On The Trail Of The Forgers

[Omlor]

Hello everyone,



GREETINGS!




That's right!

Believe it or not, here it is once again July 14th at 7:58 am.

It is staggering to think that another full year has passed us by.

For those of you who don’t remember the beginning of it all, you should know that FOUR YEARS AGO, on Wednesday July 14th, 2004 at 7:58 am, the first annual DITA Day was born.

Of course this was a full year after July 14th, 2003, when the words that gave DITA Day its reason for being first appeared here at the Casebook. That was FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY.

Who would have guessed that a full five years later, we’d still be here and the situation would still be exactly the same?

And so, in the name of what now actually qualifies as nostalgia, here again, in all its celebratory glory, is the first official post of the first DITA day. Newcomers and those unfamiliar with this very special holiday are urged to read it and enjoy the good old days...


http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4469/18454.html


All done?

Well, we are still here.

And since that time, of course, we have been delighted on subsequent DITA Days by the presence of the official Diary World mascot, that walking symbol of pure Imagination – Figment!



So he too is here once again to wish you all the happiest of days and to remind you and Diary Worlders everywhere around the whole wide wonderful world that there is still, after all these years spent waiting for the thorough and rigorous testing of both of these suspicious artefacts to take place…

Nothing new and nothing real.

Let the celebrations commence!

--John

[Omlor]

Hi Dougie,

Well, I have to give credit where credit is due. The phrase "secret squirrel" used in this conversational way was (and still is) a favorite coinage of a woman named Dr. Lisa Starks. She is a professor of literature and well-respected Shakespeare scholar (who has published, incidentally on Crashaw as well) and chairman of the English department at the University of South Florida's St. Petersburg campus. She is also my good friend and my ex-wife (both). She used to use the phrase all the time and I sort of picked it up by habit (the way you do when you live with someone).

It all goes back, of course, to a real character. Secret Squirrel was a noted cartoon secret agent who, with his sidekick, Morocco Mole, fought all sorts of evil-doers. You can find his image in many places on the web (a Google image search will show you) and I know there is even a Secret Squirrel bobble-head doll available online.

Anyway, I think it's the perfect phrase for all the melodramatic intrigue and secret nonsense and endless "ongoing investigations" surrounding these two cheap hoaxes.

All the best,

--John

[dougie]

Omlor,
Sadly, it seems your e-mail was a waste of time,but at least you made the effort to unravel this "mystery".I cant see that, based on the evidence of the reply you received, that you or (almost) anyone else is ever going to recieve a satisfactory answer. I imagine you are familiar with the phrase "flogging a dead horse",maybe that is the case here.
I love the "secret squirrel" phrase by the way...may I ask who coined it?
regards

[Maria]

John:

Can you show me in which paragraph Keith says that he has the evidence ?
Of course, as Caroline warned us, we must not take Keith on his word for what he claims.

Maria

[Maria]

Graham:

Mc Crone also worked on the Vineland Map forgery. Sadly, the main scientist of that firm and who was interested in testing the diary has now died as well.

Maria

[Omlor]

Graham,

Yup, it's these guys... http://www.mccroneassociates.com/

They worked on the Shroud and the Zapruder film, etc.

--John

PS: "secret oath of silence" -- I like that phrase, it sounds so dramatic. Maria, I suspect Keith is saying he has the evidence but he just won't tell us what it is (despite already having told everyone what it says) because that would somehow "compromise" other parts of the so-called "ongoing investigation" (which has now been "ongoing" for more than a decade). It's a vague, oddly charming, and apparently endless way of talking about all of this that, like politician-speak, offers words but tells us nothing.

[Maria]

Victoria:

The trouble with this, is that at the time of the Liverpool trial, Keith claimed to have incontrovertible evidence which proved that the diary came from Battlecrease.

Now he says that its " an ongoing investigation " so one statement contradicts the other completely.

Keith is now saying he doesn´t have the evidence which proves the diary came from Battlecrease and just like I thought, that evidence does not exist.

Maria

[Victoria]

Good on you John for contacting Keith, that is
certainly a step in the right direction.
Seems like there is 'something' happening at his end.

I would suspect though that the "might have been more
forthcoming" .. would only apply to you, if you had stayed
on good terms with him, and then you would be in his
'inner circle' along with Caz.
Then you would know the same amount of secret squirrel info as Caz ..
and be under the same secret oath of silence.

[Graham]

Mr O,

Is the McCrone Group the American company that deals in precision microscopes and other analytical equipment?

Graham

[Omlor]

Ah, what the heck.

I'm bored and have some time. So I'll just post my message to Keith and his response right here for everyone to enjoy. Who knows? Maybe I'm missing something or can't quite read between the lines. Maybe in his response Keith does tell me what the secret Battlecrease evidence is or at least explains precisely why he can't reveal it despite having already revealed its conclusions in public. Maybe I just didn't see it.

So here first is my message to Keith.

Keith,

At the suggestion of Caroline Morris, I am writing to ask you a couple of direct questions regarding the evidence you claimed, at the Liverpool trial last year, to have which allows you to conclude that the diary came from Battlecrease house.

What is this evidence? What exactly were you talking about when you made your comment? What materials do you have and in what form are they and what do they say?

If you are, for some reason, unable or unwilling to share that evidence, then for the sake of clarity in this matter could you please explain precisely why you can't? What exactly is preventing you from sharing this evidence with the public?

Thanks,

--John


And here, in its entirety, is Keith's response. It should be noted, of course, that I disagree with his characterizations of our past exchanges. But that's another debate.

Here's what I got in response to my questions:

John

Thank you for your e-mail which I have just collected from my old email address.

You and I were last in contact precisely four years ago when, in what I took to be a friendly and constructive exchange of information, I attempted to elicit from you the sequence of events which had led to the breakdown of the diary tests with the McCrone Group, which you had initiated. As I recall, (and like you I will have these emails on file), you backed off my questions, as you considered there was no point in trying to identify where it had all gone wrong and why. Instead, the discussion leeched into your outrage at Robert Smith's behaviour at challenging your professional credentials, twinned with your dictum that I should have immediately leaped to your defence - and this after you had more or less suggested I was guilty of continuing to pimp, as genuine, a document I knew to be a modern hoax, when all the written and public evidence had made clear that I did not believe James Maybrick had penned this journal, but neither did I accept it had been scientifically or historically exposed as being created after circa 1989.

At which point our communication ceased.

So, why should you be bothered, four years down the line, with what I have uncovered? Why should you even believe me?

It's a great shame John that our brief relationship has deteriorated because I strongly suspect you came into this controversy with a sincere and genuine desire to help.

Ally suggested that I should not have said anything at Liverpool about my information and - in retrospect - she is correct. So are you. Which was why, when I was preparing my presentation, I avoided any reference to this part of the investigation which is still ongoing and you have characterised as secret squirrel. The question from the floor - after the presentation -demanded an honest response which I gave. I could not go any further without compromising the investigation. I am not prepared to say who is financing it but the results will be eventually
published. As I say though - you either believe me, or you don't - and in your case, given your perception about my moral probity, it is clear which side of the divide you fall.

You were not at the Liverpool event and because you are so cemented into your belief that anybody who does not agree with your academic opinions and posturing are misguided, you could not be expected to appreciate or understand that I was actually advocating the audience, (jury), to return a verdict of not guilty against James Maybrick as, in my opinion, there was not a shred of evidence to prove that Maybrick wrote the diary or had anything to do with the murder of 5 women in the East End of London in 1888. Moreover, I suggested it was the diary and it's unsatisfactory, questionable provenance which should be on trial. not James Maybrick. What you have spectacularly failed to grasp - because you were not present and because you could not be bothered to ascertain all of the facts - is that my talk was heavily weighed in favour of the diary being modern and created by - or with the assistance of - Mike Barrett. And this was the reason the new evidence, (which I had sought permission to use), about the advertisement for the diary in a trade magazine, formed part of my presentation.

What I am mildly curious about is why you should at all be bothered about the date of creation of this journal if, as you have ruled, it is of modern origin? Why not just walk away from it ,as most of my colleagues have, resting on scholarship, common sense and a proper historical reading of the document? Might it give you a problem if ink met paper prior to 1987-89? You may, incidentally, be interested to learn that these same colleagues, with whom I disagree, have not severed personal or professional relationships with me, as you suggested would probably happen if I remained outside of the academic elite. Possibly, just possibly, they do not fear being contaminated, by association, with somebody who, in your opinion, brings the field of historical research and study into disrepute.

This response to your email of course will not satisfy you but if you had shown yourself more willing to work with me, four years ago, trying to determine what went wrong with the McCrone Group - and possibly it had something to do with you realising that this type of operation is extremely time consuming and expensive and you'd rather delegate the responsibility to somebody else - then I might have been more forthcoming. How much, incidentally, were you personally prepared to invest financially in these tests and how proportionate would that figure have been to the final cost?

You have, I understand, alerted the Message Boards that you have emailed me and will report back when you have received a response. So - for the sake of clarity - and not your representation of our exchange - I am suggesting you put up both of our emails and let anybody that is interested form their own judgement. You, no doubt, will want the right of reply and last word - and after that - using your own exit line to me in July 2004 - we're done here.

Keith


So that's it.

I did notice this, though. Keith writes that he "might have been more forthcoming" had I been more willing to work with him a number of years ago.

So maybe that's our next step.

Perhaps someone who has no history with him, someone who has not already pissed him off a few years back, should write and ask him the same questions and he will "be more forthcoming."

Maybe that way we'll finally get some clue as to what the secret squirrel evidence really is.

Any volunteers?

Thanks,

--John

[Omlor]

Hi Dougie,

Well, I did indeed receive a reply. Of course, Keith did not tell me what the secret squirrel Battlecrease evidence is, nor did he tell me why he could not release it (except that it would somehow "compromise" some allegedly "ongoing investigation" -- a vague answer that we've all heard so many times before and that we've been hearing for years and years).

Anyway, if anyone wants the complete exchange, with my e-mail to Keith and his response to me (which rehashes, for some reason, much of our past history in place of answering my direct questions), they can feel free to write me at omlor@tampabay.rr.com and I'll happily send them both my note to Keith and Keith's response in full. Interestingly, Keith copied Caroline Morris on his reply to me, so she can send it to you as well, if you'd all rather write to her.

Unfortunately, there is, in both my questions and his replies, still nothing new (with the possible exception of Keith admitting that he "should not have said anything at Liverpool" about his "information").

Oh, well. The game goes on. I'm sure no one is surprised.

--John

[dougie]

Hi Omlor,
Well whatever the response, at least you have tried.The trouble might be that, as is so often the case ,any "new evidence" regarding anything here so often has to run the gauntlet of ridicule.(Im not suggesting you are guilty of this by the way,just a general observation).I hope your e-mail gets a reply .
regards

[Omlor]

Hi Dougie,

At Caroline's suggestion, I have done exactly that via e-mail this morning.

I look forward to reading his response.

Of course, this is all a bit disingenuous, since no one here is naive enough to believe that Keith does not know what has been said on these boards since he made his comments last year or what questions have been raised. He could have made a response available at any time, of course.

Still, I have asked him directly to share with us either what evidence he has or the reason why he has decided not to make that evidence public after announcing its conclusions to everyone at the Liverpool trial.

I'll let you know when I receive a response.

All the best,

--John

[dougie]

Maybe if someone asked Keith (ive no idea who keith is by the way) politely, he might answer?......................

[steje73]

Common sense? Grip on reality? Nobody has ever said I had those before!