The Maybrick Thread (For All Things Maybrick)

[rjpalmer]

This is a really good example of how facts can be twisted to suit an argument. What Paul Feldman advised Mike Barrett not to do and what Keith Skinner believed Mike Barrett had intentionally avoided mentioning have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what Mike Barrett said or did not say during his interview with DS Thomas.

Hi Ike,

Is it possible that this a really good example of you jumping to a wrong conclusion?

Why do you assume that Keith was referring to Barret's witness statement?

Why would Keith ask Feldman out-of-the-blue why Barrett denied owning a word processor unless he had positive information that this had happened?

How does that make sense?

Couldn't it have been something Barrett had said while be interviewed by Scotland Yard rather than something that had not appeared in his witness statement?

But I agree--why guess? Why not ask Keith for clarification?

Hasta la vista, baby.

[rjpalmer]

I don't see how he could have known either way and may have simply been relying on a verbal report afterwards from Barrett himself.

Why couldn't it have come from DS Thomas?

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

Is it possible that this a really good example of you jumping to a wrong conclusion?

Why do you assume that Keith was referring to Barret's witness statement?

Why would Keith ask Feldman out-of-the-blue why Barrett denied owning a word processor unless he had positive information that this had happened?

How does that make sense?

Couldn't it have been something Barrett had said while be interviewed by Scotland Yard rather than something that had not appeared in his witness statement?

But I agree--why guess? Why not ask Keith for clarification?

Hasta la vista, baby.

A wrong conclusion? I believe I am right in saying that neither Paul nor Keith were present when Barrett meet with DS Thomas so I am of the opinion that Barrett must have reported his denial which - at the time - would have been rightly taken as truthful. Keith wrote his post in 2018 when we all knew long since what Barrett’s reliability was like so maybe he did have solid documentary evidence to support it or else it has not occurred to him in the moment of typing that he was reporting hearsay.

Keith bring Keith, he’ll soon clarify the truth of the matter for me.

We cannot rely on the truthfulness of Mike Barrett, I think we can all agree with that.

[Iconoclast]

Why couldn't it have come from DS Thomas?

We’ll soon find out.

[rjpalmer]

While we wait, here are some little-known photographs of Florence Maybrick and her mother, the Baroness.

[Iconoclast]

My Dear Readers,

If there is one thing that recent exchanges have shown it is that we must always:

1) Aim to establish the truth-basis of any claim;
2) Avoid the temptation to draw unreasonable or patently-skewed inferences from events in order to give the illusion that there is evidence to support our views.

What may seem 'obvious' to you may not be obvious to someone else. 'Obvious' needs to be tautologous the moment the actual agreed-upon evidence has been provided. What may seem well-established to you may turn out to be ambiguous, unproven, or just plain wrong.

If we can do the first and avoid the second, the fog will lift considerably and we can possibly start to see what inferences are reasonable to draw rather than simply convenient to draw.

I do not believe for one moment that Mike Barrett had anything whatsoever to do with the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook. I say this because there is no evidence to support it. Yes, he was the first to produce it (in London on April 13, 1992) and - yes - he later claimed he had created it as part of a hoax designed to help him pay his crippling mortgage. The first claim we can reasonably accept as true: no-one has ever come forward and claimed that they had seen that specific document prior to April 13, 1992. The second claim we cannot reasonably accept as true: Mike Barrett proved to be a chronic liar and thereby sacrificed his right to be taken at face value as an honourable person.

And that's where we are with Barrett. And I'm absolutely done with Barrett. In my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 (no hope, by the way), I have to spend half the document talking about Mike Barrett. And here on the Casebook, I have to keep reminding everyone that there is zero evidence that Mike Barrett had any involvement whatsoever in the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook.

I fully understand that those who - not unreasonably - have the gravest concerns regarding the authenticity of the scrapbook would home in on Barrett. I imagine I might be tempted to do the same because he's a very easy foil to fall back on in the rather stark absence of any other plausible candidates for a hoax.

I don't believe in the Cottingley Fairies and I like to think I am not naive enough to fall for such hoaxes. I am strongly convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire on John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and therefore I am strongly drawn to the possibility that he was killed as part of a conspiracy. And I genuinely believe that the Maybrick scrapbook is authentic. I - perhaps as much as anyone - can articulate the reasons we should rightly have for not believing this, but I believe that there is sufficient reason to keep digging for now. The reliance on Mike Barrett being the creator of a scam gives me hope because he can be so easily seen through. A stronger candidate for a hoax would possibly tilt my sails in another direction altogether, but in the absence of a credible case against Barrett, I retain my confidence in Maybrick.

I don't want to talk about Barrett any more than I already do in SocPill so I'm going to attempt to ignore him until such time as the evidence is overwhelming that he created the text of the Maybrick scrapbook and had that text written-up into the document itself. This will mean that I have to bite my tongue many times when his name comes up and someone says it's 'obvious' that this is true and that is true when it is no more than convenient conjecture based upon a need to have someone to fall back on in the absence of a proven hoaxer. It won't be easy, but I am done with Barrett so let's see how I get on.

PS I will seek to finish the Barrett denial of his word processor discussion and then he and I will attempt a trial separation and I can get on with SocPill with fewer tedious interruptions.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

As Roger has already pointed out, it's not a case of Mike "failing to mention to Bonesy of the Yard" that he owned a word processor. It's about what Keith Skinner described as Mike's "denial to the police, in October 1993, that he owned a word processor". Can you not read anything properly, Ike?

In Conclusion

I think it was perfectly reasonable of me to challenge the evidence for the claim that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor.

Now that I have, Keith Skinner - with his usual prodigious memory for all things Maybrick - has pointed me in the direction of Shirley Harrison's 1998 paperback, The Diary of Jack the Ripper, pages 259 to 260, in which Shirley wrote:

"Anne has since described that day as the worst in her life. She prepared refreshments and hardly said a word while Detective Sergeant Thomas grilled Michael who kept asking for beer. In the middle of it all Anne's father , Billy Graham, turned up and Michael asked Detective Sergeant Thomas to pretend he was the insurance man rather than admit his true identity. Among other things Michael denied that he had a word processor."

So Keith got it from Shirley who had got it from Anne Barrett. I can't see any obvious reason for why Anne would lie about Mike denying the word processor so I have to accept that he did deny it. Of course, we know why he did - Paul Feldman gave him the rather poor advice that he should deny it if asked which Barrett appears to have duly done. I'm personally struggling to see what the link is between a man having an Amstrad word processor in 1992 and an old book with a handwritten confession in; but what I do know is that Barrett's stupid denial gave Kenneth Rendell the opportunity to make a huge drama of the 'sinister development' that a word processor had been found with a typescript of the diary contents on one of its discs.

Mike Barrett, the gift that just keeps giving. One of life's born fools.

"Enough" [thank you, Richard Curtis].

[Herlock Sholmes]

My Dear Readers,

If there is one thing that recent exchanges have shown it is that we must always:

1) Aim to establish the truth-basis of any claim;
2) Avoid the temptation to draw unreasonable or patently-skewed inferences from events in order to give the illusion that there is evidence to support our views.

What may seem 'obvious' to you may not be obvious to someone else. 'Obvious' needs to be tautologous the moment the actual agreed-upon evidence has been provided. What may seem well-established to you may turn out to be ambiguous, unproven, or just plain wrong.

If we can do the first and avoid the second, the fog will lift considerably and we can possibly start to see what inferences are reasonable to draw rather than simply convenient to draw.

I do not believe for one moment that Mike Barrett had anything whatsoever to do with the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook. I say this because there is no evidence to support it. Yes, he was the first to produce it (in London on April 13, 1992) and - yes - he later claimed he had created it as part of a hoax designed to help him pay his crippling mortgage. The first claim we can reasonably accept as true: no-one has ever come forward and claimed that they had seen that specific document prior to April 13, 1992. The second claim we cannot reasonably accept as true: Mike Barrett proved to be a chronic liar and thereby sacrificed his right to be taken at face value as an honourable person.

And that's where we are with Barrett. And I'm absolutely done with Barrett. In my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 (no hope, by the way), I have to spend half the document talking about Mike Barrett. And here on the Casebook, I have to keep reminding everyone that there is zero evidence that Mike Barrett had any involvement whatsoever in the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook.

I fully understand that those who - not unreasonably - have the gravest concerns regarding the authenticity of the scrapbook would home in on Barrett. I imagine I might be tempted to do the same because he's a very easy foil to fall back on in the rather stark absence of any other plausible candidates for a hoax.

I don't believe in the Cottingley Fairies and I like to think I am not naive enough to fall for such hoaxes. I am strongly convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire on John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and therefore I am strongly drawn to the possibility that he was killed as part of a conspiracy. And I genuinely believe that the Maybrick scrapbook is authentic. I - perhaps as much as anyone - can articulate the reasons we should rightly have for not believing this, but I believe that there is sufficient reason to keep digging for now. The reliance on Mike Barrett being the creator of a scam gives me hope because he can be so easily seen through. A stronger candidate for a hoax would possibly tilt my sails in another direction altogether, but in the absence of a credible case against Barrett, I retain my confidence in Maybrick.

I don't want to talk about Barrett any more than I already do in SocPill so I'm going to attempt to ignore him until such time as the evidence is overwhelming that he created the text of the Maybrick scrapbook and had that text written-up into the document itself. This will mean that I have to bite my tongue many times when his name comes up and someone says it's 'obvious' that this is true and that is true when it is no more than convenient conjecture based upon a need to have someone to fall back on in the absence of a proven hoaxer. It won't be easy, but I am done with Barrett so let's see how I get on.

PS I will seek to finish the Barrett denial of his word processor discussion and then he and I will attempt a trial separation and I can get on with SocPill with fewer tedious interruptions.

Ike

Can I suggest that the problem here, Ike, is your tendency to deny the obvious. Michael Barrett was undoubtedly working as a journalist between 1986 and 1988 but you don't like this because it offends your image of Barrett as a gibbering idiot who could not have written the diary so you literally attempt deny reality.

It also doesn't help when you say things are "evident" which are not supported by evidence. I'm thinking of your disastrous and now disproven claim that "Evidently, Barrett didn't think of himself as a journalist" for which there is no evidence at all and for which the actual evidence flatly contradicts your claim.

[Herlock Sholmes]

In Conclusion

I think it was perfectly reasonable of me to challenge the evidence for the claim that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor.

Now that I have, Keith Skinner - with his usual prodigious memory for all things Maybrick - has pointed me in the direction of Shirley Harrison's 1998 paperback, The Diary of Jack the Ripper, pages 259 to 260, in which Shirley wrote:

"Anne has since described that day as the worst in her life. She prepared refreshments and hardly said a word while Detective Sergeant Thomas grilled Michael who kept asking for beer. In the middle of it all Anne's father , Billy Graham, turned up and Michael asked Detective Sergeant Thomas to pretend he was the insurance man rather than admit his true identity. Among other things Michael denied that he had a word processor."

So Keith got it from Shirley who had got it from Anne Barrett. I can't see any obvious reason for why Anne would lie about Mike denying the word processor so I have to accept that he did deny it. Of course, we know why he did - Paul Feldman gave him the rather poor advice that he should deny it if asked which Barrett appears to have duly done. I'm personally struggling to see what the link is between a man having an Amstrad word processor in 1992 and an old book with a handwritten confession in; but what I do know is that Barrett's stupid denial gave Kenneth Rendell the opportunity to make a huge drama of the 'sinister development' that a word processor had been found with a typescript of the diary contents on one of its discs.

Mike Barrett, the gift that just keeps giving. One of life's born fools.

"Enough" [thank you, Richard Curtis].

This is a classic attempt by you to deny reality and to re-shape it into something more comforting.

You did not challenge the evidence for the claim that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor. What happened is that you hadn't understood that Mike Barrett had denied to DS Thomas that he owned a word processor. That's because you hadn't read Keith's words properly.

You thought that the issue was that Mike Barrett simply hadn't mentioned owning a word processor. Hence you asked:

"What did he have to fear and why would he feel the need to mention his word processor? Was he even asked if he had one?"

That's not challenging the evidence. It's not understanding it.

My point is that Mike obviously wasn't being candid with Scotland Yard in October 1993. I would suggest that one thing he knew when speaking to them is that they had already spoken to Devereux's family. Either Bonesy told him that the Devereux family believed he was a journalist or he feared they would have said this because this is what he'd told Devereux to whom he'd also mentioned that he'd had articles published in a magazine. But I reckon he'd not specifically mentioned the magazine titles, Celebrity and Chat, to Devereux so he felt able to twist the truth when speaking to the police by saying that he'd only ever had articles published in a children's magazine. He got away with it then (although I can't help wondering what Anne was thinking when she heard him say this, knowing it wasn't true, or why she didn't report this lie to Keith Skinner) but he surely knew it would be a different matter after his journalism was publicly exposed in Ripperana by Nick Warren in the summer of 1994.

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Herlock Sholmes;n853169]

Can I suggest that the problem here, Ike, is your tendency to deny the obvious. Michael Barrett was undoubtedly working as a journalist between 1986 and 1988 but you don't like this because it offends your image of Barrett as a gibbering idiot who could not have written the diary so you literally attempt deny reality.

It also doesn't help when you say things are "evident" which are not supported by evidence. I'm thinking of your disastrous and now disproven claim that "Evidently, Barrett didn't think of himself as a journalist" for which there is no evidence at all and for which the actual evidence flatly contradicts your claim.
[/QUOTE

Hi Herlock

The points are that Mike Barrett was a journalist at one point. That he was certainly not a gibbering idiot and that there is nothing to suggest that between them Mike and Anne could not have written the diary. It's just that some don't like this. Because it might suggest something they don't like.

Cheers John

[rjpalmer]

Now that I have, Keith Skinner - with his usual prodigious memory for all things Maybrick - has pointed me in the direction of Shirley Harrison's 1998 paperback, The Diary of Jack the Ripper, pages 259 to 260, in which Shirley wrote

Hi Ike,

Please read the following carefully.

No offense meant, but had Keith Skinner instead pointed you in the direction of Shirley Harrison's first paperback edition, you would have found the following remarkable statement on page 272:

"The facts are this. The police did not have a warrant. Mike Barrett invited them to his house and co-operated in every way. The WPC was hardly "found." It was on the table in the dining room where he had transcribed the diary with the help of his wife, in order to make it easy to read." (page 272)

On the table in the dining room?

I pointed out this discrepancy to Caroline Brown nearly a quarter of a century ago after she wrote:

"I have to say that I do think Mike would have got rid of the wp, or anything connected with it, if he truly knew any of it to be damning. The fact that he and Anne made no secret of making the transcript, and handed it over with the diary, together with the fact that the wp was there, as bold as brass, when the police came to investigate, subsequently clearing Robert Smith of fraud, without even considering charges against Mike..."

I then pointed Caroline to the very passage that Keith has now pointed you.

What do we make of this jarring contradiction in Harrison's two paperback editions?

Since Shirley was not present at Scotland Yard's interrogation, her belief that the word processor had been "on the table in the dining room" could have only come from Barrett. Harrison had been deceived, not only by Mike, but by Feldman who was working his magic from behind the scenes.

Still clinging tenaciously to Barrett's honesty, Harrison also wrote (in the 1998 paperback) that "[Mike Barrett's] use of a word processor was, in any case, in the first edition of my book."

Have you had a chance yet to refer to page 7 of Harrison's first, hardback edition?

Isn't there something rather 'funny' or odd about what it states?


RP

[Iconoclast]

On the table in the dining room? ... What do we make of this jarring contradiction in Harrison's two paperback editions?

I don't really make anything of them. We know so very little about the truth of the matter that it is impossible to comment. My own 1989 Amstrad PCW9512 came with a cover for the main unit and one for the printer but both of these were fairly translucent depending upon how the light fell. Barrett had an earlier Amstrad model for which I have no idea if there was a cover. Can we exclude the possibility that the WP was indeed on the table with its cover on (if it had one) and DS Thomas had one of those dancing gorilla moments? I don't know. My gut instinct would say that Anne was telling the truth and Mike was asked the question about whether he had a WP and that therefore Mike must have said to someone that his WP was there on the table all along when in fact it wasn't. How can we possibly know, though, what really happened?

What I would ask is, why would DS Thomas (or his colleague if he was also there) ask Mike Barrett if he had a word processor? What would be the point? The Maybrick scrapbook was handwritten into a very old book. What would it matter whether Mike had a word processor or not? DS Thomas might equally well have asked Mike whether he owned any notebooks or scraps of paper (if he was looking for evidence of a premeditated text from which the scrapbook text was copied-out). Perhaps DS Thomas was seeking clues as to whether Mike was deliberately suppressing an unmentioned previous career as a journalist whilst he was on invalidity benefit? It feels like a stretch, but perhaps his detective radar was blaring out that here was a skilful man of letters and therefore perhaps he had a word processor hidden away somewhere on which he might have composed a hoaxed text before he or someone else hand wrote it into the scrapbook. It's possible, I guess. But - still - what would be especially telling about a word processor that a notebook or scraps of paper could not have equally told?

I'm fascinated to know why it matters. I appreciate that Kenneth Rendell made a huge drama out of it live on a US radio station but that was just to utterly and quite dishonourably muddy the waters for Shirley Harrison - the cheapest possible shot anyone could have made given that a man in 1992 in the UK having an Amstrad word processor was truly no great breaking news event. The fact that this particular guy also had an old Victorian scrapbook seems utterly irrelevant to me other than to explain why a typescript of the scrapbook's contents had apparently been found on one of the discs which was still no great shakes given how freely Barrett had provided a print-out of that typescript (or some version of it) to Doreen Montgomery well over a year earlier. If the big deal is that it shows Mike to be a liar then we have wasted a great deal more quality SocPill time these past few days. Imagine Bonesy was trying to get to the bottom of whether a local thug had written a threatening letter to an elderly neighbour. Would it have occurred to anyone at all to ask the thug whether he had a word processor? Why would the question ever come up for Barrett to deny it? I don't know, but it evidently must have done.

Since Shirley was not present at Scotland Yard's interrogation, her belief that the word processor had been "on the table in the dining room" could have only come from Barrett. Harrison had been deceived, not only by Mike, but by Feldman who was working his magic from behind the scenes.

I'm not sure what magic you feel Feldman was working but the news that Shirley was being deceived by Mike Barrett has not shaken any earth around me and I can't imagine why it would shake the earth around anyone else. He was a liar. That's what liars do. As a mental terrorist, he positively revelled in it, it would appear (unless he was just very keen to practice it in order to perfect his skills).

Still clinging tenaciously to Barrett's honesty, Harrison also wrote (in the 1998 paperback) that "[Mike Barrett's] use of a word processor was, in any case, in the first edition of my book."

Still the earth around me remains apparently very solid indeed.

Have you had a chance yet to refer to page 7 of Harrison's first, hardback edition? Isn't there something rather 'funny' or odd about what it states?

I've read it but I can't see anything 'funny' or odd about it, no. Perhaps you would enlighten me?

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

[QUOTE=John Wheat;n853171]

Can I suggest that the problem here, Ike, is your tendency to deny the obvious. Michael Barrett was undoubtedly working as a journalist between 1986 and 1988 but you don't like this because it offends your image of Barrett as a gibbering idiot who could not have written the diary so you literally attempt deny reality.

It also doesn't help when you say things are "evident" which are not supported by evidence. I'm thinking of your disastrous and now disproven claim that "Evidently, Barrett didn't think of himself as a journalist" for which there is no evidence at all and for which the actual evidence flatly contradicts your claim.
[/QUOTE

Hi Herlock

The points are that Mike Barrett was a journalist at one point. That he was certainly not a gibbering idiot and that there is nothing to suggest that between them Mike and Anne could not have written the diary. It's just that some don't like this. Because it might suggest something they don't like.

Cheers John

Hi John,

Those are indeed the points. Ike's full gymnastic routine has been on display in this thread, with contortions that have never been seen before.

Q. When is a journalist not a journalist? A. When he's a journalist by the name of Michael Barrett, apparently.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don't really make anything of them. We know so very little about the truth of the matter that it is impossible to comment. My own 1989 Amstrad PCW9512 came with a cover for the main unit and one for the printer but both of these were fairly translucent depending upon how the light fell. Barrett had an earlier Amstrad model for which I have no idea if there was a cover. Can we exclude the possibility that the WP was indeed on the table with its cover on (if it had one) and DS Thomas had one of those dancing gorilla moments? I don't know. My gut instinct would say that Anne was telling the truth and Mike was asked the question about whether he had a WP and that therefore Mike must have said to someone that his WP was there on the table all along when in fact it wasn't. How can we possibly know, though, what really happened?

What I would ask is, why would DS Thomas (or his colleague if he was also there) ask Mike Barrett if he had a word processor? What would be the point? The Maybrick scrapbook was handwritten into a very old book. What would it matter whether Mike had a word processor or not? DS Thomas might equally well have asked Mike whether he owned any notebooks or scraps of paper (if he was looking for evidence of a premeditated text from which the scrapbook text was copied-out). Perhaps DS Thomas was seeking clues as to whether Mike was deliberately suppressing an unmentioned previous career as a journalist whilst he was on invalidity benefit? It feels like a stretch, but perhaps his detective radar was blaring out that here was a skilful man of letters and therefore perhaps he had a word processor hidden away somewhere on which he might have composed a hoaxed text before he or someone else hand wrote it into the scrapbook. It's possible, I guess. But - still - what would be especially telling about a word processor that a notebook or scraps of paper could not have equally told?

I'm fascinated to know why it matters. I appreciate that Kenneth Rendell made a huge drama out of it live on a US radio station but that was just to utterly and quite dishonourably muddy the waters for Shirley Harrison - the cheapest possible shot anyone could have made given that a man in 1992 in the UK having an Amstrad word processor was truly no great breaking news event. The fact that this particular guy also had an old Victorian scrapbook seems utterly irrelevant to me other than to explain why a typescript of the scrapbook's contents had apparently been found on one of the discs which was still no great shakes given how freely Barrett had provided a print-out of that typescript (or some version of it) to Doreen Montgomery well over a year earlier. If the big deal is that it shows Mike to be a liar then we have wasted a great deal more quality SocPill time these past few days. Imagine Bonesy was trying to get to the bottom of whether a local thug had written a threatening letter to an elderly neighbour. Would it have occurred to anyone at all to ask the thug whether he had a word processor? Why would the question ever come up for Barrett to deny it? I don't know, but it evidently must have done.



I'm not sure what magic you feel Feldman was working but the news that Shirley was being deceived by Mike Barrett has not shaken any earth around me and I can't imagine why it would shake the earth around anyone else. He was a liar. That's what liars do. As a mental terrorist, he positively revelled in it, it would appear (unless he was just very keen to practice it in order to perfect his skills).



Still the earth around me remains apparently very solid indeed.



I've read it but I can't see anything 'funny' or odd about it, no. Perhaps you would enlighten me?

Ike

Hi Ike,

Might I suggest that it would have been quite rare in 1992 for an unemployed working class man in Liverpool to own a word processor. Why would he have needed it?

If Bonesy had heard that Mike owned one, might that not have piqued his interest, leading him to ask the question?

Harrison's claim that that it was on the table in the dining room might have been no more than her own experience of where it usually was and where she expected it to be when the police were there. Perhaps Mike had hidden away in advance of Bonesy's arrival.

[Iconoclast]

Mike Barrett freely admitted that he submitted pieces to magazines, encouraged to do so by writing circles he had signed up to. If you want to call that professional journalism, career journalism, or just plain journalism, that's your call. It is clear that it is necessarily so in your mind in order to provide a balwark to support your key argument - that his sleepless terrors and worst fears were all coalescing in the form of Nick Warren making the same exaggerated claim that you are making in July 1994 thereby making it imperative that Mike got in there first, which basically means he simply brought forward the inevitable by a month (in your world) and denying himself any possibility of a reprieve by speaking out. I've ordered the July 9, 1994 Ripperana to see exactly what was said (which I assume Warren must have told him was coming), but it must have sent the horrors of hell down Mike's spine daily: "Oh God, they've found out that I submitted some very average interviews to some very average gossip rags some many years ago as part of a writing course I'd paid for so it's absolutely game up on my extraordinary shift to world's greatest forger and I may as well confess all now".

Well, that was quick - my July 1994 copy of Ripperana arrived this afternoon. We know that Mike had freely admitted in his Scotland Yard interview way back in October 1993 that he wrote pieces for Look-In back in the day, but apparently he was suffering the absolute horrors of hell to such an intense degree at the thought of being exposed by Nick Warren as a journalist (therefore potential hoaxer) in June 1994 - ahead of the July 1994 quarterly edition of Warren's Ripperana - that he simply caved-in under the seismic pressure he was enduring and confessed all to Harold Brough of the Liverpool Post.

The following is the sum of the devastating expose of Barrett's professional career as a journalist which Warren wrote (bear in mind that Warren had sent this to Barrett in advance of publication to give him the opportunity to respond):

Mr. Devereux understood that Barrett was a journalist (he had certainly contributed features to magazines) ...

I've got to be honest, I was expecting slightly more than this for my £9.99 (including first-class post), especially given the rabid build-up it had been given in terms of it being the motivation Barrett needed to 'fess up and face the music. I don't know about anyone else, but I was certainly trembling as I read what I expected to be Warren's relentless and eviserating condemnation of what was so clearly a very guilty person, though in the end I had to conclude that it had not been particularly damning at all. What do you think, dear readers?

Are you thinking, 'Lord, how Mike Barrett must have lost his mind in panic and terror at the thought that such a claim was going to be revealed to the world which he had so far fooled so brilliantly: 'he had certainly contributed features to magazines''.

Or are you thinking, 'Talk about overplaying your hand to try to draw a conclusion which would rather conveniently work for your far-fetched and over-stretched fantasy regarding Mike Barrett's hoaxing powers"?

Ike