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

[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]

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
X

[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.

[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]

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.