One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[erobitha]

I am embarrassed to say that I believed Anne’s family provenance theory, even after I found out she and Feldman became lovers. But at least I came around to the right thinking that it was a lie. Thank you Ero and Caz.

Well at least you making some progress.

[Iconoclast]

I am embarrassed to say that I believed Anne’s family provenance theory, even after I found out she and Feldman became lovers. But at least I came around to the right thinking that it was a lie. Thank you Ero and Caz.

Lombro2,

You need to ask Admin to open up this post and remove this slur against Anne and Feldman. There is absolutely no evidence of this - just prurient tittle tattle from the chattering classes who know nothing.

I knew that this sort of claim would one day become 'truth', and here it has. It was always an ''enterprising' journalist' moment in the making, a 'the Diary's been proven to be a hoax' moment, a 'Jack had anatomical and surgical knowledge' moment, and it needs to be removed before other people start assuming it to be provenly true.

Cheers ...

Ike

[Lombro2]

No, I think I’ll tell Admin how embarrassing it is to believe Mike after finding out about what Rodger calls an “emotional attachment” between Anne and the driving force behind the Diary. I know how it is.

[jmenges]

Lombro2,

You need to ask Admin to open up this post and remove this slur against Anne and Feldman. There is absolutely no evidence of this - just prurient tittle tattle from the chattering classes who know nothing.

I knew that this sort of claim would one day become 'truth', and here it has. It was always an ''enterprising' journalist' moment in the making, a 'the Diary's been proven to be a hoax' moment, a 'Jack had anatomical and surgical knowledge' moment, and it needs to be removed before other people start assuming it to be provenly true.

Cheers ...

Ike

Or you could have reported the post to Admin, refrained from commenting on it, and let us be the judge. But that would mean following the rules, which is never your first choice, is it?

JM

[rjpalmer]

No, I think I’ll tell Admin how embarrassing it is to believe Mike after finding out about what Rodger calls an “emotional attachment” between Anne and the driving force behind the Diary. I know how it is.

Who is Rodger and where did he make any such comment?

As always, Lombro, I'm left scratching my head, trying to figure out what you are attempting to express.

Are you referring to your own theory?

"So Feldy was making a movie and made the moves on Anne and Mike got back at them by claiming he forged the Diary.

If so, this doesn't make sense on any level.

When Barrett first confessed to the hoax, to the journalist Harold Brough in the summer of 1994, Anne was in hiding. She was not in contact with Feldman. She barely knew him, nor were they an 'item.'

So your suggestion doesn't work.

Further, despite the popularity of the idea that Mike was making a false confession to 'get back' at Feldman, Barrett's sworn affidavit was a secret document that he lodged with his solicitor. It was not circulated, and almost no one knew about it--even those on the Diary Team--and wouldn't know about it for several years.

I belief the first time the affidavit was given widespread public exposure is when Stephen Ryder published it on this site around 1998/1999.

So how was Barrett was going to damage Feldman's film deal by making a false confession that was never circulated? That makes no sense.

Recall that Barrett was given two radio interviews on the Bob Azurdia Show in September 1995 (nine months after his secret affidavit was signed)

Did he take this opportunity to stick it to Feldman?

Of course not.

Instead, Mike walked back his earlier confession to Harold Brough, denied writing the diary, and denied that his secret confessional affidavit even existed. Pressured by Azurdia, he mischaracterized the affidavit and lied about its contents.

Strange behavior Mike if Mike's motive was to get back at Feldman.

[Lombro2]

1. The (Graham) Family Heirloom

One month after his confession, Barrett’s estranged wife (they would later divorce and she would revert to her maiden name of Anne Graham) told video producer, Paul Feldman, that she had first seen the Diary in 1968, though she was not more than mildly curious, being only a teenager.

https://www.jamesmaybrick.com

[erobitha]

Yes, you did suggest that she needed to gain 'control' (a rather vague motive and a non-answer--leaving unanswered why she needed control, particular when she could have simply let Barrett hang himself out to dry) but you also framed it reference to a long and mysterious meeting at the Moat House Hotel with Feldman, who stood to make millions off a film deal. If you weren't suggesting she was pandering to Feldman's financial benefit, then I stand corrected, and even agree with you.

I said she was motivated by control, primarily control over Mike. Do I know the exact reasons for her motivation for wanting to control the volatile situation of a man who was hassling her in return for supporting the notion of another man hassling her? How can I know that? Only she knows. The evidence to me is that somehow she thought her wagon was better hitched to this concept than the one Mike had been peddling. This is not the thought process of a woman being bullied into doing anything she did not want to do. She can't be timid and weak-minded one minute, easily influenced by her abusive husband and then the master puppeteer the next. She is likely just a woman trying to take control of something she never instigated in the first place, which has plagued her life for the past few years.

But how could Feldman have 'coerced' her into lying? Does a person who is 'coerced' gain control? As I see it, she was the one leading Feldman down the rose path--telling him what he wanted to hear--not the other way round.

My feeling is this was an arrangement that benefitted both parties. Perhaps Feldman dropped a hint along the line of "If this diary was yours and not Mike's, this whole situation would be better for all of us." Perhaps this sparked a question as to how. Maybe nothing was ever explicitly concocted, but the pair of them could have actively encouraged each other to open their minds up to what a world would look like if the diary was Anne's. That may have sparked her into coming up with something he wanted to hear. As you know, he did not need much encouragement. All speculation on my part.

Did you not say that Mike coerced Anne into handwriting the diary because she was so scared of him? Now, she is this master manipulator? The truth is probably somewhere between those two things.

Carefully considered, her original motive seems to have been to get Feldman off the backs of her in-laws, who was bothering them with wild theories of Barrett being related to Maybrick. He was harassing them by both phone and by letter.

It was at this point that one of them, Mike's sister, called Anne on the phone, despite Anne having been split up from Barrett for months and despite Anne publicly telling Harold Brough that she knew nothing about the diary's origins.

You agree was she being harrassed by both men?

Why did Mike's sister fully expect that Anne could somehow remedy the situation? Why did she complain to Anne and not to Mike? What could Anne have done, if Anne did not know the truth?

The only problem that needed remedy was Anne refusing to speak to Mike. Anne was refusing to talk to Mike. Not his sister. Very simple.

Do you think it's possible that Mike's sister might have had more insight into what Mike was capable of doing, and what Mike was capable of putting Anne through, then a group of Ripperologists who didn't really know either of them?

I'm not following your line of logic, old chap. She was being harassed by Feldman and Mike. She opted to go with Feldman despite whatever his sister was saying. Why would she trust Feldman over Mike? She believed him. She knew she could not trust Mike. But again, only Anne can reveal the why.

So, you see, Jay, I think Anne was motivated by guilt. Guilt that her ex-husband's hoax had led to her in-laws being harangued by a madcap and pushy Ripperologist named Feldman.

That doesn't work. Mike was haranguing them far worse than Feldman was. She was refusing to talk to him. His forgery claim affidavit was an insurance policy if she didn't talk to him. Mike had crazy notions of what a security policy looked like. Mike may have been playing away from home around this time. I have no proof, but I have my suspicions the reality of Anne's motivations might be more connected to what Mike was doing rather than Anne.

So, in effect, the control she hoped to gain was to put the burden for the hoax onto her own shoulders, so Feldman would leave the Barretts alone, and the public could "believe what they wanted to believe"---because they would anyway.

....and everyone lived happily every after. Except they didn't.

[rjpalmer]

That doesn't work. Mike was haranguing them far worse than Feldman was. She was refusing to talk to him. His forgery claim affidavit was an insurance policy if she didn't talk to him. Mike had crazy notions of what a security policy looked like. Mike may have been playing away from home around this time. I have no proof, but I have my suspicions the reality of Anne's motivations might be more connected to what Mike was doing rather than Anne.

I strongly recommend reviewing Ripper Diary: Inside Story chapters 3 & 4, so you have a better grasp of the chronology.

Anne's provenance is intimately connected to Paul Feldman and his harassment of the good citizens of Liverpool.

Anne Graham left Barrett at the beginning of January 1994. By April she went into 'semi-anonymity' at a friend's house.

Astonishingly, this same month, and without evidence, Feldman told the executives at New Line Cinema that he could prove the diary came from Billy Graham, and began to formulate a theory that Anne Graham was a decedent of James Maybrick.

He wanted to find Anne and get her to sign a "Grants of Rights and Assignment' letter admitting this.

You can find all of this in Ripper Diary.

This bizarre obsession consumed Feldman for the next few months as he harassed Barrett; Billy Graham; Anne Graham; Barrett's family; Anne's friends; and even people who had attended the Barrett's wedding 17 years earlier. He was also digging through their birth certificates, etc.

By mid-July the final straw was reached when Feldman called Mike's sister with his bizarre theories and Mike's sister angrily called Anne in response.

Pg. 104:

"One evening in mid-July 1994 (21 July) [Anne Graham] received a very angry telephone call from Michael Barrett's sister Lynn, complaining about the call Feldman had made to her. 'I felt very guilty that I had brought all this worry on their heads as they had been very good to me and I was obliged to them for helping me get away from Mike. I rang Paul Feldman about 11 p.m. that evening, a few minutes after Lynn had rung. I was furious angry with him for pestering Michael's family and worrying my friends Audrey and Eric [witnesses to the Barretts' wedding] with his questions."

Note the word 'guilty'. I didn't make up that word out-of-the-blue, Jay, it is from Anne's own lips.

Guilty.

It was two days later, on 23 July 1994, after this angry phone call, that Feldman took Anne to the Moat House Hotel, and from this and subsequent conversations the 'in the family story' emerged, with Anne at least partially confirming Feldman's wild theories, claiming that her father HAD seen the diary at the time of World War II, and also telling him that there was a family tradition linking Elizabeth Formby to Alice Yapp.

In other words, she told him what he wanted to hear.

So, I repeat: Anne's "in the family" story was her way of getting Feldman off the backs of her in-laws and friends; by her own admission she had felt guilty about it.

You can believe her, or not believe her. You can even say her motivation was altruistic, but the immediate impetus for her coming forward, by all appearances, was Feldman's harassment of Mike's in-laws, and specifically Lynne.

I don't think your intuition about this and mine is all that far apart.

The question you should be asking yourself, if you believe the Eddie Lyons provenance, is why Anne didn't simply stop the bleeding and the harassment by telling Feldman that neither she, nor Mike was related to Maybrick, and that the simple truth is that Barrett had brought the diary home from the pub in March/April 1992 and that the Tony Devereux provenance had been made up.

She might not have known the whole story, but she would have known that much: her own 'tidied up' research notes were dated to August 1991.

Feldman then could have turned his investigation to Eddie Lyons and Vinny Dring and Jed Owens--whoever he is.

Why would honesty not have been the best policy?

As I see it, her behavior only has two explanations--she was telling the truth, or she was implicated in the hoax. The Eddie Lyons option makes no sense on any level--even an 'emotional' level.

That's how I see it. Good luck.

[erobitha]

You are assuming her guilt is from her hand in the hoax? Could it not just be as easily the fact she went along with Mike's whole story initially anyway? Maybe, she had reservations at the time? In fact, we know she did - she tried to burn the diary.

Her guilt could be from allowing the likes of Ripperologists in all shapes and forms into their lives in the first place. She thought it was done and dusted until Feldman went on his one man crusade. However, she was also having to deal with Mike at the same time.

I think she did what she thought was pragmatic at the time. I think Anne has always tried to be pragmatic in every situation.

I don't think she knows about Eddie Lyons (unless she follows ripperology closely) or even how the diary came to be in Mike's hands.

Mike was a law unto himself. His ego meant he could not spend any significant time with the truth. Anne knew this.

Feldman would stop hassling all her family and friends, make her a few sheckles at the same time and also put the boot into Mike.

It seems like all good motives to tell someone what they want to hear.

[Iconoclast]

The question you should be asking yourself, if you believe the Eddie Lyons provenance, is why Anne didn't simply stop the bleeding and the harassment by telling Feldman that neither she, nor Mike was related to Maybrick, and that the simple truth is that Barrett had brought the diary home from the pub in March/April 1992 and that the Tony Devereux provenance had been made up.

That is a critical question. It points to the possible validity of Anne's claim (she was simply telling the truth) and it also points to the possible invalidity of her claim (that she understood it was a hoax and she wished to maintain the deception she either knew about or was even involved in). What it doesn't do is explain her claim if the Battlecrease provenance was the true one, it is true, unless she knew that the scrapbook had appeared suddenly in March 1992 but knew that that knowledge was insufficient to counteract Barrett's unexpected hoax claims.

By offering the explanation she did, she:

• Told the truth at last, and/or
• Removed Barrett's influence over the provenance, and/or
• Hid the hoax they had created from the world

That's not a bad move in a game of Chess played out in real time in Liverpool all those years ago. We know Anne was a clever person so it should come as no surprise to us that she was capable of such a strategically brilliant move. She checkmated her chucked mate.

I still applaud her for it ...

[Iconoclast]

His ego meant he could not spend any significant time with the truth.

A brilliant line, ero b, and one I wish I had come up with.

Of course, I may yet still do so ...

[caz]

So again, why did she make up that lie because it was a forgery, and not because it was stolen and her ex was saying it was a forgery?

Hi Lombro2,

I imagine it would have had to be because this woman was as lucky as she was dim.

Dim, because if the Barretts had really faked this thing together, Anne would have had no way of knowing in July 1994 what beans Mike could have spilled to put it beyond all doubt. And by all that is holy, he ought to have had enough beans to fly a kite with all the wind.

Lucky, because for whatever reason Mike was pathologically incapable of telling a straight story and physically incapable of producing any beans - unless you count the kidney variety.

In short, the man was full of wind and piss.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Mike believed Feldman turned Anne and Caroline against him. There was no love lost between these two men from what I understand.

Mike used his forgery claim to try and negotiate with Anne, to get her to talk to him. As far I’m aware, Anne stayed resolute.

My guess is Mike was more annoyed that Feldman pulled a fast one on him that his ego could not handle it. So he convinced himself to pursue the forgery claim and the rest is history. Mike could not admit where he actually got it from as he would lose his right to it and may face criminal charges.

At least this way he feels he gets to have the last word.

That he did. This is the mess he left behind.

Hi ero,

What some people miss, because they see the diary as a shabby shambles, created over a wet weekend in Anfield, is the fact that Mike Barrett considered it a work of genius. He was flattered to know that some quite intelligent people actually believed he had written it himself. Like Bruce Robinson, our Mike would have given his eye teeth to have done so. Proving it was to be another matter entirely.

Mike's fakery claims can be viewed in that context. They were not merely mendacious and malicious; they also had 'ego' writ large all over them. What a clever fellow he had been to fool the likes of Feldman. His first claim, in June 1994, took all the dubious 'glory' for himself. It was only after Anne claimed to have charmed Tony Devereux into passing her father's diary on to Mike with no explanation, and then got daddy to play his part too, that Mike set about trying to stitch them all up while retaining control over his masterpiece.

Mike typically kept the best bits for himself. While Devereux was in the know and Billy paid for the scrapbook, Anne only did the handwriting because Mike's was too 'distinctive' - a risibly euphemistic description if ever I saw one. Mike had to be the creative genius behind it all. If the diary was going down in history as a fake, he was going down with it, as his intellectual property.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

So again, why did she make up that lie because it was a forgery, and not because it was stolen and her ex was saying it was a forgery?

Not a very well-thought-out question, Lombro.

Clear back at the very beginning of the fiasco, Anne asked Barrett in front of complete strangers, "did you nick it, Mike?"

No one was twisting her arm--she said it herself without prompting.

That doesn't sound like a woman who was terrified that people would think such a thing, does it?

But now you suggest that two years later, after already having left Barrett, and having refused her royalty cheques, and having filed for divorce, she's telling elaborate lies to everyone around her to avoid admitting precisely the same thing that she herself had already spontaneously suggested?

Doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense, Old Bean.

Why couldn't she have simply told the truth, if Barrett had brought the diary home from the pub in March 1992?

[Iconoclast]

Why couldn't she have simply told the truth, if Barrett had brought the diary home from the pub in March 1992?

If Anne's objective was to stop Barrett in his tracks from making a false confession, then the above (even if it were true) would not suffice, would it? Mike could simply argue that he 'brought it home' in March 1992 but had had it home for five years (as he claimed) as he worked on his brilliant forgery before 'bringing it home' (i.e., from out of wherever he had been hiding it in the house) in March 1992.

By saying that she had handed it to Tony D, Mike simply gets cut out of the creative process entirely. He can't have been a hoaxer, she is saying, because I saw the scrapbook in 1968 or 1969, long before I met Mike Barrett in the Irish Club in 1976.

I think she was more than clever enough to have worked out how to cut Mike out of his remarkable claims to Harold Brough.

brilliant chess move, I'd say.