Maybrick Diary Typescript 1992 (KS Ver.)

[caz]

To reiterate, I was not running with Melvin's "duff information" because Melvin never suggested it.

Ironic, when we consider that Melvin's duff information was that Robbie and Albert had lived at No.37 Goodwin Avenue, and therefore not No.160, while Feldman had never suggested they did. In fact, he candidly admitted that no link could be established between the family at No.160 and our Johnson brothers.

You're getting us off topic (again)...

Sounds like my ex, when he expected me to share the blame for all the booze in our shopping trolley, which somehow ended up in his glass.

I've been the one trying to steer us back to the typescript. Trying and failing is better than making no attempt at all.

...but if Carol Emmas is correct, and Robbie did live in Goodwin Avenue in the 1960s...

You mean if the electoral register is correct, and I would never accuse you of doubting it, although I did wonder if Feldman may have doubted the register's accuracy when it came to its spelling of Johnstone.

...then an explanation is in order why Olga Maybrick Ellison already knew by the mid-1980s (at the latest) that someone in Goodwin Avenue had had Maybrick's watch, when Albert, formerly of Goodwin Avenue, claims he didn’t buy the watch until 1992.

There is an assumption here that IF [the biggest IF on the Wirral] Olga told Norma that 'someone' in Goodwin Avenue had James Maybrick's watch, it would have been the same watch that Albert Johnson went on to covet and buy in 1992, three decades after he had lived there himself, with its distinctive JO monogram engraved on it. While I have little doubt that a man like Maybrick would have owned at least one pocket watch of some sort and at some point in his life, that's as far as it goes. How, when and why his own watch would have left his possession and ended up with this unknown person in Goodwin Avenue, before eventually being sold to Albert in 1992, is not something I consider remotely worth exploring. If others feel the need, go for it.

I have two explanations, and neither is good news for your theories.

1. Mrs. Meagher's memory was polluted by Feldman and his team, and she never actually mentioned Goodwin Avenue. The street name was inadvertently 'planted.'

2. Someone in Goodwin Avenue did have Maybrick's genuine watch in the 1960s, and unless you're willing to swallow an enormous coincidence, this was the inspiration for Robbie Johnson's later hoax.

Let's go with No. 1, since it seems to be your preferred explanation.

Whoa, slow down there boy. The only explanation I need is that Olga and Norma both had genuine family connections back to the Maybricks and Olga's birthday book happened to have an entry for someone named Johnstone who had genuinely lived in Goodwin Avenue. Norma could well have recalled her Auntie Olga mentioning Goodwin Avenue in the context of one of her relatives, friends or acquaintances [Mrs Johnson sounds too formal for the first two, and she'd have known the correct spelling if this was a close friend or near relation], given the existence of that birthday book. Had the surname in common been Smith, Brown or Jones, would this have seemed beyond coincidence? You seem to be suggesting that Robbie could have known that someone in the Johnstone family had James Maybrick's watch in the 1960s, so when he learned in April 1993 that a diary had turned up, claiming to be Maybrick's, he suddenly had the brilliant idea to use the watch his brother had bought the previous year to create a bandwagon hoax, not knowing if the diary would resist being tossed in the same skip as the Hitler Diaries before it could even be published.

This would mean that on three known occasions Feldman and/or Feldman's team managed to elicit false information from the people they had interviewed, whether through 'pollution,' leading questions, or from people telling Feldman what he wanted to hear.

1. Mrs. Meagher.

2. Anne Graham.

3. Billy Graham.

Three strikes and one is usually out, but you're banking on Feldman eliciting genuine information from the electricians--not a great bet considering Feldman's track record for the other three--as well as the irony that with the electricians even Feldman himself believed that his own clumsy interviewing techniques had led to false leads, a rumor mill, and (ultimately) one of the electricians offering to the give the diary a bogus provenance "for the right price."

Considering all that, it's going to be a tough sell, Caz. Good luck with it!

I don't consider luck to have anything to do with it. Evidence only is required, and only one strike is needed against the combined evidence for a 9th March 1992 emergence of the diary, for me to crack a whole box of eggs on my own face. I think I'm safe to consume the box I have, and several future boxes, while waiting for that one strike.

If Feldman's instincts were wrong concerning Anne Graham and Billy Graham - which is something we can both believe in - then the chances are good that his instincts were also wrong when he dismissed the electricians only to go charging down the Graham rabbit hole. Perhaps he was judging all workmen by his own standards, when he assumed that the one offering to reveal all wanted money for old rope.

As for Norma Meagher, I'm not sure we can say with any certainty whether she only said what she said because of what Carol Emmas said first, or whether she would have said it anyway.

[caz]

If Feldman's instincts were wrong concerning Anne Graham and Billy Graham - which is something we can both believe in - then the chances are good that his instincts were also wrong when he dismissed the electricians only to go charging down the Graham rabbit hole. Perhaps he was judging all workmen by his own standards, when he assumed that the one offering to reveal all wanted money for old rope.

Just a quick addition before we go back - cough, cough - on topic, to what the evidence is for the Barretts' typescript being faked to make it appear like a genuine transcript made from the diary itself. In the absence of any evidence, I suppose the argument - albeit a circular one - would be that as they had so little trouble faking the actual diary between them, it follows that faking the transcript to accompany it to "that London" would have been a piece of cake by comparison. Except for the fact that there was never any need to do one at all. All Mike needed to say to Doreen, in the event that she had actually asked him to produce a transcript, was that the task would be beyond him, as a humble ex scrap metal dealer, and his wife was too busy to help him. Job done - or not done in this instance. But from the context it looks like Mike rashly went and told Doreen he had transcribed the diary - partly to impress her, and partly to impress upon her that he had spent some time working on the diary, and hadn't just been working on Eddie Lyons to part with it. Naturally enough, Doreen asked Mike to bring the transcript to her office with the diary.

The addition is in connection with the theory that the Battlecrease electricians - to a man - were lying to Feldman with the intention of screwing money out of him for a false confession to removing the diary from Paul Dodd's house.

But only one of them, when he answered the phone in Fountains Road and Feldman accused him of theft, asked what his confession was worth. This was Eddie Lyons.

So what motivated Eddie to meet Robert Smith and Mike Barrett in the Saddle just a couple of months later, and come out with an obviously invented story in which he had indeed removed a book from Paul Dodd's house but had thrown it in a skip - that was never on the premises? And why did Eddie lie again, by denying he had ever met Robert Smith or told this story?

Allowing that Eddie was not a clone of Mike Barrett - nor indeed a clown like Mike Barrett - one would have expected him to have reasons for lying that actually made some sense. This time, Eddie was not telling lies in the hope of screwing money out of Feldman, Smith or anyone else, and there was nothing to be gained by telling them, so what was the point? Something else was going on here, but what? Only if he had something to lose - or something to hide - would it have been in Eddie's own interests to lie, not once but twice, over this imaginary skip. What was the worst that could have happened if he'd had no provable connection with Mike Barrett or anyone's diary prior to Feldman coming along in 1993 and putting temptation in his way? What was Eddie doing in late June 1993, injecting himself into a second Battlecrease fantasy, if he'd been the one to sow the seeds of the first? If he'd merely told Feldman what he had wanted to hear, but had not gone on to make a confession because there was nothing to confess, what damage had he done, which then needed to be undone with something the size of a skip?

Compare this with Feldman's promise of filthy lucre dangled in front of Anne Graham the following year, in return for confirming his latest hunch that the diary was a family heirloom, and not someone else's property that was too hot to handle. His previous scepticism concerning revelations for financial rewards simply melted away on encountering Lady MacBarrett - a gentlewoman in whom he built an absolute trust.

[rjpalmer]

If Feldman's instincts were wrong concerning Anne Graham and Billy Graham - which is something we can both believe in - then the chances are good that his instincts were also wrong when he dismissed the electricians only to go charging down the Graham rabbit hole.

If we apply this same logic to everyone else whose instincts were wrong concerning Anne and Billy Graham, who will be left to defend the Eddy Lyons provenance?

It's a fair question, isn't it?

Why do you hold Feldman to a different standard than the others who were taken in by Anne and Billy?

[Scott Nelson]

What if Anne's 'in her family for years' story actually meant the photo album (without the diary handwriting) that may have belonged to Billy Graham?

Billy then gives it to Tony Devereux and they compose the diary story together? No?

[erobitha]

What if Anne's 'in her family for years' story actually meant the photo album (without the diary handwriting) that may have belonged to Billy Graham?

Billy then gives it to Tony Devereux and they compose the diary story together? No?

I don’t believe there is any evidence at all that Billy knew Tony directly. However, we do know Mike’s dad Stan did on occasion drink with Mike and Tony in the Saddle.

[caz]

If we apply this same logic to everyone else whose instincts were wrong concerning Anne and Billy Graham, who will be left to defend the Eddy Lyons provenance?

It's a fair question, isn't it?

Why do you hold Feldman to a different standard than the others who were taken in by Anne and Billy?

My observation was not about logic in general, as it may apply to other people's 'instincts', but how Feldman's mind worked in individual situations - specifically in 1993 compared with 1994 and beyond. He never knew about the Maybrick related events of 9th March 1992, so his instincts were necessarily confined to what he was being told and by whom, and their 'information' was rejected or accepted accordingly. If he disbelieved what the electricians were telling him merely because one of them had asked what was in it for him, he should not have tempted Anne with what was in it for her, if she told him something he didn't know but was already primed to believe. Feldman held himself to a different standard in each case, which ought to put a question mark over his conclusions in both.

It was rather different for Keith Skinner, who was not involved with the electricians when Feldman had that particular bee in his bonnet in 1993. Keith only picked up where Feldman had left off in 2004, when he was as surprised as anyone to find himself staring goggle-eyed at the documented double event of 9th March 1992. Previously there had only been the one game in town for Keith, which was Anne's unevidenced "in the family" story. Mike's muddled hoax claims had failed to stand up to scrutiny to form one coherent, credible and supported explanation for how the diary came to exist. Tony Devereux was not only dead but, without Anne's belated attempt at life support, he was also a dead end. Now, in 2004, there appeared to be actual evidence pointing to an alternate possibility, which could be followed up and tested - to breaking point if it was all an illusion, consisting of not one but several unlikely but genuine, fact-based coincidences. [Where is "Ludwig" when we need him?]

I don't have to tell anyone that no such breaking point has yet been reached, and that consequently the Barrett hoax believers are still at war with Battlecrease, as it battles on regardless, its walls and secrets impenetrable.