New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[Lombro2]

Caz came up with a new idea about the "alleged" Saddle pub transaction:

Mike conned Eddie out of the diary with no cash changing hands, on the pretext of having 'contacts' who would know how best to handle and place it. In short, he nicked it off the nicker. Mike promised to get back to Eddie when he knew more... [Then] Eddie learned that Mike had only gone and hooked a book publisher, and not just some private collector who would pay in cash and ask no questions.

So Eddy had the Diary and immediately went to a pub at a time when Mike Barrett was known to regularly stop in. Why? Was it just because he was a published author? Mike was already a dealer in scrap metal and we know he was a thief. So dealer and thief equals fence or, at least, it strongly suggests the possibility. Mike claimed it and ran with it, apparently knowing that Eddy couldn't call the cops on him.

So now it looks to me like there's a good possibility that Mike was a regular fence and dealer in stolen property, and he and Eddy already had some sort of association. Otherwise why would Eddy give him the book? Eddy must have trusted him because of previous dealings and got "conned".

[Iconoclast]

Caz came up with a new idea about the "alleged" Saddle pub transaction:

The idea of Mike being a regular fence of stolen goods is an interesting one, Lombro2, though there is zero evidence for it - but, for clarity, Caz's idea about why Mike received the scrapbook is not new, she and others have proposed this many times over the long years of this debate.

[Scott Nelson]

How about Mike already possessing the diary when he meets Eddie in the pub (without the actual diary in hand)? Eddie only gives Mike the idea that it could have come from Dodd's house, so Mike is comfortable with that provenance, should he need to use it in the near future.

[Lombro2]

This is the problem I posed in post 1.

The Battlecrease Provenance is clearly written in the Diary. If Barrett used it and was given confidence to use it by Eddy’s information, why didn’t he embrace it when the rumors started trickling out?

[Lombro2]

Then of course, the electricians, and the rumours they apparently started, provided Michael with his “air-tight” cookie tin alibi to take care of the INKonsistecies. But he didn’t think to use that either even though he invented or incorporated a Battlecrease Provenance.

[Scott Nelson]

The Battlecrease provenance isn't clearly written in the diary. Mike probably couldn't figure where it came from until Eddie suggested it based on discussions Lyons had with colleagues who worked in the house years before. The way subsequent events unfolded, Mike didn't have to worry about using a "Battlecrease Provenance."

[John Wheat]

This is a completely pointless thread.

[Lombro2]

I agree you don't need a Provenance for a serial killer diary. It's not a work of art. But the Diary says, at the end when he's dying in his bed in Battlecrease, "I place this now in a place where it shall be found". That means Battlecrease (more likely than the Knowsley Building).

It could have come out of Battlecrease at any time between 1889 and 1992. So your theory must be that it came out of Battlecrease before and then came to him. And then Eddy by coincidence also came to him with a story of working at Battlecrease.

If Michael Barrett had the diary previously written by someone else, as you're now saying, then he'd have read that and known it meant Battlecrease. Or Mike first learned from Eddy what Battlecrease was, and he just happened to have a Diary that came from there.

So he had the written word and the words of Eddy to cement a Provenance given to him by Providence. And yet, again, he didn't receive it with open arms.

He's not thinking like a Forger. He's thinking like a Dealer who found out he's dealing a stolen artifact.

[Lombro2]

In conjunction with the Battlecrease Provenance, there is the matter of the gold watch that mysteriously appeared at the same time without a proven Provenance for the actual watch itself. It was alternately in a cubby hole in Battlecrease or it was in a jeweler's sock drawer until 1992.

Coincidentally, it has a watch repair mark in the middle which is an H or a K with the numbers 9/3.

I think that was the mark made by the jeweler and/or repairman who got the watch back and running on March 9 of 1992. I think it's a K for Kruger of Kruger Jeweler. Their store is now in the same unit where Stewarts used to be but, in 1992, it was in the same neighborhood. They did not reply to two requests for comment.

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