The Diary — Old Hoax or New or Not a Hoax at All?​

[Iconoclast]

Charles Lechmere ...

He obviously did it.

William Bury ...

So did he.

James Maybrick ...

OMG - what a stupid theory! Based on what? Who said it? Where's the evidence? How come he was never mentioned before? Bollocks, pareidolia, lies, money, fraud!

Michael Barrett ...

Obviously hoaxed it! He said so, didn't he? He confessed. What more do you people want???

It's what most of us do.

Not me. I wasn't Jack the Ripper, thank you.

PS I didn't actually read your post, Caz, before I replied to it so my apologies if any small parts of it are not quite logical or relevant.

[rjpalmer]

I occasionally post in a Zodiac killer forum and recently a fellow member referred to another member as a "VPN Viper". Any idea what this is? I've asked but haven't had a reply yet

It seems rather straight forward. VPN Viper, like the Zodiac, is communicating in such a way that he or she can't be traced.

When someone posts on-line, unbeknownst to them, their computer leaves a sort of fingerprint of their server; if the person sets up a VPN, however, that fingerprint is hidden, so the website owner or the email recipient can't trace the sender's location or identity.

In theory, the website owner should be able to determine whether 'Soothsayer' and 'Peter Wood' and 'Tom Mitchell' and 'Gladiator' and 'Shirley Harrison' and other Maybrick theorists did or did not all post from the same small village in the Outer Hebrides, unless they set up a VPN (A Virtual Private Network) to hide this fact.

I'm not implying all those people were one & the same, however. Only some of them were the same brainwashed acolyte of Paul Feldman.

[Iconoclast]

Here's another 'typo' or three by Mike Barrett which is also presumably irrelevant to whether his affidavit was even vaguely trustworthy.

Mike made the request through HP Bookfinders.
It was made in March 1992.
HP Bookfinders are not listed in the 1985, 1989, nor 1993 Writers' & Artists' Yearbook (so, presumably, not in the 1986 one).
Technically, Anne did pay for the diary but it is moot whether one can say that that is the same as 'Anne purchased a Diary'.

This all seems to suggest that Mike was lying through his teeth when that affidavit was created. None of these things matter, of course, because affidavits are just like private notebooks that you can throw ideas around in without any recourse to accuracy, it would appear.

It is a curious fact that when asked for the small red diary, rather than make any attempt to hide the fact it had been purchased, Anne produced it and even produced the cheque stub to show when she paid for it and how much she paid. Really seriously curious behaviour from a hoaxer's wife who had apparently got her fingerprints all over the hoax itself. She evidently had some balls that woman.

[rjpalmer]

Hey, whatever happened to Peter Wood anyway?

One would hope Mr. Wood eventually came to his sense, but this is unlikely. In its most virulent form, Maybrickitis is utterly incurable.

In other words, once you believe Jim is Jack, you can't go back.

I think Neil Young wrote a song about it.

[caz]

In his January 5, 1995 affidavit, Mike Barrett had the perfect opportunity to enumerate a long list of where he got his references from which he used in his hoaxed scrapbook but - instead - he seemed to deliberately focus on aspects of his 'creation' which were patently untrue. I wonder why that was?

If you or I had done what Barrett claimed to do, there is a good chance that our January 5, 1995 affidavits would have included:

"I got the reference to 'Punch' from the back of Fido (1987)".
"I got the reference to 'left my mark' from Fido (1987)".
"I spotted that 'Juwes' looked a bit like 'James' when I saw the GSG in [wherever]".
Et cetera.

There must have been many other references which he could have included which would have given us some degree of confidence that he had indeed been aware of a number of Ripper-related books but he chose to focus on things which he 'did' or which 'happened' which were simply untrue. It's almost as though he was - deep down - trying to show the world how little he knew and how little he had actually wanted to create that affidavit.

No?

Ike

You forget, dear Ike, that it was supposedly created for Anne's eyes only, to give her a bit of a fright and hopefully persuade her to talk to him and let him see Caroline. He didn't need to include any incriminating details if she knew them all like the back of her hand, did he? All she needed to believe was that next time, if she didn't give in to his emotionally-charged demands, he might actually swear a truthful affidavit, with bells and whistles, and all the right notes in the right order [thank you, Eric] and then send it straight to Harold Brough, cutting out the middle woman.

Or maybe not.

Love,

Caz
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[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock -

In reference to Alice in Wonderland, Harold Brough of the Liverpool Post deserves credit for the mind-numbing observation that the diary's bogus handwriting is strong evidence that Maybrick was the author!!

Brough came up with this brainstorm back on 29 September 1993.





Using this same logic, if the handwriting in the diary did look like Maybrick's, it would be a strong indication that it was a fake!

Given such complexities, what were poor Mike & Anne to do??

I doubt that even the March Hare ever went this far down the rabbit hole...

Ciao.

[caz]

It’s understandable when Ripper authors get viperish when discussing aspects of the case. They have invested a lot of time and effort in their theory and book. So I can understand it when they go spewing venom. I just brush it off or suck it up and spit it out unobtrusively.

Even Feldy told me I was “sick”. So what! I just told him I thought he was cool too.

So Caz, any time you want to be a viper, it’s okay.

Only one problem with that, Lombro2: I'm not a Ripper author.

I do have a trusty switchblade, however, to cut a hypothetical scenario to ribbons if nobody else beats me to it and the evidence disproving is being ignored.

One example is the scenario where Mike's affidavit could be largely true, and only marred by a 'typo' over a date.

But I was too busy laughing to take it seriously and sharpen my blade for that one. It falls on its own sword.

Love,

Caz
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[Geddy2112]

Obviously, it didn't end 0-4 ...

Hope you enjoyed the game... sure you did.

[Iconoclast]

... so the website owner or the email recipient can't trace the sender's location or identity.

And can this VPN thingy you've got reveal which planet you're posting from, RJ?

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Hope you enjoyed the game... sure you did.

It was magnificent!

So, it's now 7 finals in my football-following lifetime (5 Newcastle, 2 England) and I've yet to taste victory. Will this 6th for Newcastle finally bring home a trophy? My dad was 25 when he attended the last domestic trophy win (1955). It's got to be a little overdue?

[Iconoclast]

You forget, dear Ike, that it was supposedly created for Anne's eyes only, to give her a bit of a fright and hopefully persuade her to talk to him and let him see Caroline. He didn't need to include any incriminating details if she knew them all like the back of her hand, did he? All she needed to believe was that next time, if she didn't give in to his emotionally-charged demands, he might actually swear a truthful affidavit, with bells and whistles, and all the right notes in the right order [thank you, Eric] and then send it straight to Harold Brough, cutting out the middle woman.

Worryingly, I can't think of a counterpoint at this moment. Must have been distracted by the footy ...

[caz]

Oh, I get it, it’s Wescott not Westcott. How very droll of you.

An initial there but not here.

Neither here nor there, but since Palmer has promoted himself to the 'spelling police' long after the former Commissioner retired to concentrate on sympathising with Spurs supporters, we had all better watch our step. I'm sure the new boy will be strictly fair and not only stop and search minority theorists for the most minor offences while leaving the popular majority to mistreat the King's English unmolested.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Here's another 'typo' or three by Mike Barrett which is also presumably irrelevant to whether his affidavit was even vaguely trustworthy.

Mike made the request through HP Bookfinders.
It was made in March 1992.
HP Bookfinders are not listed in the 1985, 1989, nor 1993 Writers' & Artists' Yearbook (so, presumably, not in the 1986 one).
Technically, Anne did pay for the diary but it is moot whether one can say that that is the same as 'Anne purchased a Diary'.

This all seems to suggest that Mike was lying through his teeth when that affidavit was created. None of these things matter, of course, because affidavits are just like private notebooks that you can throw ideas around in without any recourse to accuracy, it would appear.

It is a curious fact that when asked for the small red diary, rather than make any attempt to hide the fact it had been purchased, Anne produced it and even produced the cheque stub to show when she paid for it and how much she paid. Really seriously curious behaviour from a hoaxer's wife who had apparently got her fingerprints all over the hoax itself. She evidently had some balls that woman.

Does it really suggest that Barrett was "lying through his teeth with the affidavit was created" though, Ike, or does it suggest that the person who wrote the affidavit for him (Alan Gray?) didn't fully understand the sequence of events?

Clearly, Barrett had told Gray that Anne had paid for the diary using a cheque from her Lloyds bank account so, in Gray's mind, when he drafted the affidavit, she obviously purchased it. Even you've accepted that she did technically purchase it, because she paid for it.

I think we already know that Barrett confused his years and should have said 1992 instead of 1990 but, as I've previously said, dating errors and failures of recollection are not evidence of someone lying.

What does it matter if it wasn't the Writers Year Book? What possible significance can that have? Surely that would only be important if the story about the 1891 diary was a complete fiction, which we know it wasn't.

This mission you are embarked on, Ike, of finding mistakes in the affidavit is a complete waste of time. None of the errors you have mentioned assist towards disproving the forgery. If anything, they support the idea of the forgery because, when the erroneous date of Jan or Feb 1990 is corrected to March 1992, it means that the timeline of the forgery suddenly makes sense.

As for Anne's behaviour, she must have seen her husband's affidavit in January 1995, so had plenty of time to prepare for any questions about her payment for the diary. What if she had denied it and then information had been obtained from Lloyds Bank that she had paid for it? What would she have done then? So surely the only sensible thing for her to have done was to admit it. And isn't it the case that when she was asked to explain the purchase, she said that Mike simply wanted to know what a Victorian diary looked like? We know that isn't true, due to the wording of the advertisement, and even you don't claim that this is what Mike was up to. So why did she lie?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock -

In reference to Alice in Wonderland, Harold Brough of the Liverpool Post deserves credit for the mind-numbing observation that the diary's bogus handwriting is strong evidence that Maybrick was the author!!

Brough came up with this brainstorm back on 29 September 1993.





Using this same logic, if the handwriting in the diary did look like Maybrick's, it would be a strong indication that it was a fake!

Given such complexities, what were poor Mike & Anne to do??

I doubt that even the March Hare ever went this far down the rabbit hole...

Ciao.

Thanks Roger. That kind of thinking also appears to have influenced someone posting under the name "Tom Mitchell" for, when recently reviewing the thread he started entitled 'One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary', I saw that he wrote in the very first post in the thread dated 30th August 2008:

"I suspect that it is the fact that the handwriting looks so little like the known examples of Maybrick's writing that many people have assumed the diary to be an 'amateurish fake'. Personally, if I were to write a forged diary, the very first thing I'd do before I gave up my weekend writing it would be to check what the target's handwriting looked like (otherwise, the effort would be patently wasteful). The lack of correlation makes me think either an utter idiot wrote it (an argument not then backed up by the detail contained within it) or else it was written by Maybrick in a hand not historically on record elsewhere."

It's a shame he wasn't around to own up to this when Caz wondered who was making such an Alice in Wonderland type argument

[caz]

The purpose of the forum is to cover all theories and possibilities and present them without having to face a gauntlet of debunkers. Bad theories should die their own natural death. If they're good theories, they should live on without people propping them up like Bernie Lomax.

Good theories don't need help. They help you by continually giving researchers gifts that make them look good. Barrett theory hasn't provided any "library miracle" since 1992.

I'm waiting for someone to knock down the walls of the Battlecrease double event of 9th March 1992, with proof that it was all a coincidence.

Aside from it being a hellishly awkward one for anyone to swallow, it is not made any easier to digest when both Mike's affidavits, each telling a completely different story, are considered together in the context of documented events. The little 1891 diary gets spewed out, but it's the only visible means of support for the eleven-day Creation Theory, and doesn't amount to the hill of beans a truly contrite hoaxer would have been able to spill in a heartbeat.

Love,

Caz
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