New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[John Wheat]

Amazed this has reached 14 pages! I mean, come on? Really??????????

Hi Losmandris

I know ridiculous isn't it.

Cheers John

[Losmandris]

Amazed this has reached 14 pages! I mean, come on? Really??????????

[Herlock Sholmes]

How would a forged diary make the slightest difference to what the real James Maybrick may or may not have done in his spare time?

You can point to the evidence that convinces you that the real James did not write the diary, but it can tell you nothing about what else the real James didn't do.

If I fake a diary by Monty Druitt, would the contents tell you how 'very, very unlikely it was' for Monty to have been the ripper?

Love,

Caz
X

I couldn’t help a smile, Caz, by your framing of the murdering and mutilation of women in London as something James Maybrick might have done in his spare time.

Just a little side hobby, eh?

I'd say that the difference between Monty and Maybrick is that Monty was an actual Scotland Yard suspect in the case, whereas Maybrick's possible involvement was the invention of a modern forger, but please yourself if you think he might have been Jack the Ripper, that's entirely your prerogative. I was just having a little chat with Abby who I knew would understand what I'm saying.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I didn't mention it, Herlock, because if I mentioned everything published in the various books that could be relevant or significant, just for your benefit, I'd still be here at Christmas 2030, assuming I live that long. I'm currently more concerned about my cat, Monty, who is fifteen, off his food and not displaying his usual, highly vocalised needypuss complex. I don't need an even needier purrrson to take his place right now.

Tim Martin-Wright was told about Jack the Ripper's diary before Feldman arrived to muddy the waters. Alan Davies had worked for Portus & Rhodes, like the Battlecrease crew, and he was working with Jim Bowling on another job just a week after Jim had been sent with Eddie Lyons to Battlecrease to help out with the rewiring for the storage heaters on 9th March 1992. Alan Davies told Alan Dodgson about the diary and he told Tim Martin-Wright about it, because of Tim's known interest in antiques. Tim made an offer for the diary, but he was then told it had already been sold to a bloke in a pub over in Anfield. All this happened before Feldman's involvement, and Tim gave his own account independently of anyone else, and before Feldman could have influenced it in any way. Tim happened to pick up a copy of Shirley's book and quickly recognised that she was writing about the diary he would have bought if it had still been on the market. Tim read the book in the car, while his wife was driving them both home.

Naturally, you will be assured by the usual suspects that I'm flat out lying about all this, or at the very least totally confused about the supporting evidence currently in Keith's possession - because they have a crystal ball to tell them so.

Love,

Caz
X

So the reason you mentioned a Battlecrease witness supposedly talking (vaguely) about "an old book" but didn't mention a Battlecrease witness supposedly talking (specifically) about a "leather-bound diary" is because you'd still be here at Christmas 2030 if you'd done so? Seriously?

But now I think we're getting to the meat of the matter. You say "Tim Martin-Wright was told about Jack the Ripper's diary before Feldman arrived to muddy the waters." Can you please provide the evidence to support this claim?
I note that we've miraculously now transmogrified from a leather-bound diary to Jack the Ripper's diary - another thing that I guess you didn't have time to mention previously (and something I don't find at all in Robert Smith's book) - but I'll let that pass.
Then, in respect of the Alan Davies story you've told me, about which you say: "All this happened before Feldman's involvement...". Is there any available evidence to support this claim?

I'm certainly not accusing you of lying Caz but am I to take from your reference to "the supporting evidence currently in Keith's possession" that this will turn out to be more "evidence" you're sadly unable to share with me to support what you're claiming?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Just read the post, Herlock, instead of trying to read into it what's not there.

I merely observed from listening to the various recordings that when Keith and Coral were gathering witness accounts, the diary was referred to on more than one occasion, and by more than one of the interviewees, as "the old book" when claiming to have personal knowledge of it, and not just what they could have read in a book. I don't know why they thought of it in this way; they just did. I don't know if any significance can be attached to it. It is what it is.

If you don't like it being called "the old book", is that because you are worried that it could be significant? If you are happy that there is no significance, is there a problem with it being described in that way?

Love,

Caz
X

Its not that I don't like it being called an "old book" Caz, it's just that I can't understand why you keep calling it that in quotation marks. I'm trying to work out who called it that. So far, you've not identified a single person who described the diary in that way, let alone someone who can be described as a witness.

What you've said in your post could be extremely important so I find it hard believe that you're not prepared to expand on it. Which of those interviewed claimed to have personal knowledge of an old book? And what do you mean by "personal knowledge"? I wasn't aware of anyone claiming to have personal knowledge of anything relating to the discovery of the diary. So how they name something is less important than the fact that they claim to have had personal knowledge of something. What is it?

Is it possible to find out more about the witness accounts gathered by Keith and Coral? Or is this something else which is secret?

The reason I press the point is because I have a suspicion that all the interviewees were doing was passing on to Keith and Coral second hand rumours which had been started by Feldman and his investigation, so that they weren't witnesses in any true sense of the word. Just electricians who had heard the famous story of Eddie's discovery of Jack the Ripper's diary. If that's the case, it doesn't matter what they called the diary, does it?

But, truly, if there was someone who in 1992 had personal knowledge of the discovery of an "old book" in Battlecrease, please do tell us who that was and how they knew about it. It seems pretty important to me.

[caz]

Apart from ‘one off instance’ Abby which shows unequivocally that the diary is a forgery, there is content in the diary which whilst not being 100% proof certainly comes close. It shows how very, very unlikely it was for Maybrick to have been the ripper. The red handkerchief is one obvious example. This, along with other things, count strongly against the diary being genuine…and these are without the total proof of one off instance (on the subject of which, all that we get is “surely someone could have used”…and that kind of thing. Every suggestion against that has been put forward so far have been embarrassing and feeble to be honest)

How would a forged diary make the slightest difference to what the real James Maybrick may or may not have done in his spare time?

You can point to the evidence that convinces you that the real James did not write the diary, but it can tell you nothing about what else the real James didn't do.

If I fake a diary by Monty Druitt, would the contents tell you how 'very, very unlikely it was' for Monty to have been the ripper?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I've checked in Robert Smith's book and I think I can see why you're refusing to answer my question. He didn't witness a single thing. Smith tells a story of Alan Davies at some unknown date after November 1992 informing someone that Eddie Lyons had found "a leather-bound diary" under the floorboards of Battlecrease. It seems to me that this probably occurred in 1993 after Feldman and started this rumour among the electricians. Also, if "a Battlecrease witness" had spoken of "a leather-bound diary", I can't understand why Caz didn't mention this? Surely that's way more significant than an "old book" (which expression Smith doesn't attribute to Davies at all). Presumably it's because Alan Davies isn't "a Battlecrease witness". Someone must have told him about the Maybrick diary in 1993, after Feldman started pestering the electricians, and he passed this rumour on. That hardly "proves the Battlecrease Provenance". In fact, it doesn't prove anything.

I didn't mention it, Herlock, because if I mentioned everything published in the various books that could be relevant or significant, just for your benefit, I'd still be here at Christmas 2030, assuming I live that long. I'm currently more concerned about my cat, Monty, who is fifteen, off his food and not displaying his usual, highly vocalised needypuss complex. I don't need an even needier purrrson to take his place right now.

Tim Martin-Wright was told about Jack the Ripper's diary before Feldman arrived to muddy the waters. Alan Davies had worked for Portus & Rhodes, like the Battlecrease crew, and he was working with Jim Bowling on another job just a week after Jim had been sent with Eddie Lyons to Battlecrease to help out with the rewiring for the storage heaters on 9th March 1992. Alan Davies told Alan Dodgson about the diary and he told Tim Martin-Wright about it, because of Tim's known interest in antiques. Tim made an offer for the diary, but he was then told it had already been sold to a bloke in a pub over in Anfield. All this happened before Feldman's involvement, and Tim gave his own account independently of anyone else, and before Feldman could have influenced it in any way. Tim happened to pick up a copy of Shirley's book and quickly recognised that she was writing about the diary he would have bought if it had still been on the market. Tim read the book in the car, while his wife was driving them both home.

Naturally, you will be assured by the usual suspects that I'm flat out lying about all this, or at the very least totally confused about the supporting evidence currently in Keith's possession - because they have a crystal ball to tell them so.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Is there any point in answering any more of your questions when you didn't bother to read the post you quoted from, which contained a whole paragraph dedicated to the suggestion that Anne had assisted Mike in creating the diary? Here it is again, but you are seriously trying my patience now:



You wrote:



Mike didn't have his thought processes in order throughout the period between June 1994 and the end of the year, in case you hadn't noticed. He went from claiming publicly in the June that he had written the diary by himself, to telling Alan Gray several months later that Anne had assisted him. By the first week in January 1995, he had decided to rope in his late, not so lamented 'friend', his wife's deceased father - and even his daughter Caroline as a living witness to the diary's nativity. Much had happened since June 1994 to influence his behaviour and decision making. What could he have done differently to get his new version of events out there sooner if, as I think you said yourself, the papers were not exactly falling over themselves to print a potentially libellous accusation this time round, by a deeply troubled husband and father who had been without his family for the whole of 1994 and was again drowning his sorrows in drink, as he had been doing when his solicitor retracted his first story?

I wonder if you are mixing up two issues here: Mike could only have acted impulsively regarding his forgery claim, and spilled all the right beans in the right order and all at once at the earliest opportunity, if that was really his aim and he had the beans to spill. The facts indicate that he didn't, and was therefore struggling impotently over time to try and make his story believable. It doesn't matter if he was the impulsive type, as I see him, or laid back to the point of being horizontal, if what he wanted to achieve was simply not going to be possible, either in the short or the long term. That's a very different beast from seeing an old book signed Jack the Ripper and using his gift of the gab to make it his own in the shortest possible time.



It was RJ Palmer's contention that Anne was 'terrified' about anything diary related, never mine. In 1992, the prospect of Mike one day saying he had forged the diary himself was hardly likely to have dawned on her. It was the prospect of Mike getting it published that RJ Palmer argued would have scared the living hell out of her [melodramatic or what?] and he also argued that she came out with her new story in July 1994, because she was 'terrified' at the prospect of Mike linking her with the diary's creation.

None of it makes any sense, because by June 1992 Anne was so 'terrified' that she coughed up the train fare for Mike's return trip to London with the diary to get a publishing deal, and her new story in July 1994 was very likely to have got Mike frothing at the mouth and - er - linking her with the diary's creation at the next earliest opportunity, if only he could have provided a coherent and credible account of the forgery process from start to finish. I'm not sure how Anne could possibly have known that he couldn't even do that, assuming they had worked together on producing the diary, or that all the hard evidence had been mopped up and destroyed by then. If Mike had been the one to source the raw materials, she'd have been relying on him not to have left any knowledge or trace of this process with a third party, or in the marital home when she left it in January 1994. She could have destroyed the auction ticket in theory, if it ever existed and she knew where Mike kept it, but he claimed he still had it in April 1999, which, if true, would at least have given RJ Palmer some cause to think Anne might have been 'terrified' at the prospect of him whipping it out at any time from June 1994. But Mike didn't leave it to anyone in his Will, and went to his grave without it, and there never was a scintilla of supporting evidence for its existence.

Love,

Caz
X

Are you sure it's accurate to say that Mike "went from claiming publicly in the June that he had written the diary by himself, to telling Alan Gray several months later that Anne had assisted him." Can you provide a quote from June 1994 in which he said he wrote the diary, including the manuscript, on his own? The reason I ask is that on multiple occasions after June 1994, from what I heard on the tapes, Mike would say "I wrote the diary" but at the same time he would say that he didn't write the manuscript, Anne did. So are you quite sure he ever said that he did it all by himself? Or was that something everyone assumed him to be saying because he didn't mention anyone else?

Clearly, Roger has never said that Anne was terrified about Mike falsely claiming that she was involved in forging the diary. I just don't see how a false claim by Mike that Anne was involved in forging the diary would have affected her in any way. Nor can I believe that Mike would have thought so. That's why I find it so difficult to understand why Anne reacted in June 1994 as if Mike's confession was an attack on her personally. Can you explain it? And it's why I find it so difficult to see why she would have felt blackmailed by any threat by Mike to circulate his affidavit. Yet she said she regarded it as blackmail.

[caz]

It was Alan Davies, the other witness, who told his wife about an "old book" and told Alan Dodgson about a diary.

The advantage of Google Search.

I should have known it wasn't Eddie who said it was an old book. Why would a thief say anything about what he stole that would make it seem valuable? He wouldn't say it was old and valuable and he definitely wouldn't say it was a diary much less the Diary of Jack the Ripper.

It also explains why nobody really knows what he was claiming to have found.

I suppose Eddie could have claimed to have found a water damaged paperback romance from the 80s, and thrown that in a skip, if he'd had RJ Palmer's imagination, but we can't have everything.

I'm still puzzling over why Eddie said anything at all, if the Barretts had forged the diary, and therefore the electricians were the men that could not be blamed for nuffink.

Eddie could then have saved himself the trouble of subsequently having to deny saying anything at all, and instead simply directed people to Mike's forgery confession. After all, he must have believed it himself - mustn't he?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hold on Caz, which witnesses are you talking about, what did they witness and in what year did they give their accounts to Keith Skinner and Coral? I've no doubt that some of the electricians, having been told about a theory that one of their number had found a diary of Jack the Ripper, might well have spoken informally of the possibility of someone having found an old book. Perhaps someone had put the idea into their heads. But is there an actual witness to an actual event or conversation in 1992 who spoke, unprompted, of the discovery of an old book? Surely that must be very important information. Who is the witness, or witnesses, who mentioned "an old book" and in what context did they mention it? This all seems basic stuff that needs to be out there.

Just read the post, Herlock, instead of trying to read into it what's not there.

I merely observed from listening to the various recordings that when Keith and Coral were gathering witness accounts, the diary was referred to on more than one occasion, and by more than one of the interviewees, as "the old book" when claiming to have personal knowledge of it, and not just what they could have read in a book. I don't know why they thought of it in this way; they just did. I don't know if any significance can be attached to it. It is what it is.

If you don't like it being called "the old book", is that because you are worried that it could be significant? If you are happy that there is no significance, is there a problem with it being described in that way?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Oh well if you're only presuming that Mike wasn't one of the forgers, that's fine. I thought you were telling us that Mike definitely couldn't have been involved because he wasn't capable. But if it's only an argument that he didn't do it because of a lack of evidence, that's fine. I'm not aware, incidentally, of the evidence which points elsewhere, and you didn't mention it in your post, but that may just be because I'm relatively new to the subject.

I still don't understand your point about the affidavit. My question was premised on the assumption that Anne assisted Mike in the forgery. So coming back with an argument based on the premise that she did not, doesn't get us anywhere. So to repeat what I said

"if she had assisted her husband in the forgery, wouldn't there have been a danger to her in him announcing this to the world?"

Are you willing to start with this premise? I'm not asking you to accept it, but, in the hypothetical, if she was one of the forgers there would have been a danger to her in Mike's affidavit being released to the world wouldn't there? And surely that's true whether the affidavit contained factual mistakes or not (and I'm not saying it didn't).

Is there any point in answering any more of your questions when you didn't bother to read the post you quoted from, which contained a whole paragraph dedicated to the suggestion that Anne had assisted Mike in creating the diary? Here it is again, but you are seriously trying my patience now:

Of course there would have been a danger to Anne in Mike announcing to the world that they had forged the diary 'if' that had been the case, but the degree of danger would have depended on whether Mike would ever be capable of making yet another confession statement, but with all the right notes in the right order. Anne could only have crossed her fingers and hoped that day would never come. She might have guessed he didn't have any physical proof, such as the auction ticket, or a receipt for Diamine ink, or it would have saved him - not to mention Alan Gray - all the time and trouble of making such an error filled statement in the first place. But back in July 1994, when she came out with her new story, she couldn't have known that Mike hadn't managed to gather the hard evidence he needed, following the hasty retraction of his first forgery claim - unless no such evidence ever existed.

You wrote:

As for what was going on in Mike's mind, in another post you told me that Mike wasn't the type of person to hang around. Yet he'd told Alan Gray in October 1994 that his wife had assisted him with the forgery, hadn't he? He'd repeated this in November. Yet he'd said nothing in public. He didn't do anything through the whole of December. Is it your contention that Mike was slowly laying the groundwork through October, November and December ready for the big reveal in January when he could use this totally fake story about Anne's involvement in an affidavit to blackmail her into speaking to him? That idea doesn't sit well with me. Does it with you?

Mike didn't have his thought processes in order throughout the period between June 1994 and the end of the year, in case you hadn't noticed. He went from claiming publicly in the June that he had written the diary by himself, to telling Alan Gray several months later that Anne had assisted him. By the first week in January 1995, he had decided to rope in his late, not so lamented 'friend', his wife's deceased father - and even his daughter Caroline as a living witness to the diary's nativity. Much had happened since June 1994 to influence his behaviour and decision making. What could he have done differently to get his new version of events out there sooner if, as I think you said yourself, the papers were not exactly falling over themselves to print a potentially libellous accusation this time round, by a deeply troubled husband and father who had been without his family for the whole of 1994 and was again drowning his sorrows in drink, as he had been doing when his solicitor retracted his first story?

I wonder if you are mixing up two issues here: Mike could only have acted impulsively regarding his forgery claim, and spilled all the right beans in the right order and all at once at the earliest opportunity, if that was really his aim and he had the beans to spill. The facts indicate that he didn't, and was therefore struggling impotently over time to try and make his story believable. It doesn't matter if he was the impulsive type, as I see him, or laid back to the point of being horizontal, if what he wanted to achieve was simply not going to be possible, either in the short or the long term. That's a very different beast from seeing an old book signed Jack the Ripper and using his gift of the gab to make it his own in the shortest possible time.

I find the idea that Anne was terrified about Mike falsely claiming that she was involved in forging the diary to be wholly unconvincing myself. And I have to say that, yes, Anne could have known very well in July 1994 that Mike hadn't managed to gather the hard evidence he needed to prove his story if she had destroyed it all herself, or was aware that it had all been destroyed.

It was RJ Palmer's contention that Anne was 'terrified' about anything diary related, never mine. In 1992, the prospect of Mike one day saying he had forged the diary himself was hardly likely to have dawned on her. It was the prospect of Mike getting it published that RJ Palmer argued would have scared the living hell out of her [melodramatic or what?] and he also argued that she came out with her new story in July 1994, because she was 'terrified' at the prospect of Mike linking her with the diary's creation.

None of it makes any sense, because by June 1992 Anne was so 'terrified' that she coughed up the train fare for Mike's return trip to London with the diary to get a publishing deal, and her new story in July 1994 was very likely to have got Mike frothing at the mouth and - er - linking her with the diary's creation at the next earliest opportunity, if only he could have provided a coherent and credible account of the forgery process from start to finish. I'm not sure how Anne could possibly have known that he couldn't even do that, assuming they had worked together on producing the diary, or that all the hard evidence had been mopped up and destroyed by then. If Mike had been the one to source the raw materials, she'd have been relying on him not to have left any knowledge or trace of this process with a third party, or in the marital home when she left it in January 1994. She could have destroyed the auction ticket in theory, if it ever existed and she knew where Mike kept it, but he claimed he still had it in April 1999, which, if true, would at least have given RJ Palmer some cause to think Anne might have been 'terrified' at the prospect of him whipping it out at any time from June 1994. But Mike didn't leave it to anyone in his Will, and went to his grave without it, and there never was a scintilla of supporting evidence for its existence.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

When Eddie was asked about his conversation with Brian Rawes on Friday 17th July 1992, in the drive at Battlecrease, he naturally denied telling Brian he had found anything in the house which he thought could be "important", or had asked what he should do about it, but suggested instead that he may have mentioned to Brian in passing that there were a lot of "old books" in the house - which would be an odd thing to say in isolation, just as Brian was collecting the firm's van and about to reverse back down the drive to go to another job. Brian never actually set foot in the house and had not expressed any interest in it, when Eddie caught him as he was leaving to impart this fascinating snippet of useless information.

I don't 'want' you to comment on anything, Herlock, if you don't have easy access to all the information you think would qualify you to do so. In fact, it would be better for all concerned if you didn't.

Robert Smith's original notes on his stranger than strange encounter with Eddie in the Saddle in June 1993 are Robert Smith's property, and I'm quite sure you would not be too worried if Robert had forgotten what was said during their brief conversation, when writing about it in his book. I wouldn't worry on Robert's behalf anyway, as his memory is arguably better than most and he would have referred to his notes in any case, if not directly quoting Eddie's exact words in his book.

As I think you have already been told, Herlock, I am not at liberty to direct you to any material that has not already been made available here by those in possession of it. But it has been posted on the boards that Eddie has denied on more than one occasion that he ever met Robert Smith or had any conversation with him in the Saddle. It has also been posted that Robert positively identified Eddie from a photograph, as the man introduced to him by Mike Barrett that evening.

Love,

Caz
X

So, Caz, just so I've got this clear in my mind. When you told me that "the evidence we do have strongly indicates that it already existed before Mike first clapped eyes on the "old book", as it has been referred to by Battlecrease witnesses" you were actually referring to a comment supposedly made by Eddie Lyons to an unidentified person that he may have mentioned to Brian Rawes in July 1992 that he had seen some old books in Paul Dodd's house. Can that be right? Because that's not him talking about the diary is it?

It's interesting that you say that this would have been an odd thing for Eddie to have said to Brian in isolation as Brian was collecting the firm's van and was about to back down the drive to go to another job because it struck me when, I first read Robert Smith's book, that it would have been very odd for him to have told Brian in those circumstances that he'd found (and stolen!) something from the house a few months earlier.

But anyway back to the point. Is the real answer that no identifiable Battlecrease witness has referred to the diary as an "old book"?

As for the record of the conversation between Lyons and Smith, look Caz, let me make one thing clear. I simply don't care if you or anyone else want to keep evidence secret and hidden in this case. All I was asking is if there is a note available of the conversation between Smith and Lyons. That's it. If the answer is no there is not, that's all I needed to know. But please don't expect me to comment on things that I'm not fully informed about. If, however, you don't want me to comment, why are you even addressing posts to me? I'm not interested, incidentally, in what has been posted on the boards summarising what Eddie Lyons is supposed to have said to Smith. I need to see his exact words and the context in which they were spoken. If we don't have his exact words, I at least need to see a contemporary note of the conversation. This is all basic Evidence 101, Caz. I can only go on hard evidence, not on people's memories of events from years earlier, however good you might think someone's memory might be. The other thing I asked for was to be directed to a transcript of an interview in which Eddie Lyons was asked about this meeting. Is there such a transcript in existence? If so, can I see it? If not, I can't understand why you, or anyone else, wouldn't want to show it to me.

I really don’t see why this subject or these questions/points irritate or annoy Caz but they clearly do for some reason.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We'll have to agree to disagree on this point, Herlock. You are making yourself clear; I just don't agree that your argument makes any sense, either logically or from what we know happened following Mike's first attempt to confess to fraud. He'd have known the game was very much not up, because there were no consequences, either from his 'exposure' [ha ha] as the world's least well known and most untrained journalist, or from every subsequent attempt made by himself or anyone else to demonstrate how he 'must have' created the diary. He died without having been exposed as a proven co-conspirator in the diary's creation - even after trying every trick in the book over several years to expose himself [don't titter at the back there, it's not a pretty image]. Nobody who knew the man believed a single word of it. So remind me again - what 'game' did he realise was 'up' back in June 1994, and how did that pan out?



No, I just didn't think it merited an answer. Not all your questions do. This isn't Mastermind or the Spanish Inquisition.

Mike threatened people with solicitors like other people frown and walk away. He went down to see Eddie Lyons in Fountains Road in 1993 and threatened him with solicitors if he said he found the diary in Dodd's house. Around the same time, Mike decided to swear an affidavit to the effect that he had been given the diary in good faith by the late Tony Devereux, as he had been claiming since the start, because his ownership was now under threat.

What is your source for Mike being 'extremely agitated' by Warren's forthcoming article? How did this manifest itself? Or was he just miffed by Warren's interference and anti-Mike agenda? He wasn't planning to give Mike or the diary an easy ride, was he?



If you say so. It was no doubt a nasty shock at the time, for those closely involved, but it wasn't a 'disaster' because Mike tried and failed, and tried again to produce a credible account of how and when the diary was written and by whom, and still he failed.



Look, if Mike himself had no evidence to prove he was a forger, I'm not sure how any of the researchers were meant to find it. These included Melvin Harris, Nick Warren and Stanley Dangar, among other less prominent players, who would each have given their eye teeth at one time to expose Mike as a forger, or co-conspirator, so were they completely incompetent? Mike was even helping them to work up a case against him, with Alan Gray as a hapless middle man, and still they got no lasting joy.



I hesitate to say that you don't know the half of it, because I will only be accused of being mean to the 'newbie' but - and it's a heck of a big but - you really don't know the half of it.

From March 1992 to June 1994, Mike was adamant that Tony Devereux had given him the diary for being a good friend.

In June 1994, Mike claimed that he had forged it by himself.

After reading Shirley's paperback, Mike decided to accuse Anne of holding the pen - not unwisely, as nobody sane could ever attribute the handwriting to him.

In January 1995, Mike added his late father-in-law, his former friend Tony and even his young daughter Caroline to the list of people in the know or involved somehow in the process of forging the diary.

We had various changes of story from that point, where Mike would revert to his original Devereux provenance whenever it suited him in the moment, restating a belief that the diary was genuine one minute, before carrying on with his forgery claims the next, allocating the various roles to himself or Anne, depending on the questions he was being asked and the effect he wanted to have on his audience. There wasn't a single coherent account that could be relied upon, right up to 1999 at the aptly named Smoke & Stagger [thank you, Keith Skinner], and yet a tiny scrap of paper with an auction date and proof of purchase would have saved Mike years of fannying about trying to maintain some sort of personal control over the diary story.

In his final years, when sobered up and less of a live wire, Mike reverted once more to the Devereux provenance and his stated belief that the diary was genuine. He tried his hand at writing a novel, and sent a chapter to Robert Smith for approval, not to try and show how he could have written the diary - that was a long gone busted flush - but in the forlorn hope of finally getting someone to believe he had it in him to be a writer in his own right.

Think of all the sad people who have auditioned for tv singing or dancing competitions, who couldn't hold a tune in a bucket or had two left feet, and you may get some idea of the mountain Mike had set himself to climb, without any of the God-given equipment.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

Your claim that Mike Barrett was "the world's least well known and most untrained journalist" is surely nothing more than exaggeration. He was a journalist in a nationally distributed magazine published by a major and reputable publisher who had his name in the by-line, sometimes accompanied by the word "EXCLUSIVE". No one is suggesting that he was John Pilger. I really don't know why you feel the need to underplay Barrett's journalism. But it simply didn't matter how big or famous or highly trained he was. It was the mere fact of him having been a journalist and the fact that he kept this secret from Shirley Harrison which is the key point here.

I'm pleased you now agree that this discovery was, in fact "a nasty shock" to the researchers at the time, although you seem to have missed my point that it would have been so much greater a shock had Mike not already claimed to have forged the diary. You also confuse what actually happened (which is irrelevant to the question of Mike's motive for confessing) with what Mike would have been worried in his mind in June 1994 wouldhappen. So the fact that, in your opinion, after June 1994, Mike tried and failed to produce a credible account of how the diary was written isn't relevant to the issue of what motivated Mike to confess in the first place. He could hardly have known that no-one would take his confession seriously, could he? In fact, you must agree that if he was the forger, or one of them, he must have been utterly baffled by the lack of impact his confession had on people like Feldmann, Smith and Harrison. How could he possibly have predicted that?

I suggest that Warren's revelation would and should have been a disaster to people like Harrison, and to Mike himself, in circumstances where the June 1994 confession hadn't been made. They would certainly have needed to deal with it.

When you say to me "if Mike himself had no evidence to prove he was a forger, I'm not sure how any of the researchers were meant to find it", this shows that you've misunderstood what I was saying. What you were replying to was my statement that: "Absent the confession, though, surely it would have led to some very uncomfortable questions for Mike, unless the researchers at the time were completely incompetent or, worse, unwilling to consider any evidence which pointed towards him being the forger." That's got nothing to do with the competence of researchers in finding any evidence (or not), which is an entirely different issue. All I was saying there was that, unless the researchers were incompetent or unwilling to consider evidence pointing towards Mike as the forger, such as his journalism career, they would have asked Mike some difficult questions about why he'd never mentioned to any of them it before. That is surely uncontroversial. And, to repeat, it's not about proving anything, I’m just asking questions. Because, remember, we're only discussing Mike's state of mind in June 1994. He would have expected to be asked these questions. And I suggest he didn't have any answers. Or at least, if he didn't have any answers that would help explain why he gave up the pretence and confessed.

As for the evidence that Mike was extremely agitated by Warren's forthcoming article and how that manifested itself, I already suggested a reason for that. It's the fact that he threatened in writing to sue Warren for defamation by letter dated 13 May 1994. I can't think of anything that demonstrates extreme agitation more than that.

Now that I've given you my source (although I'd already provided it), could you please provide in return your hard evidence that Mike threatened Eddie Lyons with solicitors in 1993?

As for your attempt to demonstrate that Mike changed his mind like the weather, you haven't told me anything I didn't already know other than: "In his final years, when sobered up and less of a live wire, Mike reverted once more to the Devereux provenance and his stated belief that the diary was genuine." Could you provide the source for this please? The latest knowledge I have of Mike saying the diary came from Devereux was 2002/3 when he was expecting money from Shirley Harrison's "American Connection" book. What is the evidence for Mike's position after this date, please?

The rest of your chronology is what I already summed up. Mike first said the diary came from Tony but then, from June 1994 onwards, said the diary was a forgery unless there was the prospect of money to be made from suggesting it might be to be genuine (or perhaps to please Anne which may be the same thing).. I don't see that the fact that he didn't mention the role of his wife or Billy Graham in June 1994 is inconsistent with that claim. The fact that he did later mention them isn't necessarily a change of story. Rather, it augments it.

You keep saying that a tiny scrap of paper could have saved Mike all the trouble, but that assumes that the auction ticket hadn't been destroyed in 1992. Why do you think he would have kept it? If we assume that the ticket had been destroyed in 1992 (or in 1993, along with the other physical evidence of the diary's creation) how do you say Mike could have proved to your or anyone else's satisfaction that he was the forger?

[caz]

According to Robert Smith, in his 2017 book, Eddie Lyons "told me that he had found a book under some floorboards at Battlecrease...". Then a little later he says, "Remember, Lyons told me at The Saddle on 26th June 1993 that he found a book under the floorboards at Battlecrease..." A little bit later in the same paragraph he asks "Had Lyons found "a book" at Battlecrease on 9th March 1992....?"

Three references to what Lyons told him, all of which are "a book", none of which are an "old book".

So Lyons can't be the "witness" who mentioned an old book, if Robert Smith's account is correct, of course.

The only issue I thought I was dealing with was who was the witness who mentioned an "old book". If you want me to comment on what Eddie Lyons said to Robert Smith in June 1993 Caz I'd be happy to have a stab at it but could you first tell me where I can find a copy of Robert Smith's contemporaneous note of his conversation with Eddie? If no such note exists, I'm worried that, writing 14 years later, Robert may have forgotten what Eddie said to him. Memory, as I've said elsewhere, can play tricks on anyone. I'd also like to see exactly what Eddie Lyons said when asked about this meeting. Are you able to direct me to a transcript of any interview in which he was asked this question?

When Eddie was asked about his conversation with Brian Rawes on Friday 17th July 1992, in the drive at Battlecrease, he naturally denied telling Brian he had found anything in the house which he thought could be "important", or had asked what he should do about it, but suggested instead that he may have mentioned to Brian in passing that there were a lot of "old books" in the house - which would be an odd thing to say in isolation, just as Brian was collecting the firm's van and about to reverse back down the drive to go to another job. Brian never actually set foot in the house and had not expressed any interest in it, when Eddie caught him as he was leaving to impart this fascinating snippet of useless information.

I don't 'want' you to comment on anything, Herlock, if you don't have easy access to all the information you think would qualify you to do so. In fact, it would be better for all concerned if you didn't.

Robert Smith's original notes on his stranger than strange encounter with Eddie in the Saddle in June 1993 are Robert Smith's property, and I'm quite sure you would not be too worried if Robert had forgotten what was said during their brief conversation, when writing about it in his book. I wouldn't worry on Robert's behalf anyway, as his memory is arguably better than most and he would have referred to his notes in any case, if not directly quoting Eddie's exact words in his book.

As I think you have already been told, Herlock, I am not at liberty to direct you to any material that has not already been made available here by those in possession of it. But it has been posted on the boards that Eddie has denied on more than one occasion that he ever met Robert Smith or had any conversation with him in the Saddle. It has also been posted that Robert positively identified Eddie from a photograph, as the man introduced to him by Mike Barrett that evening.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear, Caz. If Mike was the forger, he must have been under immense pressure due to the imminent exposure by Nick Warren of him having been a journalist. Indeed, assuming he was the forger, there is a very good chance that he realized that the game was up because he would inevitably be exposed as a liar and a scam artist who must have created the diary. For that reason, he could very well have decided to own it, get ahead of it, and tell the world about how he was a master forger who fooled everyone. That seems to fit perfectly with human behaviour as I understand it.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this point, Herlock. You are making yourself clear; I just don't agree that your argument makes any sense, either logically or from what we know happened following Mike's first attempt to confess to fraud. He'd have known the game was very much not up, because there were no consequences, either from his 'exposure' [ha ha] as the world's least well known and most untrained journalist, or from every subsequent attempt made by himself or anyone else to demonstrate how he 'must have' created the diary. He died without having been exposed as a proven co-conspirator in the diary's creation - even after trying every trick in the book over several years to expose himself [don't titter at the back there, it's not a pretty image]. Nobody who knew the man believed a single word of it. So remind me again - what 'game' did he realise was 'up' back in June 1994, and how did that pan out?

I note that you didn't quote (and respond to) the part of my post which said "And we certainly know that Mike was extremely agitated by Warren's forthcoming article in May 1994, don't we? He even threatened to sue him for libel if he went ahead with publication?" Was that a problem for you to deal with?

No, I just didn't think it merited an answer. Not all your questions do. This isn't Mastermind or the Spanish Inquisition.

Mike threatened people with solicitors like other people frown and walk away. He went down to see Eddie Lyons in Fountains Road in 1993 and threatened him with solicitors if he said he found the diary in Dodd's house. Around the same time, Mike decided to swear an affidavit to the effect that he had been given the diary in good faith by the late Tony Devereux, as he had been claiming since the start, because his ownership was now under threat.

What is your source for Mike being 'extremely agitated' by Warren's forthcoming article? How did this manifest itself? Or was he just miffed by Warren's interference and anti-Mike agenda? He wasn't planning to give Mike or the diary an easy ride, was he?

If the surprising news of Mike having been a journalist didn't come as a complete shock or disaster when it was revealed in July 1994, that can only be because there had been an even bigger shock and disaster of Mike having confessed to having forged the diary.

If you say so. It was no doubt a nasty shock at the time, for those closely involved, but it wasn't a 'disaster' because Mike tried and failed, and tried again to produce a credible account of how and when the diary was written and by whom, and still he failed.

So, of course, the journalism issue paled by comparison. Absent the confession, though, surely it would have led to some very uncomfortable questions for Mike, unless the researchers at the time were completely incompetent or, worse, unwilling to consider any evidence which pointed towards him being the forger.

Look, if Mike himself had no evidence to prove he was a forger, I'm not sure how any of the researchers were meant to find it. These included Melvin Harris, Nick Warren and Stanley Dangar, among other less prominent players, who would each have given their eye teeth at one time to expose Mike as a forger, or co-conspirator, so were they completely incompetent? Mike was even helping them to work up a case against him, with Alan Gray as a hapless middle man, and still they got no lasting joy.

As for Mike allegedly "changing his mind like the weather" I'm well aware that he told two different stories about where the diary came from. One was that he was given it by Tony Devereux, the other that he (and his wife) had forged it. But when saying that a person changes their mind like the weather it implies constant, irrational changes doesn't it? Yes, we can see that when Mike saw an opportunity from making money from the diary he would say he got it from Tony Devereux. But on other occasions - and I would suggest all other occasions - he said it was a forgery. I think it just paints a false picture to suggest he kept changing his mind like the weather as if he couldn't work out what story he liked best.

I hesitate to say that you don't know the half of it, because I will only be accused of being mean to the 'newbie' but - and it's a heck of a big but - you really don't know the half of it.

From March 1992 to June 1994, Mike was adamant that Tony Devereux had given him the diary for being a good friend.

In June 1994, Mike claimed that he had forged it by himself.

After reading Shirley's paperback, Mike decided to accuse Anne of holding the pen - not unwisely, as nobody sane could ever attribute the handwriting to him.

In January 1995, Mike added his late father-in-law, his former friend Tony and even his young daughter Caroline to the list of people in the know or involved somehow in the process of forging the diary.

We had various changes of story from that point, where Mike would revert to his original Devereux provenance whenever it suited him in the moment, restating a belief that the diary was genuine one minute, before carrying on with his forgery claims the next, allocating the various roles to himself or Anne, depending on the questions he was being asked and the effect he wanted to have on his audience. There wasn't a single coherent account that could be relied upon, right up to 1999 at the aptly named Smoke & Stagger [thank you, Keith Skinner], and yet a tiny scrap of paper with an auction date and proof of purchase would have saved Mike years of fannying about trying to maintain some sort of personal control over the diary story.

In his final years, when sobered up and less of a live wire, Mike reverted once more to the Devereux provenance and his stated belief that the diary was genuine. He tried his hand at writing a novel, and sent a chapter to Robert Smith for approval, not to try and show how he could have written the diary - that was a long gone busted flush - but in the forlorn hope of finally getting someone to believe he had it in him to be a writer in his own right.

Think of all the sad people who have auditioned for tv singing or dancing competitions, who couldn't hold a tune in a bucket or had two left feet, and you may get some idea of the mountain Mike had set himself to climb, without any of the God-given equipment.

Love,

Caz
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