The Paul Harrison Affair

[Erik Narramore]

Paul Harrison's theory was that Jeremy and Sheila acted together, but as explained before and also on another current thread, the collusion theory doesn't work.  It's an attractive idea and sounds convincing and plausible on its face, but when you think it through logically, you realise that a guilty Jeremy would not - and could not - involve Sheila, and even if he was the thickest person in the world, he had to have realised this himself.  The culprit must be either Jeremy or Sheila; it's extremely unlikely that it was both.  There is, admittedly, a small possibility that they were both deranged and acted in concert somehow, without regard for the consequences.

As for the letter Paul Harrison published, it looks and reads fake to me, but could well be a genuine letter from a fake - if you see the distinction.  Ironically, Harrison may have been taken in himself.  Otherwise, I agree with the assessments of the book: it's the worst book on the case, if it qualifies as a book at all.

[Erik Narramore]

It's also possible of course that Mike Teskowitz sent that letter to Paul Harrison, perhaps with Harrison's prior knowledge.  That wouldn't make the letter genuine, since it still rests on whether Mike is recounting events accurately.

I am not doubting Mike's word that he was imprisoned with Jeremy and mixed with him.  Category A prisoners often mix with lower category prisoners in some institutions, but the question hanging in the air that I think Mike should answer is: Did Jeremy confess? Do the authorities have a tape recording of a confession from Jeremy?

Pursuing this theme further, if Jeremy did confess to his carceral amanuensis, then more questions arise:

Why is Mike defending Jeremy, a mass murderer and double child killer, who has confessed to him?  And why do so in the knowledge there is a taped confession somewhere?

Why is Jeremy continuing to brazenly protest his innocence?

I mean no disrespect here to Mike because we owe him a debt of gratitude in so many ways, but if this is all a load of rubbish and Jeremy never confessed, then I would like Mike to now state this definitively for the record and confirm that when he claimed this previously he was just clouded with depression or other personal troubles.  If so, the matter will never be brought up again.

[Erik Narramore]

Should Paul Harrison still be permitted to sell his book?

I expect the counter-argument will be that there is no way of conclusively showing that this particular book is a fraud.  He just might have been at that trial (he does contradict himself about that, but even so); he might have received a letter from a prisoner; he might have worked at the Court of Appeal in 2002 and spoke with Edmund Lawson (an interview that I think would have been 'in character' for Lawson); he might have interviewed those police officers.

Don't misunderstand: I'm very sure he is a fraud and it's all made up, but there is a burden on the accuser if the matter is to be taken further and there are ways for him to wriggle out of it or muddy the waters.  For instance, one could ask the Ministry of Justice whether they have any personnel record for somebody called Paul Harrison, but even if they can positively deny he was ever employed by the courts, he could say that he was there as a contract worker or in some capacity related to the police, or whatever.

Personally, I view his book along the same lines as the online book, David Shaw's The Innocent Man.  It's a work of pseudo-fiction on the killings, as well as a spontaneous psychological study of the author himself, and perhaps should be read, studied and considered from those angles?

The real issue I have with Paul Harrison is that his book is just not very good.  I could forgive him if it was a good read, in which case I would just put it down to a bit of enterprise and consider it amusing.  Although David Shaw's online work is blatantly plagiarist and fictitious, it is at least a good read and a ripping yarn.  I had the popcorn out reading Shaw, whereas with Harrison I was falling asleep.  Never mind that it's made up, the real problem is that it's badly-written and boring.

[Erik Narramore]

A 2018 Vice interview [link below] with Paul Harrison in which he claims to be a former police officer, an expert on serial killers and "Britain's mindhunter" (I think that's what he says).  He claims to have worked for or with or studied the FBI in his early 20s, having been assigned to this by his parent British police force, and to have interviewed John Wayne Gacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbHg6U5DL0w