One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Scott Nelson]

Once Tony Devereux passed his rewrite to Mike Barrett, Mike floundered with it for a couple of years, trying his various attempts at rewriting it himself. Finally, he gave up and brought Tony's version to the Rupert Agency.

[Mike J. G.]

Once Tony Devereux passed his rewrite to Mike Barrett, Mike floundered with it for a couple of years, trying his various attempts at rewriting it himself. Finally, he gave up and brought Tony's version to the Rupert Agency.

Devereux writing the diary is possible, but not probable, imo. We know very little about him, whereas we already know enough about Mike to know he was capable. The inability to believe Mike was behind it stems more from a mistaken belief that the diary must've been penned by some sort of genius, when the truth behind good hoaxes is often much more mundane when revealed. If Tony wrote it, everyone around him kept quiet and let Mike and Anne have the spotlight. Tony may well have been a reader, but there's no evidence that he was a writer.

[caz]

There's a lot more than oh come on here, though, obviously.

What are the actual legal consequences that Eddie can expect to have thrown his way? He has already claimed to have found and removed said diary, passing it to Barrett after having it mysteriously vetted by an unknown person at an undisclosed location at "Liverpool University", beating rush-hour traffic on a busy Aigburth road to do so after finding a phone and randomly arranging said meeting with this unknown person based on very, very little. He then, after being savvy enough to arrange a meeting at this random university with an unknown person who has never ever come forward or been named, decides to just hand it over to Barrett for no reason at all.

Mike and/or Anne forging it is the only truth that is available, I'm afraid. There is literally no evidence to suggest it was penned by anyone else.

I'm interested in Mike's source for the above, as to my knowledge Eddie has claimed nothing of the kind, and I don't recall anyone claiming to have phoned a university about the diary.

It's a bit rich to talk about 'the only truth that is available', if the rest of the above post has been conjured up from Mike's imagination.

I would also remind people that the diary is no more in Mike or Anne's handwriting than it is in James Maybrick's - which is presumably why people still have to come up with spurious arguments based on claims that were never made.

[caz]

Who said Eddie gave it to Mike for free? I didn’t.

Caz might know more, but perhaps she can answer this - did Robert Smith, Mike and Eddie all met at The Saddle not long after all this broke? If so, what was the reason for Eddie’s presence? Why was he there?

Hi erobitha,

Coming very late to the party...

Yes, they all met in The Saddle in late June 1993. My understanding is that Robert asked Mike if he could arrange an introduction with one of the Battlecrease electricians, and so it came to pass. Mike and Robert were already in the pub when Eddie made his entrance, came out with his party piece about finding something while working in the house and throwing it into a skip, then left. Eddie has since denied any such meeting took place. Make of it what you will.

What prompted Eddie to agree to meet Robert and tell this strange story? What was in it for Eddie - or Mike? If nothing else, it established that they knew each other well enough to make it happen.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

A better question you should be asking is:

Why did Mike need the so-called "demonstration diary" to be complete with blank pages?

If all Mike is doing is seeing how easily obtained such a book is to begin with, then why the need for blank pages?

A couple of possibilities come to mind here.

Firstly, Mike has no clue if the writing in the scrapbook could be genuinely old, or just someone's idea of a prank. For it to be the latter, the prankster would have needed to find an old book with enough blank pages for the purpose. How easy would that have been?

Secondly, Mike has no clue where the old book has been, or if its rightful owner will miss it and get the police to make enquiries locally.

Knock knock: "Mr Barrett? I have reason to believe you have in your possession a Victorian diary. Mind if I take a look? A valuable one has recently gone walkabout."

"Here you are, lad. But this is mine and that's the God's honest truth. Inherited it from my grandfather. See? That's his handwriting and what have you."

He didn't need it in the end, as nobody came looking for the "old book". Forgot all about it until payment was overdue and Martin Earl chased it up.

[caz]

Barrett claims the red diary was obtained in ‘January or February 1990’ (which we know is wrong). The context then makes it clear that he afterwards attended the O & L auction. Why? Because when the red diary showed up, it was too small and worthless, so he still had to find a suitable supply of Victorian paper.

This chronology is further supported by Mike's many statements where he admits the diary was created after talking to Doreen Montgomery.

So Mike added further support to his own chronology. Wow - that's impressive. He was using the red diary to claim that it was an unsuccessful attempt by his estranged wife to purchase a suitable book for their hoax. Naturally he was going to claim the successful attempt came afterwards. That's not evidence that it did; you only have a liar's word for it, at a point in his life when he was at rock bottom.

Do you seriously believe that if Mike's advert had produced anything suitable for the Maybrick diary, Anne would have gone ahead and sent off a cheque to Martin Earl, without a second thought?

Yes, Mike was a liar, but he was also a drinker. All of this shows that Mike simply got the year wrong in his affidavit, because we have a "hard" date for the red diary: March 1992---as verified by Martin Earl. And why wouldn't Mike have gotten the year wrong? He was on a prolonged alcoholic bender and probably couldn’t have named the correct Prime Minister. The relevant point is that Barrett dates the scrapbook to after the red daily planner. The context makes that clear.

His drinking wasn't so bad that he couldn't work out, with or without Alan Gray's help, that the 1891 diary had to come before the scrapbook, for his claims to have any credibility at all.

Personally, I believe it was Alan Gray that was unconsciously shoving Mike's timeline backwards, because he suspected that Devereux was involved, and it didn't make sense to him that the raw materials weren't purchased until after Devereux's death.

Alan Gray wasn't so silly after all, then. It only makes sense to the true Barrett believers that 'the raw materials' were not purchased until April 1992. Even Mike must have known that nobody would have swallowed that - unless they absolutely had to, in order to keep the dream alive that the red diary would have been used for the hoax if only it had been something completely different, and of the right date and dimensions.

Personally, I believe Mike knew very well he couldn't date the red diary's arrival to March 1992, for that very reason.

[caz]

Hi RJ.
I’ve just read that the diary contains 9000 words.
When composing on a word processor it’s set at an A4 page as standard.
There’s 500 words per A4 page with one individual space between words so that equates to 18 pages needed to write the final released version of the Diary without all the odd spaces and paragraphs for poems and rants.
So 20 pages works as a safe requirement to get the story out there with enough editing I guess

The problem is that Mike didn't ask for 20+ blank pages of A4 size. He asked for a diary for 1880-1890 with 20+ blank pages, without specifying any size for the pages. If he'd spent the previous year drafting the text on A4, is it likely that he never gave a thought in all that time to what size the 20+ pages would need to be, and ended up ordering a useless little article in March 1992, after getting a positive response from the London literary agent?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Yes. Many times. Harrison included a facsimile of it, as well as a full transcript.

But we aren't talking about the diary; we are talking about a typescript of the text that was found on Mike Barrett's word processer, supposedly created for either research purposes, or for use by his agent. Cheers.

Remind me of the details of when the typescript was 'found' and by whom. If the police found it, were they unable to establish when it was created?

I thought the typed transcript of the diary was sent or handed over to Doreen and co back in 1992, more than a year before the police went to interview the Barretts. I'd be most surprised if there was anything incriminating left to find by then, assuming there was anything to begin with.

I wouldn't mind betting that no transcript was created until after 9th March 1992.

[Iconoclast]

Remind me of the details of when the typescript was 'found' and by whom. If the police found it, were they unable to establish when it was created?

I thought the typed transcript of the diary was sent or handed over to Doreen and co back in 1992, more than a year before the police went to interview the Barretts. I'd be most surprised if there was anything incriminating left to find by then, assuming there was anything to begin with.

I wouldn't mind betting that no transcript was created until after 9th March 1992.

Hi Caz,

Allow me to make two predictions:

1) The police checked the Created Date of the typescript on Barrett’s computer and found that it was well after March 9, 1992 (when Barrett first rang Rupert Crew), probably even well after April 13, 1992 (when Barrett first took the diary to London IIRC); and

2) There will be transcription errors in the typescript (where the Barretts struggled to make out what James Maybrick had written in the diary and had had to guess and got it wrong - at least as far as the final agreed versions in the published works are concerned).

Either one of these predictions would bury the Barrett-created-diary-in-1991-on-his-computer-and-waited-until-March-30-1992-to-buy-a-suitable-document-to-transcribe-it-into-ahead-of-his-meeting-in-London-two-weeks-later theory stone dead I reckon.

Mind you, what would I know?

Your old friend,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Hi Ike.

I don't have the time, nor the inclination, to get into this at the moment, but as a demonstration of how little we have progressed over the past 15 years, let me reprint a post of mine on this topic dating to 18 June 2005. Please study it closely and see what points are raised.

* * * *

Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2005 - 1:27 pm:

---

Caz-- After checking, I've been unable to find anything in the pubic domain to support [your] statement:

"At some point it's agreed that the Barretts will produce a typed transcript of the diary (fact)."

Indeed, all the evidence suggests that this was not the "fact."

Of course I do not question your claim that Keith Skinner (and others) received a document purporting to be a typescript of the Maybrick Diary in June, 1992.

What I do wonder about is whether we have any credible evidence to indicate when and for what reason that typescript was created. Here's why.

On Nov., 1993 Shirley Harrison & Kenneth Rendell had a joint appearance on the Larry King Show. Rendell stated that there had been a sinister development, that the police, armed with a warrant, found a word processor in Barrett's home with the Diary on it. (Harrison, pocket books paperback, p. 272)

Harrison responds: "The police did not have a warrant. The WP was hardly "found" it was on the dining room table." (Ibid. p,272) (Remember this, because we'll be coming back to it eventually).

A few months later, Nick Warren, writing to Doreen Montgomery mentions the unusual discovery on Mr. Barrett's W.P. [2021 note: wasn't this actually on a 3" floppy disk? RP]

Montgomery writes to Warren on 8 May, 1994:

"Of course we know what the SFS found--a transcript of the Diary! There's nothing sinister in that. "Right from the word go, everyone knew that Mike had bought a WP precisely to transcribe the Diary, in order to study its contents more easily."

(SFS=Serious Fraud Unit)

Now hold the phone. Multiple Questions.

If the argument is currently running (see Caz's statement above) that this transcript was typed up at the request or "agreement" of Doreen Montgomery and the ladies at Crew Literary Agency, why on earth didn't Montgomery say this? Why didn't she say something like, "Why Mr. Warren, of course Mike had a transcript of the Diary!..it was agreed that he and his wife would create a typescript for our benefit." The contractual agreement (Crew was a professional business) could then have been produced showing this. But clearly, this wasn't the understanding of why the typescript was produced as of May, 1994.

Enter Paul Begg.

Author: Paul Begg Casebook Message Boards Archives
Thursday, 12 April 2001 - 06:03 pm

"Hi Martin
Your understanding is pretty much the same as mine. I likewise thought or probably more right I assumed it to be a copy made at the request of Doreen Montgomery, and only later did I understand it to have been a copy made by Mike."

So independently, we have two sources with the seeming belief that this "typescript" actually preceded Barrett's arrival at Crew, and at no time was it made at the request of Doreen Montgomery... It was made by Barrett, for Barrett. Doreen's own statement suggests this.

It should also be noted that Barrett's claim (implicit in Doreen's statement of May 8, 1994) was demonstrably false. Barrett did not buy the word processor precisely to transcribe the diary. Research by private detective Alan Gray revealed that in fact the Barretts bought the Amstrad in 1986..roughly five years before showing up at Crew. Remember that this inexplicable (?) lie by Mr. Barrett was long before he allegedly began making false confessions, currently dismissed by some as solely due to psychological pressures of his marital breakdown... This is back when Mr. Barrett was still stating the Diary was too legit to quit. Those who believe Mr. Barrett's confession can be explained by psychological pressures need to further explain why he was already being deceptive in 1992.

But does any of this raise a troubling question?

Why is it now stated or more rightly claimed that the typescript was created by an "agreement" with Crew? Where did this idea come from? The answer, as far as I can tell, is rather surprising. Or am I missing something? It appears that its genesis can be traced to Anne Graham a number of years after the fact.

In 1995, a full year after Montgomery wrote to Nick Warren, Anne Graham was subjected to an interview. Graham, now separated from Barrett, and unable to compare notes with him, tells her version of the where the typescript came from.

The gist of this interview is recorded in the following note made by Keith Skinner, dated May 31, 1995: (this comes from a posting on the Old Casebook Archive).


"Anne said that the transcript [of the Diary] was made after they were in a 'go' situation. It was done fast. Mike's typing was hopeless so Anne had to redo it. Mike read it [i.e., from the Diary] and Anne typed it [i.e., the original transcript] checking back against original, every so often, as she believed that it should be same as original."

(My emphasis is underlined).

As far as I can fathom ---and the truth is far from clear--something rather strange is going on. If it was known that typescript was created "by agreement" with Crew, why is Keith asking Anne Graham about it? One can only conclude that there was still some mystery as to when and why the typescript was created. Hence the questions put to Anne in 1995.

Yet, it certainly seems that Graham's version of events directly contradicts Barrett's earlier version as reported by Montgomery. Montgomery clearly believed Barrett bought the word processor specifically to transcribe the diary and study it; Graham was now stating that the typescript was not made until the Diary was ready "to go" to a literary agency.

Is there any reason why we should now accept Anne's revision?

* * * *

At this point, Caz reported back, after asking Shirley Harrison about her memory of these events. She stated "We certainly asked Mike to produce a transcript."

(This, unfortunately, is ambiguous. Produce it from scratch, or physically produce the one supposedly made by Mike for the purpose of 'research'?)

To which I respond:

Posted on Thursday, June 23, 2005 - 2:46 pm:

---

Hi Caz-- Looking it over, I am still unable to reconcile Shirley's statement with Doreen's.

Shirley: "We certainly asked Mike to produce a transcript."

Doreen: ""Right from the word go, everyone knew that Mike had bought a WP precisely to transcribe the Diary, in order to study its contents more easily."

It seems probable to me that this apparent conflict can be reconciled if Barrett's "typescript" of the Diary was an alleged part of his original "notes."

This would make perfect sense in reference to the agreement of April 30th, 1992.

" IT IS AGREED that the Owner will make available to the Author with mutually agreed safeguards for research purposes the Diary and his own research notes...."

If there is no individual reference to the 'production' of this typescript --and one would think that there should have been--than I think it is best to conclude that the typescript was portrayed as being part of the 'research notes'., ie, that it already existed, as per Doreen's later letter to Nick Warren.

Thus, all one can logically infer is that Barrett was asked for a typescript and (at a later meeting) delivered one. It doesn't tell us whether or not he went home and typed one up, or whether he merely downloaded it off his WP. Doreen's statement suggests the latter.

This brings to the forefront Pan Books. If Barrett had indeed contacted Pan Books prior to contacting Rupert Crew, would that not qualify as a 'go' situation? You see, in my hypothesis, I don't rule out the possibility that Barrett's transcript is what he was presenting to Pan Books. Oddly, Shirley uses the phrase "story" in regards to this episode. I don't know why that is. Pan Books published, among other things, mystery novels, and Barrett mentions elsewhere owning a copy of a Colin Dexter mystery which was (I checked) published by Pan Books. Thus, his claim to get their name from a book lying around the house is at least somewhat credible. In one of Barrett's ramblings to Alan Gray he stated that the diary didn't even physically exist when he contacted Doreen. He bamboozled her. Nothing Barrett said can be accepted without evidence, of course, but it certainly does fit in with the apparent fact that Barrett ordered the maroon diary on or about the same day he called Rupert Crew. It might be worth noting that one of Barrett's 1995 affidavits stated that he got the bookdealer's address from the Writer's Yearbook. This has been proved false. But wasn't Rupert Crew advertising in the Yearbook? Barrett had muddled the two events in his mind; the two events went together. Or at least that is how I see it. Cheers RP


* * * * *

The above is slightly edited, but one can find the entire conversation here:

Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards: Where do we go from here?

[rjpalmer]

Allow me to make two predictions:

1) The police checked the Created Date of the typescript on Barrett’s computer and found that it was well after March 9, 1992 (when Barrett first rang Rupert Crew), probably even well after April 13, 1992 (when Barrett first took the diary to London IIRC)

It sounds like you're merely guessing, Ike, or do you have some actual evidence?

The Amstrad 8256 used 3" floppy disks. Are you suggesting that a police forensic examiner could determine a composition date from a floppy disk? Or find evidence of revision?

On what do you base that supposition?

Unless you have specific information, the bet Caz suggests is pointless. If the first keystroke on Barrett's Amstrad could be conclusively dated to after March 10, 1992, but before April 13th, it would be still be consistent with Barrett's claim to have bamboozled Crew into believing the diary already existed during that first phone call, when in fact it didn't.

A question I have asked Keith Skinner in the past, and which has never been adequately answered, is whether the typescript referred to by Joe Nickell is identical to the typescript that Barrett gave to Doreen Montgomery in 1992.

Until that question is adequately answered, the date of the 'Crew' version may not be entirely relevant, unless, of course, it pre-dates March 1992.

Ike: 2) There will be transcription errors in the typescript (where the Barretts struggled to make out what James Maybrick had written in the diary and had had to guess and got it wrong - at least as far as the final agreed versions in the published works are concerned)"

That's your interpretation, but no one else has been allowed to study this typescript. As such, the subject is not worth pursuing.

If memory serves, Keith decided not to upload the typescript to this site, on the principle that the diary critics would not give it a fair hearing, but only use it to damage the diary's reputation.

It doesn't seem 'cricket' for you to now make claims and draw conclusions about the typescript, if you're not going to produce it for inspection.

Fair enough?

Ciao.

[Iconoclast]

It sounds like you're merely guessing, Ike, or do you have some actual evidence?

Of course I am guessing, RJ. My 'predictions' would make me a shallow poster if I actually knew the answers before I posted them! (That's not to say that I'm not a shallow poster, of course.)

The Amstrad 8256 used 3" floppy disks. Are you suggesting that a police forensic examiner could determine a composition date from a floppy disk? Or find evidence of revision? On what do you base that supposition?

I was merely assuming that every file ever created (and possibly ever modified) has a timestamp for its creation (and modification) in exactly the same way they all do today. I am backward-engineering my prediction from what has now become the norm. That does not mean it was the norm in 1986-1992, but I feel it is a reasonable guess on my part. Of course, the obvious challenge with this is that no-one seems to know who has Barrett's original floppies.

Unless you have specific information, the bet Caz suggests is pointless. If the first keystroke on Barrett's Amstrad could be conclusively dated to after March 10, 1992, but before April 13th, it would be still be consistent with Barrett's claim to have bamboozled Crew into believing the diary already existed during that first phone call, when in fact it didn't.

I'm immediately inclined to agree with you, RJ. There now, there's a first! I think I bamboozled myself last evening as I sat melancholically reflecting on the nightmare scenario which was England winning their group and didn't really think this one through. I'm rather inclined to withdraw my first prediction on the grounds that it's pretty meaningless unless a creation date was after April 13, 1992; but even then it could be argued that this was a copy made of a pre-Aril 13, 1992 version (thereby creating a post-Aril 13, 1992 timestamp). The prediction is meaningless due to the irrelevance of the intelligence it would yield. I'll stick with my second prediction if that's alright with you.

A question I have asked Keith Skinner in the past, and which has never been adequately answered, is whether the typescript referred to by Joe Nickell is identical to the typescript that Barrett gave to Doreen Montgomery in 1992.

I think this question would yield no meaningful insight for the very reason I mention above? The Barretts could have produced multiple versions of the transcript on Mike's computer because they were changing their script (if they were hoaxers) or because they were improving their interpretation of the diary (if they were not hoaxers). I think lawyers like to say there would be a difference without a distinction in that event.

Until that question is adequately answered, the date of the 'Crew' version may not be entirely relevant, unless, of course, it pre-dates March 1992.

I think any creation date pre-April 13, 1992 is meaningless because the diary had yet to be witnessed by anyone else until that date. Even a creation date after that, thinking about it, could serve the hoax-theory ("the Barretts simply made a copy of their original file") or hoax-denier ("the Barretts simply made a copy of their original file"). It's that distinction without a difference again, I think.

Ike: 2) There will be transcription errors in the typescript (where the Barretts struggled to make out what James Maybrick had written in the diary and had had to guess and got it wrong - at least as far as the final agreed versions in the published works are concerned)"
That's your interpretation, but no one else has been allowed to study this typescript. As such, the subject is not worth pursuing.

Does your aristocratic chum not have a copy he could give to you for you to post here (after all, I believe it is only his actual publications which are banned on here since his dramatic resignation from the Casebook)?

If memory serves, Keith decided not to upload the typescript to this site, on the principle that the diary critics would not give it a fair hearing, but only use it to damage the diary's reputation.

It doesn't seem 'cricket' for you to now make claims and draw conclusions about the typescript, if you're not going to produce it for inspection.

Fair enough?

I think that would be a fair sporting analogy, RJ, if I had made any claims whatsoever. I think I made predictions though? And therein - I think - definitely lies the difference with a distinction.

Your old insight-provider,

Ike

PS Running out with the dogs now so haven't time to check this for errors of grammar, spelling, or content. Fortunately, I have an aristocratic friend who does that for me as a rule.

[caz]

It’s a big leap from being of the opinion that a particular woman (Anne G.) would not have stooped to such shenanigans to suggesting that no woman at all would do so. Apart from that dubious introduction, which is worthy of the most slippery of theorists, this is a very interesting post.

I agree, Gary.

If just one woman could 'stoop' so low, albeit acting alone, why not Anne Graham, with hubby in tow? After all, back in early 1992, she could have had no idea that going public with a fake diary they were creating together in their spare time would turn her sober, discreet, loyal, hard-working, dependable husband of more than fifteen years into the mendacious, violent, angry, drunken wreck of a man he clearly was just two years later, when his diary book with Shirley had just become a rip-roaring success, promising to lay all the golden eggs they could have wished for, and even Scotland Yard had been and gone with no further action in mind.

It's not Anne's personality that we need to probe here, but Mike's, and whether any relatively sane creature - man, woman or cat - never mind one with all the normal family responsibilities and work commitments, including a young daughter and an elderly father they had moved closer to, so he could be cared for more easily, would have entertained the idea of joining forces with this man in creating a literary hoax, and believed they could possibly succeed.

If the Barretts had been behind this diary's creation, the end result would have looked very different - IMHO. And Anne would have destroyed it, before it could destroy them.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Hi Caz.

The woman who married Mike Barrett, who signed on the dotted line when the publishing contract was made, who (from your own admission) lied multiple times to diary investigators, who paid for the blank Victorian diary, whose father bankrolled Barrett's writing career, who invented a new provenance tale when the old one came crashing down, and who went on to not only work with Feldman's team but to write her own book about the Maybrick case, would have, under no circumstances, helped Mike Barrett create a hoax.

Got it. And a most convenient belief for anyone who desperately wants the diary to be something other than a modern fake.

R P

[rjpalmer]

Does your aristocratic chum not have a copy he could give to you for you to post here (after all, I believe it is only his actual publications which are banned on here since his dramatic resignation from the Casebook)?

You clearly haven't been following this saga very closely, Ike, or you wouldn't have asked the above question. Correct me if I'm wrong, didn't you once post an excerpt from this document?

As for the rest of it, you seem to have missed the plot.

If the typescript was created at the instigation of Doreen Montgomery (as we have been told), which would date it to after 10 March 1992, why did Doreen herself (along with Paul Begg) voice an entirely different understanding of these events, and state that the typescript was actually created by Barrett himself for an entirely different reason? Why did the story change, and what, if anything, necessitated that change? Equally, why were we told something was a 'fact' (by Caz) when there actually appears to have been considerable confusion about what happened and when it happened?

By the way, according to a statement in the archives, the last person to have possession of the word processor was not Mike Barrett; it was Anne Graham. Keith made a reference to Anne still using the Amstrad 8256 after her split with Barrett, to type up notes for Feldman, write reports, etc. A fox in the henhouse, as it were.

A few weeks ago, I had a discussion about a vaguely similar situation with a lady friend of mine. When a couple divorces or splits, there is always the ticklish question of who gets what. We decided there is a kind of unspoken law of the matrimonial universe that if something was given to hubby by the 'in laws,' ownership rightfully reverts to the wife. It may or may not be entirely fair, but that's the way it usually works.

Is this why the Amstrad reverted to Graham? Was Mike correct in stating that it was William Graham who shelled out four hundred pounds plus VAX for the word processor? Why would Billy have done that for the benefit of an illiterate scrap metal dealer? Billy must have had more confidence in Barrett's writing ability than you and Caz do. (And maybe an illuminating case of 'money talks, bullshite walks'?)

Or had the Amstrad been intended for Anne all along? She's the one who went on to publish a full-length book about the Maybrick case, wasn't she?

Can we even believe anything we've been told? (Rhetorical question only; no response needed)

Anyway, maybe you should ask AG for the disks if you want to subject them to a forensic analysis at this late hour.

Wake me up if you do, but I've been credibly informed that she tends to slam down the phone these days when asked about the Maybrick hoax, so take good care.

(though I suppose no one slams down phones anymore; it was one of the great joys and comforts of the pre-cell era, now irretrievably lost)

R P