New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[Herlock Sholmes]

Who is Alan Rigby? By coincidence, IIRC, David Barrat made the identical mistake over the name of the poor chap.

I don't know how many times this has been posted, Herlock, but the evidence tells us that the first occasion, since being taken on by Colin Rhodes in late 1991, that Eddie could have been free to pop into his local, the Saddle, on a Monday afternoon, was on - er - bear with me, I have the date on the tip of my tongue - ah yes, 9th March 1992. He was only helping out in Paul Dodd's house that morning on a casual basis with his mate Jim Bowling, so Dodd wasn't being charged by the hour for their labour - just the hours worked by the main man, Arthur, and an apprentice, JC, who did two hours. Mike Barrett would have been in the Saddle as usual, but this was not a usual day for Eddie, who was living very close to the pub and might have fancied a pint after knocking off for the day, in which case it would have been a chance meeting, with no need for the two men to have met before. Mike was everyone's friend and nobody's, and Eddie would have been a new face with a fresh pair of ears to bend. If this stranger had Jack the Ripper's diary with him, Mike's curiosity would have known no bounds. Collecting Caroline from the school just across the road at 3.15, they'd have been home before 3.45 - with or without the diary - with time for Mike to make a couple of phone calls. Tomorrow was another day.

There can be no rigid Battlecrease 'theory' until the pieces of the jigsaw all fit together perfectly to form a complete picture - as few gaps as humanly possible, and no pieces forced in where they don't belong. If and when that happens it won't be a theory any more. Any theory needs to be reasonably flexible and regularly tested, because by definition it is not yet a fully fledged truth and there will be more to learn. If a theory becomes fixed in the mind, where no new evidence in the world can penetrate and force a rethink, it will stagnate and forever be just an article of faith. That's clearly not the case with RJ Palmer's GBH - his Great Barrett Hoax conspiracy theory. His approach is flexible enough to allow for different 'creation' scenarios, playing with the individual roles that he thinks Anne and Mike may have played in the days, months and even years before the diary was seen in London on 13th April 1992. He may be fixed on Anne, and what he believes she could tell us, but then I'm still drawn to Eddie, and what was behind his strange behaviour if he knew nothing at all.

Love,

Caz
X

So what time of day was the visit with the diary to Liverpool University? Or did that not happen?

And what's the evidence to support your claim that Eddie was "only helping out that morning on a casual basis with his mate Jim Bowling"? How do we know what he was doing that morning?