New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[caz]

If you've decided to mangle the English language by describing Eddie Lyons as a witness to his own alleged discovery, could you please provide the quote in which Lyons says he found an "old book"?

Towards the end of June 1993, when Eddie agreed to meet Robert Smith and Mike Barrett in the Saddle, he volunteered a story that he had found an old book in Dodd's house, but said he had thrown it in a skip - which wasn't there. It would still have been taken from the house without Dodd's knowledge or permission, but Eddie must have thought the childish lie about the skip would satisfy Robert that he hadn't literally 'stolen' anything and it could not have been the diary in any case.

Perhaps you could explain why Eddie said anything at all. Was he covering his back, or was he an even bigger fantasist than Mike?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Devereux could have "created" the diary.

Along with thousands of other Liverpudlians, Scotty. In theory at least, which is all they've got with the Barretts.

Imagine Mike Barrett seeing a little old lady walking down a quiet street carrying a brown paper parcel. He grabs it from her and runs, and this time nobody sees it happen, so he gets away with it.

Who's the forger now? Is it Mike? Or is it the lady whose husband had recently died, leaving her a load of old books to sort through?

How long's a piece of string?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

You seem to be asking me to tell you what was in Mike Barrett's soul, Caz. I can't do that.

I've read your paragraph about what you refer to as "the journalist argument" carefully and I can't see for one second how or why it's absurd. How are you possibly able to say that Mike felt under "no pressure" to confess as a result of Nick Warren's forthcoming exposé? How do you know what he was feeling at the time? Can you provide some evidence if you say this is the case Caz?

Mike didn't have to 'confess' to anything, therefore he was under no pressure to do so. There is no logic behind the argument that he would have felt obliged to throw himself under the bus because he'd neglected to tell the bus company that he once had a dream about being a train driver.

How could Shirley's reaction to discovering in July 1994 that Mike was a former journalist, absent his confession in June, have been anything other than one of complete shock? How could she have not instantly demanded an explanation for this bombshell from Mike? She had told the world that Barrett was only ever a merchant seaman, chef and scrap metal dealer in her book. How was she going to explain the omission of journalist to the world? It would have been a complete disaster, surely.

But it wasn't, was it? It was neither a 'complete shock' or a 'complete disaster' for Shirley. The only thing that could be described as a 'bombshell' was Mike's claim to have forged the diary himself, but that simply wasn't believable. Shirley went on to write and sell more diary books, safe in the knowledge that Mike's former writing ventures did not amount to evidence that he had faked the diary, with or without his wife.

Of course, Mike's confession in June, followed fast by Anne's new story about where the diary came from - which I assume you think is a complete lie but, curiously, aren't too bothered - changed the entire dynamic but it got Mike out of a hole.

Why do you say I'm not 'too bothered' that the Barretts provably lied about the diary? I'm not keen on liars and I don't seek to defend their lies. While all forgers are liars, all liars are not forgers, and it's an important distinction to keep in mind before we start accusing individuals of more wrongdoing than the evidence allows. It's not so much a matter of justice for those individuals; it's about trying to establish the truth about the diary, so its creation doesn't end up attributed to the wrong person or persons by popular demand, or by the sheer force of a theorist's ego.

I'm not sure what you mean by Anne's new story getting Mike out of a hole. He didn't want to get out of a hole, did he? He went and dug himself a deeper one after Shirley's 1994 paperback came out and he wasn't happy with what she'd revealed about him and Anne. If they had written the diary together, Anne's new story, as told to Feldman in the July, was an open invitation to Mike to drag her down into the hole with him, by proving it. I think you've been paying far too much attention to the illogical arguments on that score.

I'm not convinced, incidentally, that Mike "changed his mind like the weather". If you want to make that point good you'll need to set out some evidence for it.

Then don't be 'convinced'. If you prefer to believe Mike didn't change his mind and his story, to suit his audience and the circumstances, I'm not bothered enough to disabuse you by leading you to the evidence that he did. You probably know all about the most major change, when his affidavit of January 1995 gave a totally different account from the one he swore in April 1993. At least one of them, if not both, contained nothing but lies, and the circumstances in which he made each statement were as different as the statements themselves, providing context and plausible motives for the stories he came up with on each occasion.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

There was a movie deal in the works. William Friedkin was set to direct in 1995 with Anthony Hopkins so it was a real deal. Michael was sabotaging it with "blackmail" or whatever you want to call it.

What's there not to understand?

So you think Anne's concern was ensuring she received the money from the film deal?

[Herlock Sholmes]

That’s Eddy with the Old Book story.

It’s hard to keep up, I know, even with Google.

If you've decided to mangle the English language by describing Eddie Lyons as a witness to his own alleged discovery, could you please provide the quote in which Lyons says he found an "old book"?

[Lombro2]

There was a movie deal in the works. William Friedkin was set to direct in 1995 with Anthony Hopkins so it was a real deal. Michael was sabotaging it with "blackmail" or whatever you want to call it.

What's there not to understand?

[Lombro2]

That’s a witness, of course, that corroborated other witnesses (the only ones that count) even when he’s the accused.

[Lombro2]

That’s Eddy with the Old Book story.

It’s hard to keep up, I know, even with Google.

[Herlock Sholmes]

If Anne would not have put anything of an incriminating nature in her private letters to Mike, then she presumably didn't consider anything she wrote was potentially incriminating, so I'm glad if we have now got that one sorted out. Previously, the very mention of the word 'blackmail' had Barrett theorists all excited that they had found evidence against her.

I think I would have been just a little bit upset at the prospect of my ex circulating an affidavit containing lies about me and accusing me of fraud. I might even have promised to retaliate if he did anything of the sort. Maybe I'm funny that way. But Anne didn't actually need to tell Mike that his affidavit was a pack of lies, because they would both have known it.

I'm still waiting to be told why the Barretts were capable, physically, mentally or psychologically, of creating the diary - by someone who would actually know.

Meanwhile I will continue to presume that they were not - not least because 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. The laws of physics would render the Barretts incapable in that respect.

Love,

Caz
X

I'm not aware of anyone having been excited that evidence had been found against Anne in her letter Caz. I only mentioned it to confirm the date of her divorce. It was you who seemed interested in the content of the letter. Anyway, as I said, it seems a bit odd for her to have been describing Mike's threat to release the affidavit as "blackmail". I'm not sure how you've satisfied yourself that Anne wouldn't have put anything incriminating into her private letters with Mike though. She might have been careful not to say anything by which she openly admitted her role in the forgery (if she did indeed have a role in the forgery of course) but that doesn't mean she wouldn't have written something incriminating. Not everyone is a master criminal incapable of slipping up.

It's still odd to me that Anne didn't say something like "what you're proposing is ridiculous because it's all lies". The letter doesn't prove anything but it's still odd in my opinion, and consistent with Anne being one of the forgers.

To repeat, I've never claimed that the Barretts were capable of forging the diary. I don't know their capabilities. But I thought you were claiming they were incapable. Have I got that wrong?

What Battlecrease "witness" has referred to the diary as an "old book", by the way? Could you identify who you are talking about and what they claim to have witnessed please?

[Herlock Sholmes]

You might have had a point if only Mike had not made such a thorough mess of that affidavit, regarding dates, details and order of events. Anne wasn't the heavy drinker, so if she had been involved in forging the diary with Mike, she'd have known precisely which claims were outright lies, or contained provable errors, that collectively would have rendered his account impossible.



One more time - I don't need to do that. The onus is on you to prove he was involved in creating the diary, if that's what you have actually been led to believe - not by any real evidence, which doesn't exist, but by the arguments you have read.



Ah, that makes sense. Why do you suppose the newspapers were not biting again in January 1995? Was it because Mike's forgery claims from the previous June were immediately retracted on his behalf by his solicitor? Or perhaps because they were now hearing a complete change of story from Mike's new spokesperson, Alan Gray, and they didn't want to touch this one with a barge pole, not least because of the libel implications?

Love,

Caz
X

I’m sorry Caz, but there's no onus on me to say that Mike Barrett was involved in creating the diary because I'm not saying this. I'm saying I don't know of any reason why he couldn't have done it. I thought you, on the other hand, are positively saying that he definitely didn't do it. So surely the onus is on you to explain why not.

I don't really understand your point about the affidavit. Sure, if there were mistakes in it Anne would have realized that immediately but, 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? After all, didn't she get extremely upset and defensive when Mike said in June 1994 that he had created the diary, without even mentioning Anne? Didn't she regard his confession as an attack on her personally even though she hadn't been mentioned in it?

In any case, what Anne did or did not think when reading the affidavit isn't the relevant point here. Surely, the relevant point is what was in Mike's mind at the time. He, presumably, wouldn't have known about the mistakes in the affidavit. What I'm saying is that if the whole thing was a tissue of lies, he would have known that and Anne would have known that and he would have known that Anne knew that, which makes his attempt to use the affidavit for the purposes of blackmail very odd. You surely must agree with that at least?

[caz]

I think we both agree that once Mike swore his affidavit he put it through Anne's letterbox, and then did nothing else with it.

What I'm saying, however, is that this doesn't necessarily tell us why he agreed to do the affidavit in the first place.

But even if showing it to Anne was prominent in his mind, and he was hell bent on revenge for Anne wanting to divorce him, it doesn't necessarily mean that he had a motive to lie about having done the forgery with Anne. To my mind, the fact that he only sent it to Anne as a form of blackmail is more consistent with Anne having been involved the forgery.

You might have had a point if only Mike had not made such a thorough mess of that affidavit, regarding dates, details and order of events. Anne wasn't the heavy drinker, so if she had been involved in forging the diary with Mike, she'd have known precisely which claims were outright lies, or contained provable errors, that collectively would have rendered his account impossible.

I appreciate that you disagree with me but that's because you don't think that Mike was involved in the forgery. What you're not giving me are reasons why what I'm saying can't be true.

One more time - I don't need to do that. The onus is on you to prove he was involved in creating the diary, if that's what you have actually been led to believe - not by any real evidence, which doesn't exist, but by the arguments you have read.

Just to add that my source for the newspapers not being sufficiently interested in Mike's story is in the Alan Gray tapes where Gray was obviously trying to get newspapers interested in the story but none of them were biting. I'm not saying that they were offered the affidavit, only that if they weren't interested in the story in the first place, the affidavit, which could only ever have been supporting evidence for the story, was of no practical use for that purpose

Ah, that makes sense. Why do you suppose the newspapers were not biting again in January 1995? Was it because Mike's forgery claims from the previous June were immediately retracted on his behalf by his solicitor? Or perhaps because they were now hearing a complete change of story from Mike's new spokesperson, Alan Gray, and they didn't want to touch this one with a barge pole, not least because of the libel implications?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I wasn't putting Anne's letter forward as evidence of anything relating to the affidavit, Caz.

Can I remind you how this discussion started? I only mentioned the letter (in #96) because it shows that the Barretts weren't yet divorced as at February 1st, 1995. You then raised a question (in #106) about what else was in the letter, so I told you what else was in the letter.

The good thing is that I think we both agree that Mike had said to Anne something along the lines of "Speak to me or else I'll publicize this affidavit". For me, that's kind of odd if the entire story was untrue and Mike knows that Anne knows it's all untrue. It's also odd to my mind that Anne described it as blackmail and seemed to be upset by the prospect of Mike circulating the affidavit to the point where she threatened to retaliate. But, hey ho, people do odd things. At the very least, though, Mike's threat and Anne's response is consistent with them both being involved in the forgery. And Anne never says in her letter to Mike that his affidavit is a pack of lies, which, frankly, I would have expected her to do if that was the case.

So, anyway, I'm still waiting to be told why the Barretts weren't capable of doing the forgery

If Anne would not have put anything of an incriminating nature in her private letters to Mike, then she presumably didn't consider anything she wrote was potentially incriminating, so I'm glad if we have now got that one sorted out. Previously, the very mention of the word 'blackmail' had Barrett theorists all excited that they had found evidence against her.

I think I would have been just a little bit upset at the prospect of my ex circulating an affidavit containing lies about me and accusing me of fraud. I might even have promised to retaliate if he did anything of the sort. Maybe I'm funny that way. But Anne didn't actually need to tell Mike that his affidavit was a pack of lies, because they would both have known it.

I'm still waiting to be told why the Barretts were capable, physically, mentally or psychologically, of creating the diary - by someone who would actually know.

Meanwhile I will continue to presume that they were not - not least because 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. The laws of physics would render the Barretts incapable in that respect.

Love,

Caz
X

[Lombro2]

James Maybrick could have created the diary.

In which case, we’d all look foolish in front of the whole, wide, World Wide Web!

[Scott Nelson]

Devereux could have "created" the diary.

[John Wheat]

More and more ridiculous as one of your fellow Barrett Believers tries to express your shared belief.

Ridiculous post the Barretts created the diary.