A Bird on the Blog

Well, after an eventful weekend on the "Exposing" blog, replete with acrimonious infighting, the authors have settled back into their normal routine.

Their latest subject/victim is called "Magpie", who appears for some reason to have earned a spot on Karen's "enemies list". Since we don't know much this person, and unlike the "Exposing" team we lack luxury of simply inventing things, we decided to take them up on their suggestion to check out Magpie's posting history. We also took a brief look back on the "Exposing" blog to see what the scoop is.

Supposedly Magpie is an aficionado of the "aristocratic conspiracy" angle of the Ripper killings--or is he? Here's what the bloggers claimed:

Here's the link to all his posts. Turn a couple of pages merely and you'll see he's very preoccupied with everything that surrounds Cleveland Street and the aristocracy theme, with a particular enthusiasm for a Montague Druitt analysis. He and Bob Hinton (particularly) have bothered the life out of Karen ever since she claimed to be writing on Cleveland Street, for some odd reason best known to themselves.

The first thing we notice is that Magpie has over 800 posts--since the bloggers did not specify just where the above evidence is located, we think the intent is pretty obvious. If you give your readers a list of 800-odd posts and say "it's in there somewhere", chances are they won't bother to read them all and just accept your word for it. We went through several pages, both in order and with random samples, and were unable to find a single post about Cleveland Street, Prince Eddy, or any Masonic conspiracies.

The same with the threads that Magpie has started. There were few enought that we could check them all. The only remotely Masonic-related post was an amusing comparison between the Ripper case and The Da Vinci Code, which appeared in the Pub Talk section: a section devoted to general chit-chat and off topic banter.

The second thing we noticed was that in order to "prove" the accusation that "he's very preoccupied with everything that surrounds Cleveland Street and the aristocracy theme", the bloggers are reduced to including every post that Magpie contributed to the M.J. Druitt section. This would be considered a blatant and cynical misrepresentation by most, for the "Exposing" blog it's just business as usual.

The article about Eddie that arch-conspirator Magpie posted on jtrforums.com was a transcript of a letter to a well-known history magazine. It was immediately followed by another post from Magpie about another magazine's recent article about Ripper suspect Neil Cream. The subject of the thread? Recent magazine articles about Jack the Ripper. Can anyone say "distorting the facts"? Yes, we thought so too.

Claims that Magpie constantly promotes Jame's Tully's Secret of Prison 1167 are completely without foundation-we have to wonder how he can simultaneously be constantly promoting the Masonic Theory, the Druitt theory and the Kelly Theory. Granted there are 800 posts, and we didn't read all of them, but if he was as vocal about Tully's book as the blogger's claim, we should have encountered it at least a few times--we didn't find a single one.

Obviously the source for the article was one of Karen's tirades, which said in part:

On Howard's website, Magpie keeps talking about Karen and her book and waxing poetic about Cleveland Street like he actually knows what he's talking about....Yet he still carries on about Lord Arthur Somerset, squawking like the birdbrain that he is.

So we looked up those messages on jtrforums.com and we found some interesting results. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the "Exposing" bloggers have displayed their usual degree of fairness, accuracy and truthfulness--in other words, almost none.

The most interesting part of the exchange is that it starts on August 18--less than a week ago.

So much for a long-standing obsession. But aside from that, let's look at what he actually said:

Is there any evidence that Somerset was a pedophile? When asked about previous criminal activity, we're told that he was a pedophile, but is there evidence of that? I thought the Cleveland Street scandal was about homosexuality, pure and simple. Is there more to it than that?

Far from "waxing poetic" or claiming any profound knowledge about the Cleveland Street scandal, Magpie is obviously requesting clarification about one of Karen's claims: that the rentboys at the notorious brothel were 8 years old. (n.b. We find it interesting that no-one provided evidence to back up Karen's claim, including Karen. Several people refuted it. We aren't here to judge anyone's theory, so we'll leave it at that).

Magpie contributed four posts about the Cleveland St scandal, all of them polite, sincere and containing no personal comment's directed at Karen. In summary, it appeared a legitimate attempt to learn something: certainly nothing calling for Karen to declare "Well, it would seem that we now have another obsessive personality on our hands." This coming from a woman who posts four times that many posts a day about the Baphomet. If the irony were any heavier you could build a second Eiffel Tower with it.

Although we considered it too trivial to mention, by chance we uncovered the real story behind another assertion made by the "Exposing" team. It proved very interesting and paid us back in full for the time we spent trawling through old posts:

One informant asked him a question about Albion Street, London, and he was immediately able to state that there were two, which raised alarm bells sky high.

We fail to see why having any knowledge about the streets of London is cause for alarm, which is why we initially dismissed it we ran across the following exchange which paints an entirely different story, and effectively undermines many of Karen's claims:

The" informant" was actually Karen Trenouth, erstwhile author of "Epiphany" and the exchange is a far cry from the "Exposing" claim that Magpie has "bothered the life out of Karen ever since she claimed to be writing on Cleveland Street, for some odd reason ..."

Karen: There is a Margaret Giffin on Albion Street. Can someone out there let me know where Albion Street is in relation to the murder sites?

Magpie: There are currently 2 Albion St in London. One in Westminister, near Hyde Park, and one in Southwark, South of the river.

Karen: Thanks Magpie. Hmmm............ Lord Arthur Somerset had his home and stables near Hyde Park. I will double check that though.

Karen: Magpie, would the Hyde Park Barracks be close to Albion Street. How close? I feel that we're onto something here. It's really niggling away at me.

Magpie: Well, not particularly. Albion Street is north of Hyde Park in Westminster, and the Barracks in is Knightsbridge, to the south of the Park.

Magpie: I'm a little confused, Karen.I thought you had dropped Dr Alfred Pearson in favour of Albert Pearson the moulder? Are you now back to the good Doctor?

Karen: Please don't be confused. I have not dropped the doctor at all. The doctor is very important indeed. The moulder, Albert Henry Pearson, was probably the trowel-swinging hoaxer. The police were probably getting very close to the location of the good doctor so a hoax was contrived to draw attention away from the good doctor. You see, the moulder used Alfred's name, to deflect attention away from Mr. Cousin Doctor. Get it? The moulder, Albert, used the name Alfred at Brierley Hill Police Station so that Alfred Pearson would be a name associated with a hoaxer. I
simply, just exposed the REAL Alfred Pearson, the Surgeon. If you have any other
questions, please just ask Magpie. Thanks

(n.b.: compare this friendly encouragement for Magpie to ask questions to Karen's later responses when Magpie did just that. Although hindsight has shown us all that the fastest way to end up on the "Epiphany" hit list is to question anything about the theory, perhaps Magpie was naive to take this offer at face value. We hope he has learned his lesson).

Later in the thread Karen acknowledges Magpie's contribution and makes a light-hearted offer:

Magpie:You're hilarious!!! I was thinking that since you helped with some of my research vis a vis a street name, that I could possibly give you a role in the movie. Do you act? You could portray Catherine Eddowes, complete with fire engine impersonations.

To which Magpie offered an equally humorous reply:

I'm very flattered by the offer Karen, but alas I must decline.While my religion encourages crossdressing in order to embrace the cosmic duality found in all sentient things (Eructions 21:12) it strictly forbids the mimesis of any form of emergency response vehicle (Amphibians 3:22).

Although we only know him through the very posts that "Exposing" and Karen claim paint him as a monster, Magpie comes across as a patient, friendly person who took the time and effort to help Karen with some information. We admit it was not ground breaking research by any means, but he didn't have to do it at all, especially when we see how Karen has returned the favour.

We haven't even touched on the "copyright" fiasco, since we assumed it was simply a legal issue between two people and of interest to nobody. Even the "Exposing" authors have told Karen pointedly to shut up about the issue because no-one cares. In light of Karen's vehemence, and "Exposing's" tendency to parrot back whatever Karen feeds them with no critical evaluation whatsoever, we are rethinking our stance and investigating further.

We've already uncovered some interesting posts concerning copyrights from Karen, Magpie, Lars Poster, Dan Norder and others that call into question Karen's hysterical claims on the "Exposing" blog. It appears that Karen has a history of claiming copyright infringement and threatening legal action on the flimsiest of pretexts. We believe there may be enough for an article, and we are working on that. For now we will give Karen the last word, from a post on casebook.org following the completion of her book:

The nice people I mention in my book are Spryder(of course), GaryW, Christoper J. Morley, Diana and Magpie. Thank you friends!!