Maybrick--a Problem in Logic

[caz]

Yawn.

Hi Caz - your posts admirably demonstrate why it is pointless to discuss the Maybrick hoax with you or Keith Skinner. Pretending that Keith's integrity has been challenged has always been the most useful way to duck the hard, cold facts, and to avoid the tough questions. That game has grown old and stale, however, so I'll be off.

But let me first spell out the relevance of the above to you, since you seem to be confused. To repeat, Keith stated in his Cloak and Dagger interview with Barrett, ""I’ve got the apology to make because I’ve got the red diary. What I’ve also got and I got it from Anne, because she sent it to me, Christ knows why because it just incriminates her, but she sent it to me. She sent me the red diary. She sent me the cheque book with the stub."

I am not accusing Keith of anything. I am trying to understand his thinking at this point in time, and what it might tell me.

Note the line in bold. What is Keith saying? Are we supposed to draw a conclusion from Anne's cooperation., as if it is proof of her integrity and fair-mindedness? She cooperated with Keith, we are told--against her own best interests, "Christ knows,"---and since she handed over the red diary willingly, it must have been an innocent purchase. In other words, "Move along, nothing to see here, folks."

Isn't that what is being implied? I mean, Anne's behavior IS pretty impressive isn't it? She boldly hands over potentially the most damning piece of evidence, and, along with it, even the cheque stub for its purchase!

Impressive. But wait a minute.

WHY would the purchase incriminate her?? Why did Keith say it would? If it was ordered and purchased in May 1992--after Doreen Montgomery had already seen the "Maybrick" diary, then it WOULDN'T HAVE INCRIMINATED HER, would it? Her purchase was odd, yes, but it couldn't have been connected with any attempt to purchase the raw materials for a forgery, because it was bought two months too late, after an independent party (Doreen) had already seen the Maybrick document.

So, OBVIOUSLY, whether Anne was truly cooperating or whether she was being evasive would entirely depend on what she had told Keith: whether she had admitted it was actually purchased in March 1992, or whether she had left Keith with the false impression that it wasn't purchased until May 1992. In other words, it would be highly RELEVENT if she FAILED to make it clear that the red diary was actually ordered BEFORE Doreen laid eyes on the Maybrick diary, and, further, it would also be highly RELEVANT if she failed to tell Keith that Barrett had been put down as a late payer.


And all I am saying is this: judging by Keith's line of questioning, as already detailed above, it certainly appears to me that Anne HAD left him with a false perception. Hence Keith's following question:

Keith to Barrett:

'What I don’t understand (RJP's emphasis) is that the statement that Anne sent me which backs your story beautifully is dated May 1992. May 1992 by which time you’ve been to see Doreen Montgomery with the Diary.'


Why would Keith want to boil my head for pointing out this question?? I think it goes to the heart of the matter, but, like I say, outrage has it's usefulness.

No, Caz, sorry to disappoint, but I am not suggesting Keith is being deceptive to the audience. I am suggesting that he is genuinely confused over the May purchase date. To me, he is behaving as if he has caught Barrett in a lie--as if he has caught Barrett with his pants down. Mike had been telling everyone he bought the red diary before contacting Doreen, but--voila!--Anne's cheque stub disproves this. It wasn't bought until May! And Keith isn't wrong. It WASN'T BOUGHT until May, and how would he know any differently? Unless Anne told him. I am NOT saying she did---in fact, I am suggesting the opposite. I am suggesting his question shows that SHE DIDN'T give him all the relevant facts, and he eventually had to figure it out on his own.

Do you think I'm mistaken? If so, what DO YOU think the question implies???

If you can't see the relevance of what Anne Graham may have told Keith, then I don't know what to tell you. Boil my head away, but it's an entirely fair question. By your answers above, I can only conclude that Anne's conversation with Keith wasn't recorded, nor her letters on the subject kept, so all we really have to go on is this indirect confirmation that Anne had left the early diary researchers with a false impression that was later debunked. FINIS.

Hi R.J,

You really could have saved yourself an awful lot of time and trouble by reading carefully the letter which Keith sent on April 27th 1999 for the June 1999 issue of Ripperologist, which you can find again here at #54:

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-media/audio-visual/rippercast/714049-rippercast-audio-archives-the-maybrick-diary/page4

It all seems clear enough to me now, that as far back as August 1995 Anne had told Keith over the phone that she thought Mike had 'bought' the little red diary by 'phoning' Yellow Pages and thought that this had been "pre-Doreen".

That would appear to clear up the little matter of whether she had deliberately delayed paying for the red diary until May, in order to leave the false impression that the purchase was only made after the Maybrick diary had already been seen in London.

It is also clear that the actual date the red diary was sent to Mike - March 26th 1992 - had not yet been established in April 1999.

At the risk of boring everyone else stupid by repeating myself, Mike had claimed back in January 1995 that Anne had purchased the red diary in early 1990, while Tony Devereux was alive, followed by the scrapbook, putting both purchases, and the eleven-day creation of the diary itself, two whole bloody years before he first contacted Doreen. So yes, just as you wrote above, Keith was 'behaving as if he has caught Barrett in a lie--as if he has caught Barrett with his pants down', for very good reason. Mike had claimed the red diary was bought two whole bloody years before contacting Doreen, so of course Anne's cheque stub disproved this. It wasn't bought until 1992. At the time, Keith didn't know whether Mike had actually taken delivery of it before or after his meeting with Doreen on April 13th, which he also makes clear in his letter. So you could say Anne had effectively incriminated herself by admitting to Keith that she thought Mike had 'bought' it, or at least ordered it, "pre-Doreen", as well as confirming his claim that she had paid £25 for it. But nobody at that time had any reason to think that a Victorian diary acquired as late as 1992, whether in March, April or May, could have been the intended recipient of the Maybrick diary.

In April 1999, Martin Earl had yet to be traced, along with the advert and its timing, and the fact that the red diary was sent to Mike 18 days before Doreen saw 'the' diary, and just 13 days before the letter confirming that meeting was sent to Mike. Much of it was still unknown in 2003, when Ripper Diary was published. Keith still has all his documentation and if you were to check back to the email he sent you on July 30th 2004 outlining the sequence of events between June 3rd and June 23rd 1999, based on the notes he transcribed for you, you would see this is the case.

Here again is what Mike said about those infamous eleven days:

'Anne and I started to write the Diary in all it took us 11 days. I worked on the story and then I dictated it to Anne who wrote it down in the Photograph Album and thus we produced the Diary of Jack the Ripper. Much to my regret there was a witness to this my young daughter Caroline.'

Mike puts this activity back to early 1990, but he says nothing about being under any pressure at the time, which I suppose is understandable as he gives himself two whole bloody years before contacting Doreen to say he has the diary. And of course it conflicts with an auction date of 1992.

Is it totally out of the question that Mike's eleven days was actually taken up with making the transcript of the diary? Anne said she had to take over the word processor because Mike was not very good with it and his spelling was hopeless, so he read to Anne from the diary and she did the typing. She told Keith that she checked back with the original to make sure she was spelling it the same way. Naturally, Caroline could have witnessed this without anyone being concerned about it, and it would have been done after school, when Anne was home from work. If they began, say, on the evening of Monday March 30th, it could have been completed around the same time Mike got his letter to confirm the meeting on April 13th. The letter was dated April 8th, so it would have been received around the 10th.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

As for Barrett's auction ticket, I always kind of figured Mike was just yanking everyone's chain. He states in his Jan 1995 confession that his sister destroyed the physical evidence and why wouldn't the ticket fall into that category? Of course, Lord O suggests that the reference to a police officer sitting in the audience may have had a chilling effect on Barrett's cooperation that evening. Who knows? Ciao.

Come on, R.J. You can do better than this. If I didn't respect you more, I'd think you'd become Lord Orsam's puppet.

We all know that by 1999 Mike had been insisting he was a forger since June 1994, and the police had not taken a blind bit of notice since the end of 1993, when they completed their investigation. Mike could not even reignite their interest with his copy of the Sphere book. How chilling would the effect have been on him in April 1999, if he had been told there were a dozen police officers present, after claiming he had that auction ticket on him? Two years previously, in 1997, he had faced a far more serious charge, by sending a written death threat to his ex wife. He narrowly got away with that one by claiming he was drunk at the time and never meant it.

I absolutely agree with you that Mike was just yanking everyone's chain. He claimed his sister destroyed the incriminating writing materials, so if he didn't have the auction ticket on him in 1999, he was lying, but he could have simply claimed she had destroyed that too, saving him the embarrassment of finding yet another excuse for not producing it at any time from his first 'confession' in June 1994.

In short, you would sooner brand Mike's sister a liar, for denying she ever received anything of the sort from Mike, than admit to yourself that he may have yanked your chain and been lying about ever having that auction ticket. That is something you have invested in so heavily, not financially but personally - far more hurtful in the long run - that there is no cure, no vaccine, no nothing that can alter your way of thinking.

Bye bye.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

We all know that by 1999 Mike had been insisting he was a forger since June 1994, and the police had not taken a blind bit of notice since the end of 1993, when they completed their investigation. Mike could not even reignite their interest with his copy of the Sphere book. How chilling would the effect have been on him in April 1999, if he had been told there were a dozen police officers present, after claiming he had that auction ticket on him? Two years previously, in 1997, he had faced a far more serious charge, by sending a written death threat to his ex wife. He narrowly got away with that one by claiming he was drunk at the time and never meant it.

And here's another thought!

Mike was 'apparently' willing to show the auction ticket at the C&D Club but backed-out because there were some retired policemen in attendance (he may not have known they were retired) who could have grassed him up?

Is it beyond Mike's infantile grasp on reality to work out that showing a room full of people who were not police-related an auction ticket which proved he was the world's greatest ever hoaxer might just have been as legally incriminating? Surely it had crossed his mind at some point?

Ike

[rjpalmer]

So yes, just as you wrote above, Keith was 'behaving as if he has caught Barrett in a lie--as if he has caught Barrett with his pants down', for very good reason. Mike had claimed the red diary was bought two whole bloody years before contacting Doreen, so of course Anne's cheque stub disproved this.

Hi Caz.

Fair enough, fair enough. But with this in mind, doesn't it make Anne's use of the phrase "pre-Doreen" when quizzed about the red diary back on 22 August 1995 slightly strange? (I refer to the link you provided to Keith's letter to the Ripperologist, dated 27 April 1999).

As in the above exchange, Keith would have been working from Mike's January 5th confession, and would have presumably asked Anne about a red diary supposedly purchased in 1990. Agreed? Thus, Anne referencing the purchase date by the yardstick of 'post-Doreen' or 'pre-Doreen' is curious isn't it? What brought that up? Why did she hone in on that event, if the red diary was supposedly purchased in 1990? Doreen wasn't the Nazarene, I'm assuming, and people didn't normally speak of the passing of time in terms of "B.D.' or 'Anno Doreeni.'

Maybe I'm being unfairly suspicious and critical, but Anne must have been fairly sharp on her toes if she immediately fathomed that the relevant point wouldn't be 1990 or 1992: it would be whether the red diary had been ordered before or after someone as trustworthy as Doreen Montgomery had laid their eyes on the black ledger.

But you'll say I'm over analyzing it.

The other thing Keith's letter to The Ripperologist seems to reveal is that as of April 1999 no one yet knew that Barrett had been set down as a "late payer." Neither Anne or Mike had mentioned it, because Keith (and Shirley) are still in the process of determining whether the red diary had been ordered in March or May. If they had known Barrett was down as a late payer, the writing would have been on the wall.

To be fair to Anne, her willingness to produce her check stubs is a mark in her favor. On the other hand, the terminally cynical will wonder if she would have produced them if, rechecking her records, the stub had said March instead of May, since she was already astute enough to realize that pre/post Doreen was going to be the key issue. Once she saw May (don't get excited, Ike, 'May' is just a coincidence, there's no greater meaning), she may have realized it was a way of defusing Barrett's little bomb. She presumably couldn't have known that documentation of Barrett's late paying would turn up, or the existence of Earl's advertisement.

I'll be diplomatic and withdraw my question and admit that Anne's behavior is inconclusive on this point.

[caz]

And here's another thought!

Mike was 'apparently' willing to show the auction ticket at the C&D Club but backed-out because there were some retired policemen in attendance (he may not have known they were retired) who could have grassed him up?

Is it beyond Mike's infantile grasp on reality to work out that showing a room full of people who were not police-related an auction ticket which proved he was the world's greatest ever hoaxer might just have been as legally incriminating? Surely it had crossed his mind at some point?

Ike

Well, Ike, Mike's grasp on reality may just have been firm enough to realise that there's one born every minute, so someone, somewhere, at some point - cough, cough, Orsam, cough, cough - was bound to fall hook, line and sinker for this poorly thought-up excuse for not whipping out his auction ticket. Poor Mike, he comes along to a club packed to the rafters with dozens of true crime enthusiasts and professionals, expecting to prove he is a true criminal and forger, and it simply doesn't dawn on him that if he succeeds, he is more likely to have the darbies clapped on him than a medal hung round his neck.

No, I think R.J. got it right. Mike was yanking everyone's chain - as usual. And most of us know it.

Love,

Caz
X

[StevenOwl]

Well, Ike, Mike's grasp on reality may just have been firm enough to realise that there's one born every minute, so someone, somewhere, at some point - cough, cough, Orsam, cough, cough - was bound to fall hook, line and sinker for this poorly thought-up excuse for not whipping out his auction ticket. Poor Mike, he comes along to a club packed to the rafters with dozens of true crime enthusiasts and professionals, expecting to prove he is a true criminal and forger, and it simply doesn't dawn on him that if he succeeds, he is more likely to have the darbies clapped on him than a medal hung round his neck.

No, I think R.J. got it right. Mike was yanking everyone's chain - as usual. And most of us know it.

Love,

Caz
X

I reckon old Bongo spied Jeremy Beadle at the back of the room and thought "****, this whole thing has been an elaborate 7 year wind-up by someone, and if I whip out the auction ticket now the TV cameras will be revealed and I'll be made to look a right tit on national tele".

[caz]

Hi Caz.

Fair enough, fair enough. But with this in mind, doesn't it make Anne's use of the phrase "pre-Doreen" when quizzed about the red diary back on 22 August 1995 slightly strange? (I refer to the link you provided to Keith's letter to the Ripperologist, dated 27 April 1999).

As in the above exchange, Keith would have been working from Mike's January 5th confession, and would have presumably asked Anne about a red diary supposedly purchased in 1990. Agreed? Thus, Anne referencing the purchase date by the yardstick of 'post-Doreen' or 'pre-Doreen' is curious isn't it? What brought that up? Why did she hone in on that event, if the red diary was supposedly purchased in 1990? Doreen wasn't the Nazarene, I'm assuming, and people didn't normally speak of the passing of time in terms of "B.D.' or 'Anno Doreeni.'

Maybe I'm being unfairly suspicious and critical, but Anne must have been fairly sharp on her toes if she immediately fathomed that the relevant point wouldn't be 1990 or 1992: it would be whether the red diary had been ordered before or after someone as trustworthy as Doreen Montgomery had laid their eyes on the black ledger.

But you'll say I'm over analyzing it.

The other thing Keith's letter to The Ripperologist seems to reveal is that as of April 1999 no one yet knew that Barrett had been set down as a "late payer." Neither Anne or Mike had mentioned it, because Keith (and Shirley) are still in the process of determining whether the red diary had been ordered in March or May. If they had known Barrett was down as a late payer, the writing would have been on the wall.

To be fair to Anne, her willingness to produce her check stubs is a mark in her favor. On the other hand, the terminally cynical will wonder if she would have produced them if, rechecking her records, the stub had said March instead of May, since she was already astute enough to realize that pre/post Doreen was going to be the key issue. Once she saw May (don't get excited, Ike, 'May' is just a coincidence, there's no greater meaning), she may have realized it was a way of defusing Barrett's little bomb. She presumably couldn't have known that documentation of Barrett's late paying would turn up, or the existence of Earl's advertisement.

I'll be diplomatic and withdraw my question and admit that Anne's behavior is inconclusive on this point.

Hi R.J,

Back so soon?

Firstly, you are assuming that Keith knew about Mike’s sworn affidavit of January 5^th 1995 by August 22^nd 1995. He didn't. Mike sent a copy of this affidavit to Shirley on January 22^nd 1997 and Shirley then gave Keith pages one and two the following day. This was the first Keith knew about its existence. He thinks it’s possible it had been put on the internet by someone in 1996. But in short, he had no knowledge of it, or the content, back in 1995. Keith doesn’t know if Mike could have given Anne a copy, but Keith wasn’t working from it when speaking to her in August 1995, so the 1990 date didn’t come up.

I have no idea what Anne meant by pre-Doreen. Before April 13^th 1992, when Mike finally took the scrapbook to show her? Before his first telephone contact with her, on March 9^th? Or before Doreen's first letter arrived, expressing interest in the diary? Whatever Anne meant, she was evidently not seeking to put the enquiry, which produced the red diary, after Doreen had seen the scrapbook.

The first note Keith has relating to the red diary is on July 5^th 1995, when Paul Feldman phoned and asked him to make a note that Mike had phoned him the previous week, saying Anne had bought a Victorian diary in 1992(!) [KS exclamation mark made at the time] for which he, (Barrett) had the receipt. Feldman asked Anne about it – and Anne said, yes, she had bought a Victorian pocket diary – and still has it.

Immediately after Keith’s telephone conversation with Anne on August 22nd 1995, he made the note below in biro. Anne had called him for a chat, and Keith took the opportunity to ask her about the red diary. He didn’t get the impression that she had prepared notes for what to say just in case he brought up the subject:

22.8.1995

Anne’s recollections re Victorian Diary –

Thinks it was pre [KS underlining made at time] Doreen... thinks Mike got it by phoning up Yellow Pages – wanted to see what a Victorian Diary looked like – All Ann can clearly remember is having to pay £20 for it – is going to search for cheque stubs ! [KS exclamation mark made at time]

Added in pencil and squashed up in the top right hand corner is an additional note:

3.30pm Anne phoned back – has been looking at statements and old cheque books – between 17 May 1992 and 21 May 1992 there is a stub which says £25 – book. Anne is going to see whether bank can identify who cheque is payable to...

Hope this helps.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I reckon old Bongo spied Jeremy Beadle at the back of the room and thought "****, this whole thing has been an elaborate 7 year wind-up by someone, and if I whip out the auction ticket now the TV cameras will be revealed and I'll be made to look a right tit on national tele".

Hi Steven,

Now there's a thought.

Mike had actually met Jeremy the previous day at Camille Wolff's lunch.

See my post #331 for the link to the articles in the June 1999 issue of Ripperologist if you'd like to read more about the events leading up to the C&D interview.

I'm off to the garden to catch some rays.



Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

See my post #331 for the link to the articles in the June 1999 issue of Ripperologist if you'd like to read more about the events leading up to the C&D interview.
Love,
Caz
X

I hope we've all viewed this clip (from Caz #331):

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/Barret...er_podcast.mp4

I've posted it again so no-one has an excuse not to. Although detractors will say that Barrett was three sheets to the wind and that we shouldn't use this clip as an indicator of Barrett's general state of mind, the reality is that it clearly shows the world how very very bad a drunk he was, and that's exactly what he was when he started making his ridiculous 'confessions' (of having created the Maybrick scrapbook).

Sober - nice, sincere guy. Drunk - loud-mouthed, incoherent boor.

No World's Greatest Ever Actor. No World's Greatest Ever Forger. Just a bombastic fool without the brainpower to string a cogent argument together one word to the next.

If you're serious about uncovering who created the Maybrick scrapbook, you need to have extraordinarily-strong reasons to target Mike Barrett. Now always remember that, ladies and gentlemen.

Ike

[Abby Normal]

so someone is more reluctant to show evidence of a crime if they know a copper is in the audience? wow-totally outrageous. (thats sarcasm btw)

[rjpalmer]

Hi R.J,

Back so soon?

Hi Caz,

Yes, I have a few odds and ends to finish up.

I sometimes get the feeling that Ike is a wee bit bashful. He recently wrote that he’s even a little afraid of you, so let me ask a question on his behalf, and he’ll have to forgive me if I’m overstepping my authority.

From Paul Feldman, p. 129:

“We had promised to take the Barretts to lunch. A cab was ordered…[and]…Caroline asked if she could travel with us….There was no attempt to discourage her. Paul Begg and Martin were relentless. The poor kid had barely sat down in the car when they started a cross examination. ‘Do you remember when your dad came home with the diary? Do you remember whether your dad phoned Tony and asked him where he got the diary from?’…

“….I wish I had trusted my instinct. Caroline remembered clearly the day that would change the Barretts’ life forever. She remembered the day her dad came home with the diary. She remembered her dad pestering Tony, and she could not forget the row between her mother and father….”

Here’s Ike’s question.

He’s wondering how Little Caroline could have had a clear memory of Barrett pestering Tony Devereux about the diary, if the black ledger was underneath Dodd’s floorboards until March 1992? Didn’t Devereux die in August 1991? (Let me answer that second question. 'Yes.' 8 August 1991).

[rjpalmer]

Hi Caz. Here's the second bit, and my apologies for the long delay.

You’ve asked me a couple of times to provide evidence that Mike Barrett had once referred to Bernard Ryan’s “The Poisoned Life of Mrs. Maybrick” as a source in the creation of the diary.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to the Barrett tapes at the moment, but I did find the following excerpt from Melvin Harrison’s long article “The Maybrick Hoax: A Guide Through the Labyrinth.” (It’s towards the end, about 80% in) showing that Harris, too, had noticed this.

In a discussion of the mythical “Manchester murder,” Melvin recalls Barrett having discussed its genesis with Alan Gray.

“Barrett did in fact offer an answer that was taped by private investigator Alan Gray. Shorn of its repetitions and over-ripe oaths, a transcript reads: "That other book, The 'poisoned Life' one, says he was in thick with Thomas.. He only lived 20 miles away in Manchester.. See the connection?... It's all about plotting... It's just a big circle.. .The first was in Manchester so the last has to be in Manchester. It's put down like that in the diary. F... .it, he was only 20 miles away.. .You don't need a f...... excuse to hop over and see your brother... Everyone visits everyone else at Christmas time...”

One argument frequently used by Diary believers is that Barrett only had a very superficial understanding of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ case and the Maybrick poisoning case and thus wouldn’t have had the expertise to create or help create the text. (See Paul Begg’s opinion in Feldman, p. 130. Begg describes Barrett’s knowledge was ‘negligible,’ evidently based on the fact that Mike was unfamiliar with his book). Yet here we see Barrett confidently citing Bernard Ryan chapter and verse, and he obviously knows (correctly) that Ryan had mentioned Maybrick’s obscure older brother Thomas living in Manchester. Barrett even seems to be recalling a specific passage in Ryan’s book (see below).

So how negligible was Mike’s knowledge, really?

And note: this is Barrett referring to Ryan in 1995, back when people were still suggesting that Moreland, Christie, etc. were the probable sources of the Maybrick diary. It was only afterwards that textual studies convinced many that Bernard Ryan’s book was almost certainly used... and yet, here is Barrett already alluding to it in another context….


(Here is the passage in Ryan to which Barrett is alluding. Am I to believe that someone with a 'negligible' knowledge of the Maybrick case would recall this obscure passage in a secondary source? Or are you suggesting that Barrett memorized these bits to "fool" us into believing he knew his stuff? Even that shows some ability, doesn't it?) Have fun with it.

[Iconoclast]

so someone is more reluctant to show evidence of a crime if they know a copper is in the audience? wow-totally outrageous. (thats sarcasm btw)

Not very good sarcasm, Abby. Watch the clip then come back to us and repeat your assertion.

Honestly, is this a man whose horse you'd bet on?

Cheers,

Ike

[Abby Normal]

Not very good sarcasm, Abby. Watch the clip then come back to us and repeat your assertion.

Honestly, is this a man whose horse you'd bet on?

Cheers,

Ike

to forge a half arsed hoax? of course-hes exactly the type to do it. (not sarcasm)

[Iconoclast]

to forge a half arsed hoax? of course-hes exactly the type to do it. (not sarcasm)

Ah - I've got it, Abby. You haven't watched the clip, and you haven't read the scrapbook's contents.

If you had, you could not possibly call it a 'half arsed hoax'.