THE ORSAM CHRONICLE

BRUTAL MURDER OF JAY HARTLEY

By a staff reporter

Residents of the small town of Casebook-on-Sea were stunned to witness Roger J. Palmer murder Jay Hartley in cold blood and in broad daylight last month.

Hartley had earlier intervened in a discussion between Palmer and a local politician (the leader of the Diary Defending Party) which he obviously hadn't understood, to say: "Anyone who truly believes using the testimony of proven liar Mike Barrett helps us get anywhere in this discussion is, in my view, missing a few volumes themselves."

Unfortunately, he hadn't realized that the only person who was relying on the testimony of proven liar Mike Barrett was none other than his own boss, Caroline Morris-Brown, someone who totally believes Mike when he said that he discovered the source of the Crashaw quote in the library, despite there being no corroborating evidence at all of this.

The disturbing murder of Hartley then occurred on 2 March 2024 at 11:59am GMT when Palmer used his keyboard to inflict fatal injuries upon the man, his killer opening line being: "Why do I get the strong but familiar sense that Jay Hartley doesn't firmly grasp what is being discussed, let alone the implications of any of it?"

A post-mortem of the deceased revealed the absence of a brain in the cranium, causing observers to wonder if Palmer had stolen it or if there was another reason for its absence.

PHOTOSHOPPED IMAGE SCANDAL HITS CASEBOOK

A conspiracy theory has spread amongst users of the small town of Casebook-on-Sea via social media that a photograph of Jay Hartley being used to prove that he is still alive, and not murdered by R.J. Palmer after all, has been doctored using photoshop. Photographic experts have identified six points of obvious photoshopping in the image supplied to the press by Getty Images.

As a result of the scandal, Getty and other news agencies have now recalled the photograph which has been flagged as "digitally enhanced at source".

Conspiracy theorists are suggesting that the fictional entity known as "Jay Hartley" may be a collective of kindergarten children who created the character for some sort of humorous school project. A random person we spoke to in the street, who gave his name as Mr O. Lord, told us, "I never believed that Hartley was a real person, it was all just too ludicrous for words, but a good joke by the young children nonetheless".

Police investigating the murder of Hartley are baffled and are now investigating whether there is even a dead body, despite earlier reports of a post-mortem having been carried out.

HARTLEY MYSTERY DEEPENS

A controversial photograph supposed to show a living Jay Hartley on his way from the shops has been challenged on social media as actually showing a body double imposter.

Judge for yourself. Is this Hartley or not?

A spokesperson for Hartley said "This is definitely him, and this photograph of him alive should put paid to the silly rumour that Jay Hartley was nothing more than a group of pre-school children having a laugh or that he was murdered by R.J. Palmer." The spokesperson added, "And if you know of a corporate finance expert who could explain to me in words of less than one syllable how a share offering works, so that I can posthumously correct the schoolboy error Hartley made in his 'Mine Game' article, when he thought that Maybrick had invested a small fortune in a company which never traded, I'd be very grateful because myself and Hartley have been searching these past two years and, even though you'd think it would be very easy to sort this out, we can't find anyone, hence we haven't yet issued a correction for the blatant error".

BEAR LOST IN WOOD

A confused old man, believed to be the fiction writer Simon Wood, wandered into the Casebook-on-Sea town square on 16 March 2024 at 5.50pm to shout at anyone who would listen:

“Kosminski” [no forename] made his debut in 1892 as a leading fictional character in Israel Zangwill’s best-selling Anglo-Jewish novel “Children of the Ghetto,” which documented the lives of immigrant Jews living and working in the Yiddish-speaking streets of London’s".

He was ignored by the locals who were all aware that Zangwill's fictional character (as introduced on pages 25-6 of his 1892 book) was a Polish tailor called Bear Kosminski, better known in literary circles by the name the character adopted of Bear Belcovitch, and thus did have a forename, so can't be connected with the Macnaghten suspect whose forename wasn't mentioned in his1894 memorandum.

Our reporter searched for "Bear Kosminski" in Google but didn't find anything. Zangwill expert Professor Ekafa told us: "This is because the character's name was actually Bear Belcovitch, if you do a Google search under that name you will find a number of mentions of him, for example in a 2012 book by David Glover entitled 'Literature, Immigration and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siecle England'."

We found the book for which the relevant extract is below:

Wood was last seen walking away muttering to himself about Ostrog being in a French prison awaiting trial during the period of the Ripper murders, something which was only discovered for the first time by Philip Sugden in Parisian archives in 2001, with no evidence that the Home Office had ever been informed about this, nor (if they were) that anyone at the Home Office informed anyone at Scotland Yard, including Macnaghten, bearing in mind that the only issue the Home Office was investigating at the relevant time (in July 1894) was in respect of Ostrog's whereabouts in May 1889, long after the 1888 murders, because he had been convicted (wrongly as it turned out) in England on 2 July 1894 of having obtained goods by false pretences in Eton in May 1889. The fact of Ostrog's imprisonment in France was definitely not known to Macnaghten, or anyone else at Scotland Yard or indeed at the Home Office, in February 1894 when Mac wrote his famous memorandum naming Ostrog as a suspect, so there is literally nothing in the point.

SECOND MURDER ROCKS SLEEPY SEASIDE TOWN

There was pandemonium, and not a little panic, in Casebook-on-Sea following reports of a second murder committed by R.J. Palmer who now seems to be out of control on his murdering spree.

Following the alleged murder of the alleged individual known pseudonymously as "Jay Hartley", Palmer is now believed to have terminated the life of the leader of the Diary Defending Party who had thought it would be a good idea to suggest to Palmer that he'd been triggered by Mitchell comparing himself to a mathematical genius with an IQ of 225 in order to support his lonely argument that the real James Maybrick was genuinely the author of the Jack the Ripper Diary.

As Palmer was quick to remind her during his savage assault, "unless you suddenly believe that...the diary really is the handiwork of James Maybrick, then you must think Tom is just as wrong as I do. But please don't tell him."

The murder weapon is, once again, believed to have been a keyboard. Police are currently searching the town to recover it.

VISITING MAGICIAN DELIGHTS RESIDENTS

Proving that it's not just murders which occur in the charming seaside town of Casebook-on-sea, residents were delighted recently with a series of magic tricks by an elderly magician known as The Great Thomas Mitchell, although these days he prefers the title of "Mentalist" due to his extraordinary mind bending skills.

Taking the stage of the Town Hall to rapturous self applause, his first trick was to convince himself that he could be compared to a female mathematical genius with a high IQ simply because no one believed her when she first provided a solution to the Monty Hall paradox, just like no one now believes his diary defending nonsense. Spurning the examples of flat earthers, holocaust deniers and US election deniers, whom no one sensible believes, because they are idiots, he plumped on someone who has been proved right, without pausing to consider that, once she explained her solution, everyone quickly realised that she was right after all, in stark contrast to his own argument which no one in their right mind accepts despite him having spent the best part of 16 years attempting to explain it. So what a fantastic illusion to create this completely false comparison between himself and a true genius. The large audience of two (Mr and Mrs T. Mitchell) absolutely loved it.

He followed this up by a second incredible trick in which he somehow managed to convince himself that James Maybrick would have known the height of Inspector Abberline from non-existent press photographs and that this height, of five feet nine and half inches, about three inches taller than the average height of men in the 1880s, and one inch taller than Maybrick's own believed height, means that Maybrick would have plausibly described Abberline as "a funny little man".

An even better part of the trick, though, was to deflect attention from the fact that the diary has already been proved to be a fake through its inclusion of impossible language, by focusing on minor and irrelevant details about whether the Ripper would or would not have been obsessed with Abberline chasing him.

This newspaper has no hesitation in declaring the evening an unqualified triumph for the visiting magician whose magic tricks are beyond compare.

SHOCKING MURDER OF MAGICIAN, SERIAL KILLER ON LOOSE

The police have now officially named Roger Palmer as a serial killer following his third alleged murder, this time of visiting magician, The Great Thomas Mitchell, who was dramatically murdered following his triumphant performance at the Town Hall.

Using the same murder weapon believed to have been used to commit two earlier murders, Palmer changed his modus operandi and struck in darkness during the evening, at 7.26pm, on 21 March 2024, when Mitchell's existence on this planet was brought to an abrupt end after Palmer told him that the photograph he had posted of Fred Abberline, from which James Maybrick was somehow supposed to have decided that he was a funny little man, even though he appears to be of normal height, may not even be of Abberline. It appears that Palmer on this occasion had an accomplice, believed to be a mysterious individual known as "Nelson", who struck separately by noting that the photograph was in any case unknown to the public in 1888. However, the police forensic pathologist believes that Mitchell was already dead when this blow was inflicted.

Police have issued a warning to all diary defenders residing in Casebook-on-Sea, informing them that if they see Roger Palmer prowling the streets they should not approach him. He is a very dangerous man.

The Orsam Chronicle (established 1888)

1 April 2024

LATE EXTRA

There was singing in the streets of

Casebook-on-Sea recently when it was

announced that a new resident is going to solve the mystery of the

identity of the Whitechapel Murderer

of 1876 in a forthcoming book

which will be a clever blend of fiction and fiction, weaving an imaginative re-telling of the facts with a creative re-imagining of the facts, to establish

a new category of Fictional True

Crime alongside similar works by Pierre, Simon Wood, Michael Hawley, and Thomas Mitchell (deceased). The book

will apparently consider for the very first time ever the possibility that there are cryptic messages hidden in the famous "Jack the Ripper" letters. A random resident

who we spoke to, but who does not wish

to be, named told us: "This is so exciting.

With Pierre, a.k.a. Kristina Nordqvist, we had to wait two years for the solution of

the mystery to be revealed to us but now we will only need to wait until December.

I am so looking forward to parting with my

cash and finally learning the true fictional

identity of the famous killer." A party to

celebrate the discovery of the elusive killer's

identity will be held in the Town Hall.

STOP PRESS

An astonishing incident occurred in the

Casebook-on-Sea mortuary on 30 March

when RJ Palmer was discovered beating the

cold dead body of Tom Mitchell to a pulp

before fleeing. Piecing together what had

occurred, detectives discovered that Mitchell

had spoken to Palmer through a Medium

during a seance, when he seemed to warn him

about being banned from Casebook-on-Sea,

in response to which Palmer murdered

Mitchell for a second time by telling his corpse:

"Between you and I, which of us has been

repeatedly suspended or banned---and under

multiple use names--at both at this site and at

Howard Brown's old site for appalling behavior?".

Legal experts have been frantically researching

whether it's possible for someone to be charged

with murder of the same person twice but, until

Palmer is arrested and brought to justice, this

will remain a theoretical question. Palmer

remains at large and very dangerous.