One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[StevenOwl]

What no one has to date, satisfactorily, explained is why he'd make a false confession.

Mike already explained that himself in a taped meeting with Harrison, Skinner and others. It was to get back at Anne for leaving him and denying him access to his daughter for a year.

[GUT]

Mike already explained that himself in a taped meeting with Harrison, Skinner and others. It was to get back at Anne for leaving him and denying him access to his daughter for a year.

Two questions

1. How did that get back at Anne?

2. How come so many believe some things he says and not others, and how do they decide which is which.

[John G]

Yes, but one of the things he said in his affidavit was that the 1891 diary was purchased before the attempt at forging the Diary.

Now that we know that 1891 diary was acquired on 26 March 1992, we cannot ignore this fact which suggests that, had Barrett been aware it when drafting his affidavit, he would presumably have been able to state that the Maybrick Diary was forged at some point between 26 March and 13 April 1992.

As I have already said to you (but you have ignored), Barrett also told us that it took only 11 days for the Diary's text to be written out. He could have said two months, or six months but he just happened to give us a time period which fits in perfectly with the time period between acquiring the 1891 diary and presenting the Maybrick Diary to Doreen.

Bear in mind that some people in this forum couldn't believe that the Diary could possibly have been written out in only 11 days. So why didn't Barrett select a much longer period of time?

I also have to bear in mind that Barrett's plan with the 1891 diary would have necessarily involved him in ripping out the early pages of that diary with writing on, in circumstances where a few days later he presented Doreen with a diary that had its first 64 pages ripped out.

I also cannot ignore the fact that there is no sensible or rational reason why Mike Barrett would have attempted to acquire a Victorian diary with blank pages other than to create a forged Victorian diary.

But that doesn't exclude the possibility that Barrett acquired the diary on behalf of somebody else, i.e. as part of a conspiracy in which his role was fairly minor.

[StevenOwl]

Two questions

1. How did that get back at Anne?

Only Mike could possibly answer that one, alas...

2. How come so many believe some things he says and not others, and how do they decide which is which.

That's a very good question. Personally, I tend to believe that a relatively sober Mike Barrett, whilst living with Anne and Caroline, was for the most part an honest man. However, once his wife had left him, he was denied access to his daughter, he was knocking back a bottle of Scotch a day, and whiling away the small hours filling up the answer machine tapes of everyone he knew who was connected to the Diary with incoherent drivel and bile - well let's just say that I put far less stock in anything he said during that period.

From what I can gather, during the taped meeting I referred to (where he says he made up for the forgery story to get back at Anne) Mike was sober and relatively together. I believe during that meeting he tried to bargain for a bottle of Scotch at one point, which certainly suggests he hadn't had a drink for a day. Because I never knew Mike I listen very closely to the opinions of those who did; if they say they believed he was being truthful or not with any given statement, then I think it's very hard for those of us who didn't know Mike to argue.

I believe 100% that Tony Devereaux gave the Diary to Mike and told him to "do something with it", as told by sober Mike. I also believe 100% that all of drunk Mike's claims of forgery are untrue, although the affidavit of Jan 1995 possibly contains some true facts.

[caz]

No, of course I don't think it was "a little bit insane".

People confess to crimes all the time, for various reasons which have nothing to do with insanity.

Fair enough, so you don't think Mike was in a disturbed state of mind whenever he confessed. His solicitor did after his first attempt, and the police were never willing or able to charge him with fraud even after he made substantial sums of money from the book buying public. What made Mike and Anne immune, when Kujau had been quickly convicted and slung in jail for what you believe was much the same crime?

Love,

Caz
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[Hannibal Hayes]

Caz,
Do you know if it was just Mike who made substantial sums of money or whether it was him & Anne?

Thanks.

[caz]

Let's remind ourselves of the question:

""I worked on the story and then I dictated it to Anne who wrote it down in the Photograph Album and thus we produced the Diary of Jack the Ripper."

Why did that not happen?"

Your first answer - "Because Mike's original claim, that he wrote it himself, was not considered credible, so he had to come up with another idea?" - That is not an answer to my question. Had I asked you why Barrett said that he worked on the story and dictated it to Anne your answer would have been reasonable. But I did not ask that. I asked you why Barrett's account did not happen.

What I meant was that Mike had a potential motive after his first attempt at confessing to incriminate Anne and make his next attempt more credible. Obviously your question was redundant if you were seriously expecting proof of a negative - that something did not happen. That would involve constant cctv in the Barrett home from, say, 1987 to 1992, to cover all eventualities, would it not? I assumed you just wanted to hear the reasoning behind other people's convictions that it did not happen as Mike claimed.

So let's have a look at your other answers:

"Because it's not in Anne's handwriting and there is no evidence that she'd have been able to disguise it well enough and thoroughly enough to fool experts like Sue Iremonger?" - Equally, there is no evidence that Anne could not have disguised her handwriting is there?

Another negative you are asking people to prove? Tut tut, this won't do. If you can keep wheeling Baxendale out because he considered it 'likely' that the diary was not penned before 1945, I can repeat that Sue Iremonger did not see Anne's disguised hand in the diary any more than she saw Maybrick's disguised hand there.

"Because (whisper whisper) the diary didn't need 'working on', having come out of Battlecrease and found its weary - wary - way to Mike, ready written and raring to go public?" – There is no known evidence that the diary came out of Battlecrease.

Not known to you, David. Not known to the general public yet either. But known to me and to enough other people to make all the difference to my reasoning and responses. You really need to get over this, David. Clearly, those who know the thing was in Battlecrease before Mike ever got his paws on it would say this was proof that Anne did not write the thing to Mike's dictation. You are free to scrub this from your personal record until the evidence is out there.

"Because had Mike 'worked on the story' himself he'd have had Mary Kelly killed on September 11th (9/11), between Chapman and the double event?" - Well apart from your statement that Mike thought that MJK was killed on September 11th being a guess (with the most likely explanation is that he believed 9/11 to be 9th of November, which it is in England), Mike's account of how the Diary was written would have ensured that Anne picked up on any such errors before writing them down.

Of course, because Anne could have checked the sources Mike used - that small handful of books Melvin Harris claimed would have given all the information (and misinformation) needed to complete the diary. Do you know which books Mike consulted when making his 'research' notes? Do you know if they matched Melvin's selection, or would have provided the Barretts with every piece of information that appears in the diary?

"Because he'd have produced something even the most loyal wife would have been too embarrassed to write down?" – That is unfounded speculation. If his wife would have been too embarrassed to write any parts of it down she could simply have not done so.

Did I say it wasn't unfounded speculation? At least I have met Anne on a few occasions, and she isn't known to have had a drink problem. So my reasoning is based on personal experience of her character, and my conclusion is that it would be 100% unfounded speculation to suggest that Anne would not have been too embarrassed, too intelligent and too sane to touch such a marital project, involving 63 pages of Mike's 'creative' writing, with a barge pole.

Love,

Caz
X

[StevenOwl]

Caz,
Do you know if it was just Mike who made substantial sums of money or whether it was him & Anne?

Thanks.

I'm sure Caz will reply in due course, but seeing as I'm in the middle of 'The Inside Story' - I believe that Mike received around £40k but it was gone within a couple of years with nothing to show for it. Who knows how much Anne took for herself. It seems as though further payments to Mike were largely offset against legal fees incurred by the publisher, brought about due to his own dubious confessions. Hopefully Caz can enlighten us further...

[caz]

Caz,
Do you know if it was just Mike who made substantial sums of money or whether it was him & Anne?

Thanks.

Hi HH,

As I'm really struggling to catch up with all the posts here, could I suggest you read Ripper Diary - The Inside Story [1 penny from Amazon last time I looked], which goes into much more detail about who made how much and when.

From memory, Anne wanted no share of the spoils to begin with, but when she left Mike in January 1994, taking her daughter with her, it was the Barretts' agent Doreen Montgomery who insisted she should have her rightful share for her daughter's sake.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I take it as meaning what it says:

"a one off instance, I said..."

And as I've already explained in great detail, it's not an expression that Maybrick himself would or could have formulated in 1888, let alone have expected to be understood.

But your point was that his wife would not have understood what he was talking about, which is why I quoted the rest of the passage in question, which demonstrates beyond all doubt that our diarist had 'Sir Jim' immediately explain to Bunny precisely what was meant by the expression. Even a backward earwig would have got it.

If your failure to quote me fully was not a careless oversight but an attempt at sleight of hand, David, it didn't become you and you underestimated me if you thought you'd get away with it. I hope you can see that playing fair is likely to do you more favours.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

In the very next paragraph in Ripper Diary, we get "According to Barrett's statement, while he and Anne were writing the diary, Tony Devereux was housebound and very ill: 'In fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony Devereux severely ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990'.

You've done it now, Ike. Odd that David has chosen not to ask anyone why this did not happen.

Perhaps we could ask David how this could have happened, if the diary - faked by the Barretts of Goldie Street with Tony's help - was completed in late March/April 1992, as he seems to be pinning his hopes on. I mean, you can't get more severely ill than Tony was by then, can you?

I'm beginning to wonder why Mike's confession claims have any more place on this thread than the watch. If anyone sane is still posting on topic, do they seriously imagine there is a single incontrovertible, unequivocal or undeniable fact to be found among Mike's creative thinking and writing which demonstrates his knowledge that the diary was a fake when he took it to London?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Can I suggest, Iconoclast, that the entire puzzle is solved if what Mike Barrett was remembering in 1995 was that Devereux was ill while he was drafting the Diary during 1990. In other words, I am suggesting that there was a draft in existence (in typed format) prior to Mike phoning Doreen and acquiring the scrapbook.

When Mike says that there was a pause after Devereux's death, what I suggest he is thinking of is the period between August 1991 and March 1992.

According to Mike, the Diary was written "from my typed notes" and only on occasions "at my dictation".

His memory (through his drunken haze) of Devereux being ill while he was drafting (as opposed to dictating) the Diary may indeed be what has caused him to mess up the chronology in his mind.

Nice mental gymnastics going on here, David, but how do Mike's abysmal memory for dates and chronic chronology problems help to demonstrate that he had any knowledge that the diary was a fake when he took it to London? We can put it all down to the demon drink causing him merely to be very forgetful and confused over what happened and when (while presumably remembering enough of the 'what' and not being dishonest or mistaken about it), but since alcohol misuse can also be associated with certain mental health issues, such as confabulation, no responsible, objective investigator would surely be expected to take his claims as gospel without the belt and braces of solid evidence, would they?

By the way, do you accept Mike's claim that Tony Devereux was actually a co-conspirator in the diary project, or could he have been confused about who was and who wasn't involved? Was it a false memory perhaps? He also claimed that Anne's father donated the £50 needed to buy the guard book, and of course that its kidney shaped stain was caused when Anne dropped an actual kidney on it. Confusion? Delusion? False memories? Inventiveness? Or honest attempts to describe events that really happened? If you can't get inside Mike's mind when he was coming out with all manner of contradictory stories, how do you begin to assess what is a truth or an untruth where the evidence doesn't tell us either way?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

If you are asking me why he would seek an 1890-91 diary, he wasn't seeking such a diary at all. He was seeking one from around 1888.

And you know this how, David? Because Mike said so? If he did say so, that doesn't make it true, does it? 'The' diary is signed off in May 1889. I would be surprised if Mike was aware, at the time of placing that order, whether the undated 63 pages related to events going back days, weeks, months or even years, in the life and times of Jack the Ripper. If you can bear to consider the shocking possibility that he got the thing ready written, it could have taken him some time and effort to work his way through the entries and work out a likely starting date.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I'm not Mike Barrett but I can see that a person who is about to forge an LVP diary might find it useful to acquire a genuine LVP diary containing some blank pages.

How many blank pages did the order specify? Twenty, wasn't it? Two sides to each page would have given forty (assuming it wasn't interpreted as twenty sides). If the diary draft had already been completed and typed up before Devereux became poorly in mid-1991, and was good to go, would the Barretts not have realised that much of their hard work might go to waste if it could not be squeezed into a diary of any size with as few blank pages as that? Or was the original plan for Anne to use much tinier writing? Surely she had sensibly practised by March 1992 and was aware that the handwriting would take up considerably more space than the typed version?

Also, have you any thoughts as to why anyone 'about to forge an LVP diary' would a) alert a literary agent before they had even found a suitable book with enough blank pages for their creation, or b) not give it a sensible interval between putting ink to paper and allowing anyone to see it - unless of course they needed a check up from the neck up? Why the indecent haste, if the plan had been taking shape nicely since before Tony went downhill?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

What we know is that Barrett advertised for an LVP diary with blank pages in March 1992 so I have adjusted the chronology to fit in with that known date.

And therein lies your problem, David, if I may be so bold. You have adjusted Mike's impossible chronology to fit and you have limited yourself to an illogically, if not impossibly tight time frame, which would make Mike and his sensible, sober wife Anne the daftest pair of forgers ever not to be exposed as the creators of their own forgery.

I am often reminded on this thread of the arguments made by Lechmere theorists, who rely on the lack of knowledge about their suspect and his character to put the most sinister interpretation on the few known facts about him. It's lazy.

So again, why the indecent haste to announce you have Jack the Ripper's diary before you even have something to write it in? Were Mike and Anne afraid the dog would eat their homework if they didn't get a move on?

Love,

Caz
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