Identity Crisis Part 1: All the News that’s Fit to Print.

In a very strange dream, I sat at an empty table, staring at Mr. Relkin. The room was dark except for a hint of light shining down from a light above the table. I couldn’t remember how I got there, or even why I was there. There was a deck of large cards sitting on the table in front of him, and he was staring at me. I knew that I was about to take the T.A.T; the Thematic Apperception Test; just like Mrs. Baniszewski.

“This is very serious,” he said.

Suddenly he picked up a card and showed to me. I recoiled when I saw it.

“What does it mean?” he asked

“The source of all that has gone wrong.”

“Wrong with what?”

“Everything.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I heard it from a very wise person.”

Relkin turned the card around and looked at it.

“Oh, sorry, that must’ve got mixed in with my cards by mistake.”

“Thank Heavens,” I said with a sigh of relief.

“How about this one?”

“Well, I see an evil entity…like the one haunting 3850 East New York Street.”

Then he turned the card around and looked at it.

“Sorry..wrong test. Rorschach is next. I was afraid it was another Gidget card.”

“Well, what do you see?” I asked.

“Hmm. I suppose it does look like the evil entity that…Wait! I’m giving the test.”

“I apologize.”

Then he picked up another card, looking intently at it.

“Here we go…what about this one?”

Yes…he showed me card 9gf. Finally. I paused for a moment to think.

“I see a woman watching a woman running down the beach.”

“What it means…what it means! I didn’t ask you to describe the elements in the picture.”

“Sorry. It kinda looks like…”

Actually, this one was a tough one. Perhaps it’s just me, but I saw a somewhat complex, somewhat esoteric, scene.

“Who are the two women?” Relkin asked.

“What?”

“Who are the two women,” he repeated, an annoyed tone in his voice.

I paused for a moment.

“I never said there were two women.”

What an interesting scene, indeed. Now the role of the media has been discussed in other essays on this website. As far as I am concerned, there is much more that needs to be said about this subject. It seems inherently true that the media is the primary means of communication between the authorities in all their manifestations, and the public. Some media outlets are critical of the authorities. Some media outlets are the means by which the authorities litter the minds of Tiptonities, people from South American Indianians…not to mention Hoosiers, either of the Horrified type, or even the Mighty McClintiks. Not to mention the gross distortions and utter nonsense perpetrated in the press about the so-called, reporter-created, Jack the Ripper. If that note, which was sent to the police, was actually from the White Chapel murderer, then:

How foolish it was for the killer to put his return address on his nonsensical letter! Of course, Hell is pretty big place, so perhaps it wasn’t as helpful as the City of London police would have liked. An interesting parallel? I suppose so. The letter misspells “kidney” as “kidne”, whereas the Sylvia Likens Two Weeks letter misspells “intercourse” as “intercoarse.” But spelling is hard. All around, it would seem.

Everyone should have their two-ton bag of rock salt with them at all times. And you had best be careful. Should you get in an altercation with a neighborhood paperboy about paying him for your subscription, he might just go and tell on you to the editor. And we all know where that got Gertrude Baniszewski, or Gertrude Wright, hopefully not Rosie Van Fossan, who is in turn a bizarre manifestation of Gertrude Van Fossan. Too many women with too many children in the same house? Two Van Fossan women move into one, or both sides, of the shabby double-house on the corner of East New York Street and North Denny Street, and at the same time?

Why rock salt? Because we journeyed into the weird, and flat-out mendacious world of the news coverage of the Sylvia Likens Affair. It is clear that the press was being used by the police to put the Canonical Story in front of the public. One might ponder the notion that they should have got that story straight before doing so. The inability of getting the same slogan out within the same Two Weeks shows that. There are, of course, parallels of just how far the press will go to help the police solidify a pack of lies about a tragedy. On April 15, 1989; a horrible human tragedy played itself out in about 30 minutes in the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, England. It boggles the mind that 96 people can be killed in a crowd-crush at a football match. And the police were to blame. However, the police decided, sort of like the Ricky Hobbs fictional character, that they would not bear all blame. Still, the Yorkshire Police didn’t have Shirley Baniszewski, or a Silent, Suffering Character to foist 33% of the blame upon. No. They decided to share the blame with…the victims. That Canonical Story has perhaps just as many bizarre elements in it as the Sylvia Likens case. In particular, one of the causes of that tragedy was the sudden opening of an exit gate called C Gate. Actually, the second opening of that gate. As the description “exit gate” clearly implies, it is a point of egress, not entrance. But the complete mismanagement of a large crowd outside of the turnstiles at the entrance resulted in a near lethal crowd-crush at the point of ingress. It became clear that the only way to prevent deaths outside of the stadium was to funnel the people at the front of the crown out of the way. The only way to do this was let them in through C Gate. This was done three times, and parts of the crowd were also let in through A Gate and B Gate. And the combined crowd having ingressed through the egress, smashed right into the back of an over-sized crowd at the end of a dark and, metaphorically, hellish Tunnel.

I make no claims to being any kind of expert on the subject of the Hillsborough Disaster. For that matter, I make no claim to being an expert on the White Chapel murders, or the Sylvia Likens Affair. But I do like Canonical Stories and the details out of which they are built. Commenting on the Sylvia Likens Canonical Story, certain parallels relative to the White Chapel murders and the Hillsborough Disaster may be discussed along side it. No denial of what happened in Sheffield in 1989 is being made here, and finally, after more than 25 years, most of the issues have been decided as far as the culmination of a series of inquiries is concerned. I take the truth of that for granted, and do not call it into question, nor offer any alternative view of the story. There are, perhaps, certain details that, like those in the other two Canonical Stories just referenced, make a certain impression on an always curious Teaspooner. And no one will deny that so many lies and distortions have been told about this catastrophe that one finds 1889 and 1965 sharing the strange feature that so much truth was buried in so many lies that it can leave anyone navigating her way through either of these Canonical Stories considerably disoriented.

The Sylvia Likens Canonical Story began its chaotic development by the next morning. The Hillsborough Canonical Story actually began within an hour of the event. The strange thing that both Canonical Stories have in common is that were apparent problems with the first stage of Canonical-Story-Formulation at the outset. Had the exit gates not been opened, the crowd-crush that happened inside the stadium would have simply occurred outside the stadium.

Actually, the crowd is much bigger than it looks from this shot, which is taken from CCTV footage. This simply shows the crowd size at the entrance turnstiles on the Leppings Lane end…the one that Liverpool fans, who made up all 96 fatalities, had to pass through. It was the emergency protocol to siphon-off at-risk fans at the front of a crush outside the gates to let them in through an exit gate. It was that or death. However, the opening of the gates was done in such a way as to let far too many people in at once. That was not protocol. Entering the courtyard, fans had three entrance points into terraces known as pens…standing areas behind the goal. There two points where one could enter into smaller, side pens. But looming right in front of the entering crowd, almost as if it had a large arrow above it just as the large arrow pointing to the Hobbs home in the Indi Star, was a large Tunnel that led directly to Pens 3 and 4. And these were already over-crowded. If that tunnel wasn’t closed, then the crowd would ended up where they shouldn’t have. Or so it goes.

In the end, the opening of C Gate, three times actually, and the opening of A Gate and B Gate, was not the direct cause of the catastrophe. That was merely part of the Anatomy of a Disaster that needed several other building blocks to create what one might describe as a Perfect Disastrous Storm. You might need to start with crowd mismanagement out front of the turnstiles, then the opening of C Gate..twice, then the apparent failure to close the Tunnel, then the simultaneous opening of A Gate, B Gate, and a final opening of C Gate, then the failure to close the Tunnel again, and also the failure to balance the influx of people into Pens 3 and 4 on the one hand, and the half-empty side pens on the other hand, earlier in the day…say, around 2:00 – 2:30. To this you would add faulty turnstiles, and, long ago, the removal of Crush Barriers 144, the removal of a section of Crush Barrier 136, and the failure, or unwillingness, to do anything about a faulty Crush Barrier 124a.  

The beginning of the Canonical Story was strange and chaotic. The order was given to open C Gate…or so that is the story. If that order had been given by the officer in charge of the police that day, and that had been done under similar circumstances in the past, then he would have believed that that was the correct, and indeed, the only coarse…sorry…course of action. Watching the video footage of the events in Pens 3 and 4, the odd thing is that one doesn’t actually see the lethal crush taking place. Something is going on there, but it is strange that the footage..well..the footage I have seen, which is derived from stadium, police, and BBC video sources, doesn’t actually show the crush. If I hadn’t been told what happened, watching the footage, I would not have guessed that 96 people were in the process of being crushed to death. Similarly, when watching the footage taken at different angles and by different sources..and the BBC footage is certainly the best in quality..one is struck by the actions of the police as the tragedy played out in Pens 3 and 4. Officers standing right in front of these pens, who were gazing into these areas, do not behave as though 96 people were being crushed to death in front of their eyes. It’s as if what they were supposed to be seeing, they weren’t seeing, even though it was only several feet in front of them. As time moves forward, there are scores and scores of cops milling around the football field, many strolling around quite casually. Watching them, and not knowing the Canonical Story, they seemed to have no idea that a horrible tragedy was playing itself out.

So the confusion. Either the police there that day simply didn’t care, or weren’t seeing what one would expect them to see. The police not caring, and consequently never doing anything of any real significance to the events in Pens 3 and 4, doesn’t seem plausible. And so I find myself confused…very confused. Another essay on this site discussed the subject of interpreting photos and pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words…or does a picture needs a thousand words to be worth anything? How would one interpret this photo:

According to the story, there was a crowd surge toward the front at 3:05. The story also holds that it was at that point that Crush Barrier 124a buckled and collapsed, sending a stream of people into the front fence. And so we see the police officer motioning to the crowd in the pens. We also see that the fans that are outside of the pens, and are standing on the pitch, don’t seem particularly interested in what is happening three feet behind them. There appears to be something far more interesting going on down field. The officer standing on the base of the fence is motioning to the crowd in the pen. Here he is again:

No, he is not the conductor of a symphony. He is motioning to the crowd. At the same time, we see another police officer at the gate leading from the pen to the pitch. No more than two people can fit through the perimeter fence at a time. Is he pulling people out or is he pushing people back in? And what about Greenwood? Is he motioning for people to move back? If there is a lethal crush occurring in that pen, it is because that pen is packed full of people. And if people are being crushed to death only inches in front of him, he would clearly see the crowd. Simply put, there is no way to save anyone by motioning the vast crowd to start trying to back up. But Greenwood is not the only one doing this:

And what time is this? 3:03:54. Thus, Crush Barrier 124a has not yet failed. But look at the fans standing on the base of the perimeter fence motioning at the crowd, apparently to “back up.” The guy from the press thinks it time to snap some photos, and the cop doesn’t seem overly concerned.

The above picture is a glimpse of the size of the crowd. You want to save lives by telling these people to back up?

And so it is hard to interpret pictures without someone giving you a thousand words before you look at them.

This is another interesting shot. The time is 3:04:26, approximately 30 seconds before Crush Barrier 124a will collapse. But the Canonical Story holds that people were being crush to death before the collapse of the barrier. And what is happening here is that two paramedics, shown in the circle, are strolling past the front of the pens. They don’t seem to be aware of what is happening right in front of their faces. Here’s another:

I’ve left the time counter showing. Having strolled along the front of the pens, and working from the presupposition, which is built into the Canonical Story, that Crush Barrier 124a has now collapsed, people are now trying to pull people out of the pens, fans who left the pen are now all over the place, but the paramedics do not appear to think that there is anything of real interest going on. What is the status at 3:05:54?

A good sized contingent of police have now appeared. The guys in the white uniforms are from the Nottingham Forest team, who are playing Liverpool. The police don’t seem to be in much of hurry, and they’re not interested in Pens 3 and 4. Yet, Crush Barrier 124a has collapsed, and according to the Canonical Story, the crush was killing for some time. Shouldn’t these cops be helping at the pens? Move forward to 3:11, the crush barrier failure was 6 minutes ago. What can happen in 6 minutes? Generally speaking, the human being dies when there has been no oxygen intake for roughly 6 minutes. Since being caught in a crowd crush does not involve a sudden and complete lack of oxygen, the time will be extended out from this approximation. But not by much. So this is particularly strange:

The arrival of a stretcher…one vs. 96 dead and dying..and in the footage, the paramedics are walking at a leisurely pace. No real reason to hurry, you know. 96 are dead and dying and one stretcher shows up? But what are we missing? What would be particularly handy right now?

I knew something was missing! An ambulance would, of course, come in handy. It is now 3:15, and the crush barrier failure is now 10 minutes old.

Here is one of the strangest scenes I’ve seen in the footage. The time is 5:13:28. Fans are still pouring over the top of the perimeter fence. So let’s look at this one:

An apparent scene of panic. But look toward the back center of the photo. If one were surrounded by scores of dead and dying people, it takes one cool cucumber to take the time in the middle of an apparent human disaster to stop and light a cigarette. Talk about cool under pressure! People being crushed can’t breathe in, or breathe out. Still, a smoke break is always nice. But!

Look to the center back of the photo. We see our smoker, but then see another man lighting a cigarette. Does anyone else think this is strange? I’m sure the Surgeon General wouldn’t approve at any rate.

And so Canonical Stories of all kinds are fascinating, and details…details…details! Based on the behavior of people such as cops, paramedics, fans, and smokers, one would almost get the impression that the primary problem wasn’t at the front. At 3:15, an ambulance arrives on the pitch, as seen above. But this was the scene back at C Gate one minute earlier:

This is perhaps the most fascinating picture of them all. This is the courtyard on the other side of the turnstiles near C Gate. One minute before the arrival of the ambulance on the pitch, an ambulance is arriving at the back. Must it be said, that given the over-crowding in Pens 3 and 4, that people crushed to death at the front of the pens could not have been brought back through that crowd, carried back up the tunnel, taken back to the courtyard, and then placed in an ambulance? Look at the top center of the photo. There appears to be a figure huddle over another figure. Why? Here comes the ambulance…is the huddled figure trying to revive someone lying on the ground? There appears to be another figure lying in a strange position next to the huddled figure. Who would these people be? Why an ambulance at the back, when the crush it at the front of Pens 3 and 4?

The Canonical Story quickly came together, and although the police would admit to failures, but they refused to bear the blame alone. Shades of Ricky Hobbs. So they blamed the fans. And that was where the media came in:

The police would essentially accuse the fans of being a drunken, out of control mob. The terrible toll that two decades of slander directed at the dead had on the victims’ families is nigh incalculable.

The disaster went through several inquiries, and the police kept up the lying until finally in April 2016, the fans were ruled to have been unlawfully killed. And the fans? They were found “utterly blameless.” Of course, pondering strange things and taking interest in things that other people find…well, boring, I return now to the heart of this essay, i.e. newspapers. An essay on this website showed clearly how the Sylvia Likens Canonical Story was being built by the police through the media, including the leaking of supposed confessions from a 12 year old boy. How different are these two event-phenomena? The police used the media to tell their Canonical Story. Still, I found this interesting. And it concerns Crush Barrier 124a, which was the barrier that broke in Pen 3, at around 3:05 pm.

This is a diagram that forms part of a particularly fascinating and certainly expert discussion of the architecture of the pens by someone far more knowledgeable than me. Still, I will make comments on details that only a person with many questions and apparently no answers would blunder into. Crush barriers are designed to keep fan pressure from becoming highly concentrated against people in each forward section. The people at the very front are at the most risk, then those in the next zone, and so on, moving back to the Tunnel. Two key changes had taken place in the years prior to the disaster in 1989. First, the barrier in Pen 4 labeled “144” seems to have dubious value. And it did, but not always. There were two more segments at one time, another segment in Pen 4 that ran to the fence separating the two pens, and one segment in Pen 3 that ran to the same wall. The purpose? The barriers would have had the effect of keeping a sudden, rapid influx into the pen from bearing straight down on those already in the pen by requiring a turn. So the people behind an intact barrier 136 would be protected. Strangely enough, the two segments were removed to allow a more rapid flow into the pens…which is just what the barriers were supposed to prevent. Then the police had the middle section of barrier 136 removed, creating barriers 136 and 136a. The long Crush Barrier 136 protected the people between it and 124a/125. The police wanted the segment removed so they could gain easier access to trouble-makers who might be creating a disturbance in the pen. As the diagram shows, its removal allowed a mean for a large influx of fans to exert potentially enormous pressure on people who had once been protected. It’s been argued that on the day of the disaster, this is exactly what happened. And it is a fact that barrier 124a collapsed:

This resulted in the people behind the barrier being thrust into the people standing in front of the barrier. A different view of the pens is interesting:

The Tunnel looms in the back. In this picture, there is more than just the fence, there are two brick flanking walls. Would these walls have an effect on the pressure channel in the pen? Diagonal flow? Why wouldn’t an influx of too many fans in an a chaotic flow, en masse, with the pressure being applied from behind, not place the greater part of the pressure they are contributing on the fans penned in by Crush Barrier 136a and 125? One might wonder why the flanking wall wouldn’t direct the influx of fans straight, rather than diagonally. Barrier 144 might have stopped such a flow. Would the removal of the two segments of Barrier 144 have had the effect of preventing a sudden and lethal crush taking place in the Tunnel as the flow into the pen hit that barrier and stalled?

Of course, as others have clearly shown, Crush Barrier 124a was corroded, and far too old. And I have to say, the way they found out just how old it was is an amazing component to a Canonical Story! Very much so. It’s like the episode of Columbo where a man kills his wife and frames another guy. To give himself an alibi, he takes a clock and turns it back. A picture of his wife is taken, with the clock clearly visible, and it is used in conjunction with a fake ransom note. Of course, for a brilliant no-Kaiser-or-Dixon detective such as Mrs. Columbo’s husband, the clock is simply too convenient. So too if hypothetical cops found a hypothetical murder victim wearing a watch with a broken crystal, that broke during the victim’s struggle with the attacker. An exact time of death! And if I were the not-Kaiser-and-not-Dixon detective, I would be unable to escape the feeling that it is far too convenient. The cross-bar of the barrier is actually hollow. And there was garbage crammed into it. Those analyzing the failed barrier pulled the junk out of the hollow cross bar until found a newspaper. Nothing surprising there, except that the newspaper had a date of 1932. 1932! I suppose the inside of the hollow cross-bar never got damp. That would be a shame since it would ensure that the newspaper was nothing but mush. And that newspaper must have been made out of very high quality paper! How long does it take for newspapers to turn yellow, then brittle, and then essentially turn into newspaper-dust? Perhaps this newspaper was made out of vellum, or leather, or some type of paper that they used in the 1780s in Germany, paper of such high quality that when I go to the library and read an insightful book on theology that was written by J.D. Eichhorn, the paper is in great condition. If I preferred Piscator, I could read a book far older than Dr. Eichhorn’s books, ca. 1600. I suppose that 300 years from now some theology student will pull down Piscator’s commentary on the book of Jeremiah and read the exact same sheets of paper that they were originally printed on. If that person understands medieval scholarly Latin, of course. How many have I found in the library, and not just in the theology section, but also the history department, where the pages have yellowed, and the sheets of paper practically break off as I turn them? Then the librarian accuses me of vandalizing books! No, I insist. The paper quality is not nearly as good as the paper quality that they used to print Piscator’s commentaries. Not all paper is created equal! Some is meant to last indefinitely. Some is meant to last no more than a few days, such as the paper used to mass produce newspapers, after which the expectation is that it will end up in the trash. That is not true, however, if you shove newspapers into the hollow cross-bar of a Crush Barrier in Hillsborough stadium. Perhaps these Crush Barriers should be studied by archivists.

It would appear that the someone, whoever would normally do so, did not keep a file that held various pieces of paper, not from 1932, that indicated how old the crush barriers were. And! It also appears that these crush barriers were inspected as required, but the inspectors, or engineers, could carry out inspections of something that was linked to life or death, and I mean that literally, without knowing how old it was. I just got on a United Airlines flight back home. Suddenly, I found myself wondering how old the components of the engine were, or the landing gear, or anything else associated with the aluminum tube in which I was travelling, really are. I sure hope that none of the gizmos were built in 1932! Do the maintenance guys, not to mention the inspectors, shrug their shoulders and say… “we don’t know when this thing was built. We don’t know how old it is. But it’s built pretty tough. So let’s see what happens. I bet they know how old every part of the engine is. How do you pass or fail the safety inspection of something that you don’t how old it is? The removal of Crush Barrier 144 was the fault of the police. The removal of a key segment of Crush Barrier 126 was the fault of the police. But there’s plenty of blame to go around. The engineer/safety inspectors ignored the corrosion, and apparently it didn’t occur to anyone that all the layers of paint may have been the result of stadium maintenance guys rightly reckoning that one way to hide unsightly corrosion is to paint over it, and figuring that a barrier that was essential to prevent a crowd-crush involving fans at the very front and those standing in the zone created by crush barrier row 1 and crush barrier row 2 didn’t need to know how old it was. That was fine, since whoever kept the records for the stadium facilities couldn’t find a file that included information like the age of the barrier, which of course has a finite life-span, and would be needed to save scores of lives that can suddenly be lost within ten minutes. So how would you know how old the thing is? That one is not on the police. After all, they’re too busy removing parts of crush barriers that…. Well, if I said it again, it would be redundantly repetitious, and said too many times too! Am I calling into question the newspaper from 1932? I am not. Am I saying that this part of the Canonical Story was made up? I am not. As has been said elsewhere on this website…bizarre things do happen, and they do not necessarily indicate the detail in question is spurious, or the overall effect each detail of such a nature has in aggregate. No. But those who study the Canonical Story, those who you might call Teaspooners, love details. The whole is important, but one must judge the whole in relation to the details. The trees are more interesting than the forest…even Jimmy’s Forest, and even more interesting that Gidget’s Jungle of Horror. Each detail is a whole in itself. So pondering inscrutable things, and obviously having more questions than answers, I find the detail about the newspaper from 1932 to be a fascinating detail indeed. The newspaper is part of a bigger whole…it is more than just printed on bionic paper, something that can be pulled out of the middle of the hollow top bar of a Crush Barrier after you pull out all the cups, wrappers, programs, and old crumpled-up cans of Tennent’s Lager until you get to the middle. And it is more important than just providing a dramatic clue establishing just how old the Crush Barrier was, when I would have simply looked at the records in the maintenance office. A whole bunch of other ponderable details are emitted from it. No records? Inept, incompetent, or just careless inspections? Of course, if the police had simply left Crush Barrier 125 left as it was installed, i.e. as one long crush barrier protecting fans standing in crush zone 2, Crush Barrier 124a would not have collapsed. And it is clear that it did. So a fascinating chain of blame results, giving numerous parties roles in the Great Disaster. Perhaps the parts are greater than the sum of the whole. So newspapers are of prime importance to Canonical Stories, and in more ways than one.

And another key element of the Canonical Story, was it’s very beginning. Announcer John Motson, following the stopping of the game at approximately 3:06, attempted to find out had happened. At 3:13, he announced that he had been told that the cause of the disaster was that a gate, presumably C Gate, had been forced open, resulting in an inrush of fans who didn’t have tickets, who then poured through the Tunnel and into the over-crowded Pens 3 and 4. I find that strange. Why? Because watching the footage, and particularly the behavior of the police, if the main event occurred where we are told it did, it seemed to take them a fairly long amount of time to figure what was happening. And if the crush was just beginning to become apparent, surely the horrible numbers of dead would have taken far more time to ascertain. And although this is purely subjective, the amount of time this would have taken suggests that 3:13 is too soon for the excuse offered by the police to have surfaced. First you have to realize that an emergency had developed. This seemed to take an agonizing amount of time. This would then have to be communicated to commanding officers. Then the scale of the emergency would have to be determined. Then they would have had to determine that the actual cause of this was due to the inrush of fans through C Gate. Since the opening of C Gate was the right thing to do, there would have been confusion. Then, if the Tunnel had in fact not been closed off, then police commanders would have to learn of this too. Then they would have to make the connection between the opening of C Gate and the Tunnel not having been closed off. Then they would have to contemplate this and, now learning of the scale of the disaster, would have to consider what excuse to make. Although this is subjective, I find that the communication of this excuse at 3:13 pm to be extremely unlikely. It is simply too soon. If that is true, although it probably isn’t, then either the police had an excuse before the disaster happened, a troubling option indeed, or the main event happened before 3:05, and somewhere else other than at the front of Pens 3 and 4.

The next day, the Canonical Story changed. Peter Wright now contradicted what had been said the previous day at 3:13, and he stated that it was the police who opened C Gate. Still, he maintained that the opening of C Gate was not in a causal relationship to the influx of fans into Pens 3 and 4. And, the fans were still to blame. So why walk back the claim that the fans broke open the gate? Presumably the video footage would show the police opening the gate. But which time? The second opening, or the third opening? And individuals who were stated to have been involved in the opening of the gate, police and stewards, would later deny, or have difficulty remembering, the circumstances of how C Gate was actually opened. And then something even more strange. C Gate was opened for the first time at 2:48, and there was an inrush of fans. A police officer is clearly seen walking toward the gate. The gate is then opened again at 2:52, and a very large inrush of fans takes place. The gate closed at 2:58. At approximately the same time, A Gate and B Gate were opened, resulting in another large inrush of fans. Suddenly, after just having closed, C Gate opens again at 2:59. So there is a sudden inrush of a very large crowd of fans, who now pour in through Gates A, B, and C. Where did these fans go? And did the police open C Gate all three times? If the Tunnel had not been closed…had it remained open when the first two opening of C Gate took place? Had it remained open the third time C Gate was opened? Had it remained open when A Gate and B Gate were opened? It is the opening of all three gates at the same time that raises the question in my mind. Was it the intention to divert the fans entering through A Gate and B Gate away from the Tunnel, and to the entrances to the side pens? Of course, if so, many would no doubt head for the Tunnel area anyway. Is that where the fans entering C Gate the third time headed…straight ahead? What would have happened if the Tunnel had actually been closed before A Gate and B Gate were opened? And if it were closed when C Gate suddenly opened for a third time, after having just been shut, what would have been the result? I suppose there is no way to know. But if enough fans entering through A Gate, B Gate, and C Gate (third opening) head toward the closed Tunnel, then perhaps one possible outcome would have been a massive, lethal crush in the courtyard, as people are forced up against the closed Tunnel. People might also end up crushed against the walls visible in the footage. And that is where two figures are seen lying on the ground in the photo shown above, with one figure apparently being attended to someone...by the wall at the turnstiles. If police could not get to C Gate because of the crush, they would not have been able to open it and relieve the crush. The only thing to do would, hypothetically of course, be to try and open the Tunnel. And if you did that, then there would a final, lethal inrush of fans into Pens 3 and 4. Fans at Crush Barrier 124a reported that just before the barrier broke, there had been a large surge forward. Survivors stated that such surges were not rare in the pens, and while they suddenly became rather uncomfortable, they always receded. But this did not happen this time, and the crowd remained frozen. So people could no longer breathe. And Crush Barrier 124a broke.

Finally, we circle back to role of newspapers. During the final inquest into the Hillsborough Disaster, the issue of the opening of C Gate came up again. That’s strange. How C Gate was opened was admitted by the police to be due to their actions. On the day of the disaster, fans were blamed. The next day, the police took responsibility. Then on August 24, 2016, police appealed for 19 men identified as having been at C Gate to come forward to give evidence. Some of these men were on the outside of C Gate, and some were on the inside of C Gate. The police said they wanted to talk to these men, but that they hadn’t done anything wrong. So why talk to people who had been at C Gate 27 years ago? We know what happened at C Gate…the police opened it. Matter closed. Why talk to anyone about it again? Why talk to certain people about a subject that seemed closed the day after the disaster? If one didn’t know any better, one might think that the circumstances surrounding one specific opening of C Gate were not quite as certain as they had seemed to be. Details…details…details. And what can be said of coincidences? The same thing? Perhaps. But I show one more picture here, and one that presents an absolutely phenomenal coincidence. Actually, it is a crop from a photo shown earlier. A fan is standing on the perimeter fence as there is an apparent rush to climb out of one of the pens. There is a newspaper in his back pocket:

It was only as I finished my essay that I finally noticed that the newspaper has been rolled up in such a way that the only thing visible to the eye is the word "death." I would be very confused if that word is just one of three words: "crushed to death." My, that is quite a coincidence...or would be. And in the end, Canonical Stories seem simple enough. But, you can’t believe everything you read in the papers. Even if it’s fit to print. Maybe.