had questioned him, and six months before he 'confessed' for the first time] to 'expose the fraud', and that the idea for it came from discussion between himself, his wife and Tony Devereux. He didn't try to take all the credit for the idea. In fact, he didn't actually say which of them introduced it to the others, or first mentioned Maybrick as a possibility. It seems he had a reason for keeping things vague, unless he just couldn't remember details like that, after a year spent trying to expose the fraud.

Anyway, if this is still a work in progress for you, that's a good thing, because it means you are continuing to think things through and haven't quite joined up all the dots yet to make a satisfactory whole for yourself.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I think everyone on this forum can distinguish between spending "time and effort" on a project and actually spending hard cash on it. I have repeatedly said that it can make sense not to spend cash on a project until you are certain it will bear fruit and there has never been a sensible response to this.

And as I have repeatedly said, it can also make sense not to spend time and effort on the project if you then have to ask if it might bear fruit, and only then begin the process of sourcing materials for the job which won't prove 'useless' for the purpose.

Why does this sound so utterly unreasonable to you, David? Have you never heard of the expression: "time is money"? All the time anyone would have spent researching and drafting the diary's contents, they were losing out on the £ per hour they might otherwise have been earning, which could then have been spent acquiring the necessary materials, without which their funny peculiar little writing project would have been doomed before they managed to draft the first sentence.

Suppose it took six months, or even a year, for Mike to find a book from the right period with enough blank pages for the project. Would the Rupert Crew agency have conveniently forgotten those intriguing calls from Liverpool by then, about Jack the Ripper's diary? He had given a false name but his real address. At the very least he'd need to find out if anyone else might be 'interested' in such a thing, and then he'd have to hope that Doreen and co would not cause problems if and when the original plan took off.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I have noted this ridiculous sentence which is worth repeating:

"And then he had to wait to see if his enquiry for a Victorian diary would bear fruit - which would have been rather unlikely given the wording of the advert and, as we know, how it was interpreted."

The absolute opposite is true. Mike was asking primarily for a blank (unused) Victorian diary from the period of the Ripper murders. That was the perfect wording for what he was after. If he could not get a blank one then he wanted one with a minimum of 20 blank pages. I don't suppose he imagined it would be a doddle to find such an item. Hence he didn't just restrict his request to an unused, completely blank, diary. And hence he was prepared to accept one outside of his preferred date range.

He didn't think it would be a 'doddle' to find, yet he only made the enquiry when he was about to call the literary agency, or had already done so.

But it seems clear to me and I think to everyone who has sensibly considered the matter that the advertisement was perfectly worded and entirely consistent with someone looking for a genuine Victorian diary which could be used to create a fake Victorian diary.

Well I do think Mike was looking for a genuine Victorian diary which could be used to create 'a' fake Victorian diary. The difference is that I don't accept he was looking for it to house 'the' diary, and if he had just been shown one which he suspected may have been used in that way, he'd have naturally wondered how easy something like this would have been to obtain. Was it a doddle to find one in 1992, or more like a lucky one-off instance for some scallywag to have come across?

You won't convince me on this one, David, and I'm not even trying to convince you. So maybe we should leave it there?

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Keith, I can't speak for what has influenced RJ – and I appreciate that I am, at my peril, now getting into what seems to be a rather sensitive area - but I certainly did notice that on 21 January 2018 you posted in this thread via James:

"I will just end by saying that Caroline (Caz) expresses and articulates my thinking clearly and accurately. I seldom read a post where I disagree with what she has written."

I was somewhat surprised by that statement at the time (and was almost tempted to quote lots stuff to you that she has posted to ask if you agree with it or not) but one thing that is clear from her posts is that she strongly believes that Barrett was presented with a diary of JTR on 9 March 1992 about which he was told absolutely nothing, not even that it came from Battlecrease or was supposedly written by Maybrick.

Actually David, it's more a case of not having seen any reliable evidence that demonstrates otherwise.

That being so, it must be that Caz concludes that Barrett "knew absolutely nothing"...

Similarly, I have yet to see any reliable evidence that demonstrates otherwise. And it's difficult for me to see why that should be, considering all Mike's efforts to prove otherwise.

I can't speak for Keith.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

So I was having this conversation with James Johnston at the end of January and here is what I said to James (#831):

"The chances of Brian being able to remember, 25 years later, what someone said to him one day in July 1992 - something he wasn't asked to recall until over a year later - are minimal to non-existent."

I think you can see clearly that I said nothing about the police or Scotland Yard. Yet a full 23 days later someone who isn’t James (for, sadly, James never responded to my post #831) asked me:

"How do you know Brian Rawes was asked by Scotland Yard to recall what Eddie said to him in July 1992? How would Scotland Yard have even known that any such conversation had taken place until Brian himself introduced it while being asked what he knew, if anything?"

So the question was asked on the false basis that I had said I knew that Brian was asked anything by Scotland Yard. Consequently, when someone says to me "I'm pretty sure I asked you how you knew that Brian Rawes was asked by the police to recall his conversation with Eddie" I can ignore such impertinence.

Apologies, David, for impertinently presuming that when you said Brian was asked to recall an event from July 1992 'over a year later', you could only have meant during his police interview in October 1993, since I couldn't think of any other occasion you might have been referring to. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to who actually 'asked' or 'expected' him to recall this event 'over a year later' and when. He told Robert Smith about it, but not until 1997, nearly five years later, but even then he wasn't 'asked' to recall it because Robert knew nothing about it until Brian told him.

More than this, the question focussed, in typical fashion, on a pure irrelevance, namely who asked Brian to remember what was said. It doesn’t matter.

Well maybe not, but you did claim that he was asked to recall it 'over a year later', which is an odd way of putting it if you weren't thinking of anyone else doing the asking and are now saying he could have 'asked himself the question as to when he heard about the diary', which is not the same as asking 'himself' to recall an actual event from July 1992, which seems absurd, which may explain why you changed it.

For, if he was always aware that Eddie told him he found either a book or something under the floorboards then it must have been a lie for him to have told the police that Lyons told him he had found “a diary”.

Must it? Couldn't it have been an educated assumption that Eddie had been talking about the diary, which turned into a memory of him actually using that word? No eye or ear witness can be expected to have perfect recall, yet they are not all liars, deliberately giving false evidence. But in fact, your point suggests Brian did at the very least recall a conversation from 1992, involving the find of a 'book' or even a 'something' under the floorboards, which Eddie thought could be important, because if nothing of the kind had happened, and his recollection was a totally false memory, brought on after hearing about 'the' diary, why would Brian not have used that word - diary - from the start and stuck with it? And why would Eddie now be speculating about what he may have told Brian that day, if he could simply deny saying anything because it never happened?

To be continued...

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

I suppose it's obvious that when a woman says privately that she is anxious that something might happen to an item so has put it in a safe we should not understand her to have been anxious that something might happen to an item so has put it in a safe. Because to interpret what she says literally is "reading her mind". Instead, we must assign to her some convoluted Machiavellian motive which is, of course, not an attempt to read her mind.

Alternatively, the private memo which has been produced actually reveals the truth of the situation at the time.

[David Orsam]

I guess I am compelled to repeat myself again:

"Short of asking for a diary he could use to create a forged Jack the Ripper diary I do not know what else he could have asked for which would have been likely to produce the desired result."

That means that if he had made clear why he needed the diary and made clear that he needed each page to be absolutely blank, with no dates showing, because he was intending to create a forged Jack the Ripper diary, this would have guaranteed he did not receive a diary which did not suit his requirements by having the date on every page --- mind you, it still wouldn't have produced a positive result because there was clearly no such diary, with completely blank pages, available amongst readers of Bookdealer in March 1992 otherwise Martin Earl would have obtained it, such a diary perfectly fitting the requirements of the advertisement.

As I have also said repeatedly, there were not many Victorian diaries easily available so the forger had to make do with whatever he could find, as we see by the fact that a photograph album was used and a number of pages needed to be cut out, both of which issues would ensure that no sensible person would think it was a genuine diary. Fortunately, the forger did not need to rely on people being sensible.

[David Orsam]

As far as I know, no-one asked Brian Rawes to recall his conversation prior to July 1993. I am aware that he was interviewed by the police in October 1993 but the question is WHY was he interviewed by them in October 1993? Had he been asked by someone prior to the interview if he knew anything about the subject? Or was it a routine interview with the information only emerging during that interview? Either way, someone must have asked him what he remembered Eddie saying to him - even if he only asked himself - and that question was asked over a year after the conversation took place. The only point of any importance is whether he was likely to accurately recall that conversation over a year later when he has had no reason to think about it until that point. I am saying, no, he is not likely to recall it accurately. No doubt that explains why he doesn't seem to be sure if Eddie told him that he had found "a book" or just "something". Perhaps it explains why he appears to have told the police that Eddie said it was "a diary" - although if the police record is accurate and he did say this to the police then he must surely have been lying.

I have already answered why Eddie might have been speculating as to what he told Brian. In fact I have given two possible explanations. The first is that Eddie did find something which he stole but it was not the diary (so that his speculations with James were designed to deceive). The second is that no such conversation took place with Brian - that Brian is hopelessly confused and has imagined the conversation adding information in hindsight once he heard about the JTR Diary (and suggested by the fact that he claims to have mentioned the conversation to Arthur Rigby who appears to have no recollection of this) - so that Eddie was trying his best to work out why Brian thinks such a conversation did take place. I have no idea why I have had to repeat this because it was always clear the first time.

[rjpalmer]

It’s exactly the same, as far as I can see, with Mike’s sworn affidavit and all I am doing is accommodating and not ignoring Mike’s statement.

Hi Keith. Thanks. In this same spirit, perhaps it would be worth while to accommodate other aspects of Barrett's affidavit. His motive, for instance. If I understand your methodology (and perhaps I don't), exploring the motives and behaviors of the various people involved in the Diary saga might give us a clue to what is going on. And I think one of the reasons we find ourselves in conflict is that we fundamentally disagree as to why Mike Barrett confessed. But then, I don't recall the 'Inside' authors really being very clear on this point.

A number of explanations for Mike's confessions have been given, none of them particularly credible.

Because it's odd, isn't it? Isn't it odd that, not overly long after the diary was published, and some money was rolling in, that Mike Barrett confessed to forgery? Why at that moment, when the harvest is about to be reaped? Somewhere at the heart of what we call 'motive,' is self-interest. But surely Mike confessing to forging the diary was against his self-interest, was it not? An act of sabotage against his own future royalties? Maybe even jail? So why IS he confessing?

1. One early explanation is that Mike was simply drunk. I think the line was 'he does not have complete control of his faculties,' or some such deflective comment. Not a very convincing explanation. At some point Mike sobered up, but he was still signing sworn affidavits for weeks or months. And anyway, some might argue that people can be MORE truthful while intoxicated. It was reported recently in the U.S. that the whole Trump/Russia scandal might have started with someone leaking sensitive material after having a few-too-many cocktails. Loose lips sink ships. So, unless you really wish to keep it, I suggest we toss this one out.

2. Anne Graham's explanation. Anne's explanation for Barrett's original confession in July, 1994 was that Mike was trying to get 'at her,' for leaving him. Okay. Jealousy is a motive, it might be worth a look. But it still seems a bit iffy. Why get 'at her' by cutting his own throat? I'm sure many people here have had the unpleasant experience of being 'dumped' by a wife or a husband or some significant other, but to react by confessing to killing Lord Lucan's nanny or having pulled off the Great Train Robbery seems a little unusual, to say the least. Let's call it a "possible," but bear in mind that it might just be the reaction of an estranged spouse who thinks it's "all about her," or is outraged by the implication. We really can't take it too seriously.

3. Mike hated Feldman. This was Paul Begg's take, and you've reposted it here, which may or may not indicate that you endorse it. Okay. Hatred. Another motivator. But again, Mike is going against his own self-interest. Wasn't there some other way to get at Feldman besides derailing the diary and his own potential earnings? The old tried-and-true method of punching him in the nose or keying his car? And eventually Mike retracted his confession (we are told). Does this mean Mike stopped hating Feldman? Maybe, but Chris Jones recently reported that Mike failed to show up for one of the Maybrick conferences because he was still bitter about some of the attendees. I think Feldman may have been dead, already, but you get the point. You, Smith, Harrison. Barrett was still bitter. So I will call this one a "maybe," but not a very satisfying maybe. It has problems.

No, what I am looking for is a motive that DOESN'T go against Mike's own self-interests. By "accommodating" Mike's own words--as you suggest--here's what I came up with.

1. Mike Barrett affidavit #1. 5 January 1995. "There is little doubt in my mind that I have been hoodwinked or if you like conned myself. My inexperience in the Publishing game has been my downfall, whilst all around me are making money, it seems that I am left out of matters, and my Solicitors are now engaged in litigation. I have even had bills to cover expenses incurred by the author of the book, Shirley Harrison."

This comes in the middle of Mike's confession. It is a remarkable outburst, and Barrett supplies us with a rational motive. He is not blaming the bottle, Anne Graham, or Paul Feldman, he is claiming he has been 'hoodwinked' by the publishers, and he is not getting the royalty cheques he thought he would be receiving.

Please understand, Keith. I am not arguing that Barrett is correct or incorrect; I know very little about the payment details beyond what you and your coauthors have revealed; I am simply trying to 'accommodate' Mike's statement and see things from his angle. He is clearly associating his confession with his royalty cheques.

2. Mike Barrett affidavit #3(?) 25 January, 1995. Nearly three weeks later. A pretty angry outburst by Mike. "The Independent Advisor never said a word, but the others made it clear to me that if the 'Diary of Jack the Ripper' is genuine I would get my money in June 1995, however due to my Solicitor advising me some time before this meeting, that I had been granted legal aid to take Shirley Harrison to Court, along with Robert Smith and that if I stay quiet I would get my money, so this being the case I decided to collaboarate with these people and Anne's story by supporting the Diary., much to my regret but at the time I did not know what to do." Again, I don't know the truth of these allegations, but right here in his affidavit he is again obviously obsessed with his ROYALTY PAYMENTS. He seems to be outraged that others are allegedly "making money," and he has to wait until June 1995. So again, it is obvious (to me) that Barrett's confession is intimately linked to a dispute he is having with the publishers.

3. Keith Skinner's comment on Howard Brown's site. Feb 4th, 2018, from someone who was there. "Basically, Mike had initially employed Alan Gray to find the whereabouts of Anne and Caroline after they had left him. Alan became very interested in Mike's story and believed Mike's claim that he (Mike) had forged the Diary but was being prevented from telling the truth by people in London who were threatening him with violence." You and I may or may not agree on the interpretation of all the details, Keith, but I agree this is part of the puzzle. Again Mike's feud with the publishers appears to be the motivation. A question: If Gray let his 'friend' Barrett run up a bill of £3,000 over a period of years--at a time when Mike's income appears to have been extremely meager--then it seems obvious that Gray must have had some reason to believe there would eventually be a "pay day." But how could 'helping Mike prove he forged the Diary' help make this payday come about? Any ideas? The only answer that makes sense is if Gray believed he might help Mike recover the alleged missing royalty payments. That, and the half-baked scheme (which Gray seems to allude to) of a confession-for-profit.

4. Final piece of the puzzle. Pink Moon, two weeks ago.

On one occasion when mike popped into me he had some papers with him that dealt with the research fees that had been claimed against the revenue from the book sales these amounts asked for by some very well known names in the ripperology world I was quite frankly appalled...

I withhold judgment as to whether or not this was 'appalling,' they could very well have been legitimate fees, but, again, I am seeing it from Mike's point of view, and it's still all about the money. Whatever papers Pink Moon saw, they seem to be the similar to the papers Mike mentions in the 5 January 1995 affidavit where he states "I have even had bills to cover expenses incurred by the author of the book, Shirley Harrison."

Again, Keith, I am not accusing you or the publishers or Shirley Harrison (a very nice person) of wrong doing. I wasn't there. But Mike clearly thinks he is being "hoodwinked" ("conned" at his own "con game") and this supplies Mike with a motive for telling the truth about the origins of the diary to people who believe it is a genuine article. Yes, it has the smell of blackmail, but then, Barrett counter alleges that Feldy was blackmailing him. I wasn't there.

Agree with me or not, it does supply Mike with a credible motive for telling the truth about the diary being a forgery. He feels like he is being fleeced. If the Diary is a fraud, and all the textual indications point to it being one, Mike has no motive for telling the truth before the publication of the Diary, nor in later years (presumably after July 1995 when he started getting his cheques). But during that small remarkable window July 1994 - May 1995, I find his motivations abundantly obvious, and this is why I believe he was leaking truthful information to Gray, who, however, couldn't get the job done and who eventually pulled up stakes. And he couldn't get the job done because Barrett was conflicted; there was still a chance of getting his royalty cheques and having the film deal go through. It's not as simple as Caz's mantra about once an I.R.A. liar, always an I.R.A. liar. And what do we find? When we look at Barrett's affidavit and at the Alan Gray tapes, we see elements that can be CONFIRMED, including the purchase of a blank diary with at least 20 blank pages. If you find a flaw in this thinking, I would certainly be obliged if you point it out. I apologize for the long post, but just so you understand where I'm coming from...All the best. RP