On The Trail Of The Forgers

[caz]

Please, the least you can do here is to admit the obvious...

...You have now claimed in public that the super secret evidence you claim to have seen lets all potential A.N. Other modern "forgers off the hook."

Why should anyone believe you?

--John

Hi John,

If the ‘obvious’ is that nobody can see into a ripper theorist's mind and know that a book was - or was not - written in the hope that it would shove the diary out of the limelight, then I’m happy to admit it. I have no idea why Melvin would have imagined that a hospital patient still made a plausible enough ripper suspect to merit another book claiming D'Onston was actually Jack. But there we are. I have to believe that he did imagine it, otherwise how would he have expected to make his readers imagine it too?

It is unfortunate that some people do things (such as using their book, which concludes that a hospital patient murdered and mutilated a series of women, to claim that a certain diary was a modern hoax - both cases still unproven and certain to remain that way, whether anyone likes it or not and whether anyone believes me or not) that leave themselves wide open to speculation about their motives. But that’s life. You’d have had more room to whinge about Paul Butler if you were not already the perfect role model for anyone thinking of voicing a negative opinion of someone's motives.

Nobody need believe me at all about anything they’d rather not. I don’t blame you for not even wanting to believe in the existence of evidence which would only do uncomfortable things to your belief in the existence of a modern hoax conspiracy.

Steve,

I think the only evidence we have of how Feldman and Barrett 'got on' is in Feldy's book. Reading that, it would seem that Feldy considered Mike to be a sad case, a drunk whose life had fallen apart, and who could probably be exploited for the sake of his, Feldman's, theory. On the other hand, maybe this is too simplistic. Maybe Barrett saw in Feldman his ticket to riches and was doing some twisting around his little finger for his own end. If I were a cynic, which I ain't, I'd have said that a Scouser wide-boy and a clever Jewish entrepreneur was a damn good combination if their aim was to make a bob or two....

All the best,

Graham

The trouble is that Mike might have continued to make much more than a ‘bob or two’ if only he had joined forces with Anne and Feldy after retracting his confession and supported her family provenance instead of insisting it was a load of rubbish (even if he knew it was a load of rubbish). And if Feldy was a clever entrepreneur, how come his ambition to make a bob or two backfired so badly that he ended up a broken man - in every sense?

Mr. Pee:

You are right it wasn´t expounded by me but by a very credible witness Grey Hunter. He was there...

And I was there when the diary crowd where going to release the additional 10 pages supposedly found years later after the diary was found.... funny that.. and when I laughed at Shirley Harris in her face if she really expected me to believe in such a fairy tale, the woman´s face became very sour just as though she had eaten lemons.

The other funny thing is that they decided not to release the additional 10 pages after all. Maybe that was too much of a hard pill to swallow.

But there are people like you, who would believe anything including fairies !

Poor you.

- Maria

Exactly, Maria. Grey Hunter is indeed a very credible witness, which is why I doubt that he would appreciate you implying that he just sat there while Feldy blatantly created a new provenance with no fear of the consequences. I suspect that what Grey witnessed was merely Feldy in the process of convincing himself, and expecting to convince his audience that he was on the right track with his theorising. It doesn’t seem at all likely to me that a man so utterly obsessed with proving himself right would throw it all away by deliberately falsifying a provenance in front of Grey Hunter of all people.

Were you ‘there’ in March 2002 when Mike Barrett gave the ten pages to Keith Skinner? Was Shirley Harrison? (Melvin would not thank you for suggesting she is a Harris. ) We reported this on page 271 of Ripper Diary. Mike originally told Keith that he had transcribed the text from some of the missing diary pages. (The pages he handed over clearly didn’t come from the diary itself.) Later he claimed that he had created the pages himself to see if he could match what was written in the diary. The only person who may have expressed an intention to ‘release’ these pages was Mike himself, and presumably he thought better of it. There is not a shred of evidence that any of the missing pages survived to be seen by Mike, and to my knowledge Keith never voiced any plans to release the pages he was given, nor was Shirley in any position to do so.

So where were you when this ‘diary crowd’ told you they planned to release additional pages? When did this happen and which individuals told you this?

Or were you just trying to appeal to readers who believe in fairy stories?

Love,

Caz
X

[Omlor]

Fascinating.

Paul Butler comes out in public and claims that the reason Melvin Harris developed his theory about D'Onston and published it was "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary." Caroline Morris knows that this is nonsense. She knows Paul's idiotic claim is absurd and she knows, as Chris George long ago pointed out, that Melvin was working on this theory before the diary even appeared.

But still she just can't bring herself to admit the perfectly obvious. She can't get herself to say that claiming Melvin developed his theory about his own suspect "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary" is ludicrous and belied even by the simple chronology of events.

According to Paul, Melvin spent all that time and energy "fitting up" his suspect "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary."

And here, now, Caroline can't simply say, "look, that's a stupid ahistorical attack and a ridiculous and idiotic and completely unevidenced claim."

Well, I suppose that's all we need to know about the priorities here. Clearly some misplaced sense of personal loyalty or fidelity to some imagined cause or group has trumped the truth and simple common sense. No surprise there, of course. This is Diary World.

But what I really love is how she answers the question about the secret squirrel evidence she insists will prove beyond a doubt that the diary could only have come from the real James Maybrick's old house and that it will get all modern forgers "off the hook."

I asked why we should believe this claim of hers, since no one has been allowed to see this allegedly decisive documentation.

She replied:

Nobody need believe me at all about anything they’d rather not. I don’t blame you for not even wanting to believe in the existence of evidence which would only do uncomfortable things to your belief...


Funny, when he first came here, that's exactly what Steve Powell said.

God, I love this place.

--John

[caz]

Fascinating.

Paul Butler comes out in public and claims that the reason Melvin Harris developed his theory about D'Onston and published it was "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary." Caroline Morris knows that this is nonsense. She knows Paul's idiotic claim is absurd and she knows, as Chris George long ago pointed out, that Melvin was working on this theory before the diary even appeared.

But still she just can't bring herself to admit the perfectly obvious. She can't get herself to say that claiming Melvin developed his theory about his own suspect "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary" is ludicrous and belied even by the simple chronology of events.

According to Paul, Melvin spent all that time and energy "fitting up" his suspect "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary."…

Hi John,

I think you are getting confused about 'the simple chronology of events', either because you don’t know them as they apply to the development of Melvin’s theory, or because of your habit of not always quoting people completely or directly. Let's go back to when you did.

You quoted Paul Butler as having:

'...referred specifically to, "a latter day ripper author 'fitting up' a very implausible hospital in-patient as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary!"'

D’Onston did not become a hospital in-patient suspect for Melvin (very implausible or otherwise) until he discovered, after having developed and published his original ripper theory, that the man didn’t enter hospital after Mary Kelly’s murder as he had originally assumed, but was actually in hospital for the duration of the Autumn of Terror.

The “fitting up” (which Paul Butler did indeed use quotation marks for, so it was obviously in the figurative, not literal sense, just as I originally suspected) therefore refers to what Melvin was obliged to do next, if he wanted to continue selling the D'Onston theory and republish it - this time in The True Face - at an appropriate time to include his condemnation of the diary in the appendices.

In short, if Melvin wanted to see his diary diatribe in print he had to start claiming that his own suspect faked the illness which had earned him such a lengthy stay in The London Hospital, and was able to plan each murder carefully on a map and come and go as he pleased, with nobody being any the wiser. If he thought his suspect now made a 'very implausible' ripper, I personally doubt that even Mighty Mel would have believed he could persuade the reading public to buy it. So I assume he must have found the new version of his theory not only completely feasible but presumably the only logical solution - much like Feldy with Anne's tales from Liverpool.

But what Paul Butler implied about Mel's motives for keeping his D'Onston theory alive with artificial respiration was a good deal milder and no more unlikely than the downright daft claims by Maria and co that Feldy blatantly invented a false provenance for the diary in front of witnesses, including a retired police officer, who all looked on and did nothing. And yet your silence would imply you fell for that one with no trouble at all.

I also love the funny and truly desperate measures you have to adopt in order to delude yourself that Keith Skinner’s simple statement last year about the Battlecrease documentation, in response to a direct question put to him, could be compared ‘exactly’, or even remotely, with anything Steve Powell has ever said on the subject of the diary’s origins.

You might delude yourself into thinking that equating my words with Powell’s is some sort of meaningful academic exercise. But you won’t fool anyone who has ever worked with Keith with such a crass and worthless little word game. It actually makes you look very dim indeed if you assess the chances of Powell having any evidence about the diary’s origins as being on a par with the chances of Keith having some.

Perhaps Powell could tempt you to write a foreword for his upcoming book: From Oz With Love - The Diary Down Under or My Part in its Downfall. Then at least you will have published something on the subject that can't be erased by computer crashes and forgotten.

Love,

Caz
X

[Omlor]

And now the tap dancing has begun...

Let's be clear.

Paul Butler argued that Melvin Harris "fitted up" his suspect "in order to deflect the limelight away from the diary."

This is stupid. This is nonsense. The idea that Melvin's case for D'Onston was published in the True Face book solely "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary" is the worst type of idiocy, not only because it ascribes to someone the worst sort of duplicitous motivation for publishing their own theories and does so with absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support such a ridiculous attack, but also because it allows for people like Caroline to then come here and muddy the waters even further and cast further aspersions on the character of the author involved, again without a hint of evidence to support such ugly and idiotic speculations.

Then, of course, Caroline goes on to invoke her patron saint, as was inevitable, when it is pointed out that her claims in public about unseen and unpublished super secret squirrel hush hush evidence sound at this point just like all those other such claims based on stuff no one is allowed to see that have come before her, including dear old Steve Powell's (and, if memory serves, her old friend Melvin Harris's).

Caroline has, in the past, often claimed not to suffer gladly those fools who promote public conclusions based on alleged unseen and unpublished evidence.

Apparently, though, she has managed to make peace with at least one of them. Herself.

It's the circle of life here in Diary World,

--John

[Steve Powell]

Who's changing what?

Shirley Harrison letter to Victoria. (circa 2000)
I don't know what to make of Steve Powell.
He has changed his story several times and yet
I feel there IS something lurking here and I can't
ignore it altogether.
..I do think he means that Anne and Steve (Park)
were 'in it' together. But honestly Anne was eighteen
at the time - do you see a kid of that age setting to
on such a sophisticated forgery?
We are planning to talk to Anne eventually
but have purposely not done so yet to try and get
more concrete evidence.
She does however remember you.

Read that last line again.
"She does however remember you"
Anne Graham said that she remembered Victoria at first,
then later changed her story to: 'I wish I did'.
Who 'prompted' this change of story?
Feldman?

Steve Powell
wed19mar2008

[caz]

And now the tap dancing has begun...

Yes, John. You are now dancing because you started by misquoting, misunderstanding and getting yourself thoroughly worked up over a single tongue-in-cheek observation made by someone on a site where your own are not welcome.

'Let's be clear'?

The true face of a politician dancing.

'The idea that Melvin's case for D'Onston was published in the True Face book solely "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary"...'

Is it 'solely' now?

The true face of a dancer introducing steps of his own to make his desired sequence work for him.

I don't need to 'invoke' Keith. He was there from the start. If it wasn't for him I would not have said a word in public about 'unseen and unpublished super secret squirrel hush hush evidence' that shows the diary came from Battlecrease. And if it wasn't for you, I would have had much less opportunity to mention it in the context of the little discussions around here.

'Caroline has, in the past, often claimed not to suffer gladly those fools who promote public conclusions based on alleged unseen and unpublished evidence.

Apparently, though, she has managed to make peace with at least one of them. Herself.'

Yes, and you don't have to suffer this fool gladly or otherwise, but you are still here, giving me the opportunity to remind everyone that only a foolish fool promotes public conclusions based on evidence that must remain unseen and unknown to another living soul because it amounts to nothing at all.

Oh, by the way, even I have no idea just how many people, alive or dead, know that the diary came from Battlecrease.

Whoops - I did it again.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Read that last line again.
"She does however remember you"
Anne Graham said that she remembered Victoria at first,
then later changed her story to: 'I wish I did'.
Who 'prompted' this change of story?
Feldman?

Steve Powell
wed19mar2008

Hi Steve,

From memory, I think Anne remembered a Victoria, but it turned out to be another Victoria, and not the Victoria.

Feldy would have loved Anne to have remembered talking to someone - anyone - in the swinging sixties or glam-rock seventies about her father owning Jack's diary.

Pity really - you might have struck gold had we been talking about someone called Hermione Dudley.

Love,

Caz
X

[Steve Powell]

Caroline said:

"Feldy would have loved Anne to have remembered talking to someone - anyone - in the swinging sixties or glam-rock seventies about her father owning Jack's diary."

Anyone except me.

[Omlor]

Oh, look what's happened now.

Suddenly, in the midst of the discussion, things have changed.

Paul Butler wrote that Melvin Harris "fitted up" his own suspect "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary."

This is, of course, pure nonsense. And completely unsubstantiated by any evidence whatsoever. It's a nasty little claim and Caroline knows it and can't bring herself to denounce it in public.

So now, after several posts trying to tap dance around it, Caroline announces that it was all a joke. It was just a "tongue-in-cheek" observation.

Amazing what happens when someone is pressed.

Of course, there's nothing at all in Paul's post to suggest that there was anything at all "tongue-in-cheek" about his original claim. And it is perfectly clear in that post that he was arguing that Melvin "fitted up" his own suspect "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary." In fact, wait a minute... That's exactly what his post says.

But since that's obviously a stupid and unevidenced little allegation, Caroline is now forced to reduce it all to a jest and hope that no one takes it seriously.

Well, fair enough. We'll know from now on not to take anything Mr. Butler says seriously. Lesson learned.

And we'll also learn a lesson from Caroline's inability to call the remark what it was -- a nasty little bit of unsupported and ridiculous nonsense.

Meanwhile, there's lots of the usual Diary World talk about secret squirrel evidence and yet another provenance for this obviously bogus book, this worthless hoax. But, as always, no one is putting up the goods.

Put up or shut up, someone here once wrote about the whispers and rumors concerning secret evidence.

Clearly, though, for some, that law does not apply.

Steve and Caroline merely head the list. Somewhere that IKJ dude, with his "secret evidence" proving James was the ripper, is waiting. He's already a member of the club.

And still there is nothing new and still there is nothing real.

And we march on towards yet another July.

Figment can't wait,

--John

[Graham]

Hi John!

Look what I found on your university's "Rate your Professor" site! Three guesses who he or she is talking about!

"Had him for arts and humanities hon. Very unclear about what exactly is wanted on papers despite my asking him several times and attending every class. Grade relys on three papers...did well on first two, thought i would do well on last...definately not, ruined my grade and a few others in the class too. Very opinionated...just agree with him else"

You certainly didn't make the grade with this person, but in fairness some other of your students did say nice things about you. It's the last sentence that I find rather apposite to this thread, though.

Your good friend,

Graham

[Victoria]

Hi Steve,

From memory, I think Anne remembered a Victoria, but it turned out to be another Victoria, and not the Victoria.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

Can you expand on this statement?
Are you sure?
I am most interested, as Shirley never said that to me during our discussions
.....at all.
I was of the impression that she first remembered me from the descriptions
of events from those times, also she was given a physical description from
Shirley. Also I had sent Shirley a photo of Steve and myself, not sure if
or when Anne was shown it.

regards,
Victoria

[Omlor]

Graham,

Even I feel sorry for you if that's how you spend your time.

In the interest of fairness, why not actually post the link so that everyone can see the ratio there of favorable comments to the few critical ones? I'm very proud of it, in fact. I am more than happy for anyone interested to read everything said me about me on all such sites. I usually come off with more than my share of good reviews, despite pissing off students by demanding a fifteen page research paper at the end of my courses. And, I'm happy to say, I consistently have some of the best student evaluations in my department.

Now then, I don't suppose you have anything to say on the actual merits of the claim we were discussing made by Paul Butler?

Or would you rather avoid the substance of the discussion altogether, in favor of this sort of nonsense?

Just wondering,

--John

[Graham]

Well, hello, John.

Many thanks for such a rapid response to my post. Were I as sharp and urbane as you, I'd say I touched a nerve there.

Thing is, son, just like you, I only pick out and post the bits that suit me.

But I did say, if you bothered to read my post, that some of your students did say nice things about you. Even you can't be so blinkered as to have missed that. Can you?

And you say you are sorry for ME when you, who would appear to be one of the favoured who stroll the rose petal-strewn paths of Academe and are paid to bring Learning to our young and impressionable, waste YOUR time on something so mundane as an obviously-faked diary? Come ON!

My very best regards,

Graham

[Omlor]

Ah, hell...

I'll do it myself.

http://ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=129958

Enjoy everyone.

So then, Graham, still nothing on the merits of the claim being discussed?

I can't say I'm surprised.

--John

[Graham]

Ah, hell...

I'll do it myself.

http://ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=129958

Enjoy everyone.

So then, Graham, still nothing on the merits of the claim being discussed?

I can't say I'm surprised.

--John

Yeah, yeah, etc.

Graham