Barrett and the Diary.

[caz]

I read Caroline's post above.

Oh good.

Shame none of it actually sank in.

But we can't have everything.

You don't do an awful lot of actual investigating, with real live people, do you John? If you did, I guess you would report everything you found out, as you found it out, and in public, even if it meant buggering the whole thing up, because at least you'd be doing the right thing by some self-important twit on the internet who kept insisting he had a right to know the current state of play.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ally]

Caz,

It sank in for me. So basically Keith has researched, gone and talked to people, now he has super secret evidence that no one is allowed to see but which he is allowed to make pronouncements on and keep closeted away.

What's he waiting for? For all the key players to die so no one can follow up after he puts forth his "proof"

Yeah people who sit on the evidence and while making public claims about it...naughty. And as for the whole "court of history" bullsht that's trying to currently whitewash what Keith said: He was sitting in a mock legal trial and discussing the evidence when he made his claims. Let's not let facts get in the way of attempts to mitigate his culpability in making claims about evidence he's holding that he refuses to share while making claims of the Diary's authenticity, which once again, is something you have soundly condemned others for doing. For years.

[Callyphygian]

Hi Caz,
Can you confirm that Keith's Battlecrease documentation has been subject to rigorous scientific testing to ensure that it is genuine?

Love,
Callyphygian

[Victor]

(for those gullible enough to believe Mike's version of events re his battered old Sphere book - even though he told Feldy's secretary how he was going to fool people into believing he had the book all along and therefore must have forged the diary)

Can anyone explain this quote?

Does the sphere book exist?

Is the quote in it and in the diary?

Did Mike Barrett own a copy of the Sphere book?

Did it fall open on the page with the quote?

That seems like a fair place to start

[Omlor]

My lord,

To read some of the prose around here, one would think we were discussing covert intelligence and international intrigue.

Really, Caroline. It's just a bit of information about a cheap hoax.

And if Keith was so bent on keeping the whole thing mum while the ongoing investigation was ongoing (as it has been for so very long), if keeping it secret was really as vital as you make it sound in your post above, and he is the careful and cautious man you always tell us he is, then why would he blab about it in a public forum?

I'm sure nations won't fall if he simply backs up his public claims and puts up the goods.

--John

[Jenni Shelden]

Maybe Keith has to keep it secret because legally it belongs to Bruce?

otherwise whats his problem?

i willing to give keith the benefit of the doubt, because he's not a sod or anything

i quite like him!

[Scott Nelson]

You know, I've always thought there may be a diary conduit through Mike's scrap metal business.

[Chris George]

Maybe Keith has to keep it secret because legally it belongs to Bruce?

otherwise whats his problem?

i willing to give keith the benefit of the doubt, because he's not a sod or anything

i quite like him!

Hi Jen

Of course it is also known that Keith has been working for Patricia Cornwell, so the continuing work on the Diary that Keith has been doing might have been on her behalf. And talking about benefit, if the documentation that Keith possesses does show the Diary was done after Maybrick's 1889 demise that might help end Maybrick's candidacy, which means there is one less suspect to rival her favored suspect, Walter Sickert. Another thing is that the ongoing research might conceivably show Maybrick was at an event or meeting with someone on one or more of the nights of the murders. More squirrel nuts, anyone?

Chris

[Jenni Shelden]

Chris,

true but i would think Bruce was a more likely sceneerio as I believe Keith is helping him with a book in which Bruce tries to pin the JtR murders on Micheal Maybrick.

Either way if that's the rpoblem ,pre empting a to be published thoery - maybe it should be stated (maybe it shouldnt have been pre empted)

maybe Keith said something interpreted in a way he didnt mean - but if thats the case one would also think he would have said.

in any case I cant imagine what the evidence could be but I await to become 'astounded' later
Jenni

[Graham]

Can anyone explain this quote?

Does the sphere book exist?

Is the quote in it and in the diary?

Did Mike Barrett own a copy of the Sphere book?

Did it fall open on the page with the quote?

That seems like a fair place to start

Hi Victor,

You don't seriously think you're going to get a straight answer to your perfectly fair questions, do you?

Cynically yours,

Graham

[Omlor]

Victor,

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.


Graham,

How's that?

--John

[Graham]

Victor,

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.


Graham,

How's that?

--John

Out for a duck, John!

Graham

[rjpalmer]

Hi Chris,

John is right about the meaning of my original comment, but let me address your point anyway.

Sorry, but I dont’ buy it, I’m afraid.

I don’t accept that Barrett and Graham’s behavior is consistent with two people “merely trying to grapple with the meaning of a mysterious document.”

I find it is consistent with two people who are lying.

People find antiques, strange items, artifacts, etc. every day of the week and readily admit their ignorance of the provenance. They come forward in good faith. If something like this had happened in the Barretts’ case, why didn’t they simply behave in a rational manner from the beginning? Why the alias when Barrett called Crew? Why the lies about the word processor--with the obvious implication that Barrett and Graham were hiding their previous writing career? Why Barrett’s attempt to purchase a blank diary? I mean, good gawd, Anne Graham stated at one point that she didn’t like the Diary in her house because it was “evil.”

The main problem, in my opinon, isn’t that Graham doesn’t know where the Diary came from, the main problem is that we can’t compel her to speak.

(Not that I'm a Dick Cheney fan--certainly she has that right!)

Correct me if I’m wrong--but it appears from your posts that you might be moving toward Paul Begg’s theory that Mike Barrett is ignorant about the origins of the Diary. But if I understand Paul’s thinking, he bases it on the apparent fact that Barrett was never able to give a full account of the Diary’s creation, even while in the confession mode.

With that in mind, and admitting this is strange behavior, can I ask you a similar question to the one you posed to John O?

If you created a forgery under rather tawdry circumstances--compelling, for instance, someone once dear to you to help write it-- and the only saving grace you had left when it all came crashing down was to call yourself “the world’s greatest forger,” might you be inclined not to give a full account, particularly if the truth tended to cast you in a very different light?

Maybe the answers to these ticklish questions are human, and not forensic.

I've never accepted that Barrett is a dupe. The evidence suggests to me something very different.

All the best.

[Graham]

Hi RJ,

It's Sunday evening, I'm bored, there's not a lot happening on the boards, so I thought I'd just add a comment or two to your interesting post.

1] I think it's agreed by all that Mike Barrett was not capable of producing even a work of poor literary merit such as the Diary. He could have come up with the original idea to write 'Jack the Ripper's Diary', but given his other (published) attempts at writing, no way could he have produced the Diary.

2] Anne could have, though. Martin Fido commented that she could have written the thing with one hand tied behind her back.

3] Possible that Barrett dictated the thing to Anne (or at least told her his general thoughts which she then put into passable English) hence the text of the Diary on his word-processor?

4] Possible that a street-wise scouser like Barrett decided that he was the man to make something out of the Diary, perhaps not trusting Anne to maintain a dead-pan expression whilst pushing the Diary around publishers?

5] Possible that Barrett approached publishers prior to Smith-Gryphon and was turned down?

6] Possible - nay, probable - that Barrett cracked under Feldman's remorseless interrogation, hence the 'confession' that he wrote it, to get Feldman off his back?

7] And the watch? Was this seperate to the Diary, mere coincidence, or what? Barrett never claimed any knowledge of the watch, so far as I'm aware.

8] Possible that in reality the Diary and the watch did originate in Australia and were brought to the UK by Anne when she returned home, and that she kept both of them 'in storage' until she married Scouse rascal Mike Barrett and saw a possibility of making a bob or two via his, er, business-acumen?

9] I need a drink.

Cheers,

Graham

[Victoria]

Hi RJ,

It's Sunday evening, I'm bored, there's not a lot happening on the boards, so I thought I'd just add a comment or two to your interesting post.


8] Possible that in reality the Diary and the watch did originate in Australia and were brought to the UK by Anne when she returned home, and that she kept both of them 'in storage' until she married Scouse rascal Mike Barrett and saw a possibility of making a bob or two via his, er, business-acumen?

9] I need a drink.

Cheers,

Graham

All good points in my opinion Graham,

especially pleased that you have included point 8, as I am positive that
the origins lay here in Australia .. hopefully it will be validated, and put an end to the speculation.
The 'in storage' etc sounds a very logical assumption.

Victoria