** Michael Barrett Interview Transcript - September 1993 **

[James_J]

Evening all :-

* Michael Barrett Interviewed by Martin Howells in Liverpool, September 1993.*

Thread includes an attachment to a (.PDF) version of Michael Barrett's Interview Transcript from September 1993.

Thanks again to Keith for providing this, and thanks to Caroline for all her of her valuable input.

Michael Barrett Interview Transcript - September 1993.pdf

Best wishes, James.

[Iconoclast]

Evening all :-
* Michael Barrett Interviewed by Martin Howells in Liverpool, September 1993.*
Thread includes an attachment to a (.PDF) version of Michael Barrett's Interview Transcript from September 1993.
Thanks again to Keith for providing this, and thanks to Caroline for all her of her valuable input.
[ATTACH]18461[/ATTACH]
Best wishes, James.

Many thanks for this James, Keith, Caz, and ultimately Michael Barrett.

I hope everyone who reads and posts on the Maybrick site takes the time to read the full transcript as - once read - it would take a rather hardened and unyielding detractor to continue to argue that Michael Barrett had any significant part whatsoever in the writing of the Maybrick journal. At best, he could have known the hoax was being written, but his confession that he wrote it is a lost cause. It was a lost cause when you simply watched the short clips of him in the video, but with the whole transcript, his role in the journal cannot be too understated. The case against Barrett is a busted flush, and we simply have to move on to the true purpose of our discussions - whether or not the journal is an authentic record of James Maybrick's crimes or whether it is some form of sick hoax played on the man. There is no room whatsoever left for a 'Barrett-as-Hoaxer' argument; and - with Barrett - you have no-one 'confessing' to the hoax.

By the way, page 29 contains a piece which I am certain in my mind was used in the Winner documentary but was not highlighted in green nor referenced at the end of the transcript. It is the part where Barrett states: "Everybody is going to come at me and ask me is it a forgery? Is it this, is it that? I've got no answers what so ever. I just don't know".

We need to let the poor man rest in peace. He had no other involvement in the Maybrick journal other than identifying (from the 'Battlecrease' reference) who the author of it is intended to be.

Ike 'Relieved it's All Over' O'noclast

[Hunter]

Read it. Had already seen the video. And I came away with a different perspective...Funny that.

"Mick", as he said Devereax liked to call him, comes across as someone well read on the subject (the "diary"), very opinionated, repeats sentences a lot and may be a little paranoid. We have a president who some say exhibits these same traits. He was a prominent businessman before this... So what anyone superficially believes another is capable or incapable of holds little validity. In fact, if anything, it only exemplifies how truly gullible people can be.

This exchange is particularly interesting:

MB: Forty experts. Has anybody found a fault in
the diary yet?
MH: There are people who say they’ve found
faults.
MB: But has anybody found a proper fault, like a
proof?

Sound like he's rather proud and defensive of something at the same time.

However, I'm glad the issue is settled for you, Ike, so you won't have to bore yourself with the likes of us who are more skeptical of anything presented to us at face value.

[DirectorDave]

"I must be honest with you because I just put the bloody diary and quote me on this because
that diary has killed me here, and you know I’ve had a stroke because it really has killed me. I put the diary to one side and I didn’t really truly believe it and you can quote me on that."



Interesting given the discussion about his alcoholism on another thread.

So he wrote the Barrett photo-album, had a stroke then later put the photo album out there.

So all this talk of "Mike couldn't have wrote it" all the people judging him are doing so after a stroke?

Another in the coffin of this hoax that has more nails than wood.

[Elamarna]

Many thanks for this James, Keith, Caz, and ultimately Michael Barrett.

I hope everyone who reads and posts on the Maybrick site takes the time to read the full transcript as - once read - it would take a rather hardened and unyielding detractor to continue to argue that Michael Barrett had any significant part whatsoever in the writing of the Maybrick journal. At best, he could have known the hoax was being written, but his confession that he wrote it is a lost cause. It was a lost cause when you simply watched the short clips of him in the video, but with the whole transcript, his role in the journal cannot be too understated. The case against Barrett is a busted flush, and we simply have to move on to the true purpose of our discussions - whether or not the journal is an authentic record of James Maybrick's crimes or whether it is some form of sick hoax played on the man. There is no room whatsoever left for a 'Barrett-as-Hoaxer' argument; and - with Barrett - you have no-one 'confessing' to the hoax.

By the way, page 29 contains a piece which I am certain in my mind was used in the Winner documentary but was not highlighted in green nor referenced at the end of the transcript. It is the part where Barrett states: "Everybody is going to come at me and ask me is it a forgery? Is it this, is it that? I've got no answers what so ever. I just don't know".

We need to let the poor man rest in peace. He had no other involvement in the Maybrick journal other than identifying (from the 'Battlecrease' reference) who the author of it is intended to be.

Ike 'Relieved it's All Over' O'noclast

My friend,

You see what you wish to see. Others of course will less monocular vision see it differently


Steve






We see it here in UK, where Brexit has become almost a declaration of belief.

[James_J]

Evening all. Passing this on from KS :-


From KS

TO ICONOCLAST

Thank you for your post #2. Could I address you by your real name please rather than your user name?

I know that you fully champion the authenticity of the diary and believe James Maybrick was its author and – by extension -
responsible for the series of murders in Whitechapel in 1888. I would only caution you not to let, what I take to be, your genuinely held belief, cloud your objectivity. There are still quite a few important and unresolved questions about Mike Barrett’s involvement with this document and very little is cut and dried. People will interpret this interview in different ways and that is to be expected and welcomed. I very much take on board Roger Palmer’s decided opinion that Mike was a chameleon and what he said depended entirely on who the audience was. (#34 on ‘Who Was The Author...thread). I weigh this against Shirley Harrison’s first hand account and impressions of Mike when they first met in London on April 13th 1992 – seventeen months before this interview. And indeed my own impressions of Mike when I first met him in Doreen Montgomery’s office on June 4th 1992 and saw the Diary for the first time.

The transcript of Mike’s interview with Martin offers a glimpse of the evolving story in September 1993. No one could predict the way it would develop. That is why Ripper Diary; The Inside Story was written. Not as a propaganda vehicle but simply to try and chronicle the sequence of events as they occurred and provide an historical reference point.

We cannot, I’m afraid, let Mike rest in peace. He is right at the centre of this controversy and left us a legacy of confusion to try and objectively resolve. I’m truly sorry it has generated so much ill feeling and suspicion about peoples motives over the past quarter of a century.

** Ike. (Maybe I can get used to calling you that!) This is just a PS to my previous post as I should have thanked you for signalling the missing green highlight in the transcript relating to where Barrett states about everybody coming to ask him about whether the diary is a forgery. Will check it but I think you’re correct. I can hear Mike saying it in my head. Well spotted sir!

Best Wishes, Keith

[Pcdunn]

Well. That was very interesting to read. No wonder the film only included snippets from the original recorded interview.

One thing I found very interesting was how quickly Mr. Barrett seemed to jump to head off the idea that his friend Tony might have written the purported Maybrick Diary, just about before the interviewer had even suggested the idea. He seems either cagey or to have misunderstood the point about his book being lent to Tony.

And Mike does seem to have researched the Maybrick family, the murder case, and Battlecrease House. At the same time, he seems less than coherent in his conversation, but if that was a crime, we'd all be in jail, I suspect.

This bit about the early pages being torn out because an employee saw them-- does that strike anyone as a rather too convenient fiction?

[rjpalmer]

Keith. Thanks for your questions and I will answer in a day or two once I check a couple of facts.

Meanwhile, is Barrett not caught out in a lie (or a least a major discrepancy) on page 23 of the transcript?

After a reasonably long discussion about Tony, as well as Mike recounting how he and Tony discussed (or tried to discuss) the diary in the summer of 1991, Martin asks the following:

MH: When did the pressure really start for you?

MB: When? I think the pressure started eighteen months ago when I first had it. You see one of the things I've come across so far, in the years since I've had the diary, is scepticism, after scepticism, after scepticism..."

[Emphasis added]

The pressure started "when I first had it." What can this mean except when he first had the Diary? The pressure started when he first had the diary. Agreed?

But this tape/transcript is being made in September 1993.

18 months ago is March 1992.

Why does Barrett date 'when I first got it' (the diary) to March 1992, if he supposedly had it from Tony in August 1991?

Interesting, but before anyone gets too excited, this cuts both ways. He is either dating it to a time compatible to your theory (floorboards)

Or he is dating it to a time compatible to Orsam's theory (call to Doreen Montgomery and subsequent creation from pre-existing manuscript).

What he is not dating it to is August 1991.

He should have said "2 years, one month," or "25 months." Barrett is either really bad at math, or he has, once again, got tangled up in his own bullshite and onions and has injected a missing 7 months to his chronology.

Have a good weekend and I will get back to you soon.

[James_J]

Morning all, just passing this along from KS :-

TO R.J.PALMER

Thank you for your post #8 Roger. Caroline had noted the “lie (or at least a major discrepancy)” when Mike was saying the pressure of what he had been living through had started eighteen months ago, when he first had it (the diary), taking us back to a March 1992 date. As I said, Caroline had spotted this but we deliberately chose not to make any observations about the content of the interview.

Mike,(as you point out), is not dating his acquisition of the diary back to August 1991 when he supposedly had it from Tony Devereux. I’m not sure of your source here Roger? Isn’t Mike’s story that he was away on holiday when Tony Devereux died on August 9th 1991 and that he badgered Tony for weeks beforehand to tell him the origins of the diary?

You state that Mike should have said “2 years, one month,” or “25 months” to presumably bring it in line with August 1991? You suggest that “Barrett is either really bad at maths, or he has, once again, got tangled up in his own bullshite and onions and has injected a missing 7 months to his chronology.” Does this suggestion incorporate your decided opinion that Mike was a chameleon and what he said depended entirely on who the audience was?

Best Wishes

Keith

[rjpalmer]

No, not really. I would consider it an example of a chameleon slipping up and, for a split second, suddenly reverting back to solid green.