Who were they?

[caz]

It has possibly been noted at least a dozen times by David Barrat that in the handwritten draft of Mike's sworn affidavit the zero in the year 1990 had been crossed through and replaced with a 1. This means Barrett was only a few months off in his reckoning. Barrat also notes that Mike corrected this error during the infamous Cloak and Dagger interview. There is nothing here that should interest us. It's just more shuffling of the walnut shells.

Leaving aside the question of why this year change had to be noted 'at least a dozen times', I am curious to know where this handwritten draft came from and where it can be seen, now that RJ has 'leaked' its existence.

RJ's conclusion that, because the nought in the year 1990 had been crossed through and replaced by a one, this means that Mike 'was only a few months off in his reckoning' has to be one of the most desperate yet.

I don't recall ever seeing this alleged draft, but I doubt it was in Mike's appalling handwriting, which leaves Alan Gray as the obvious scribe, with Mike dictating the 'goods'. But as Alan was the one who typed up the affidavit, retaining the year 1990 throughout, this 'draft' could not have been corrected by anyone to read 1991 until a later date, when it was presumably too late for that person to correct the official document, sworn under oath. If it wasn't already a dodgy document to rely on, the late correction to the draft version makes it stink to high heaven.

If there is no indication of who made the correction, Mike may well have remembered later, or been reminded by someone with access to a typed copy, that Tony Devereux had died in 1991, and not 1990, requiring the diary's entire creative process as Mike had described it in the affidavit to be shifted forward a year, to make the narrative work with the one easily provable date. Melvin Harris would not have known in January 1995 that the red diary business had not begun until March 1992, but he'd have known very well when Tony Devereux had shuffled off, and would be trying to make sense of Mike's various claims in that context.

Now we know that the red diary was sent to Mike on 26th March 1992, just a few days before Doreen sent him the letter confirming their meeting for 13th April. So on what planet would a correction for its purchase from January 1990 to January 1991 show that Mike had ended up 'only a few months off' in his reckoning? Bearing in mind that he never, ever forgot the date that he took the diary to London: Monday 13th April 1992, it is simply not feasible to argue that correcting the year in which he and Anne had created the diary together, from 1990 to 1991, shows that Mike was telling the truth, because he was only a year and a bit out.

RJ is right about one thing, though: there is nothing here that should interest us, so I wonder why he was trying to make something of it. Shuffling actual walnut shells might have been more productive.

[caz]

It is reported on page 237 of Ripper Diary: the Inside Story that Keith Skinner quizzed Anne Graham about the maroon memo book in August 1995.

Yet, Caroline Brown has reported (many times, I might add) that Keith first learned about Mike Barrett's affidavit on 22 January 1997. (If you doubt this, chase down the appropriate posts for yourself, or see the "Silence of Ann" at Orsam Books).

So, who leaked it? How did he find out about it?

Personally, I don't care all that much. The fact is, circumstances forced Anne to cough up the goods.

Mike told Feldman that Anne had bought the red diary, so Feldman told Keith, who then asked Anne about it, who said yes, she had paid for it and still had it.

[No mention of Mike's affidavit, or his claim that Anne had purchased it in January 1990, two years and four months before she wrote the cheque.]

Only Anne knows how much she knew about the red diary and whether Mike ever discussed his intentions for it. Now its existence had been 'leaked' by Mike, with only mischief in mind, I can see that it was in Anne's best interests to confirm the purchase itself, but there was no obligation on her to have kept either the diary or her 1992 cheque book or bank statements, let alone to hand anything over to Keith. If Mike had been able to supply the additional information, so what? What could she have done to stop him? But what she gave Keith enabled him, when he was in a position to revisit it after Ripper Diary was published, to trace the advert. There is nothing to suggest that Mike or anyone else could have done this without access to Anne's cheque, but in the end I'm not sure it matters. The advert is the best a Barrett hoax believer can get, and will ever have, on which to base their suspicions about Mike's intentions. No circumstances on earth could have forced Anne to cough up the only goods that matter: what she knew, if anything, about those intentions.

For RJ to be correct, Anne had to know all along what Mike's intentions for the red diary were, and how a timely auction sale came to their rescue. She also had to know by the summer of 1995 that now Mike had 'leaked' the existence of the red diary, there was nothing she could do about it if he had also 'leaked' the existence of the auction ticket, because - loud drum roll for the hard of hearing and thinking - he would only have to cough that up and it would all be over.

[caz]

Similarly, with nothing to hide, there was no reason for Timoth McVeigh to mention renting a Ryder truck or his purchase of a ton of ammonium nitrate.

No one was accusing Tim of being a terrorist, so why bring it up? Must have slipped his mind.

The Barretts had "nothing to hide," folks. You heard it here from Tom Mitchell.

They didn't hide the real purchase date of the word processor, nor the details of Mike's writing career, nor the true nature of the bogus research notes, etc.

They were entirely on the up & up.

Yet two hours from now, Caz will leap in and say they had EVERYTHING to hide--because the diary was bought off Eddie Lyons down the boozer.

It's just the three-shell game, over and over and over.

Utterly surreal!

Ike was responding to RJ's argument that if the Barretts had nothing to hide [which nobody was arguing] they would have mentioned the red diary. He asked a question:

Originally posted by Iconoclast View Post
If The Barretts had nothing to hide, what purpose would telling Shirley about the little maroon diary serve?

RJ then turns this entirely reasonable question into a statement by Ike that the Barretts had nothing to hide!

Ike believes, as I do, that the evidence strongly indicates that the Battlecrease Diary came into Mike's life first, on 9th March 1992, followed swiftly by his request for the red diary.

Ergo, the Barretts were hiding this fact with the Tony Devereux story.

RJ cannot possibly be unaware of this, so whichever way he spins it, there is no real mystery over why the red diary was not mentioned between 9th March 1992 and 5th January 1995.

RJ's time might have been better spent on looking for some evidence - any evidence - for where he believes the scrapbook came from, that is wholly independent of the red diary business.

But I sense that he has gambled everything on the red diary not being a red herring dangled by Mike, because without it he has nothing else.

[caz]

I am not challenging Keith Skinner's integrity, but I suspect you know this and are merely grandstanding.

Although he thinks very little of me, I have praised some of Keith's research in the past, as well as his habit--not one shared by Maureen or Shirley or Feldman--to keep notes of the saga as it unfolded. We are in his debt.

What I am challenging is Caz Brown's "appeal to authority."

She is arguing that I should accept that the diary came out of Battlecrease because Keith has apparently drawn this conclusion.

Does Kieth himself feel that way? Should I simply take his word for it? Would that be a reasonable thing for me to do, when I see major problems with this idea?

I repeat, the only evidence we've seen for accepting this provenance is what has already been presented in Robert Smith's 2017 book, and Smith's 'evidence' was singularly unimpressive.

Keith himself has not presented his case for believing this, and he has stated on this very forum that the two events that occurred on 9 March 1992 --Barrett successfully calling a literary agent and Paul Dodd having some work done on his house--could have been a 'coincidence.'

As far as I know, the faith that you, Caz, and Hartley put in this provenance could outweigh what Keith himself believes. How would I know otherwise?

RP

RJ referred to the Battlecrease evidence, collectively, as my 'silly belief'.

I didn't suggest that RJ should accept it just because Keith Skinner continues to find it compelling. That would indeed be very silly. RJ is never, ever, ever, ever going to shift from his own, utterly baseless, evidence-free belief in the scrapbook being taken to London within two weeks of Mike finding it in an auction sale.

I was merely making the observation that if RJ insists on describing the ever growing body of evidence for it being found in Dodd's house, which I find as compelling as Keith does, as my 'silly belief' [RJ's words], he should at least be honest enough to call it Keith's 'silly belief' too.

The fact that he didn't do so would suggest that he was unwilling to go that far.

There have been more murmurs of late, complaining that all the evidence has not yet been made available, and therefore RJ and his one-liner chorus have no way of judging it for themselves and reaching a conclusion either way - which would be a really, really reasonable objection if only they had not already reached a conclusion that nothing on God's green earth is ever likely to shift them away from.

[caz]

Hardly. What it is really shows is that Anne was clever enough to cover her arse in case Keith was able to instantly track down the exact date the order was placed, which eventually happened, but not until the 'May' date was still repeated at Cloak and Dagger meetings and in Shirley Harrison's books, and in The Ripperologist.

If Anne flat out insisted that the little red doppelganger was purchased in May, she risked being caught-out in an obvious lie once Earl was contacted, so simply implying that it was purchased in May with an added escape clause was safer. Just keep it all vague an uncertain--that's the best ticket. As far as Anne knew, Barrett had her by the throat.

Priceless.

When Anne doesn't 'flat out' lie, it's because as far as she knows, Mike has her by the throat.

Aside from what Mike could possibly have revealed about the red diary, that Anne didn't volunteer all by herself, by handing Keith the damned cheque, she 'flat out' lied the previous summer with her 'in the family' story when she'd have known he had her by the throat, not over the red diary business, but with the best ticket of them all: the auction variety. Unless of course she knew he didn't get the scrapbook that way.

What would have really shown transparency on Anne's part if she had mentioned the red diary before Feldman clued in Keith to its existence. She didn't. But the hilarious thing is that you'll turn around in 5 minutes and argue that Anne lied through her teeth repeatedly to Keith and everyone else for a decade, yet not budge that she was telling the truth this time. You're in such an obvious muddle.

But what lie has RJ caught Anne out in telling about the red diary? What is it about "pre-Doreen" that RJ doesn't understand? Why does he interpret this as an 'added escape clause', when Anne herself enabled it to be established as a fact that Mike's request had come before Doreen began making arrangements to see what he had?

It was Mike's request. It was his order, and his business why he did what he did. Anne merely picked up the tab. Why would she have mentioned it until Mike began to make a big deal out of it in 1995? Had she done so, I have but little doubt that RJ would still be accusing her of covering all the bases in advance, in case Martin Earl read Shirley's book when it came out and recognised the name Michael Barrett as a customer from Liverpool who had requested a Victorian diary from him the year before. I can read RJ like a book.

When dealing with liars, Caz, one needs to stay on their toes. Even now, Anne has you chasing your own tail--but then, it is abundantly obvious that that's what you prefer doing.

Spare me the lecture.

When dealing with liars, RJ needs to stay on his toes. Even now, Mike Barrett, the ultimate liar [if we don't count Trump or Boris], has him chasing his own tail, but then, it's abundantly obvious that that's what RJ prefers doing. He knows his one-liner fans will follow him round and round like sheep - or lambs to the slaughter.

And ever since you argued—apparently with a straight face—that the easily recognizable 20th Century phrase ‘bumbling buffoon’ is a reference to Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist, I realized that you no longer care if your public explanations are more embarrassing than simply admitting that you were fooled by Mike and Anne Barrett.

As I recall, it was more subtle than that. At the time, I had already made it pretty clear that I was only arguing against a Barrett hoax. I wasn't attempting to date the diary's composition, prior to Mike coming into its possession. I still think it's plausible that whoever wrote 'bumbling buffoon', in a diary meant to be Victorian, might well have considered it a fitting phrase, since the world and his wife would have been more than familiar with Mr. Bumble, and what Dickens wanted to convey about his character with the comical moniker.

I don't give a toss if nobody would have thought to combine the two words in 1888, fifty years after Oliver Twist was published and Mrs Maybrick gave birth to the real James, because I was not then, and am not now, arguing that anyone did.

[caz]

How dense can you be, Thom?

In the very statement you quote I wrote that "Keith still repeated [the May 1992 date]--apparently believing it to be true"

Which DOES NOT SUGGEST he knew it to be a deception. Good Gawd man, drink more coffee or take some no-doze. The same can be said of Shirley Harrison who also said the red diary had been purchased after Mike had brought the scrapbook to London.

That is not evidence that Shirley 'knew' it to be a deception.

Rather, it is evidence that Anne hadn't told the whole story.

And how in the Devil is it 'proactive' to be forced into coughing-up the check stub after Barrett revealed that he had purchased a red diary and she knew this was true?

One really has to be a masochist to engage with the Diary Crowd.

But Anne gave Keith all he needed to dig out 'the whole story' for himself!

RJ keeps making the mistake of seeing the long interval 'twixt cup and lip as something Anne could control or bank on, to keep Keith in ignorance for as long as possible and preferably forever. If he had used the cheque details to dig out 'the whole story' within days of Anne giving it to him in 1995, nobody but an idiot would have suggested she had done anything deliberately deceptive.

And once again, Anne wasn't 'forced' into 'coughing-up the check stub' after Mike had told Feldman about the red diary, which she had paid for. She was the only one with the means to supply the evidence that it even existed outside of Mike's fevered imagination, and she supplied it willingly - all of it. If she knew the red diary was a failed attempt by Mike to source the raw materials for a hoax, she missed a trick by keeping it and paying for it by cheque. She could have returned it whence it came, knowing that whatever Mike had asked for, in order to fake Maybrick's diary, it wasn't one for the year 1891, with printed dates throughout. Once again, RJ has to paint Anne as the dimmest deceiver in the history of dim deceivers. Will he now reprise his argument that she kept it and paid for it to incriminate Mike if push came to shove? Well, we know just how well that would have turned out for her, don't we, readers?

[rjpalmer]

And her reference to thinking it was "pre-Doreen", and then giving Keith the payee's name, leading him to all the relevant dates and the advert, is evidence that she did nothing of the sort and wasn't even trying..

Hardly. What it is really shows is that Anne was clever enough to cover her arse in case Keith was able to instantly track down the exact date the order was placed, which eventually happened, but not until the 'May' date was still repeated at Cloak and Dagger meetings and in Shirley Harrison's books, and in The Ripperologist.

If Anne flat out insisted that the little red doppelganger was purchased in May, she risked being caught-out in an obvious lie once Earl was contacted, so simply implying that it was purchased in May with an added escape clause was safer. Just keep it all vague an uncertain--that's the best ticket. As far as Anne knew, Barrett had her by the throat.

What would have really shown transparency on Anne's part if she had mentioned the red diary before Feldman clued in Keith to its existence. She didn't. But the hilarious thing is that you'll turn around in 5 minutes and argue that Anne lied through her teeth repeatedly to Keith and everyone else for a decade, yet not budge that she was telling the truth this time. You're in such an obvious muddle.

When dealing with liars, Caz, one needs to stay on their toes. Even now, Anne has you chasing your own tail--but then, it is abundantly obvious that that's what you prefer doing.

And anyway, you can save yourself any future effort. I'm out.

Watching you, Tom, and Jay trying to explain this crazy 'little red doppelganger' theory over the past few days was like watching three drunken monkeys trying to make love to a football.

And ever since you argued—apparently with a straight face—that the easily recognizable 20th Century phrase ‘bumbling buffoon’ is a reference to Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist, I realized that you no longer care if your public explanations are more embarrassing than simply admitting that you were fooled by Mike and Anne Barrett.

[caz]

What I am suggesting is that Keith's impression of the purchase date is evidence that Anne had successfully bamboozled him.

And her reference to thinking it was "pre-Doreen", and then giving Keith the payee's name, leading him to all the relevant dates and the advert, is evidence that she did nothing of the sort and wasn't even trying.

Keith clearly wasn't bamboozled, was he? Armed with all the details which Anne was supposedly attempting - very badly - to conceal from him, Keith has not changed his mind concerning the Barrett hoax theory. The red diary has not addled his brain.

RJ doesn't need to try to mislead his one-liner fans, who have already been successfully bamboozled by Mike. But it's a bit unkind of him to pick on such easy targets, with his partial retelling of the evidence, to leave out the bits which tell a very different story from the one he wants them to take away.

What I do believe is that Anne herself knew this date was misleading. She controlled the purse strings. She damn well knew Mike had been dunned as a late payer by Martin Earl. What she didn't know is Martin Earl's methods, so she felt confident to give her bogus explanation for the purchase, not realizing that Martin Earl had placed an advertisement in Bookfinder that would make a mockery of that explanation. No one needs to have a minimum of 20 blank pages to see what a diary looks like.

Ergo, she lied.

But Anne would not have known what the payee, Martin Earl, could reveal about Mike's request and how he had worded it. If she knew Mike had been trying to obtain a book to be used for faking the diary, that could only have made her more wary about what details might come out.

It would have been clear enough to Anne that the red diary had something to do with the circumstances in which Mike had taken possession of the scrapbook. Because he lied to Doreen about those circumstances, Anne knew the truth had to be dodgy, but I doubt she knows to this day why Mike thought he needed that red diary. Her story from July 1994 had been that Mike was given the scrapbook by Tony, not knowing it had come from her, and being told nothing about it. RJ believes that was a lie, as do I. So she suggested a reason for Mike wanting the red diary, that would be in keeping with her own story.

She was hardly going to admit to a connection between Mike bringing the scrapbook home in dodgy circumstances, and the red diary arriving by post later the same month.

Ergo, she lied.

[caz]

Revealing to Shirley the existence of the red diary at any time in 1992 or 1993 would not have been "defending themselves from the claim of having hoaxed the scrapbook." It would have been the most natural thing in the world.

What? Surely, that would only be true if Mike really had been given the diary in all innocence by Tony D, in which case the red diary would have been an innocent purchase too.

If it was connected with Mike bringing the scrapbook home in March 1992 in suspicious circumstances [whether it came from Eddie or the auction], and having to lie about when and where he got it, it would not have been natural or advisable to mention the red diary and have to tell another lie to explain its existence.

Your suggestion is ridiculous and deliberately myopic. They could have revealed the existence of the red diary as part of any normal communication between two collaborators. Mike and Shirley were under contractual agreement to share research.

Hang on - 'research'?? How does that work if the red diary was directly connected, one way or the other, with a lie about how Mike had obtained his Battlecrease diary?

There were attempts, both by Harrison and later by Skinner, to determine what research Barrett had previously conducted. Mike or Anne could have mentioned the red diary then. There were also attempts, by Shirley and others, to determine if the scrapbook was genuinely Victorian.

Anne's own rationale for the purchase of the red diary is that Barrett wanted to know what a genuine Victorian diary looked like.

What would have been more natural, then, to have mentioned this red diary there and then to Shirley Harrison, as she pondered these questions, and to show that they, too, had researched this?

Instead: nada. Not a peep.

Shake it, bake it, put any spin you want on it, Thom, they failed to reveal the existence of the red diary and the strange circumstances of its purchase until AFTER Bongo started spilling the beans.

The jury of history won't like that.

But hey, you, Owl, Caz, and Ero are convinced, so why give a toss what an insane member of the clown car thinks?

It would be good if that member would start to think.

The above arguments are all based on the red diary being an innocent purchase, made several months after Mike had got the scrapbook innocently from Tony!

It would inevitably involve more lies to explain it away, if the scrapbook was not obtained until March 1992, so why mention it, only to have to lie about the circumstances in which it was requested?

Mike didn't mention the red diary in June 1994, but then he had plenty of time to 'think' over the next few months and to remember it. It was something he could use because it had not been mentioned before, due to its dodgy connection with how the scrapbook was really obtained and, best of all, Anne had paid for it. It was ripe for his next trick and still works like a dream on the hard of thinking.

As with his dodgy stories about the scrapbook, Mike was able to base this one on the dodgy truth about the red diary.

[caz]

Jay, Old Man, did you even read Keith Skinner's latest message that Ike uploaded to this forum?

Here it is again




Keith is saying Anne's story "still stands."

He is saying she is the "only person who can disprove it."

He is also saying that the legitimacy of her story is still being "assessed and evaluated."

But how can Anne be the only one with the ability to disprove the Tony D provenance, if there is enough evidence and documentation to prove "to the court of history" that her story is false and the diary really came from Dodd's floorboards? Tony wasn't alive on 9 March 1992.

It's an obvious contradiction. Which is okay. It's okay that Keith has backtracked and now realizes the 'floorboards' evidence wasn't as strong as he believed it was 15 years ago, or so.

But clearly, Caroline Brown has exaggerated the worth of this secret evidence that proves the Battlecrease provenance, because Keith himself now admits that only Anne can disprove what she has already reported.

Thus, as Abby rightly notes, we are asked to debate information that we are not only not privy to, but information which Keith Skinner himself acknowledges is not conclusive, and not even worth running past Anne Graham for her rebuttal.

As such, and as Abby rightly notes, there is no point in going on and on about it.

Anne could come clean and admit she lied. Everyone would believe her.

Eddie might confess to finding the diary in Dodd's house. And pigs might fly.

Even though Feldman didn't believe Eddie the first time, back in 1993, RJ would believe him now. And pigs might fly.

I rest Keith's case.

[caz]

Or, seen from another angle...

"there was nothing to stop Eddie Lyons - or the other electricians for that matter - from resurfacing and providing proof of how they obtained the scrapbook thus exposing Anne's narrative as entirely false.

Unless you consider the bleedin' obvious: nothing had been sold to Mike down the boozer and Anne knew it, which neatly explains why she felt free to tell the Yapp/Formby porkies."

Yeah, silly me. If Eddie was a thief, naturally he would have openly admitted to stealing the "old book" from a house he was working in, just to embarrass a woman he didn't know from Adam for telling porkies about its true origins. It's so obvious, now RJ has explained what real people would do in the real world.

Yes, Anne would have had plenty to fear from a remorseful working electrician, but nothing whatsoever to fear from a bitter and vengeful estranged husband, who was already in confession mode, and who could supposedly prove where and when he obtained the photo album, which she had then filled with her own handwriting.

Eddie knows about Mike's confession and Anne's story, but when he denied finding anything, it was Mike's "wife" he turned to in his defence, as the person who could help with where the diary came from. So it does seem a rather unlikely prospect of him ever 'resurfacing and providing proof' that he knew and Anne didn't, if that is the case.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Sorry if this has been mentioned but going back to the phrase "Topping oneself". Back in the eighteenth century and perhaps earlier a Topsman was another word for a Hangman . So when someone was topped they were hung so to speak. Following on from that topping yourself meant hanging yourself .

Regards Darryl

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

It's all about you, isn't it?

If I whinged on about all the 'bitchy' comments that have come my way since my first ever post in 1999, it would completely drown out any discussion about the diary, polite or otherwise.

But do carry on bitchin' 'bout the bitchin', because I'm sure many people would like the discussion to be drowned out by fair means or foul.

Love,

Caz
X

Whether you wish to defend yourself against untrue accusations, if they have been made against you, is up to you.

I have the right to defend myself whether you like it or not.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

God, save and preserve us from the paper-thin skinned poster. You can expect a 'polite discussion' when you learn to bloody well disagree politely.

You are completely out of order.

I always disagree politely.

You would not be able to produce examples of my being rude to other posters in the way that some of them are rude to me.

And if you cannot produce examples, you ought to withdraw what you wrote about me.

One does not need to have a paper-thin skin in order to object to being insulted.

[erobitha]

Jay, Old Man, did you even read Keith Skinner's latest message that Ike uploaded to this forum?

Here it is again




Keith is saying Anne's story "still stands."

He is saying she is the "only person who can disprove it."

He is also saying that the legitimacy of her story is still being "assessed and evaluated."

But how can Anne be the only one with the ability to disprove the Tony D provenance, if there is enough evidence and documentation to prove "to the court of history" that her story is false and the diary really came from Dodd's floorboards? Tony wasn't alive on 9 March 1992.

It's an obvious contradiction. Which is okay. It's okay that Keith has backtracked and now realizes the 'floorboards' evidence wasn't as strong as he believed it was 15 years ago, or so.

But clearly, Caroline Brown has exaggerated the worth of this secret evidence that proves the Battlecrease provenance, because Keith himself now admits that only Anne can disprove what she has already reported.

Thus, as Abby rightly notes, we are asked to debate information that we are not only not privy to, but information which Keith Skinner himself acknowledges is not conclusive, and not even worth running past Anne Graham for her rebuttal.

As such, and as Abby rightly notes, there is no point in going on and on about it.

Well, you have it nailed then RJ. You can waddle off into the sunset safely in the knowledge there is nothing to see.

If that is what he says, then that is what it is.