The Maybrick Thread (For All Things Maybrick)

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

You were expecting more than I'd already quoted to you from that article yesterday in my post #49? More than was already reproduced on Orsam's site as far back as November 2023?

You have, of course, missed out the part where the Devereux family said that, as a result of their understanding that he was a journalist who had contributed features to magazines, they were "surprised to find his publishers describing him as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke', scalesman at a firm of scrap-metal merchants".

I'm not responsible for you paying £9.99, but you are, as usual, missing the importance of what was happening in May 1994 when Mike read the draft of the article.

The first thing is that he would known for sure that he was going to face questioning from Shirley, Doreen and others following publication. Is it true that you're a journalist who has contributed features to magazines? That is question number one. A bit tricky already, isn't it?

Either he lies, which is going to be immediately found out, or he tells the truth.

Even if he just tells a part of the truth, as he did to Scotland Yard, the next question is going to be: why have you never told us this before?

If he doesn't mention Celebrity and Chat, he must know that one of the many investigators is going to find out about it. At the very least it would be a huge risk to lie.

He's caught in a trap. As of late June, the clock is ticking towards the inevitable, imminent publication and exposure of his secret past.

If you can't see this, Ike, you've really hit a flat earth type of denial of reality.

[rjpalmer]

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?

There's a far more interesting companion question that you've failed to ask.

If it was no big deal that Barrett owned a word processor, then why did Barrett anticipate that the police would ask him about it?

Because--from what Keith has told us--anticipate it he did.

Why did the word processor concern Barrett to that point that---long before Scotland Yard even knocked on his door in Goldie Street---Barrett brought the matter up with Paul Feldman (of all people!)---or Feldman brought the matter up with him---and the two men hatched a strategy for dealing with DS Thomson's noisy question should it arise?


It's a pity that Keith, taking pity on Feldman's contrition, didn't probe the matter further. My own mental wheels would have been spinning at Feldman's 'crass' admission, wondering if there was anything else he had failed to mention to his research team.

RP

[rjpalmer]

with DS Thomson's noisy question should it arise?

My apologies. DS Thomas.