Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[David Orsam]

It doesn't get more absurd than this.

I write: "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."

Rather than agree with this obviously correct statement, the person in question cannot resist trying to argue about it, saying:

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

That statement is demonstrably untrue.

The same person said in the Incontrovertible thread #2088:

"I am convinced the diary came out of Maybrick's house"

See that word. "convinced". I hardly think I need prove that she is saying that she is convinced that the diary came out of Maybrick's house on 9 March 1992 but this quote in the thread, 25 YEARS OF THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE TRUE FACTS by Robert Smith (#647), confirms it:

"Had Keith or I begun to doubt we were on the right track, we would have done each other the simple professional courtesy of expressing that doubt and explaining it at the earliest possible opportunity, instead of which every email we have exchanged on the subject prior to 2016, throughout 2016 and right up until the present, has been to the same end - the establishment of the diary's presence in Maybrick's bedroom prior to 9 March 1992."

And in this thread (#96) she said:

"You have two one-off instances, with the clearest possible connection to Maybrick and his place of death, not only in the same century, decade, year, month or week, but on the one day in March 1992."

So it's not a question of "not having seen reliable evidence to the contrary", it is a firm belief that the diary came out of Battlecrease on 9 March 1992.

And if the quibble is about Barrett being told nothing about the diary on 9 March 1992, post #438 in THE TRUE FACTS thread, makes clear her view on this:

"Does anyone know if Mike was told on DAY ONE that the diary was from Battlecrease? Did any of those involved even know the name Battlecrease then, or that this used to be the name of the house the diary came from, or that this house belonged to James Maybrick in Jack the Ripper's time? Why would they have told Mike any of this anyway, if they just wanted to offload a bit of stolen property onto him for a small amount of dosh? He'd have been left to work it out for himself, just as he was left to work out what the diary was all about. Even when he must have suspected where it had really come from, he wasn't going to talk and lose any claim he otherwise had to a potentially priceless document."

This really does show the capacity some people have for self-delusion. My statement 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, was obviously correct.

[David Orsam]

I am thoroughly amused, incidentally, by the attempt to draw a comparison between Mike potentially telling both a true story and a lie about the origins of a questioned item and Ron Murphy doing exactly the same thing.

Time and time again we are told that we cannot take anything Mike Barrett says at face value. And I have agreed that we need corroboration for everything he says. This is why I focus only on facts, such as the advertisement for the diary and his purchase of that diary in March 1992, both facts. I don't necessarily accept that anything else he has said is true.

Until now, though, one might have thought that situation was different for Ron Murphy and we could rely on what he said about the watch as being true to the best of his knowledge. Now that we are told that he is probably a dealer in stolen goods and a practised liar then I understand that we cannot for one second take his claim that he is "almost certain" that there were scratches on the watch when he sold it to Albert as being the truth and, in fact, we must discard it as being from someone who is like Mike and cannot be trusted.

A shame that there is now no reliable evidence at all that there were any scratches on the watch before May 1993.

[David Orsam]

Is there any evidence that Mike ever "boasted of connections with the publishing world"? Or is this just fantasy on the part of Diary Defenders?

No answer to this one I see.

Let me try Keith Skinner.

Keith, I appreciate that you may have gone into hiding following the latest catastrophic Chelsea result – it's not a problem though, the Europa League is a fantastic competition - but can I try and contact you via the ouija board that is James Johnston and ask if there is any evidence of which you are aware that prior to 9 March 1992 Mike "boasted of connections with the publishing world"?

While I'm at it, are you aware of a rumour that the diary was sold in an Anfield pub for £25 and, if so, what is the source of that rumour?

Finally, just a reminder of my question as to whether anyone has ever asked Doreen Montgomery about her initial telephone conversations with Mike.

[David Orsam]

I see that someone is trying to play a confidence trick on the members of this forum to pretend that "I seen" is in some way specifically identifiable with Liverpool as opposed to any other part of the country. It is most certainly not. No evidence whatsoever is offered to link the expression to Liverpudlians (to which is added "and other northerners") other than some kind of personal experience, as if this person is an expert in regional dialects.

We are also told by the same person that the expression isn't found in London, i.e. "Not in the London area, it's not".

But let us have some independent evidence on the subject:

Firstly, this is from "A Brief History of Cockney English":

Common Grammatical features of Cockney English include double negatives ("don't need no", "ain't got none"), replacing the words did and saw with seen and done ("I seen/done it", adding questions to the ends of words ("...ain't I?" and "didn't he?), and prepositions like "at" and "to" are often dropped out of sentences.

https://prezi.com/stinee_6pyxf/cockney-english/

This is from an 1895 article entitled "The Cockney and his dialect" by Reginald Pelham Bolton, who states that he was born within the sound of Bow Bells, published in the The Journal of American Folklore:

A little Cockney boy went for his first school outing. “How did you like it?” he was asked. “Werry much,” he replied, “but I didn’t get enough to drink. They gave me milk, but not aat of a clean tin. They squeezed it aat of a nasty caa; I seen ‘em done it myself”.

Examples of "I seen" can be found in two books by Dilly Court, "The Cockney Angel ("then I seen your face") and The Cockney Sparrow ("I seen her hiding") - both my cockney characters - and in Cockney Auction by Carol Rivers about her childhood in the Isle of Dogs when one girl, Doris, says both "we ain't got none" and "I seen Gran".

A song called Psychomodo by the London band Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel contains the following lyrics:

"I seen everything in every shape
I seen 1984 in a terrible state
I seen Quasimodo hanging on my gate"

And one will certainly find "I seen" said by people from Norfolk. I offer just one example from a 1939 book, "The Rabbit Skin Cap; A Tale of a Norfolk Countryman’s Youth" by George Baldry

"we were soon climbing up and down until I seen something running across a path – a rabbit."

The reason why this person is trying to pull the wool over our eyes is because it is essential for her argument that "I seen" is intrinsically and recognisably Liverpudlian otherwise why else would the forger of the diary have deliberately included it in the diary as coming from the pen of James Maybrick?

The truth of the matter is that there is absolutely no reason why one would assume that Maybrick, regardless of whether or not he was viewed as "a jumped-up clerk", would write "the whore seen her master". It is perfectly obvious that the error of language is here being made by the forger and reflects the way the forger spoke English. It is nothing to do with the forger attempting to reflect the actual language of James Maybrick because there is absolutely no sensible reason to think that Maybrick would speak or write like that.

[caz]

The fact that he may or may not have mentioned that conversation to Arthur Rigby on the same day does not change that at all.

And where is Arthur Rigby’s account of that conversation? Why is he not able to corroborate what Brian told him?

Continued from yesterday...

Has Arthur actually said he is unable to do so? Or has he flat out denied it? And why do you think he might wish to distance himself from any such talk, considering his known track record? And if you can excuse Brian for not recalling, or getting confused over something Eddie may or may not have said to him in passing back in July 1992 [because it suits you to do so], why would you not extend the same courtesy to Arthur, if he can't recall anything Brian said to him on that particular day?

One thing is certain. Brian’s claim that he told Arthur on 17th July 1992 about his conversation with Eddie on 17 July 1992 causes the Diary Defenders a massive headache.

For if Brian did mention to Arthur that Eddie had found a book or something in Battlecrease in July 1992, this could well explain on its own why Arthur secretly contacted Paul Feldman in 1993 to place Eddie in the frame for finding the diary. In other words, two accounts which initially appeared to be independent could potentially be traced back to the same source – a source which refers to an apparent discovery of an unknown item four months after 9 March 1992!

What about Jim Bowling? What was your purpose in missing him out? You are normally much too thorough to do that carelessly. Eddie and Jim worked very closely together for the Skelmersdale contract, throughout December 1991, Jan, Feb and early March 1992, but Jim Bowling didn't figure at all in the alleged July 1992 conversations [Eddie/Brian and Brian/Arthur], so why do you think Arthur dropped Jim's name in the frame alongside Eddie's, when he went to see Paul Dodd in 1993, if Brian had been his only source? Got a headache yet? I don't tend to suffer these days.

But if Brian mentioned the conversation to Arthur, why does Arthur appear to have forgotten about it? Feldman doesn’t refer to it. Had Arthur spoken of it surely the first thing Feldman would have done is tracked Brian down.

If Arthur can’t recall that conversation then why not? Does it mean it didn’t happen? If it didn’t happen, why is Brian saying it did?

Well since Arthur was working for eight hours in Battlecrease on 9th March 1992, and would know the floorboards were lifted that day, it might not be too surprising if he wanted to 'forget' any conversations about a discovery under the floorboards. What do you think?

But to return to the main point I am making. It is not easy to recall the exact words of a conversation which occurred a year earlier if there has been no reason to retain it in one’s memory.

Agreed. But how do you know there was no reason to retain a conversation involving a fellow employee making a potentially 'important' discovery under the floorboards?

So we don't know if it was other electricians who told the police they should speak to Brian but it is possible that Brian approached the police or he was selected by them and asked routine questions.

I wonder which electricians you think may have given Brian's name to the police and why, if Brian's only contribution was something about a floorboard discovery supposedly told him by Eddie, which he passed on to Arthur. I should have thought Eddie and Arthur, of all people, would have preferred the police not to question Brian and elicit that information. So someone else, perhaps? Colin Rhodes may well have given the police several names, but the fact remains that only Brian was likely to have introduced the subject of a conversation he remembered having with Eddie in July 1992, when they were both outside the house.

Anyway the question is based on the false premise that Brian was aware that he could "barely remember the gist of what was said". When have I ever have said this? Who is ever aware that they have misremembered something that they think they remember? That’s the thing about memory. It plays tricks. Sometimes the more certain you are of something you think you remember, the less accurate you are. Brian might well think he is sure his recollection is correct but he could still be wrong. That’s just a fact of life.

And then again, this might just be wishful thinking on your part. If Brian felt it worth repeating to Arthur, does that not suggest he had a reason for remembering what was said?

And as I’ve already mentioned in an earlier post (see #851), why would Eddie have told Brian that he didn’t know what to do with his find when he had already given it to Mike Barrett?

But the word is "about", not "'with": Eddie apparently doesn't know what to do "about" the fact that "I found something under the floorboards" [in March], which he passed on to a Saddle regular [Mike], who is now "as we speak" [in July] interesting a publisher in "that London". A "What have I got myself into?" moment, which changes with the coming of Storm Feldman in 1993 into a "What is my confession worth?" moment, for which he cannily backdates his find to 1989, possibly aware that "Bongo" is claiming to have been given the diary in 1991 by another Saddle regular now conveniently deceased.

Had Eddie simply forgotten about the theft for four months only to have Battlecrease remind him of his crime?

No, but if he was back working in that house after an interval of four months, it would naturally have caused him to think about his find there.

And then did a wave of guilty conscience pass over him causing him to run over to Brian to confess to him while he was driving the van? It really doesn’t seem very likely. Moreover, according to the timesheet evidence, Eddie had been working in Battlecrease for seven hours on the previous day (16th July). Did he not think of the diary during those seven hours? Did he not have the ability to contact an electrician during the evening of the 16th on the telephone if he had really wanted to speak to someone about the diary?

Life isn't black and white, David, and people don't all act in the way you would, or the way you think they would. Eddie was working with Graham Rhodes on both days and Brian only turned up on the second day to pick up the van and some equipment, and that's when the conversation would have occurred. While Eddie's mind might have been on his find on and off over both days, it was while he was actually at the 'scene of crime' - not back at home tucking into his evening meal and the tv on - that he decided to mention it to Brian because he happened to be there and wasn't the boss's son. I'm sure workmates often confide in each other about stuff like this, and on most occasions they can rely on it going no further. Unfortunately for Eddie, his find would turn out to be 'important' enough to cause the police to take an interest, and to cause Brian to open up about Eddie's find.

It just brings us back to the obvious conclusion that if Eddie found something in Battlecrease that he wanted to discuss with Brian on 17th July 1992 it must have been a very recent discovery and thus completely unconnected with the diary.

Why 'must' it? Because you want it to be? How would that improve Brian's recall over a year later? How would it affect Eddie's claim to Feldman to have found the diary back in 1989? Did Brian know about that when talking to the police in October 1993? Two claims, both by Eddie, concerning a discovery under the Battlecrease floorboards: one to Brian in July 1992, which Feldy seems not to have known about; and one to Feldy in 1993, which Brian seems not to have known about.

"I found something under the floorboards" [back in March 1992]; or "I've found something under the floorboards" [very recently]; or "I pinched the diary from the house" [back in 1989]?

Which of the above are impossible according to the known evidence, David?

Eddie didn't join Portus & Rhodes until December 1991.

Eddie is on the time sheet for 16th and 17th July 1992, but no work was done on the first floor then, and no floorboards were lifted.

Eddie is not on the time sheet for 9th March 1992, but that was the only day he could have found anything under a floorboard if he was helping out for a couple of hours, as he and Colin Rhodes have both admitted was possible.

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

I really must have hit a nerve with the amount of nonsense I am reading today.

If Arthur Rigby recalled Brian Rawes telling him about a discovery by Eddie under the floorboards why didn't he tell Feldman about it? After all, he was trying to link Eddie with the diary so it's extraordinary that he hasn't mentioned it to Feldman. And he can't have done because Feldman says nothing about it.

So we need an explanation as to why Arthur Rigby didn't mention it. None has been provided. What we don't need is waffle upon waffle attempting to disguise the fact that we have no explanation.

I have no idea what Jim Bowling adds to the scenario. As far as I understood what Rigby was saying, he went to Liverpool University with Eddie and Bowling regarding some unidentified package. But Feldman tells us the package contained "letters unrelated to the Diary".

My point is that Rigby has put together a series of unconnected incidents, none of which have anything to do with the diary to make a big picture connected to the diary. The throwing of something in the skip and the visit to Liverpool University being the two main things but IF and I repeat IF Rawes mentioned the conversation he had with Eddie in July 1992 it would explain why Rigby thought in February or March 1993 that Eddie must have found the diary and why he linked everything else with the diary.

Not a shred of evidence or reason has been put forward why Brian might have had any reason to apply his mind to or think about a conversation with Eddie Rawes in July 1992 until the subject of the JTR diary came up in the following year.

If Eddie had been approaching Brian for any advice the normal start to such a conversation would have been "I need to ask your advice about something" or similar. Instead, he does no such thing and blurts out "I found something under the floorboards". Trying to make some point about him then saying "I don't know what to do about it" as opposed to "I don't know what to do with it" is ridiculous. If he had found the diary in Battlecrease in March 1992, as we are supposed to believe, it is now out of his hands and he knew exactly what to do both with it and about it in March 1992. He gave it to Mike Barrett.

We keep being told time and time again that no floorboards were lifted in Battlecrease in July 1992 without a single piece of evidence to support that claim. Who knows what Eddie lifted in Battlecrease in July 1992? No-one!

It all just brings us back to the obvious conclusion that if Eddie found something in Battlecrease that he wanted to discuss with Brian on 17th July 1992 it must have been a very recent discovery and thus completely unconnected with the diary.

[rjpalmer]

Eddie is not on the time sheet for 9th March 1992, but that was the only day he could have found anything under a floorboard if he was helping out for a couple of hours, as he and Colin Rhodes have both admitted was possible.

Hi Caz, I don't want to debate the accuracy of this statement, because I don't know enough about it. But the whole 'time sheet' thing strikes me as very odd, but perhaps I missed something. Because I don't get it. Here in the US we have something known as the 'Wage and Hour Board,' that insures that employers follow the labor laws, and the Board also arbitrates if there are any disputes over wages due to an employee. In the firm where I was employed for many years, I used to fill out the time sheets for 8 or 9 employees that worked under me, and it was very important to insure accuracy. Believe me, if any supervisor made a mistake, they heard about it from the head of Payroll. These records need to be precise. Further, I have a good friend who is in charge of payroll with another firm, and she constantly complains about having to correct the work of supervisors. It is a task of major importance to her and her boss to make sure everything is neat and clean. If, months or years later, there is a dispute about who worked what, the company needs to be able to demonstrate to the Wage and Hour Board that their records are accurate and can be trusted. Yet here, it seems as though Mr. Rhodes is "winging it." How would Eddie be correctly paid if his hours are not listed? And why does his job location even matter? Each employee has a time sheet and it lists the hours they worked and their pay rate. It's the only sane way of doing it. So what the heck is going on here? Were these sheets you are referring to made out for the benefit of billing Dodd for the labor costs on this particular project? Certainly Rhodes, or Rhodes's payroll secretary, could have produced a timesheet showing EXACTLY what hours Eddie worked on 9 March, 1992? If not, why not? It's all very mysterious.

[David Orsam]

Just to add this RJ, I don't believe that Eddie Lyons and Colin Rhodes have ever admitted it was possible that Lyons and Bowling could have worked at Battlecrease without there being a timesheet record of such work. That question, as far as I am aware, has never been raised with them.

[caz]

In the meantime, Barrett & Graham split. So 'they' are not working together on anything. Then, in the Summer of 1994, Mike contacts the Liverpool Post and confesses to forging the Diary.

Only then does Anne Graham suddenly resurface and, for the first time, claims the Diary has been in her family for years. It has nothing whatsoever to do with anything 'they' came up with, and certainly nothing to do with any accusations of theft; she is obviously responding to Barrett's confession of forgery and is trying to undermine him.

Hi rj,

This is the bit - in bold - that needs a little more thought. Here we have Anne, doing her level best to 'undermine' Mike by trying to take his second baby - the diary - away from him, at a time when he was spitting blood because she had left him and taken away his first baby - their only child, no less. If anything was designed to encourage Mike to take his damaging forgery claims to the next level, and drag her into the mire with him, this was it. Assuming she had no proof for her 'in the family claim', and was banking on nobody being able to disprove it, she seemed to have no awareness that Mike could have reacted to her 'revelation' by retracting the retraction made on his behalf by his solicitor, and this time produced powerful evidence of their joint enterprise, with a little help from his friends, the little red diary acquired for the purpose in March 1992, and the Sphere book that had supposedly lounged in their home since 1989.

It's almost like Anne knew he had been talking out of his bottom, so she was safe to create a history for the diary leading up to, accommodating and seeking to explain his original claim to have got it from a pal who died without saying a word about it. It's almost like Anne had no idea the red diary or Sphere book could possibly come back to haunt her. It's almost like one was a little red herring as far as she was concerned and she'd never even heard of the other.

So your scenario that this 'in the family' story was something 'they' made up to cover the for an alleged theft, does not, unfortunately, even loosely fit the facts, though I'm sure some here might be happy to accept it anyway.

Explain?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Just to add this RJ, I don't believe that Eddie Lyons and Colin Rhodes have ever admitted it was possible that Lyons and Bowling could have worked at Battlecrease without there being a timesheet record of such work. That question, as far as I am aware, has never been raised with them.

You may not believe it, David, but that doesn't stop it from being the case. Certainly Colin Rhodes spoke to Keith about sending employees off to help out on a casual basis, when they were 'kicking their heels' in his office and he was paying them for doing nothing.

And Eddie's account to James Johnston of his own duties would suggest he was one of those who had been sent to help out for an hour or two, including a job involving heaters and lifting floorboards.

Now the latter admission may have been made in complete ignorance of the fact that there had only been one such occasion and his interviewer knew this. Would Eddie have been aware that floorboards hadn't been going up and down on other occasions when he wasn't working there officially and hadn't been asked to help out? But in any case, if he was opening his mouth before engaging his brain, that might help support the two previous occasions he had apparently spoken incautiously - when mentioning his find to Brian Rawes, on 17th July 1992, and when asking Feldman what his confession was worth circa late May 1993.

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

The red diary was not "powerful evidence" of anything. As I've said multiple times, it could be explained easily by Mike wanting to see what a Victorian diary looked like. This is exactly what Anne said when asked about it but we now know that explanation was not true.

The powerful evidence of Mike's involvement in a forgery is the fact that Mike wanted a Victorian diary with a minimum of 20 pages. That evidence was extracted from the advertisement, the existence of which Anne almost certainly had no clue, just like Mike clearly did not know of its existence.

The Sphere paperback is also not "powerful evidence" of anything and (if Mike actually had it in his possession in the summer of 1994) could easily be explained by coincidence. That certainly explains why I have never once mentioned it as evidence of Mike being involved in the forgery.

But we have here another wonderful example of Diary Defender doublethink. On the one hand, we have always been told that Mike has never been able to produce any evidence that he was involved in forging the diary but now we are told that he HAS produced two items showing powerful evidence of his involvement!!!

[David Orsam]

If Colin Rhodes did tell Keith Skinner that he would send employees off to help out "on a casual basis", when they were "kicking their heels" in the office and he was paying them for doing nothing, it is strange that we have not been told this by either James Johnston (who has posted extracts of what Rhodes told Keith) or by Keith Skinner himself.

So how do we know it is true? If Colin Rhodes did tell this to Keith Skinner why hasn't the full quote been provided? Why has the evidence not been properly presented? Why do we keep getting a slow drip of information from unreliable third parties?

And if it is true it still does not answer the point I made that neither Eddie Lyons and Colin Rhodes have ever admitted it was possible that Lyons and Bowling could have worked at Battlecrease without there being a timesheet record of such work.

[David Orsam]

The timesheet evidence was first presented in, I think, September 2017 and we have still seen no evidence that floorboards were not raised in Battlecrease in July 1992.

It has certainly been stated as fact time and time again but never backed up by good evidence.

If Eddie Lyons remembers lifting floorboards in Battlecrease, and the only record we have of him working in Battlecrease is in July 1992, then one interpretation of that evidence is that Eddie did lift floorboards in Battlecrease in July 1992.

[rjpalmer]

Hi caz. I only have a minute. My 'some might wish to accept it anyway' was in loose response to various comments made by you and others on this thread. The argument--stated implicitly or explicitly--appears to be that the behavior of Anne and Mike is equally consistent with a theory of forgery or with a theory of theft. Have I been misreading? Is that not what you and Keith are implying? And if so, does it really fit the facts when it comes to Anne's delayed revelation of having seen the diary in the 1960s? She appears to be responding to allegations of forgery.

Meanwhile, I can only reiterate David Orsam's post above, #1378.

I've been around hourly employees for many many years. I've worked with electricians. If Eddie is 'kicking around the office' doing nothing, then it certainly implies that he had a fixed work schedule, say 9 to 5, otherwise why did he even come in that day? And if he did have fixed hours, this is utterly damaging to your "put in a quick two hours at Battlecrease and then skip off to the Saddle for a liquid brunch and a swap meet with Barrett" scenario. If, on the other hand, Eddie was someone Rhodes brought in only when they definitely needed him at a job site, and thus only worked the odd two or three hours here and there, then it would be doubly important that Eddie's random hours were carefully documented, otherwise how would he be paid? I'm merely trying to understand your argument from a payroll perspective. How did the guy get paid without a time sheet? Enjoy your day.

[caz]

From Mike Barrett's 25 January 1995 affidavit:

On Wednesday 18th January 1995 when they all called at my home I was pressurised by them. Feldman's man Skinner came earlier than the others and started a tape recording off and my very words at the begining (sic) were, "FELDMAN YOU BASTARD GO AND GET ****ED, BECAUSE YOU ARE A BLOODY BIG MAN WITH A HELL OF A LOT OF MONEY AND AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED, I WILL NEVER GIVE INTO YOU. I REFUSE TO BE BLACKMAILED". The tape carried on as the other three people arrived, Mrs Harrison, Sally Emmy, and a man who said, "he was an Independent Adviser'. I made reference on Tape that the hatred between Ann Barrett and I must stop. 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.

Caz. Thanks for the Alan Gray quote, but I'm not disputing he eventually gave up on Barrett. I am disputing the simplistic explanation that this was an unflinching, tried-and-true, cooperative effort to expose the diary, when in fact, there are indications that Barrett was all over the map, and had conflicting motives. Check out the sentence in bold. Whatever you feel about the accusation against Keith, Sally, and Shirley, they were not privy to Mike's private conversations with either his lawyer or his estranged wife, so he could, in fact, have been 'got' at. Why shouldn't I accept that it would have dawned on Barrett that he was royally screwing up his own interests? Afterall, he was derailing the film project, was putting his own royalties at risk, and was, of course, shooting himself in the foot. The letter from Gray quoted in Shirley's book (Blake) clearly eludes to a confession-for-profit scheme, so if Barrett decided to stop drip feeding his confession to Gray, it hardly surprises me, since Gray couldn't offer him anything like what he could have made off the Diary.

Hi rj,

Apologies if I'm being dense, but I'm not sure what point you are making here. Have I asked you not to accept this? And what does it tell you about the veracity of Mike's forgery claims, if he was trying to make money out of them while at the same time destroying Feldman's interests, but finally realised that more could be made from reverting to his original position of believing the diary to be genuine, even if it meant toeing the Feldman/Harrison line?

It's instructive that Eddie Lyons's ill-fated 'confession-for-profit-scheme', from two years previously, can be so quickly discarded as a scam involving a false confession, in favour of clinging on to the belief that compulsive liar and fantasist Mike Barrett's similarly ill-fated 'confession-for-profit-scheme' involved a true one, which he might have gone on to prove if only he could have made more money that way.

Love,

Caz
X