One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

I draw your attention to Keith's words: The end result is to blur the investigation by obfuscation.

That's not a compliment. And while it's relatively mild, at this juncture, Keith and Shirley Harrison were attempting to convince Melvin to sit down and meet with them to divulge the information he had. So he wouldn't even be too outrageous but still basically said Mevin was "misleading" people and "blurring the investigation" by refusing to put what he knew on the record.

And I point you to the current situation.

I do appreciate the irony.

But to me, that's not the most ironic of the ironies.

Back in the day, Keith acknowledged that Melvin had made a strong case for the Diary being a fake and a modern one to boot. There's a post to this effect on the old CD, and Keith said the same thing to Karoline Leech.

However, Keith claimed that he had a trump card: Anne Graham.

All the "modern hoax" theories had to be 'somehow wrong' due to one fact: Anne Graham had seen the Diary in 1968 and Billy Graham had seen it before World War II.

Keith had met these people and had quizzed them, had great faith in their honesty, and Melvin hadn't even talked to them. Keith had the "Inside Story."

Further, the argument ran, Melvin was too cowardly and too blinded by his own bluff to meet these people and see for himself.

So, if you recall, it wasn't just a matter of Melvin releasing his 'secret' evidence--there was also a concerted effort to have Melvin meet Anne Graham and see for himself. The 'Insiders' were so convinced of her honesty that they were also convinced that Melvin would be, too, once he mustered the backbone to meet Anne.

Do you remember why this never happened?

It didn't happen because Melvin said that he would only meet Anne on the condition that certain papers and taped interviews with her and her father were first made available, so he could prepare himself to quiz her competently.

Since this never happened, this meeting never took place.

And around and around it went until, sadly, Melvin died too young.

Fast forward 20 years and the same people who were so confident that Anne Graham was telling the truth are now pushing an entirely different provenance (that the diary was found underneath Paul Dodd's floorboards on 9 March 1992) which immediately calls into question their own former belief in Anne Graham's honesty, and indeed, implies that she had completely bamboozled them for years for reasons never entirely explained. They were chiding Melvin for not meeting the woman that they have now more or less thrown under the bus. (Though some want it both ways and ride the fence).

Yet, without even having access to the appropriate documentation, we are supposed to believe their judgment this time around.

Admittedly, I'm a partisan. But I find that ironic.

I agree. The tapes are going to be a nothing burger.

It's only one person who is promoting the idea that people want to hear the tapes to find a "smoking gun" or that the few people who might want to hear the tapes expect to find a "big reveal."

That's not the case.

It's far more tedious than that. They are merely looking to confirm certain tedious details about dates, exact wording, etc., to prove or disprove certain aspects of Barrett's confession.

It's sad, really.

The world moved on years ago, and the 'debate,' such as it is, really boils down to a handful of people, including me, who want to prove each other wrong.

The world itself doesn't give a damn. The fact is, Tom Mitchell would have a better chance blowing new life into the stoney lungs of the Cardiff Giant than in rehabilitating the Maybrick Diary.

There's only one person who can give the whole story and she's not talking and hasn't talked for twenty years. Most key players are dead, and the rest are entering their geriatric years and probably don't need the stress.

I'm suggest we suspend the "debate" and take up bird watching.

[Ally]

So if you recall, it wasn't just a matter of Melvin releasing his 'secret' evidence--there was also a concerted effort to have Melvin meet Anne Graham and see for himself. The 'Insiders' were so convinced of her honesty that they were also convinced that Melvin would be, too, once he mustered the backbone to meet Anne.

Do you remember why this never happened?

To be completely transparent, I don't remember quite a lot so no one should rely on my memory. I dipped into the diary for a while, studied it til I was bored, and realized, as you say later that it was a never-ending merry-go-round and got off the wheel. I have only recently dipped back into it, since debate has re-started to see if there's anything new or relevant.

Fast forward 20 years and the same people who were so confident that Anne Graham was telling the truth are now pushing an entirely different provenance (that the diary was found underneath Paul Dodd's floorboards on 9 March 1992) which immediately calls into question their own former belief in Anne Graham's honesty, and indeed, implies that she had completely bamboozled them for years for reasons never entirely explained. They were chiding Melvin for not meeting the woman that they have now more or less thrown under the bus. (Though some want it both ways and ride the fence).

That is actually interesting. While I knew that much of the speculation as to provenance "back then" centered around a belief in Anne's "honesty" and that new research has shifted the theory to the diary being found under floorboards, I confess I had not quite put together how these two lines of argument are completely exclusionary of each other.

Yet, without even having access to the appropriate documentation, we are supposed to believe their judgment this time around.

Fair argument to make.

Admittedly, I'm a partisan. But I find that ironic.

I'm not particulary partisan but I consider it to be ironic as well, when you really think about it. Which I had not previously done.

The world moved on years ago, and the 'debate,' such as it is, really boils down to a handful of people, including me, who want to prove each other wrong.

Well what else are we all going to do with our time? I'm a lousy writer, an even worse sculptor and I can't carry a tune to save my life. My one great skill is arguing interminably on the internet, and reddit is just soo dull.

I'm suggest we suspend the "debate" and take up bird watching.

I literally just watched a falcon swoop down in my yard and eat a lizard. It was gross. And that was before he looked me right in the eye, did a massive **** and flew off. Birds are not my bag.

[Iconoclast]

I'm suggest we suspend the "debate" and take up bird watching.

I literally just watched a falcon swoop down in my yard and eat a lizard. It was gross. And that was before he looked me right in the eye, did a massive **** and flew off. Birds are not my bag.

Nor mine. I'm going nowhere ...

[Iconoclast]

Nor mine. I'm going nowhere ...

I know, I should have added 'fast' ...

[Scott Nelson]

Nowhere Man please listen.

[caz]

Do you know what, I have a suspicion that after almost 30 years of trying to make a purse out of a sow's ear, the argument in favour of Barrett-as-Hoaxer has hit a rather shuddering roadblock leaving its proponents with the dawning realisation that they have been following a road not as well driven as they had thought.

It's probably the complete lack of evidence that has finally led them to this impasse, I suspect. They have at last twigged-on that just having the testimony of a drunken, duplicitous alcoholic isn't quite the slam-dunk they had imagined it to be. Okay, so Lord Orsam managed to concoct a world which just about fitted Michael Barrett's affidavit of January 5, 1995, but the sole piece of available evidence for it proved to be utterly ambiguous - namely, the purchase of the little maroon diary from two years after James Maybrick died (you know, the one Barrett sought in case he needed to produce a genuine Victorian document at some point and didn't want to have to produce the actual Maybrick scrapbook itself).

They have attempted - really very pitifully indeed - to downplay the mind-bending coincidence of March 9, 1992. Well, you would, wouldn't you? However implausible it is in reality to ignore such an astonishing co-incidence of events. They have pulled out all the stops in attempting to downplay the reference to Florence Maybrick's initials in connection with tragic Kelly's room, but Dan Farson in 1973 buggered that little ploy well over twenty years before they even thought to scupper it. They have also made numerous attempts at ridiculing James Maybrick's highly idiosyncratic signature in the Victorian pocket watch which - given the wilful inadequacy of their attempts - makes you wonder quite how seriously they imagined their acolytes would keep believing despite the evidence that James Maybrick's known signature is in the back of that watch.

I can't begin to enumerate the myriad other details they have managed to downgrade, downplay, or vilify. Never with evidence, mind, because they haven't got any.

I think their days in the sun are over. Their arguments are spent, like damp squibs they have failed to bedazzle us all.

Shame really.

Not.

Afternoon Ike,

Do you suppose the Tories will succeed in sending the first asylum seeker to a peaceful future in Rwanda, before an auction theorist succeeds in posting the first piece of evidence in 28 years for where Mike obtained the guard book?

At least the Tories try to bat away all their critics by asking, weakly, what Labour's plan is, but all we ever get from an auction theorist are weak attempts to make the pesky Battlecrease evidence vanish in a puff of smoke. The mirrors are optional.

I'm never quite sure if there is a consensus on how multiple, independent witnesses came up with their broadly consistent accounts of how Jack the Ripper's diary was found in Dodd's house during a rewire and sold in an Anfield pub, which continue to be supported by fully documented circumstantial evidence, and not broken by any of it. If these people were/are suffering from 'false memory syndrome'; or lying in the vain hope of gaining something - beyond a reputation for telling lies; or even simply mistaken, we should not have expected their accounts to have had the ghost of a chance against the known facts. So what is going on here?

By stark contrast, not a single soul to my knowledge, alive or dead - aside from our very own liar and fantasist, Mike Barrett - ever claimed to have had the least inside knowledge of the diary's less than immaculate conception by Tony, Mike and Anne, right up to and including its final journey with donkey and compass to its birth in a lowly Goldie Street stable. It was a silent night - as were all the nights and days leading up to this miracle of creation. How Mike managed to keep his trap shut about it before 9th March 1992 is just another minor miracle for others to explain.

If I'd got wind of it, I'd have wanted to strangle it at birth. We are asked to consider the theory that Anne would have done it if left to her own devices, but was bullied by Mike against her will to go through all the labour pains and then feed the bloody thing on mother's ink while their firstborn watched the telly. Belatedly screwing her courage to the sticking place, Lady Mac - er - Anne did try to burn it to death, in a last-minute "Screw you, Mike" gesture, but then she meekly gave up and let him take her demon brainchild to London, thinking that if anyone there did smell a large, barely weaned rodent, it wasn't her problem and they would merely send its father packing.

By the way, I'm not actually expecting to see answers or explanations posted on these boards. I would like to think the above will give the readers some private food for thought, and they will look again at how they are making sense of it all in their own minds, away from all the noise here.

Other questions the readers might like to consider quietly, away from the boards, include why Mike is so worried in the very early days, and needs reassurances from Doreen and Shirley that his identity will not be revealed in the course of local enquiries being made in relation to the diary he claims Tony Devereux gave him.

Equally, why is Mike fishing so hard for information from Colin Rhodes in 1993 about his electricians and the work done in Battlecrease, if he used a guard book he found in an O&L auction sale in 1992 to fake the diary?

Supposing that Mike, Tony and Anne really were behind the diary's creation, and that nobody else knew about it before 13th April 1992, how do you, dear reader, reconcile all this with Mike's early fears of losing his anonymity, and his later repeated attempts to get information out of Rhodesy?

Would you be better able to reconcile Mike's actions, supposing instead that his chief worry in 1992 and 1993 was being caught out with a book that didn't belong to him?

No answers on a postcard; just put on your thinking cap and have yourself a merry little thinking session. The mince pies are optional.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Anybody remember 20+ years ago when Melvin Harris was claiming to have privileged info on the Diary that he wouldn't divulge and Keith, Caz, et al, were all taking Harris to account and calling his credibility into question because he wouldn't reveal his secret squirrel information and persisted in arguing it, despite refusing to cough it up?

...
Irony

Hi Ally,

The difference, to my mind, is that Mighty Mel did appear to be claiming that he possessed proof of the diary's origins: a modern hoax involving specific individuals, not all of whom he was prepared to identify openly. If he had that proof and had revealed it, I dare say none of us would be here today.

Nobody is claiming today to have seen privileged information that proves the diary's origins. If it merely supports evidence already in the public domain, indicating the diary was most likely seen for the first time on 9th March 1992 [and I have seen nothing personally that rules this out], it wouldn't tell us where it was before that date, so nothing changes.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I probably should have edited the above to read "David Barrat" and not "Barrett"--there's no connection, that I know of!

I also noticed a couple of quoted posts which somehow got attributed to "Kieth" and "Keith Skinne".

So nobody can accuse Palmer of 'grotesquely partisan' name bolloxing!

Love,

Caz
X

[Ally]

Hi Ally,

The difference, to my mind, is that Mighty Mel did appear to be claiming that he possessed proof of the diary's origins: a modern hoax involving specific individuals, not all of whom he was prepared to identify openly. If he had that proof and had revealed it, I dare say none of us would be here today.

Nobody is claiming today to have seen privileged information that proves the diary's origins. If it merely supports evidence already in the public domain, indicating the diary was most likely seen for the first time on 9th March 1992 [and I have seen nothing personally that rules this out], it wouldn't tell us where it was before that date, so nothing changes.

Love,

Caz
X

And how do you think that is a difference? Do you actually think Mel had proof of who hoaxed the diary? Because I surely didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now. I don't think anyone actually believed, then or now, that Melvin had incontestable proof of who had forged it. Because I don't believe journalists would have uncovered proof and just sat on it. I think he liked the game and the justifiable thrill one gets at sticking a finger in the eye of those you perceive as having slighted you.

You don't think the tapes matter, because you don't think Mike was involved in forging it. That's an opinion you are of course allowed to have, but you don't get to dismiss other people who think differently than you do from making up their own minds, on evidence that they want to hear, and which is being waved in front of them and then they are told "NO, you can't have it. Just take my word, it doesn't prove anything."

You have decided that "proof of forgery" can't be withheld without justifiable haranguement ( I don't care if that's not a word, I'm keeping it). But if you don't think the "evidence" is relevant, then it's not important if it's withheld. That's definitely a decision or a parsing you are allowed to make in your own mind, I don't particularly see a difference between Mel refusing to show his cards, while claiming he was holding them, and what is occurring now. Everyone always thinks that their own reason for doing the thing they criticized others for doing is justified.

People are making arguments based on information they have seen that no one else has. I don't care what that information is, don't make an argument saying "I've seen this, you can't see it, take my word for what it says." If you can't show, don't tell and expect people believe you.

As has been mentioned numerous times, nobody is unpartisan in this. Nobody is going to give credence to another person's interpretation. Therefore, put it out there so everyone can decide for themselves, or don't discuss it publicly and expect to not be derided. That's how it goes and how it has gone for decades. Nobody is exempt.

And once again, if the tapes are so inconsequential and irrelevant and add nothing, then why precisely is there such coyness around putting them out there?

Why the game?

[caz]

Thank you, ero.

What I find ironic is that all the tapes, originally made by Alan Gray, who eventually gave Keith copies, were supposed to be destined for Melvin Harris's ears at some point in the 1990s. I have no idea how many Melvin actually received or was able to listen to, but I would be surprised if he was only ever sent one of them, from which copies were taken and distributed to certain ears - ears that were not in the least partisan, let alone grotesquely so.

The question would be whether the other tapes were already next to inaudible and thought to be not worth sharing, or whether there was some other reason for Gray - or Melvin if he was sent more than one - to be selective about what to share and what to retain.

I would tell Keith to his face that he was being childish if I thought the release of all the tapes would change anything - but I don't, so I won't.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

And how do you think that is a difference? Do you actually think Mel had proof of who hoaxed the diary? Because I surely didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now. I don't think anyone actually believed, then or now, that Melvin had incontestable proof of who had forged it. Because I don't believe journalists would have uncovered proof and just sat on it. I think he liked the game and the justifiable thrill one gets at sticking a finger in the eye of those you perceive as having slighted you.

You don't think the tapes matter, because you don't think Mike was involved in forging it. That's an opinion you are of course allowed to have, but you don't get to dismiss other people who think differently than you do from making up their own minds, on evidence that they want to hear, and which is being waved in front of them and then they are told "NO, you can't have it. Just take my word, it doesn't prove anything."

You have decided that "proof of forgery" can't be withheld without justifiable haranguement ( I don't care if that's not a word, I'm keeping it). But if you don't think the "evidence" is relevant, then it's not important if it's withheld. That's definitely a decision or a parsing you are allowed to make in your own mind, I don't particularly see a difference between Mel refusing to show his cards, while claiming he was holding them, and what is occurring now. Everyone always thinks that their own reason for doing the thing they criticized others for doing is justified.

People are making arguments based on information they have seen that no one else has. I don't care what that information is, don't make an argument saying "I've seen this, you can't see it, take my word for what it says." If you can't show, don't tell and expect people believe you.

As has been mentioned numerous times, nobody is unpartisan in this. Nobody is going to give credence to another person's interpretation. Therefore, put it out there so everyone can decide for themselves, or don't discuss it publicly and expect to not be derided. That's how it goes and how it has gone for decades. Nobody is exempt.

And once again, if the tapes are so inconsequential and irrelevant and add nothing, then why precisely is there such coyness around putting them out there?

Why the game?

Hi Ally,

The people involved may have better things to do with their precious time, perhaps, than trying to get all the tapes cleaned up and out there, just for a handful of listeners to shrug or sneer and ask what all the fuss was about - forgetting that all the 'fuss' was about not doing it.

We both know Melvin was bluffing and didn't have the necessary evidence for a risk-free public accusation.

Did you ever consider that Keith doesn't have the necessary evidence to prove who created the diary, but has never tried to claim otherwise?

To me, the difference is integrity - that ought to matter.

Personally, I would be happy for more information to be released and I'm sure it will be - maybe not for this often toxic place [and yes, I hold my hands up to giving as toxic as I get - I can be childish too!] - but in some other medium at some other place and time.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ally]

Hi Ally,

The people involved may have better things to do with their precious time, perhaps, than trying to get all the tapes cleaned up and out there, just for a handful of listeners to shrug or sneer and ask what all the fuss was about - forgetting that all the 'fuss' was about not doing it.

Nobody has asked them to clean up the tapes. They can put them out there dirty and raw and we can happily take what they have. They aren't required to do any clean up work, and as far as I know, no one has requested that.


As for a sneering reception being a valid reason not to do something, would you have sneered at whatever Melvin put up? I suspect you would have, I know I would have, and so would Keith and Shirely, that didn't stop them, you and me from criticizing how he refused to show it.

You're basically saying, "They won't believe what I want them to believe, when I show this, so why bother showing it." That's .... interesting. Don't think that line of argument would have washed if Melvin had said "You won't believe who the forgers were anyway, so what's the point of showing it, just for you to sneer at".

Did you ever consider that Keith doesn't have the necessary evidence to prove who created the diary, but has never tried to claim otherwise?

And? No one is saying that the tapes will prove who created the diary or that Keith is required to prove the forgers to put up the tapes. What Keith's claimed is irrelevant as to the forgery. Except we know he has claimed he was going to release a tape, and then in a moment of ... something... changed his mind.

You keep trying to equate releasing the tapes as being somehow relevant to "proving" the identity of the forgers. As with Melvin, way back in the day, nobody asking to see the information, thinks it's going to "prove" anything.

To me, the difference is integrity - that ought to matter.

...I literally have no idea what standard of integrity is being claimed here. Nobody thinks this is proof of the forgers, nobody is expecting it to be, there's literally zero "integrity" on the line if this information is released? I genuinely do not comprehend what role "integrity" plays in not releasing it? How would his integrity be compromised by releasing the tapes?

Personally, I would be happy for more information to be released and I'm sure it will be - maybe not for this often toxic place [and yes, I hold my hands up to giving as toxic as I get - I can be childish too!] - but in some other medium at some other place and time.

Ah but that to be released at "some other place and time" argument wasn't sufficient when it was Melvin, being harangued to put up or shut up, back in the day and he even had the added excuse of "He'd given his word". That's at least an integrity violation if he'd released the information. But even still HIS integrity wasn't considered a good enough reason to not put up, or shut up. So why is it now? When as far as I am aware, there's nothing at all preventing the tapes from being released, in whatever medium Keith would like. He can throw them up on YouTube, it would be the work of ten minutes. Well with 15 tapes, maybe slightly longer. But I am sure there are numerous flunkies who would be willing to do the grunt work for him. Hell he could just throw them in a drop box and let anyone who wanted to listen.

It doesn't have to be as complicated as it is being made out to be.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Ally,

The people involved may have better things to do with their precious time, perhaps, than trying to get all the tapes cleaned up and out there, just for a handful of listeners to shrug or sneer and ask what all the fuss was about - forgetting that all the 'fuss' was about not doing it.

Their time must indeed be precious. Peter Birchwood asked for a copy of the Barretts' typescript twenty-two years ago. David Barrat asked for a copy (and was promised one, if I recall) six years ago.

Meanwhile, as recently as a week or so ago, Tom Mitchell, a diary proponent, who apparently was given access, cited the same typescript as evidence that the Barretts did not hoax the diary.

Smells a lot like home cooking.

[Iconoclast]

Afternoon Ike,

Do you suppose the Tories will succeed in sending the first asylum seeker to a peaceful future in Rwanda, before an auction theorist succeeds in posting the first piece of evidence in 28 years for where Mike obtained the guard book?

At least the Tories try to bat away all their critics by asking, weakly, what Labour's plan is, but all we ever get from an auction theorist are weak attempts to make the pesky Battlecrease evidence vanish in a puff of smoke. The mirrors are optional.

I'm never quite sure if there is a consensus on how multiple, independent witnesses came up with their broadly consistent accounts of how Jack the Ripper's diary was found in Dodd's house during a rewire and sold in an Anfield pub, which continue to be supported by fully documented circumstantial evidence, and not broken by any of it. If these people were/are suffering from 'false memory syndrome'; or lying in the vain hope of gaining something - beyond a reputation for telling lies; or even simply mistaken, we should not have expected their accounts to have had the ghost of a chance against the known facts. So what is going on here?

By stark contrast, not a single soul to my knowledge, alive or dead - aside from our very own liar and fantasist, Mike Barrett - ever claimed to have had the least inside knowledge of the diary's less than immaculate conception by Tony, Mike and Anne, right up to and including its final journey with donkey and compass to its birth in a lowly Goldie Street stable. It was a silent night - as were all the nights and days leading up to this miracle of creation. How Mike managed to keep his trap shut about it before 9th March 1992 is just another minor miracle for others to explain.

If I'd got wind of it, I'd have wanted to strangle it at birth. We are asked to consider the theory that Anne would have done it if left to her own devices, but was bullied by Mike against her will to go through all the labour pains and then feed the bloody thing on mother's ink while their firstborn watched the telly. Belatedly screwing her courage to the sticking place, Lady Mac - er - Anne did try to burn it to death, in a last-minute "Screw you, Mike" gesture, but then she meekly gave up and let him take her demon brainchild to London, thinking that if anyone there did smell a large, barely weaned rodent, it wasn't her problem and they would merely send its father packing.

By the way, I'm not actually expecting to see answers or explanations posted on these boards. I would like to think the above will give the readers some private food for thought, and they will look again at how they are making sense of it all in their own minds, away from all the noise here.

Other questions the readers might like to consider quietly, away from the boards, include why Mike is so worried in the very early days, and needs reassurances from Doreen and Shirley that his identity will not be revealed in the course of local enquiries being made in relation to the diary he claims Tony Devereux gave him.

Equally, why is Mike fishing so hard for information from Colin Rhodes in 1993 about his electricians and the work done in Battlecrease, if he used a guard book he found in an O&L auction sale in 1992 to fake the diary?

Supposing that Mike, Tony and Anne really were behind the diary's creation, and that nobody else knew about it before 13th April 1992, how do you, dear reader, reconcile all this with Mike's early fears of losing his anonymity, and his later repeated attempts to get information out of Rhodesy?

Would you be better able to reconcile Mike's actions, supposing instead that his chief worry in 1992 and 1993 was being caught out with a book that didn't belong to him?

No answers on a postcard; just put on your thinking cap and have yourself a merry little thinking session. The mince pies are optional.

Love,

Caz
X

Probably going to incur the wrath of Admin for a reply based upon mere superlatives, but that was an outstanding post, Caz, whether you believe Barrett did it or not. First class.

[Admin]

I can guarantee you the next person who says "I'm going to incur the wrath of Admin for posting this" and then goes ahead and posts it anyway, apparently either attempting to thumb their nose at what they think are the rules or be defiant cause they're just such brave widdle boys, ARE going to incur the wrath of Admin. If you think what you are posting is against the rules, why the **** are you posting it?

Pure obnoxiousness? Or an attempt to break the rules and let everyone know how brave you are? Do let us know the intent.

You asked for the attention of Admin, welcome to it.