On the Many Deaths of Amanda Palmer (23 page)

The APT Legal Department had, in the course of preparing a defence (given the possibility that charges may not have been dropped) acquired copies of much of the evidence gathered by the police, including all of the witness statements, lists of email and web addresses, dates, times, names, and many reports by internet researchers, forensic literary specialists, theoretical psychologists, etc, together with a single photograph, credited with being the only known image of Tobias James. After an extensive period of negotiation involving suits and counter-suits on either side it was finally agreed that we would be permitted to publish an account of our understanding of what had occurred, including whatever evidence we had at our disposal, under the unambiguous stricture that no information deemed to be of a sensitive or incriminating nature be published, with specific regard to the ongoing investigation into the death of Miss Palmer and any link that may or may not lead to Mr. James. It is worth the reader noting that the Boston Police Department (BPD) has successfully demanded final editorial control and under
particularly dubious and outrageous circumstances
was ultimately granted full rights to
rewrite the truth in annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnnnnnnnnnnnn nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
wherever they deem appropriate.

APPENDIX II

Following the seizure of
Text Number Nine
, and an initial interrogation of the Editorial Board, the BPD Internet Crime Unit (ICU) turned its attention towards tracking the author through cyber-space. The APT had, in the course of researching the
palmeresque
project, kept detailed records of every website a given text appeared on, and the earliest posting date, so far as we could tell, and so these, and any other related records, were all willingly handed over to Inspector Ruecker, together with our commitment to absolute cooperation.

Internet crime investigation is a slow and tedious process. By all accounts it takes place in a small office cubicle, and involves little more than copying and pasting text into search engines and occasionally sending emails to website administrators in the hope that a lead might be stumbled upon. For four months the APT remained in hiatus, publicly discredited, with charges pending against a number of senior board members, but nothing was happening. Until we were either exonerated or formally charged we were legally bound not to publish a denial or defence against the many exaggerated rumours that were appearing in blogs and occasional newspaper articles. Our hard won reputation as an Arts funding body and arbiter of taste was clearly suffering. Finally our computers were returned and we could at least continue with running
our business, but it seemed that this cloud of suspicion had made many of our former associates and contacts a little nervous, and they were no longer answering emails or phone calls, hence, in January 2008 the APT Legal Department began planning its extensive suit for compensation against the BPD.

That was until the second round of revelations.

As part of their investigation the BPD had hired a small team of forensic literary analysts led by a Dr. Ruth Weitz. Their job was to produce, through detailed analysis of the text, a psychological profile and notional biography of the author. Upon receipt of Dr. Weitz's report Inspector Ruecker immediately ordered the arrest of the entire Editorial Board once again, this time on charges of Literary Fraud and obstructing the police. Naturally the majority of the report remains under legal orders, however, the specific passages that led to these arrests are neither concerned with the psychology of the author, nor the circumstances of death of Amanda Palmer, and are therefore un-restricted:

. . . Given then that we had therefore established certain stylistic and formalistic similarities between all ten texts present in the book, we then set about demonstrating this postulation beyond all reasonable doubt. To do so we first isolated what we considered to be the main characteristics of concern within the texts (Christian religious symbolism,
justified idolatry
, representations of restrained or repressed violence, formalised use of English sentence structuring,
bestial sexuality
, psychological obsession with the subject, misuse of colloquialisms,
excessive grovelling
, and
false moustaches
) and then, utilising the Gilmore System, we devised a series of scales with which to measure and score each text on that characteristic. We then plotted these scores on simple line graphs. When superimposed upon each other it becomes clear that each text demonstrates a remarkably similar series of ratios between each of the chosen characteristics...

. . .
Inspector Ruecker immediately ordered the arrest of
the entire Editorial Board once again, this time on charges of literary fraud and obstructing the police. Naturally the majority of the report remains under legal orders, however, the specific passages that led to these arrests are neither concerned with Tobias James, nor Amanda Palmer, and are therefore unrestricted . . .

The above graph presents the remarkable similarity of ratios between specific relevant characteristics across all ten texts, thus demonstrating the single author postulation. The probability of a random series of ten texts showing equivalent similarities has been calculated at 1:3628800

. . . it is therefore, in my opinion and in the opinion of my colleagues, clear beyond any doubt whatever that each of the ten texts were written by the same author, with only the most superficial of efforts having been made to disguise their distinctive
style including sentence structure, punctuation and habitual themes. Furthermore, taken as a whole this collection of stories, poems and essays reveal
therefore, in my opinion and the opinion of my colleagues, clear beyond any doubt whatever that each of the ten texts were written by the same author, with only the most superficial of efforts having been

Despite our initial incredulity at such an extraordinary claim, thirty-two hours of interrogation later a full set of confessions had been extracted, and they certainly made for astonishing reading, at least amongst the Legal Department of APT. It seemed that every member of the Editorial Board had been “nobbled” in some way or other. A number of cases were very similar: said editor was approached and befriended by a tall slim and handsome young man whilst at a bar, in a restaurant, shopping for stationary and in one case at a swimming pool. He was, by all accounts, effortlessly charming, well-dressed and in each case went under a different name. It is possibly worth mentioning that on every occasion the young gentleman was wearing a false moustache, although the style was clearly different for each editor (this may at first seem unusual, however it must be remembered that since the huge critical success of the video for
Where Did I Put My Shoes?
in February 2004, false moustaches have been very much in vogue amongst Miss Palmer's fans, often of both sexes). It has been agreed between members of the previous, now disgraced, Editorial Board and the present Directors of APT that in exchange for frank and honest accounts of what exactly had transpired no explicit details would be published, including any names. Regrettably it is therefore impossible at this stage to present any specifics with regard to how the mysterious gentleman achieved this extraordinary feat of manipulation. Very much in general it could be said that having first inveigled his way into one of various potential positions of trust, he then sought out a weakness, or insecurity of some kind that he would be able to involve himself with, thus enabling gentle pressure to reap rewards.
In each case the editor in question was, it seems, completely unaware that this man was the author of the chosen text (each swears with much adamancy that the chosen text was amongst their given selection previous to his involvement—a claim later verified through meticulous cross-referencing). He had then somehow persuaded them to allow him to make the final choice (and to write the extroduction). They each claimed to feel, at the time, that it was merely a harmless delegation of responsibility, and had no idea that this same gentleman was involved in any way with other editors on the
palmeresque
project.

Thus, all amongst us who retained an interest in protecting the honour of the APT were left with a number of important questions, as the following minutes from the first meeting the new Directorial Committee of the APT on 17th March 2008 demonstrate:

Questions to be investigated and discussed at next meeting:

  Who was this young man?

  Were the similarities of style between the chosen texts merely due to all the texts having been selected by this single man, no doubt with his own agenda? And if so could it be that he was drawn to particular themes and sentence structures intuitively or directly, and was not, therefore, a sole author.

  Were all the encounters with the same young man, or were there coincidentally a number of falsely-moustachioed young male Amanda Palmer fans attempting independently to influence the selections for the book?' an unlikely but nonetheless possible scenario, needs to be considered.