New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Obviously, Ike, I disagree with this. It's not a 'fact' that anyone 'owned up to' forging the diary. It's only a fact that Mike Barrett claimed that he and his wife had done so. If he was lying, it wasn't a true admission or confession.

Yes, of course, Caz, I would be the first to challenge the meaning of such a claim - just a shame I fell into the same trap that others have fallen into and I have criticised them for.

It's a fact that someone claimed to be owning up to having forged the Maybrick scrapbook, and that is the God's Honest Truth and what have you.

Ike

[caz]

All that happened on 9th March 1992 was that some workmen did some electrical work in an old house in Liverpool. I've no idea why you say that by rights that "should never have happened".

I thought it was obvious that I meant the 'double event' of that day, when the electrical work in Maybrick's former home coincided with Mike Barrett's first known mention of the diary, which identifies none other than Maybrick as Jack the Ripper, and covers the exact period of his life after moving into that house. Nobody on the planet was aware of both events taking place on the same day until Keith Skinner made the discovery in 2004. Plenty of people knew about one event or the other, but nobody had knowledge of both happening on the same date, so nobody could have taken advantage of this fact, when the existence of the diary was first known about, and nobody ever did. That should never have been the case, if all the individuals involved were making up their individual stories and accounts from whole cloth. And that's without factoring in that Eddie Lyons was living on Fountains Road, of all addresses in the Liverpool area, when Saddle regular Mike named his old friend Tony, late of Fountains Road, as the diary's previous owner. That should not have been the case either, but it had to be put down to coincidence until the events of 9th March 1992 finally emerged into full daylight and cast significant doubt on there being no link between Riversdale Road and Fountains Road, via Eddie's work in the Maybrick house and Mike's Maybrick diary.

I can’t agree with you that the only working theory involving a Barrett hoax is that he bought it at an auction sale on 31st March 1992 though. That is certainly the only working theory if you believe Michael Barrett but we all know he frequently lied so he could easily have obtained the photograph album from another source which he wanted to keep secret for his own reasons. That said, the idea that he bought it at an auction sale on 31st March 1992 has never been disproved, to my knowledge. You can keep saying that there's "no credible evidence" for this and "no credible evidence" for that - and of course credible evidence is in very short supply regarding the diary - but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Yes, but you are trying to argue, while knowing there is 'no credible evidence' for it, that Mike Barrett obtained the diary in its unwritten state from some source or another, and you seem to be expecting others to have 'disproved' it, which is backwards. If it didn't come in the form of a photograph album from Orsam's Awesome Auction on 31st March 1992 - and you rightly acknowledge the possibility that Mike lied about the source and must have seen Orsam coming - then you have to come up with some credible evidence, or any evidence at all would help, for when and how he could have acquired it. You keep asking for evidence that Mike couldn't have forged the diary, with or without Anne, so what evidence do you have that he couldn't have got the diary, already written, from some local scallywag?

I did explain why Mike might not have mentioned Anne's role in his June 1994 confession. He might have wanted to keep her name out of it at that stage, perhaps hoping for a reconciliation.

He 'might' have done, Herlock, but it's still only speculation. Wasn't Mike reasonably consistent, from June 1994, when claiming to know the diary was forged, about taking credit for it? He seemed to want people to believe he had the brains to research and write the actual story, only roping Anne in for the handwriting - for painfully obvious reasons. He could have said at any time that Anne did all the work, if he didn't want to be associated with what had been described as a 'shabby hoax'. But there is no evidence that he ever personally thought the diary was a shabby piece of work. Indeed, he called it a "compliment" to be accused of writing it, while on other occasions he would be angry with anyone for denouncing it as a fake. In April 1999, he complained that Robert Smith had cheated him out of diary monies owed, while claiming to have pulled a fast one over everyone concerned by faking it - apparently oblivious to the breathtaking moral contradiction between those positions.

As I don't believe the story that Anne tried to destroy the diary, I'm not going to speculate about any reasons why she might have done so. I say I don't believe it because it doesn't square with her protective nature towards the diary by arranging for it to be put it into a bank safe in April. If you are going to tell me that "All three Barretts spoke independently of the row over the diary" then could you please provide the evidence for this? There is good reason to think that all three of them were liars but I'd really like to see the evidence that they all spoke independently of Anne wanting to throw the diary on the fire (which is what I assume you mean by "the row" although it's odd that you phrase it in that way).

So why do you think Anne claimed this, if it wasn't true, and if Mike and Caroline only recalled a row over the diary, but no attempt to take it from his hands? What advantage would she have gained from lying about this, regardless of where the diary actually came from? It could only have looked suspicious in conjunction with the Tony Devereux provenance, let alone alongside Mike's forgery claims. As you rightly observe, the diary was later taken to the bank, ostensibly to protect it from fire or theft.

Anne's main worry appears to have been confined to the period up to 13th April 1992, which would make sense if she didn't know where Mike really got the diary from and suspected there would be trouble if it was missed by its rightful owner. That could hardly have applied if Tony Devereux had given it to Mike in 1991, or if it had come innocently from an auction sale at any time. In the latter case, the risks would have begun from 13th April and only increased over the subsequent days, weeks and months. Even if the diary was thoroughly examined and nothing conclusive found to point to the Barretts being behind its creation, anyone involved with Outhwaite & Litherland might have recognised it again from publicity photos as an item from one of their sales, and if there was a record of it being bought by a Mr Williams - the name Mike had used when calling Doreen on 9th March 1992 - the game would have been well and truly up.

Why would Anne, in those circumstances, have been relieved by the diary's removal from Goldie Street after 13th April, to a temporary location in the bank, protected from fire and theft? If she had wanted the diary out of their house by whatever means possible, while there was the risk of someone missing it from their private collection for example, it would make sense if Anne's plan B was to insist on it going to the bank, after plan A had failed to catch the nearest way. The risk would have subsided as the days turned to weeks with nary a sniff of anyone competing with Mike for ownership, explaining why this woman "let everyone get on with it", instead of being 'terrified' by early June, when she waved Mike and Caroline off to show the diary to a prospective publisher. It's all about context, cause and effect, and any speculation has to work with all three and not be contradicted by the known facts.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Obviously, Ike, I disagree with this. It's not a 'fact' that anyone 'owned up to' forging the diary. It's only a fact that Mike Barrett claimed that he and his wife had done so. If he was lying, it wasn't a true admission or confession.

In the same vein, according to at least three witnesses, Eddie Lyons claimed to have found something while working in Paul Dodd's house: Brian Rawes, as early as Friday 17th July 1992, in the drive of Battlecrease; Feldman, in the spring of 1993, when Eddie asked over the phone how much his "confession" was worth; and Robert Smith, on Saturday 26th June 1993 in the Saddle, when Eddie added a non-existent skip just for jolly, wouldn't you, presumably to soften the rumours of a theft.

I can safely state that Eddie 'admitted' to working in the house on 9th March 1992, because his personal recollections of that occasion are consistent with the known circumstances of that day and don't apply to any other.

But if you catch me stating for a fact that Eddie 'owned up to' finding anything in the house, just because he had some unexplained psychological need to claim it on not one, but at least three separate occasions, when talking to three individuals, then you have my permission to give me a stiff talking to, before I slope off to do the same to myself.

If you catch me stating: Someone found it; someone owned up to it, I fully expect to be sent to the naughty step with no Singapore Sling come cocktail hour.

Love,

Caz
X

With all due respect, Caz, saying that Eddie admitted to working in the house on 9th March because his personal recollections of the occasion are consistent with "known" circumstances of that day and don't apply to any other doesn't make sense. What you are describing is inference. Either Eddie admitted to being there on that day or he did not. Did he actually admit to being there that day or not? If he did, what exactly did he say?

[caz]

This is literally just semantics now, Caz. Whether he stated, claimed, admitted, owned-up or confessed, it all amounts to the same thing. A confession can be true or false, so just because I say that someone confessed or owned-up I'm not necessarily saying saying it's true. Just that Mike Barrett, and Mike Barrett alone, owned up to doing it. The fact that it was in the year his wife left him is something you may feel is significant but it might not have had anything to do with it. It would be like me demanding that each time you mention his confession you say it was in the same year he was exposed as having been a journalist and then saying that when you leave out such a life-changing circumstance you lose any claim to balance or objectivity.

I certainly don't know why there is such resistance to the suggestion that Mike's forgery claims may have been true and motivated by his imminent exposure as a former professional journalist, which would certainly have changed everything had he not already confessed.

So it wasn't just semantics, Herlock, when you wrote: 'Someone forged it. Someone owned up to it', as if that is all anyone needed to know back in June 1994, and we've all been fannying about for nothing ever since, including Harris, Warren, Palmer and Orsam, until you came along to explain to John Wheat where everyone else has been making heavy work of it?

Do you even know how patronising and superior some of your posts can come across, or that you include Barrett believers and sceptics alike in this broad brush approach?

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

So it wasn't just semantics, Herlock, when you wrote: 'Someone forged it. Someone owned up to it', as if that is all anyone needed to know back in June 1994, and we've all been fannying about for nothing ever since, including Harris, Warren, Palmer and Orsam, until you came along to explain to John Wheat where everyone else has been making heavy work of it?

Do you even know how patronising and superior some of your posts can come across, or that you include Barrett believers and sceptics alike in this broad brush approach?

Love,

Caz
X

Your argument falls down Caz with the words "as if that is all anyone needed to know back in June 1994". I wasn't saying that at all. I wasn't even mentioning June 1994, so I've no idea why you've got that date in your head.

What happened is that I was asking a simple question, namely: Why couldn't the Barretts have jointly created the diary? John Wheat told me that he doubted I'd get a straight answer because there's no reason why they couldn't, to which I replied "I just don’t know why there’s such a resistance to the suggestion John. Someone forged it. Someone owned up to it."

So the key part of my post, which you seem to have forgotten, is that I was expressing bafflement as to why there is resistance to the idea that the Barretts could have jointly created the (obviously forged) diary.

You are in a unique position to help us with this problem. Why is there such resistance, Caz? And why couldn't the Barretts have jointly created the diary?

Let's see if John was right or wrong about whether I would get a straight answer.

As for your belief that some of my posts come across as "patronising and superior" I can't really do anything about how you interpret my posts Caz. It’s certainly not my intention to be either of those things. What is going on in my mind, right now, if you're interested, is that I'm hearing pots calling a kettle black, as I have repeatedly been dismissed and looked down on as a Johnnie-come lately. As if I had no right to question or dispute anything said by people with a far more longstanding interest in the diary. I’ve also been accused of being some kind of puppet for David Orsam. These things appear to be acceptable though. It does appear that, with some posters on here and elsewhere that to agree with David on anything renders me beyond the pale. I don’t try to fall out with anyone but if I agree with someone then I’ll state openly that I agree with them. Therefore have no problem in clearly stating that I absolutely agree with David that ‘one off instance’ flat out disproves the diary. And I can’t see any valid reason why Mike and Anne couldn’t have jointly created the diary.

[caz]

I've already discussed the "December 1993" date from Barrett's affidavit with Ike. It's patently obvious that this is a simple dating error and that Gray should have typed "June 1994".

Why is this 'patently obvious', Herlock? Why couldn't Mike have been telling a blatant lie about this, as you have acknowledged he lied about other things? Is it also 'patently obvious' to you that when he told Alan Gray later that same month that he had put the scratches in the watch this was a simple error of memory? Or was he blatantly lying on that occasion?

The fact of the matter is that as at June 1994 Barrett was about to be publicly exposed as a former journalist. All I'm saying is that this seems to be the best motive available for understanding his confession at that time.

It's the worst motive ever suggested, Herlock. Would a violent offender with no previous confess to the papers because he was about to be publicly exposed as a former schoolyard bully? Would he not at least wait for the police to come up with some evidence of their own?

I don't see the comparison you are trying to make between forging a serial killer's diary and interviewing mostly minor celebrities for a local magazine, or making up word puzzles for kids.

So you have no evidence of Harris commenting directly on Barrett's affidavit and you're going from memory of a post you think he once made to draw a conclusion that he regarded Barrett's affidavit as "rubbish"? Here's the problem though Caz. Did he then know about the March 1992 advertisement where Mike sought a Victorian diary with blank pages? If not, he didn't have all the evidence available to him to form an educated assessment of Mike's affidavit, did he?

I don't think; I know Harris posted his conclusion that Mike and Anne merely handled and placed someone else's forgery, and this has been posted, repeated and acknowledged, many times over the years, by others who read his original words. I resent your constant suggestions that my memory is letting me down or I am imagining things. Are you suggesting that Harris died believing that the red diary was purchased by Anne in 1990, as stated in Mike's affidavit? What difference would it have made to his theory anyway, if he'd learned about the advert placed for it in March 1992? His suspect for creating the text was Devereux, but his suspect for the penman was Citizen Kane, who was very much alive in 1992. Harris could have believed the raw materials were sourced by the Barretts, as Mike himself claimed, while Kane was the one to use them. Interestingly, Harris was furious when Feldman 'outed' his suspected penman by name, albeit misspelling the surname. Harris claimed to be more worried about the poor man's health than any legal action he might have taken. I don't know whether the libel implications of Mike accusing Anne might have influenced Harris's reluctance to name and shame the 'guilty' at the earliest opportunity.

If you're asking me why Mike delivered the affidavit to Anne's door, assuming his affidavit to be broadly true, then I would suggest the answer is that he was attempting to blackmail Anne, effectively saying to her that if she didn't let him see Caroline he'd circulate the affidavit, either to the newspapers or to Keith, Shirley, Doreen, Feldman etc. I had thought that was obvious. I don't know if Anne did let Mike see Caroline but, if not, she must have held her nerve, confident that Mike couldn't prove anything about her own role in the forgery.

Unfortunately, you are not taking cause and effect into account. Mike didn't circulate the affidavit. If he tried the newspapers, they evidently wouldn't touch it this time round, while Keith, Shirley, Doreen, Feldman etc did not get to see it for another two years. Mike may have hoped the threat of doing so would have been enough to make Anne relent and agree to speak to him and let him see Caroline, but all the evidence indicates that it didn't work and she didn't relent, and Mike was left deeply frustrated and impotent. Even when it must have been patently obvious to Mike that his threat wasn't having the desired effect, he still didn't circulate the affidavit to any of the people best placed to question Anne about its contents. And if Caroline was determined that she didn't want to see her father again, there was nothing he could have done to Anne to make it happen. He might have found this the hardest thing to accept, but the evidence does suggest that father and daughter were never reunited when Caroline was old enough to make her own decisions.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Why is this 'patently obvious', Herlock? Why couldn't Mike have been telling a blatant lie about this, as you have acknowledged he lied about other things? Is it also 'patently obvious' to you that when he told Alan Gray later that same month that he had put the scratches in the watch this was a simple error of memory? Or was he blatantly lying on that occasion?



It's the worst motive ever suggested, Herlock. Would a violent offender with no previous confess to the papers because he was about to be publicly exposed as a former schoolyard bully? Would he not at least wait for the police to come up with some evidence of their own?

I don't see the comparison you are trying to make between forging a serial killer's diary and interviewing mostly minor celebrities for a local magazine, or making up word puzzles for kids.



I don't think; I know Harris posted his conclusion that Mike and Anne merely handled and placed someone else's forgery, and this has been posted, repeated and acknowledged, many times over the years, by others who read his original words. I resent your constant suggestions that my memory is letting me down or I am imagining things. Are you suggesting that Harris died believing that the red diary was purchased by Anne in 1990, as stated in Mike's affidavit? What difference would it have made to his theory anyway, if he'd learned about the advert placed for it in March 1992? His suspect for creating the text was Devereux, but his suspect for the penman was Citizen Kane, who was very much alive in 1992. Harris could have believed the raw materials were sourced by the Barretts, as Mike himself claimed, while Kane was the one to use them. Interestingly, Harris was furious when Feldman 'outed' his suspected penman by name, albeit misspelling the surname. Harris claimed to be more worried about the poor man's health than any legal action he might have taken. I don't know whether the libel implications of Mike accusing Anne might have influenced Harris's reluctance to name and shame the 'guilty' at the earliest opportunity.



Unfortunately, you are not taking cause and effect into account. Mike didn't circulate the affidavit. If he tried the newspapers, they evidently wouldn't touch it this time round, while Keith, Shirley, Doreen, Feldman etc did not get to see it for another two years. Mike may have hoped the threat of doing so would have been enough to make Anne relent and agree to speak to him and let him see Caroline, but all the evidence indicates that it didn't work and she didn't relent, and Mike was left deeply frustrated and impotent. Even when it must have been patently obvious to Mike that his threat wasn't having the desired effect, he still didn't circulate the affidavit to any of the people best placed to question Anne about its contents. And if Caroline was determined that she didn't want to see her father again, there was nothing he could have done to Anne to make it happen. He might have found this the hardest thing to accept, but the evidence does suggest that father and daughter were never reunited when Caroline was old enough to make her own decisions.

Love,

Caz
X

The "December 1993" date is an obvious dating error, Caz. We all know that Mike first confessed in June 1994. It's a matter of public record. So why is this of any importance?

When speaking of Mike's motive you keep forgetting that he'd lied by omission over a two year period to everyone about his biography. This lie had even ended up in the book he was responsible for along with Shirley Harrison. So he'd lied to the entire world. There's no comparison to a violent offender being exposed as a schoolyard bully. It's got nothing to do with the police or a fear of being arrested, or at least very little. For someone who keeps talking about people's motives, you can't seem to even try to get inside Mike's head to imagine to the type of pressure he must have been under knowing that he was about to be exposed as a professional writer who had magically been given Jack the Ripper's diary by his dead friend and who had lied about being a professional writer to everyone he was then close to and who trusted him. Even worse is that you can't seem to see that his confession, followed by his admission to hospital, allowed him to escape from the box he'd imprisoned himself in.

As for the comparison between forging a serial killer's diary and being a journalist, they both involve writing. That's the comparison. Why you think it makes any difference whether the celebrities he interviewed were major or minor or not even celebrities at all, I truly have no idea. Further, as a factual matter you are simply wrong about calling either Celebrity or Chat "a local magazine". Why did you do that? They were both national magazines.

Regarding Melvin Harris calling Mike's affidavit "rubbish", how do you account for the point Roger made which is that Harris was convinced that the diary was written with Diamine ink? That part of the affidavit wasn't so rubbish in his view was it? If you have some evidential support for your claim that Harris regarded Barrett's affidavit as rubbish then by all means post it if you think it will get us anywhere (although why you feel the opinion of this dead man matters at all is beyond me) but until you do I can't accept it. That's all. I don't care one way or the other what his view about Barrett's affidavit was myself, I'm just asking you to post evidence for the things you say as a matter of routine.

I know Mike didn't, in fact, circulate the affidavit, or at least I've no reason to think he did. You asked me why he delivered the affidavit to Anne's door and I told you that I thought he was attempting to blackmail her. The fact that he didn't go ahead and carry out his implied threat to circulate the affidavit is immaterial. For all I know it was always an empty threat, but that's what I think he was doing at the time of the delivery.