The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[caz]

Hi Graham,

Quite right - respect is due, your No. 2 spot in the Orsam rankings is both worthy and meritful (the spell checker doesn't like this word so I've added it to my dictionary to get rid of that tiresome red underline). I only mentioned c.d.'s 3rd place because he/she mentioned it themselves. To date, Caz hasn't commented on her respectable 4th place, but I have no doubt that being out of the medal places will drive her on in the future !

The future starts now, in that case! I've only just read about my 'respectable' 4th place in Orsam's heart last summer, and can only hope to be on the podium soon, if not already.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Inside Story is a must-read, and I'm disappointed that lovely Caz no longer posts on these boards; I'm sure I speak for most when I say, 'Come back Caz, your deep knowledge and your sense of fair play are very much missed. As is your sense of humour, a rarity here these days.'

Grahan

Hear hear Graham - it is a national scandal that Caz no longer posts on Casebook and I for one demand action by the powers that be.

What do we want? Caz posts!
When do we want them? Now!

Okay, fingers crossed …

Ike

Cheers chaps, but I don't remember ever going away - not for very long anyway. Just a couple of Maybrick threads from last year, including this one, which I've only just caught up with.

They can't get rid of me that easily.

Love,

Caz
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[Scott Nelson]

Melvin Harris made a cryptic comment years ago -- maybe it was a post on this site or in one of his essays. He said "Lay off of Kane." What could he have meant by this? Kane was an old man then.

[caz]

Hi Scotty,

Melvin was furious when his suspected penman's name came out publicly, so at the time it appeared that he was afraid of a potential libel action, as he had no actual evidence that Kane was involved. It was all groundless speculation and suspicion, based on the flimsiest circumstantial evidence.

If the diary author disguised his/her handwriting, and therefore couldn't be conclusively identified, that may explain why Melvin didn't dare name the suspect himself. Accusing a living person on the sole basis that their handwriting can't rule them out as a fraudster [which could have applied to pretty much any literate English speaker alive at the right time] must surely be a risky business.

Love,

Caz
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[Scott Nelson]

OK thank you Caroline. Does anybody see a similarity between Ann Graham's handwriting and that in the Diary?

[caz]

Some do, others don't, Scotty - so it comes down to personal opinion.

That is not nearly enough to make a case for Anne Graham being willing or able to commit fraud to keep her husband happy, by disguising her handwriting over 63 pages. When Mike took the diary to London, who stood to gain most financially from its publication, if not Mike, Shirley and Robert Smith? What would have been in it for Anne in March/April 1992, to make it worth the risk of exposure and a prison sentence, and the repercussions for her young daughter? What experience and expertise did she have with literary hoaxes, to make her believe she could succeed where the fakers of the Hitler and Mussolini Diaries failed?

Love,

Caz
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[Trevor Marriott]

Some do, others don't, Scotty - so it comes down to personal opinion.

That is not nearly enough to make a case for Anne Graham being willing or able to commit fraud to keep her husband happy, by disguising her handwriting over 63 pages. When Mike took the diary to London, who stood to gain most financially from its publication, if not Mike, Shirley and Robert Smith? What would have been in it for Anne in March/April 1992, to make it worth the risk of exposure and a prison sentence, and the repercussions for her young daughter? What experience and expertise did she have with literary hoaxes, to make her believe she could succeed where the fakers of the Hitler and Mussolini Diaries failed?

Love,

Caz
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Remember the saying “needs must when the devil calls”

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Abby Normal]

OK thank you Caroline. Does anybody see a similarity between Ann Graham's handwriting and that in the Diary?

Lord Orsam does

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/11177-diary-handwriting/page3

[Scott Nelson]

The samples of Anne Graham's handwriting Barrat posted look like that of a left-handed writer. The Diary writing appears to be right-handed. I don't know how one could say she was ambidextrous. The sample comparisons between the letters and the Diary don't really agree, or nothing really jumps out at me.

[caz]

Hi Scotty,

I seem to remember somebody did once suggest Anne could be ambidextrous, which I took to mean that, like you, they thought the available examples appeared to show she was normally left-handed, while the diary appeared to have been written by a right-handed person.

I may be wrong, but the direction of all the diagonal crossings out in the actual diary [bottom left to top right, as opposed to top left to bottom right] do suggest to me that a right-handed person wrote it.

Love,

Caz
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[rjpalmer]

Hi Caz. You made an interesting comment about Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination conspiracy:

How could the conspirators have known if he had played the part well enough, or given them an impossible task to set him up? Has anything like this ever happened, even within the realms of fiction?

Yes, actually: the role that Mike and Anne Barrett played in the Great Battlecrease Heist of 9 March 1992.

What enormous luck for your nest of thieves that the Diary of Jack the Ripper was quickly and cheaply sold to the most erratic man in Merseyside--a man, no less, who had previously lent a copy of Tales of Liverpool (with its two chapters on the Maybrick case) to Tony Devereux, thus leading the delusional 'modern hoax' theorist on a wild goose chase. And what a second stroke of luck that Mike would go on to find a second copy of the same booklet and even decide to reference it in a set of bogus research notes that he and his wife would decide to create for their literary agent. How could Eddie have known it would play out so well? And could Eddie have predicted that Mike would make the bizarre decision to determine a fair market price for the Diary of Jack the Ripper by buying a blank Victorian Diary, 1880-1890, from a bookseller in Oxford? Or hide his writing career of the 1980s from Shirley Harrison and Robert Smith, and lie about when and why he purchased a word processor? Lucky for the Battlecrease thieves, Mike played the patsy to perfection.

And could Eddie Lyons have predicted in his wildest dreams that Mike would even go on to CONFESS to writing the hoax, or that Anne would come forward and claim that she had seen the diary as far back as the late 1960s and even convince her terminally ill father to back her up? Or that Anne would demonstrate her own writing ambitions and talents by co-authoring a biography of Florence Maybrick?

No; to me, this is mind blowing. Maybe we needed another Warren Commission to unravel it all. It's too bad we didn't enlist Nick Warren to help.

Eddie must have been beside himself with joy when he realized that Mike and Anne were the perfect patsies---that their odd and suspicious behavior would so thoroughly lead the most gullible and mentally lazy of the Ripperologists so far away from the truth.

As you say, it is the stuff of fiction.

[caz]

Just saw this one...

What RJ wrote was the stuff of fiction, I can only agree.

I'm wondering why Eddie is meant to have been 'beside himself with joy' that Mike ran with the "old book" all the way to the bank, leaving Eddie powerless to do anything about it. He could at least console himself with the thought that Mike was never going to piss on his own chip butty by grassing him up. Mike would just have to lie about where he got the diary if he wanted to claim ownership and make his fortune - "simple" for someone who could lie as easily as breathing.

Once the diary changed hands, what could it possibly matter to Eddie what pack of lies Mike might tell about it in the future, as long as those lies were designed to distance Eddie even further from the hot property, as they surely would be? We can see how discombobulated Mike was in 1993, when he thought Eddie was threatening to take back control and muscle in on the spoils by claiming to have found the diary. Eddie knew that was the last thing Mike wanted. Mike's only concern was to stay centre stage, which meant telling whatever lies would steer people away from Eddie and the truth, and in any other direction that suited him and his audience at the time.

Make no mistake, Mike was not doing any of it for Eddie's benefit, but Eddie would have been protected nonetheless, whether it had been just the one lie concerning the Devereux provenance, or a dozen contradictory tales of Liverpool before breakfast, for the gullible and mentally lazy to suck up like osmosis.

[John Wheat]

By the way, everyone, I'm absolutely raging about this thread ...

It's clearly a modern hoax.

[caz]

But who hoaxed it, John? Any ideas that don't show you up as one of RJ Palmer's 'most gullible and mentally lazy' of Ripperologists?

[Clue: I don't think we can pin it on Konny Kujau this time.]

Love,

Caz
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[John Wheat]

But who hoaxed it, John? Any ideas that don't show you up as one of RJ Palmer's 'most gullible and mentally lazy' of Ripperologists?

[Clue: I don't think we can pin it on Konny Kujau this time.]

Love,

Caz
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I'm not sure. However I would say the most gullible Ripperologists are those that believe James Maybrick wrote the diary. But what are your thoughts on who wrote the diary?