New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[caz]

If you really want to be depressed, Herlock, go look in the archives for May 2001.

Peter Birchwood asked the same question nearly a quarter of a century ago. He was trying to find out what the actual procedure was at O & L from Shirley Harrison. Whether he ever found out or reached out to O & L himself, I have no idea. The conversation turned in another direction and not long afterwards both Peter and Shirley quit contributing.

Peter wrote something that resonated with me. He got the feeling that Mr. Whay and Ms. Harrison were a little too eager to dismiss Barrett's account--to debunk it rather than to 'get at the truth of the matter.'

I got the same feeling. I'm not suggesting that Mr. Whay was being evasive--not at all. He no doubt said what he believed--but businessmen can be very protective of their businesses, and he might not have relished the idea that the good name of his company would forever be associated with something as distasteful as Jack the Ripper or a fake document that had gained local notoriety. It would hardly have been the fault of the auction if they had unwittingly sold the photo album to a scammer, but people can be irrational. Whay's impulse might have been to quickly dismiss any such association. "He didn't get that damned thing from us!"

Barrett's less-than-competent description of the auction might have made for a convenient 'off ramp'--- enough for Whay to throw his hands in the air and to put the matter to bed quickly.

Ah yes, let's imagine that Whay was as precious as he was irrational, and would have cared what a buyer might choose to do with any item included in one of his auction sales. How would any mud have rubbed off on his business, by association with a liar's claims to have turned an innocent photo album after purchase into Jack the Ripper's diary? Some would no doubt have welcomed the free publicity, in the event that Mike's claims had been confirmable. It's not as if anyone was likely to make a habit of treating O & L like an Aladdin's cave, where items could be picked up for a song by petty criminals and sold on as serial killer trophies.

Personally, I'm not convinced Barrett made it up. There is a logic to his chronology. The red diary Barrett had secretly received from the bookseller in Oxford WAS too small and useless, so he would have needed to seek something else. The 11/12 day span between the auction and Barrett showing up in London jives with the facts.

Well, I've seen nothing yet to convince me that Mike didn't make it up. The wording of the advert placed on his behalf by Martin Earl did not produce what would have been essential for anyone planning to fake Maybrick's diary, and was highly unlikely ever to have done so. Had the red diary proved in any way suitable for that purpose, and had Anne been moronic enough to have used it, the paper trail from advert to order to dispatch to invoice and finally to payment would have led straight back to Mike Barrett [not Williams] of 12 Goldie Street when the first diary book became a bestseller in 1993. Someone involved with supplying and sending Mr Barrett the raw material only had to recognise it and remember his 'unusual' request and that would have been that. It was lucky for Anne that the red diary was so hopelessly unsuited to the task Mike was about to set her, or that she was about to set herself.

Anne's luck must also have been in when it came to the auction find, as nobody ever came forward with inside knowledge of the photo album and compass having been in an auction sale at O & L before the diary story first emerged. When the book was published, revealing what the diary itself looked like, it wouldn't have been hard for a previous owner to work out that this was suspiciously like the one they had put up for auction the previous year, the only difference being that all the pages had originally been intact and there was no writing, just photographs, which had been mounted on the same pages which were coincidentally missing from the start of Jack the Ripper's diary.

Mr Whay's irrational reaction must have been another stroke of luck for Anne, who could hardly have expected him to be in denial about Mike's purchase if the evidence was there, even if she could rely on Mike to get the year wrong on two or more occasions.

[rjpalmer]

I may have got some of my facts wrong there, but I think the gist is correct - there just wasn't the funding to dig any deeper than was dug.

"Lift not the painted veil."

Too busy chasing after Feldman and Graham's malarky.

[rjpalmer]

The Devereux girls (to confirm the Tales of Liverpool tale inter alia)

They already confirmed it. I've seen others trying to cast doubt on this and it's lame.

The booklet was obtained from their father Tony Devereux in 1990/1991 who informed one sister that it was Mike Barrett's. That settles the matter.

As I read it, Barrett was very uncharacteristically rattled when Martin Howells brought this up with Mike.

In brief, Mike's reaction was strange. All I can figure is either he had previously told Harrison & Co. that Tony didn't know the identity of the diarist, or he had previously told them that he (Mike) had only discovered Maybrick's identity after Tony's death. Somehow, Mike feared he was 'caught out,' but we aren't given any explanation for his reaction.

[Iconoclast]

The Writing Circle should have been quizzed about Barrett. I've seen no evidence they ever were. Hindsight is 20/20 but they would have been my first port of call.

I realize most of the diary's researchers were based in London, and had limited time in Liverpool, but for the life of me I don't know why Harold Brough or Carol Emmas or Alan Gray didn't chase these people down, buy them a cup of tea, and pick their brains about Barrett's interests and literary efforts.

Brough in particular must have had many contacts--he should have been able to locate former members.

The Writing Circle
Outhwaite & Litherland (to include 1992 had it entered anyone's head that Gray's affidavit might be wrong on the dates)
The Bluecoat Chambers (did they recall him and his wife buying the brushes and the ink? - a long shot but one to cover nevertheless)
Barrett's solicitor (re the Sphere book inter alia)
Lynn Barrett (re what she knew - if anything - about the scrapbook)
The Devereux girls (to confirm the Tales of Liverpool tale inter alia)
The staff of The Saddle (not just the owner)
Goodness only knows who and what else ...

But - as I'm sure that Keith Skinner has pointed-out before - when Rendell's report crushed the potential sales of the book and Robert Smith drastically reduced his upfront investment, the monies available for researching everything went pretty much out of the window (especially as half of it was already spent on Mike Barrett's tab in The Saddle, no doubt).

I may have got some of my facts wrong there, but I think the gist is correct - there just wasn't the funding to dig any deeper than was dug.

Frustrating, I know.

[Iconoclast]

If you do quote me, Ike, please edit the last sentence. I was going to write "If he was the hoaxer, why wouldn't he?" That last 'be' somehow got in and is grammatically incorrect. I think I was going to write that Barrett would have been 'delighted,' and somehow this got lost in the editing process.

I was going to remove that whole line as it was an argument I didn't want to iterate. If I include it, could we agree to "If he was the hoaxer, why wouldn't he be delighted?"?

[rjpalmer]

one of The Writing Circle's most inept alumni.

The Writing Circle should have been quizzed about Barrett. I've seen no evidence they ever were. Hindsight is 20/20 but they would have been my first port of call.

I realize most of the diary's researchers were based in London, and had limited time in Liverpool, but for the life of me I don't know why Harold Brough or Carol Emmas or Alan Gray didn't chase these people down, buy them a cup of tea, and pick their brains about Barrett's interests and literary efforts.

Brough in particular must have had many contacts--he should have been able to locate former members.

[Iconoclast]

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".

Seriously, does anyone consider this to be a plausible 'dating error'? Get a month wrong, yes. Get a year wrong, okay. But get them both so badly wrong? Did Gray mishear or misremember? Or just randomly chuck in a month and a year because he knew it would be irrelevant to readers of it if Mike Barrett wasn't actually typing it?

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.

Hardly the 'best motive' at all! If you're about to be 'exposed as a former journalist' what does it matter whether you 'confess' your nefarious hoax before you are 'exposed as a former journalist' or after you are 'exposed as a former journalist'? Surely you ride the odds and wait to see if you are indeed going to be unmasked and 'exposed as a former journalist'?

I stress the 'exposed as a former journalist' bit in the hope it might just sink into people's brains how contrived this interpretation is of one of The Writing Circle's most inept alumni.

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.

Or she ignored the ramblings of her desperate, alcoholic ex- (or soon-to-be-ex-) husband whose motivations she could well see through after so many years of marriage, whilst she was utterly free of any concerns regarding her liberty (knowing - as she did - that she had no hand in the creation of the scrapbook). It is clear that she did know about the affidavit - the January 18, 1995, meeting with Shirley, Keith and Sally shows that she tentatively touched on it but moved on quickly when it was evident that they were either unaware of his affidavit or that they were not excited enough about it to talk with her about its contents.

[rjpalmer]

I am drawn back to RJ Palmer's insightful comments on Barrett of just a few short days ago:

"Calling him a pathological liar, while true, only grazes the surface. He was not a liar in the sense of someone who wants to deceive you. That sounds bizarre, but that's the mistake people make. In reality, Mike doesn't care if you believe him. At times, he is overjoyed that you know he's lying. His aim is less than that, and it's more than that. He's not clever, but he is a mental terrorist. His aim is to exasperate and to sow doubt. If you walk away convinced that he knows nothing at all (which is what many have concluded, wrongly), he's fine with that, too. Indeed, he loves that conclusion. If he was the hoaxer, why wouldn't he be?"

I'm thinking of sticking this into SocPill25 because it's one of the finest things RJ has ever written. Call it as you see it, say I - it was well-crafted. Barrett was a mental terrorist and a spectacular one at that as his actions have derailed the truth for over thirty years now.

If you do quote me, Ike, please edit the last sentence. I was going to write "If he was the hoaxer, why wouldn't he?" That last 'be' somehow got in and is grammatically incorrect. I think I was going to write that Barrett would have been 'delighted,' and somehow this got lost in the editing process.

As a totally irrelevant aside, let me draw your attention to the word hoaxster.

Our embattled Secretary of Defense, the incompetent Pete Hegseth, blamed his current troubles on "hoaxsters" in the media.

I thought I misheard him, so I ran back the tape. Yup, he called them "hoaxsters." As I type this word, it is underlined in red--indication that the word is misspelled.

He claims to be a Harvard grad, though it certainly doesn't show.

Anyway, apparently 'hoaxter' is a rare and acceptable variant of 'hoaxer,' but almost no one uses it, and I'm convinced Hegseth stumbled on it by accident.

But for now on I'm call Bongo Barrett a hoaxster, so be warned.

[Iconoclast]

As much as I try to avoid spending 30 minutes of my day replying to Casebook posts, it seems that my role here is simply never done ...

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 hope no-one is falling for this statistical mince? There were (and still are) thousands of old houses in Liverpool. All that actually happened on March 9, 1992, was that some workmen appeared to have done some work involving floorboards in James Maybrick's last residence (103 years earlier). Now, James Maybrick's name had no association with the authorship of the crimes of Jack the Ripper (except highly tangentially via the 'Maybrick Case') up until that day. All that then happened on March 9, 1992, after James Maybrick's last residence had workmen in was that a man called Michael Barrett rang a London literary agency saying he thought he might have the diary of Jack the Ripper and would they be interested in seeing it. All that actually happened after that included the discovery that one of the workmen drank in the same pub that Michael Barrett drank in. That's all that actually happened (which is significantly more significant than the 'all that happened' which you chose to describe).

If there is anyone on Casebook who genuinely thinks the March 9, 1992, 'double event' is just 'one of those things', please take a course in statistics because I promise you, if it were a coincidence, it is one of the greatest in the history of the human race. If, however, you think it is just 'one of those things' because that helps your argument along hugely, then please get yourself a good mirror, look in it, and ask yourself, "Why is it so important to me that I feel the need to do that?".

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.

Credible evidence is very much in short supply regarding the Maybrick scrapbook. Fortunately for me, absolutely none of it whatsoever was wasted on supporting Mike Barrett's claims, ever. Nor none wasted on the quality of Alan Gray's hearing, it would appear.

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.

If he was hoping for a reconciliation, why did he 'confess' in the first place?

If Anne assisted Mike with the diary by providing "the brains", that is highly relevant to Mike's journalistic career because she helped him with his articles. They were a writing team. It's why I keep asking why they couldn't have jointly written the diary, to which answer comes there none. So if you don’t think Mike was capable of faking a diary why wasn’t he capable of faking a diary with help from someone who had helped previously and on numerous occasions?

I personally would not equate the claim that Anne helped Mike to 'tidy up' his celebrity interviews during his very short-lived attempts at a writing career with anything even vaguely as creative as the format of the Maybrick scrapbook text, nor do I see Mike's 1980s literary efforts as anything other than what he implied when he admitted that he had been part of a 'writing circle'. As I recall, 'The Writing Circle' was a fee-paying process by which you 'learned your craft', part of which may very well have consisted of recommending that one's career could start with simple short stories and perhaps even celebrity interviews to the gossip rags. By the early 1990s, there is no evidence whatsoever that Barrett was part of a writing 'team' with his wife, nor that he ever actually had been. There is actually no evidence that he was still striving to be a writer which makes his wife's claim that she gave Tony D the scrapbook to give to Mike a particularly questionable one altogether. To me, the only evidence that is relevant here is that Barrett's attempts at a writing career in the 1980s would have been the reason why he ended up with a hookey scrapbook from a meeting in the pub in the early 1990s - Barrett's literary braggadocio presumably as evident then as it certainly was during his patronising 'confession' on stage in April 1999 (the event you harp on about so much, note).

Your question "Why would confession have been good for the soul in Mike's case, as you suggested yourself, if he'd had very little input?" is a non sequitur. The point is that Mike had been lying for two years non-stop about where the diary came from. That was the pressure he was under and that's why confession might have been good for the soul. But if he, at a minimum, obtained the photograph album and dictated the text to Anne, that is not "very little input" by anyone's definition.

I am drawn back to RJ Palmer's insightful comments on Barrett of just a few short days ago:

"Calling him a pathological liar, while true, only grazes the surface. He was not a liar in the sense of someone who wants to deceive you. That sounds bizarre, but that's the mistake people make. In reality, Mike doesn't care if you believe him. At times, he is overjoyed that you know he's lying. His aim is less than that, and it's more than that. He's not clever, but he is a mental terrorist. His aim is to exasperate and to sow doubt. If you walk away convinced that he knows nothing at all (which is what many have concluded, wrongly), he's fine with that, too. Indeed, he loves that conclusion. If he was the hoaxer, why wouldn't he be?"

I'm thinking of sticking this into SocPill25 because it's one of the finest things RJ has ever written. Call it as you see it, say I - it was well-crafted. Barrett was a mental terrorist and a spectacular one at that as his actions have derailed the truth for over thirty years now.

There is good reason to think that all three of them were liars ...

To adopt your own stance on these things, can you please provide your evidence that Caroline Barrett - aged around ten years - was a liar? If you cannot, can you - to adopt your own stance on these things - retract the claim, please?

I can't seem to get away from this place because whenever I put my head back in over a leisurely cup of Tesco's Rooibos decaffeinated tea, my sense of fair-play is assailed by a thousand claims regarding Mike and Anne Barrett for which no-one appears to have much more than a fancy and a whisper and a rumour and a mishearing here and there to back up some seriously trenchant views on what actually happened.

Ike

[caz]

Hi Roger,

In the past few months that I've been posting about the diary, it's remarkable how many times I've been categorically told things are facts which turn out not to be true. When I ask for supporting evidence I'm denied it and have to search out the truth myself. Truly, this subject is like none other I've ever encountered.

I don't even know why Gray's own enquiries, or lack of them, as the case may be, are of any significance. All I was asking was what the auctioneer actually said about the account in Barrett's affidavit of O&L's auction process. What do Gray's supposed lack of enquiries have to do with this? And what I find really extraordinary is that no-one seems to know how O&L conducted their auctions on 1992 and how that differed from the account in Barrett's affidavit. Did no-one ever ask them this simple and obvious question?

Why we're even discussing the O&L auction process is another mystery. Abby said something amusing to me about details of "the old book" being revealed in "a new book" and, for reasons I still don't understand, this led to us being told that we either believe Mike or the auctioneer. So the obvious question is: what did the auctioneer say? But I still haven't had a straight answer to this simple question. Instead, I'm being told that Alan Gray didn't bother to check something, and I can"t understand why I'm being told that. Even worse if, as you suggest might be the case, it's not even true.

In early 1997, Shirley Harrison finally had sight of Mike's January 1995 affidavit and immediately sent O & L a copy of his auction 'experience' to ask how this compared with the way they conducted their sales. The response she got made it clear that they did not accept what Mike had claimed - no ifs, no buts. I'm not particularly impressed with the argument that it might have made a world of difference if only someone had thought to change Mike's word 'ticket' to 'receipt', as if there would then have been instant recognition of O & L's typical sales practice. On balance, I'd stick to Mike - or Alan Gray - having 'garbled' the details to such an extent that nobody at O & L could have been expected to reconcile his claimed experience as a bidder with their own experience of the business in general.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

It is typical of the diary crowd that, while they have utterly no real respect for Melvin Harris's 'viperous' theories about the diary, they nonetheless cite his opinions (or alleged opinions) about the worth of Barrett's affidavit! It's weird. It's a bit like someone who has constantly rubbished the Lechmere theory putting great stock in Christer Holmgren's opinions about M.J. Druitt's guilt or lack thereof.

Is C.A.B. now plumping for Melvin's Kane/Devereux theory? If not, why should we care if Melvin didn't accept (or fully accept) the account given in the Gray's affidavit?

And it's a simplistic statement anyway. Harris also believed Barrett demonstrated inside knowledge of the diary's creation, hence his interest in testing the ink for chloroacetamide and his attempt to get at the truth of the Sphere book.

If Melvin had thought all of Mike's statements were 'rubbish,' he would have hardly done so.

Q.E.D.

[rjpalmer]

double post

[caz]

Or maybe he attended an O&L auction in 1992 but garbled some of the details slightly when recalling them to Alan Gray a few years later for the affidavit Pat?

Only 'maybe', Herlock? If Mike didn't attend an auction, and made up those details from whole cloth, where does that leave the Great Barrett Hoax Conspiracy Theory?

Neither Mike nor Alan Gray could be bothered to check with anyone at O&L that the experience as described in the January 1995 affidavit had anything in common with their day-to-day reality, whether the year in question was 1990 or some earlier or later year. Don't forget, Mike told Gray at one point that it had been Anne alone who had bought the job lot which included the journal and compass.

That's not garbling the details 'slightly' when recalling them in November 1994 - that's a total change of story, which reverted just two months later to Mike attending the auction; Mike giving his name as Williams; Mike bidding for the album and compass; and Mike coming home with the goods plus his proof of purchase.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

I originally made a note on my timeline that the tape labelled 24th October 1994 appeared to have been used again a week later, for a conversation on 31st October. I just checked the tape thread here on casebook, and as I thought the list only has the one tape dated 24th, and no separate tape for 31st, so it's somewhat surprising that you are telling me there are two tapes, one for each date in October. Did you imagine it?



So what do you think Mike meant in his January 1995 affidavit, when he stated:

'Since December 1993 I have been trying, through the press, the Publishers, the Author of the Book, Mrs Harrison, and my Agent Doreen Montgomery to expose the fraud of ' The Diary of Jack the Ripper ' ("the diary").'

There is nothing to suggest Mike had only decided to confess in June 1994, because he had been about to be exposed as a former journalist.

Okay, I get it. He was lying again, or Alan Gray got the wrong end of the stick. But that doesn't help you to establish the truth, when that's all you have to rely on.

If the Barretts forged the diary in April 1992, Mike could have told the whole story at any time, if he did it because he thought confession would be 'good for the soul', as you suggested.



Melvin Harris stated on the casebook, long afterwards, that his conclusion was that the Barretts had merely handled and placed someone else's forgery.

Why do you think Mike delivered the affidavit to Anne's door? What reaction did he want from her? His entire beef at that time was that she was refusing to talk to him and he couldn't see Caroline.

Love,

Caz
X

Thank you for confirming that there are two recordings from October 1994, one done on 24th October and the other done on 31st October. Like I said, I haven't listened to these recordings but they've been mentioned elsewhere online which is why I thought there must be two tapes.

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".

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.

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?

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.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Slowly catching up with some unread posts...

I'm struggling to find anything in this lengthy post of yours, Herlock, which in any way supports a theory that the photo album was bought at an auction sale - by Mike or Anne [he made both claims separately to Alan Gray and gave conflicting years and dates for the purchase] - on 31st March 1992, and the diary was then handwritten into it over 63 pages by Anne, using a disguised hand, from a previously prepared typescript, followed by the transcript [as seen on casebook] typed from the handwritten version, in time for Mike to take both documents to London on 13th April 1992.

That is the only working theory involving a Barrett hoax, and there has never been any credible evidence that any of it happened. Nobody seems sure whether they believe it was Mike who came up with the original idea and then composed the text, or if this was Anne, or was it both of them in close collaboration, or even mostly the product of Anne's brain, with Mike contributing only the odd line of doggerel? All theoretical scenarios have been suggested at one time or another, but no single coherent and consistent explanation takes precedence over all the others and fits neatly with the known facts, without sounding any jarring notes.

For instance, if Anne had done the lion's share of the creative work, plus the handwriting, as RJ Palmer has theorised on occasion, how would that have affected the suggested motives for Mike's initial forgery claims in June 1994, where he makes no mention of Anne or anyone else being involved in the process? Why would his former journalistic ambitions have been relevant in that scenario, if Anne supplied the brains and Mike the brawn, to bully her into being his partner in crime against her will and better judgment, as RJ Palmer has also theorised? Why would confession have been good for the soul in Mike's case, as you suggested yourself, if he'd had very little input?

When and why do you suppose Anne tried to destroy the diary, if it couldn't have been created without her? All three Barretts spoke independently of the row over the diary, and there was nothing to gain from inventing it. More to lose in fact, because the story was that Mike had got it innocently from Tony with no strings attached, back in 1991, so why would Anne have been so against Mike taking it to London the following year? Even if it had come from the Graham family, who would have known this and why would it matter anyway?

Does it make any sense to you at all that Anne might have been intimidated by Mike's controlling behaviour into creating the diary, after which she typed up the transcript, but tried to destroy the scrapbook at one point, presumably regretting the whole affair and taking her chances with Mike's temper? Surviving the episode, along with the diary, Anne let Mike get on with it and sent Caroline with him down to London again with the diary in early June to meet Robert Smith.

The evidence that the diary existed on 9th March 1992 is the strong circumstantial case for it being found in Dodd's house that day during the electrical work. For all the rumours to have been false, there would need to have been a wide, complex and ongoing conspiracy to deceive, involving numerous scallywags with seemingly nothing to gain, who must have known and consulted each other to make their accounts consistent and compatible with documented records of their individual circumstances. By rights, the double event of 9th March 1992 should never have happened, and should certainly not have been tucked away in the historical record where nobody on the planet was aware of it, if there was nothing of any substance behind the collective accounts of Mike's diary having been found in the house where Maybrick died. That would be the mother of all coincidences.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

In your lengthy post you haven't answered my question as to why you are "100% certain"that Mike got involved by pure chance long after the diary had been written and placed in Battlecrease. The only thing you've mentioned what you describe as a "strong circumstantial case" of a Battlecrease discovery and all the "rumours" about it. I can’t see how that gets you to 100% certainty? The case for a Battlecrease discovery seems remarkably weak to me. As I've already said in another post, there's absolutely no need for any form of conspiracy, just whispers and rumours started by Feldman, with human nature doing the rest. 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 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.

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.

If Anne assisted Mike with the diary by providing "the brains", that is highly relevant to Mike's journalistic career because she helped him with his articles. They were a writing team. It's why I keep asking why they couldn't have jointly written the diary, to which answer comes there none. So if you don’t think Mike was capable of faking a diary why wasn’t he capable of faking a diary with help from someone who had helped previously and on numerous occasions?

Your question "Why would confession have been good for the soul in Mike's case, as you suggested yourself, if he'd had very little input?" is a non sequitur. The point is that Mike had been lying for two years non-stop about where the diary came from. That was the pressure he was under and that's why confession might have been good for the soul. But if he, at a minimum, obtained the photograph album and dictated the text to Anne, that is not "very little input" by anyone's definition.

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).

If you think Anne did try to throw the diary on the fire perhaps you could provide me with a timeline of when she was doing this and when she was diligently spending eleven days typing up the transcript for her husband, because I can't work out when these things were supposed to have happened. I'm still waiting for confirmation of whether you believe the transcript was prepared after Mike came to London as you said a few years ago or before he left for London as you said a few days ago. Equally, when do you say Anne tried to throw the diary on the fire? Before Mike left for London or after?