“Identity Crisis Part 2: Angels Unaware”

Every Canonical Story must have its cast of characters. Certainly the Sylvia Likens does, and what a memorable cast of characters it is! So too the White Chapel murders. And there was a distinct lack of angels all around. In another essay I showed newspaper illustrations of the supposed killer. It was clear that that these were distorted images of John Pizer…an innocent man, and one who was cleared by the police. He was not Leather Apron, something he emphasized to the police. However, other images are suggestive of Multiple Sightings. This one is interesting:

Good news! Jack the Ripper was caught! No. But it would have been easy to catch a guy who dragged his victims down the street in broad day late by the hair! This is a strange sighting indeed. But one can add an even more modern sighting:

The strange gets stranger! My how the Ripper has changed. He no longer looks like a ghoul, or a monstrous reflection of poor John Pizer. He doesn’t even look like the guy caught by a bunch of people standing on the sidewalk, although that did make it easier. So what about this sighting? You guessed it…the elusive killer has been transformed into a member of the Victorian Upper Class. What spawned such a transformation? The absurd theory that the White Chapel killer was actually Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, grandson of Queen Victoria. Now that’s a sighting! What about this one?

So a man with his back to us, very subtly holding a knife dripping some substance, which doesn’t appear to be blood, and who may be intended as a representation of the Ripper, is gazing at a montage of possible suspects. Are we to figure out what face would fit on our knife-wielding man? Is he the pirate? Is he the man who looks like a clergyman? How about the face in the middle, the troll or goblin wearing the hat…a hat that looks like his hat! Upper right..is that a woman? Yes. There was a woman, Mary Pearcey, who was suggested as a possible Ripper suspect. Jill the Ripper! Jack and Jill went up a hill to stalk the streets of Whitechapel! Of course, that’s ridiculous, not to mention the fact that her face certainly doesn’t belong on the man who looks up at….her! Doesn’t it seem a little like he is actually looking up at the woman? Still, if you look at the bottom of the montage, you can’t those two faces. Very clever! One of those faces is the one that fits on the large, powerful looking man. So looking at the picture, there are certainly Multiple Sightings of history’s most famous murderer. Yet the sighting that would matter most is the one that is impossible. A touch of irony for a Canonical Story that seemed to have everything.

And the Hillsborough Affair had its cast of characters too. When studying the footage of that tragic day, one might just notice something that is…well…interesting. Of course, something can be interesting and then, in the end, prove to be of little value to the overall Canonical Story. Nonetheless, being interested in interesting things, or, at the least, being interested in things that might be interesting, and then prove to be of little interest, details…details…details. And as is clear, chronology is everything as well.

It is clear that there was a problem in Pen 3 before 3:05 pm, the approximate time that Crush Barrier 124a collapsed, sending a stream of people directly into the perimeter fence. Prior to this critical moment, 2:40 pm is clearly a key moment as well. Why is that? Because there may have been a problem at this time. The following picture is interesting.

The time is, as I noted, 2:49. The crush barrier will fail in 16 minutes. But what does this picture mean? There is no time for a thousand words, to be sure. We see the interface between Pen 2 and Pen 3. A man is climbing the fence separating the two pens. And Pen 3 is very crowded. There are two men standing on the base of the radial fence. One witness stated that he saw a man pinned against the radial fence, and that the man in question was clearly in “distress.” Here is that fence:

Another interesting component in the still shot noted above is that it almost looks like the two men standing on the base of the radial fence are actually the same person twice. The hair is the same, and they appear to be dressed in exactly the same clothes. That is interesting…almost like some bizarre mirror image…dopplegangers…like a small tunnel opened between the two Canonical Stories and strange elements of both could suddenly pass from one to the other. Relkin showed me card 9gf. Hey Relkin! What do you see?

Not sure? What about me? Hmm. It is rather interesting. Still, the dopplegangers are clearly gazing into Pen 3. But why? They do not seem to be upset. They are rather relaxed, or so it looks from the picture. They do not look like they see a dangerous crush developing at the “radial fence.” They are not pulling people out of the pen. One might be inclined to think that they are looking for someone…someone who is in Pen 3. A friend? Or maybe the man in the front, and not his doppleganger who appears to be holding onto him, is confronting someone. I am rather inclined to go with the former possibility. Why? Because if one focuses on the people in Pen 3 directly in his line of view, they appear to be ignoring the man. If he were stirring up trouble, those near the fence would be responding. But they look as though they don’t even know that the man and his doppleganger are there. And! We see a man climbing out of Pen 3. Is he escaping a crush? Looking at the picture, it is clear that there is no crush taking place at the radial fence that we see in the photo. Still, the man is climbing out of Pen 3. Perhaps he just doesn’t like how crowded the pen is at 2:49 and so he climbs into Pen 2. If the twins are looking for someone, perhaps Climbing Man has seen someone in Pen 2 that he knows. Of course, there is no way to be sure at any rate. If this picture were a tree, and that tree resided in a Canonical Story Forest, although not Jimmy’s Forest, a place in Jameson Park, and we looked at this tree in light of the Forest, then this picture could be understood to be indicative of the crush already building up in Pen 3. But looking at this tree by itself, i.e. without the Forest, a very significant interpretation is possible. What is that? Well, this picture does not provide evidence for the emergency that will exist when the final surge into Pen 3 takes place moments before 3:05. In fact, the footage shows that the crowd in Pen 3 at 2:49/2:50 is “surging” back and forth. So what? Well, there is still enough room for the people in Pen 3 to be moving around.

Note also what is happening at the bottom of the photo:

Sorry for the poor quality. Still, the scene is clear. The diagonal white line marks the radial fence that separates Pens 2 and 3. Pen 3 is to the right. It appears that there is some kind of conversation, or confrontation, between someone in Pen 2 and someone in Pen 3. I also found this interesting:

Notice the man in the middle. It looks like the man has a pinkie finger in his mouth. Actually, in the footage, someone whistles just as this shot comes into view. So is this the Whistling Man? And! He appears to be looking toward Pen 2. Here’s the same man a few moments later:

Now he is pointing toward Pen 2. One gets the impression that he whistled to get someone’s attention, someone in Pen 2, and then having gotten their attention, points at them. Is this a confrontational scene? It would appear that there was notable interaction taking place between Pens 2 and 3.

I think that the cast of characters is getting interesting. Of course, it isn’t hard to make it even more interesting. What is better than a woman watching her twin running down a beach? Twins in Pen 2? What’s more interesting than two sets of twins? No! Not Dianna and Danny. Not Jenny and Benny. Not Stephanie and Sylvia. Not Ronnie and Donnie. How about this shot:

So there are two men that look, and are dressed, just like each other in Pen 2, and we find a similar set of dopplegangers in Pen 4. Actually, there are two sets of verifiable twins in the Sylvia Likens Affair, and two sets of apparent twins in the Hillsborough Disaster. And! Look at the situtation at the very back of Pen 4. I’m speaking hypothetically, and just commenting on pictures and details, it looks like there is a very distressing situation at the back of Pen 4. Setting aside what we’re told was happening down front, and looking at the back of Pen 4, it certainly appears that a potentially lethal situation had fully developed at the back of Pen 4. So a crush has developed, or is developing, or is soon to develop, at the back of the pen. The crowd, shown in the footage relative to the middle and front of the pen, are moving around, while it almost looks like the people at the back of Pen 4 are not. There is the radial fence, but then there is the concrete wall at the back of the pen. If a crush develops at the back of Pen 4, those people would not be able to move toward Pen 3 because of the radial fence, and they would not have been able to move back because of the concrete wall, they would be in a potentially lethal situation. If another group of fans were to suddenly slam into the back of the people in the pen, one might think, being a non-expert who knows nothing, that these people in the back of the pen would be unable to escape the crush. That means, they will die; die standing up. The man in the white shirt at the back left of the photo is at the entrance to Pens 3 and 4. The crowd is packed all the way to that entrance. If the Tunnel is closed, then it will be impossible for people in the back to move out of the pen. But even if it is open, what would happen if a massive crowd of supporters anxious about missing the kick off poured in from Gate A and Gate B, and then, in what might be the proverbial straw breaking the proverbial camel’s back, Gate C was suddenly re-opened, ended up pushing toward the entrance to Pens 3 and Pen 4? There would be no way for the fans to move back…sorry Greenwood. The people at the back of the pen would be unable to escape a hypothetical crush that might, hypothetically of course, develop at the back of the pen. The following picture is approximately 2 minutes later, i.e. 2:50, which is ten minutes prior to kick-off:

he fists in the air are in response to the announcement of the names of the Liverpool players over the loud speaker. But it would appear that the people in the back part of the photo are either Liverpool fans who have a rather aloof attitude toward their team, or Liverpool fans who are packed in so tightly that raising their arms in the air is difficult. Some of them can, but it looks like that it was more difficult for them than those further down toward the front.

 Difficult, but not impossible..at least for everyone. Look at the fans on the upper terrace…they are either totally uninterested in participating in cheering the Liverpool players, or their attention is directed toward something else. In fact, they seem to be more interested in the back part of Pen 4 than anything else. What would be happening there that is more captivating than the announcement of the Liverpool players?

The second opening of C Gate took place at 2:52:20. And the following picture is interesting:

This photo is interesting as far as two characters are concerned. The gate is just opening, and we see a man standing on a ledge, or something, along the wall. Why? It might be a good way of avoiding an expected stampede or crush. Then there is a man at the middle part of the bottom of the photo, wearing the Adidas jacket. He is applauding. It’s as if he knows that C Gate will be opened, and for some reason, this excites him.

So the man with the Adidas jacket isn’t the only one who’s excited. Our Wall Standing Man, the one who took up a very wise position in the event that a crush developed in the courtyard, is now plenty excited as well.

Another person has quite wisely joined our cheering Wall Standing Man as the crowed pours in. The gate will close at 2:58. Thus it had been open for approximately 6 minutes. A cop will suddenly appear on the outside of the gate. Perhaps he was the one who closed it. Then Gates A and B will open. For some reason, C Gate opens again (2:59). This picture is interesting:

This is a terribly bad picture, I know. And my arrow is even worse than the picture. But the arrow is pointing toward a figure that suddenly appears as C Gate is opened for the third time. It is clear when watching the footage that this figure is a cop; or at least, is dressed like one. At 3:00:26, the match having just started, we see this:

This picture shows, toward the left, a cop in front of the perimter gate leading into Pen 2. There is a row of fans, with some police officers, walking toward this gate. The fans are walking at a normal pace, and entering the pen through the gate. There is no indication of a terrible emergency. If these people left one of the two pens, and then made it out onto the pitch…why? If they were escaping a crush, wouldn’t these fans have been doing more than walking casually toward the gate leading into Pen 2? Wouldn’t the officers be aware of a problem?

Now, in a previous essay I showed two stills from Hillsborough footage that showed two men, apparently at ground zero, who light their cigarettes. This seems very strange, to say the least. Here is another strange still-shot:

So it’s 3:11. The Crush barrier broke at 3:05. We can see people trying to climb out of the pen, and some people, including at least one cop, are trying to help people out of the pen. So we are in full disaster mode at this point. Look at the center of the photo, and to the left. I will crop the photo, since it is probably difficult to see what I think is so odd. Here it is:

So if you were too young to smoke, being just a boy, you might have a man give you a piggy-back ride. Of course, not a piggy-back ride like the kind Sylvia accidentally gave Little Jimmy. He was climbing onto her back, she moved, and he fell to the ground. Shirley claimed that Sylvia had “flipped” her brother. So she clearly misunderstood what happened. Dead center of the photo…a man is carrying a boy on his shoulders. They are right at the front of the pen. And yes, the boy, facing the pen, appears to be yelling at the people in the pen, and with a rather amused look on his face. I think that’s odd. But there is yet another still that I think shows something else that one might think is rather confusing. The time is 3:04, approximately a minute before the Crush Barrier failure. The footage in question is a close-up. It shows two males suddenly appear on the pitch. One is wearing a coat, and slowly drops to the ground. Two other males then kneel down over him. The second male is wearing a track suit…wait, given the infamous track suit we find in the Sylvia Likens Canonical Story, let’s simply call it ‘athletic garb’…not jail garb, Gertrude Baniszewski’s less attractive addition to her wardrobe. The second male behaves oddly:

The general idea that one will get looking at the footage is that the man in the center, having slowly dropped to the ground, has been injured in the crush at the front of Pen 3 or Pen 4. He made it over the fence, or perhaps through the perimeter gate, and is injured as a result of having been caught in the crush. The other two men, those who are kneeling over the other man, are not injured. They simply knelt down over the apparently injured man. What about the male on the right? He too fell to the ground, suggesting that he was in a similar state as the other man. That’s odd. Why? Because having fallen to the ground, he looks toward the pen, whistles, calls out, and then motions for someone to join him:

What is hard to capture in a still is the fact that he is grinning. So it is a strange shot. Four men suddenly appear. One drops to the ground, and lies on his back. Two of the others come to his aid. The fourth man drops to the ground too. But he looks back to the pen, whistles, calls out to someone, motions for this person or persons to join him, and then smiles. One is tempted to conclude that there are a lot of people associated with this disaster who do not behave in the manner one would expect. Two men calmly light cigarettes. Another man carries a boy on his shoulders…a boy who appears to smile and yell back at the people in the pen. Then, as one man suddenly appears and drops to the ground, apparently injured, another man drops to the ground, and smiles as he calls out for someone to join him. Very interesting. But this is another fascinating still:

Ignore the black vertical line. Note the time. And if you look at the bottom right quadrant, you will see a man in a shirt with red vertical stripes. What is he doing? He’s walking toward the front of the pens, clapping ecstatically. Does it seem like there are simply too many happy people looking straight ahead at a horrible calamity?

I will show a trio…a group of three, wait, that’s repetitiously redundant. Perhaps “triad” would enable me to avoid repeating myself:

The triad? Three cops, of course. They are standing on the terrace over Pen 3 and Pen 4. They are looking down rather intently. And the time? It is 2:00. That’s long before the opening of Gate C. At this time, the dangerous crush outside the turnstiles at the Leppings Lane entrance is just building up. Now look down at the pens. We see the very back of the pens. And look how full they are! In fact, the crowd in these pens are smashed all the way to the very back. So the pens were completely full at 2:00? How could a crowd of any significant size actually get into either of these pens? Yet we still have to absorb large amounts of people from the openings of Gate C, not mention Gates A and B. It might look to the naked eye as if any influx down the Tunnel into the opening to Pens 3 and Pen 4 would simply slam into the back of the crowd at the back of the pens. Given the crush barriers, even with the modifications that the police had made to them, inrushing fans would slam into the back of the people in the pens, with the tendency to be that the crowd is pushed forward. But the crush barriers will prevent this. Would there suddenly be horizontal pressure exerted? If that were the case, then people at the back of the pen could quickly find themselves in dire straights. Those people might find themselves crushed up against the radial fences, and even more dangerous, against the concrete wall at the very back of the pens. If the people attempting to move into the pens through the tunnel suddenly met significant resistance, the crowd behind them, getting bigger as more people passed through the courtyard and into the Tunnel, then the people at the back of the pen, and the people at the opening of the Tunnel trying to get into the pens, could find themselves caught in a massive crush. Those against the radial fence and the concrete wall would be the most at risk. Those in the Tunnel as well, and depending on the size of the crowd who rushed through the open gates, the danger goes back towards the courtyard. We might also say that the police in front of the pens, until they receive radio reports of what is happening at the back of the pens, wouldn’t see the crush. If that scenario has any merit, which it probably doesn’t, there would be only three ways to save those lives. The first would be for the crowd to move back…back into the Tunnel, and we’ve seen pictures of the police and fans apparently motioning for the crowd to move back. If there was also a crush in the Tunnel and into the courtyard, then again…nobody’s going to moved backwards. A second way to save lives would be for the crowd to move forward. However, that is obviously tenuous. First, people toward the front of the pens would have to become aware of the problem at the back of the pens. Then they will have to climb over the perimeter fence and/or pass through the perimeter gates. Clearly, not enough people can move forward to relieve the crush at the back of the pens in any meaningful way. One can state that if there was no perimeter fence separating the pens from the pitch, then a risk of a crush at either the front or back of the pens would seem remote. People can simply pour out onto the pitch. But decades of English football hooliganism mandated that this access to the pitch had to be removed. So up went the perimeter fences, reducing the risk of a “pitch invasion” as it’s called. That said, and people climbing out of the pens or going through the small perimeter gates being insufficient to save lives at the back of the pen quickly, another possibility exists:

Yes, tear down the perimeter fence. If the fence is removed, then the crowd in the pens could move forward very quickly and relieve the pressure that exists at the back. Notice the time is 3:18. Notice all the people on the pitch. And notice that the fence is being pulled down from within the pens, not from outside. There is obviously plenty of room for the people at the front of the pens to move around as they pull the fence down. Notice all the people toward the front who are not being crushed. If enough people being crushed at the front of the pens had escaped already in sufficient numbers so as to allow the people moving forward to have enough room to pull the perimeter fence down toward themselves, then the crush at the front would be over. Why then pull down the perimeter fence? Some people had been smoking cigarettes for some time before it was decided to pull down the fence. Not to mention piggy-back rides and calling your friends down onto the pitch. Of course, the perimeter fence is still being pulled down. So a lot of people seem to have escaped by climbing over the fence, or squishing through the narrow perimeter gates, assuming that all of the people on the pitch are from Pens 3 and 4, and didn’t come from somewhere else. Possibly from the side pens. If the scene at 3:18 was still so bad that the fence had to come down, it seems strange that so many police, dozens of them, are content to mill around the crowd on the pitch, rather than help. I’ll bet that if all those cops were helping, the perimeter fence would come down pretty quickly. They seem to be in crowd control mode. Strange, given that its 3:18. Crowd control mode? Perhaps I should take that back. The people on the pitch don’t look like the cops are controlling them. And! If the 96 victims of this tragedy were dying at the front of the pens, and given the fact that you would not be able to take these people back through the pens, down the Tunnel, through the courtyard, to ambulances waiting for them, then you must take them out of the pens through the front. And if that was happening, this crowd of people would be distinctly hampering any efforts to apply emergency aid, or getting them out of the way quickly. The cops should be getting these people out of the way, something that doesn’t happen as more and more people pour out onto the pitch, creating a bigger obstruction.

And even more strange is the fact that Pens 3 and Pens 4 were already so full at 2:00 that people were crowded back to the opening of the Tunnel. And as the photo shows, at least 3 police officers knew just how crowded those pens were at 2:00.

For the intelligent mind, nothing is inexplicable…only unexplained. Some things are explained, but the explanation seems almost…inexplicable. Of course, an explanation for the explanation for something isn’t inexplicable, only unexplained, and so may just be unexplained. Details are important, as I have said elsewhere. Canonical Stories are made up of lots of details. Here is one I find fascinating. As the account of things goes, the coroner tested those who died for blood alcohol levels. Much was made of this, and it is certain that the police, in their effort to pass the blame onto the fans, accused them of being a rowdy, drunken mob. It is confusing though. It’s not confusing that the coroner would test the victims for blood alcohol levels. Most people are not autopsied when they die. But those that are autopsied..well…it would be a case of toxicology testing. I think that this would be a matter of routine. And they found alcohol in the blood? Really? If I were living in Britain and turned on the news and heard that the fans who died at Hillsborough had tested positive for alcohol, I would say… So what? Of course they did. It’s a football match. People drink before football matches. It’s an age-old tradition. It also means nothing. If the coroner walked around the stadium testing people for blood alcohol levels, he would find thousands of people who had been drinking before the match. In fact, if the coroner had announced that the victims were tested for blood alcohol levels and announced that none of the people who died had alcohol in their blood, that would be shocking. What…the football match was between two teams whose fans were committed tea-totallers? Perhaps it was Alcoholics Anonymous night at Sheffield. If the fans who died tested positive for alcohol, and thousands of people in the stadium tested positive for alcohol, as they certainly would have, then the results of the alcohol test means absolutely nothing. If the police will claim that the fans were responsible for, not opening C Gate as Duckenfield apparently said, but being a disorderly mob, like Mr. Middup went on and on about whenever he was asked about the disaster, and which Peter Wright implied when he claimed that the crush on the terraces had no causal relationship to the opening of C Gate, it wouldn’t take an accusation of drinking before the match to get to that conclusion. Especially when Liverpool fans were involved. It was an accusation that would find firm footing when viewed in light of the Heysel Stadium disaster. The general conclusion about that disaster holds Liverpool fans were bore much of the blame. If drinking before football matches was common, then the fans could have been, hypothetically speaking, rowdy and disorderly, and alcohol consumption would still have been meaningless. Nottingham Forest fans had been drinking too, and there was no disaster on their side of the stadium. However, there is a sub-detail about the whole surprise-surprise-fans-had-been-drinking-before-the-match theme that makes the whole question about alcohol even more intriguing. The basic account states that the coroner also tested the blood of children for alcohol levels. That is strange. Did the police claim that even the Liverpool fans who died at Hillsborough who were mere children had been drinking? That would be a surprising thing to hear on the news. And would anyone believe that? And would the cops, putting together a Canonical Story to shift much of the blame from themselves, really be stupid enough to present the public with the claim that children had been drunk? And I suppose one could look at this issue from a more context-rich perspective. If the general story-line was to be that drunk Liverpool fans arrived at the stadium late, and then forcing their way in, or being let in by cops who apparently had never policed football matches before so they expected thousands of sober and orderly choir boys to show up at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium, only to find that, upon opening the gates, there was an inrush of fans who didn’t want to miss kick-off, then an interesting context would be reasonable. If this crowd rushed through the gates, into the tunnel, and slammed into the back of the people in Pens 3 and 4, which caused a crush down at the front, then the people who died, down at the front, would not be the people who rushed into the stadium and caused the disaster. In other words, people who had arrived much earlier, by 2:00 for example, were in the pens and at the front before the supposed drunken mob stormed through the gates. Hmm. That would suggest that the victims would have had absolutely nothing to do with the group that the police would blame. If a man and his eight year old son had arrived, not late, and not drunk, and not in a hurry, at say 1:50, and made their way down to the front of Pen 3, they may well die in the crush caused by the other people, who stormed in later. So if that man tested positive for alcohol, it would be even more meaningless than it would be for someone who behaved in a way that Paul Middup so disliked. Ah, yes. This is important. If the crush was at the front of the pens, one might be tempted to speculate that none of the people who died in the crush had anything to do with those who poured through C Gate..none of them. It would be people who had arrived much earlier. We saw that the triad of cops, at 2:00, seemed to show so much interest in the crowds in Pens 3 and 4 at that time, the pens being so full that the crowd was actually dangerously pinned to the back cement wall at that time. So how could anyone in the fictional disorderly mob have ever made it down to the front? That would mean that all of the victims of the crush at the front of the pens had nothing to do with the Middupian mob. So alcohol means nothing, and the people that police wished to blame the disaster on had nothing to do with the deceased. So I feel that it is a very lame argument on the part of the police that blood alcohol meant anything. But what of the children? I would think that the police, British, American, or even from the dark side of the moon, in putting together a story intended to divert blame from themselves, wouldn’t test the blood of children for alcohol. It’s not something that you could realistically use. If you test their blood for alcohol, which most people would simply refuse to believe tested positive, then you wasted your time and energy doing something stupid. And, any children who would have died at the front of the pens couldn’t have been part of the Middupian Nightmare anyway.

Now, simply for the sake of completeness, and operating from a concern for being comprehensive too, there are a couple of observations that could be made that if they were made would only show how little I know about the whole thing. First, to blame alcohol and an unruly mob as responsible, and then testing the victims in order to present the public with the claim that the victims had been drinking, then those who died would have to be those disorderly drunks. If the victims died at the front of the pens, that’s a problem. If, however, the victims died at the back of the pens, then among the dead could be, hypothetically, the people who so haunted the mind of Paul Middup. In other words, if the people who died did so, say, in the Tunnel, or in the courtyard, then the claim about drunk and disorderly fans being to blame, evidenced by testing positive for blood alcohol, could have logicality associated with it. But that puts the victims somewhere other than the front. Still, why test the blood of the children, especially if your storyline won’t be that it was an influx of disorderly drunken children who precipitated the disaster? It’s very, very strange. Of course, if you were testing blood of all the victims, and not just for alcohol, but for anything that would be relevant to a cause of death…i.e. toxicology testing, then you would have a particularly confusing situation if something was found in the blood of every victim, adult and child alike, and you didn’t want it made known, then the claim that the coroner was looking for alcohol in the blood of children would perhaps be the only way to cover up the fact that you found something in their blood that you didn’t want to, or couldn’t, explain. Then you would end with a stupid claim that alcohol was found in the blood of people who would have had it in their blood even if the only tragedy that day was the fact that their team didn’t win, because you didn’t have an alternative. And if something was strange about the blood of the children too, you would be stuck with an even more stupid stupidity than that which a bunch of stupid people started with. That assumes that those people weren’t actually smart people who, to cover something up, weren’t smart enough to realize that they were falling back on something stupid because there wasn’t anything not stupid to fall back on. 

It would be interesting to note that there are some in the cast of characters who seemed to hog the spotlight. Multiple Sightings, to be sure. Of the same person? Maybe. Or perhaps of the same shirt? Possibly. Here is an interesting still that captures something strange at 3:01:33-

So here Checkered-Shirt is where he isn’t supposed to be…on the pitch. And he appears to be having a disagreement with police officers. What do you do next?

That’s right…you put him back in one of the pens. Which one?

Wow! Pen 1. You might think, seeing how the failure of Crush Barrier 124a is only three and one-half minutes away, that he is a very lucky shirt. And he is. But then he’s not. And then he is. How did Checkered-Shirt become unlucky?

Somehow, in a matter of minutes, he ended up transitioning from the relative safety of Pen 1, to end up in Pen 3 or Pen 4. That’s unlucky. But it would appear that he managed to get out of the pen at any opportune time. What time is this? 3:03. Now one might think that you would count your blessings. Or not. And it may be that in the intervening time segment this happens:

Perhaps he’s not done mixing it up with the cops yet. Still, escaping Pen 3 should have been a moment for religious contemplation. Or not:

If you look at the lower right quadrant of the still, a shirt that looks a lot like Checkered-Shirt, perhaps his twin, is running around on the pitch. The counter is apparently around 30 seconds off from the counter on the actual footage. But clearly we have passed the point when Crush Barrier 124a broke. If you forgot your cigarettes, and there was no one who could give you a piggy-back ride, and you didn’t have a friend to whistle to you and call you out onto the pitch, you could instead get a bit of exercise by running around where you don’t belong. But that could get boring pretty fast. If so, you could find another way of entertaining yourself:

Now for yanks who know nothing about respectable, high-brow British traditions, he is making the two-fingered “up yours!” British salute. If he were an American Checkered-Shirt, he would have two middle fingers in the air. And! He is facing the Nottingham Forest end of the stadium, and telling them what he thinks about them. No wonder that Maggie Thatcher preferred Cricket to Football. I’m sure that Cricket players don’t tell the other team to stick it up their…wait, I almost forgot, this is a PG rated website. Still, having escape the fate of 96 other people, and having been thrown into Pen 1, to then make your way into Pen 3, only to climb out of Pen 3 in the nick of time, and not being of a contemplative nature, you might run around the pitch until it’s time to make obscene gestures toward the other fans. If it were me, and Paula Baniszewski might just agree, I would be on my knees thanking God and swearing over and over again that I will lead a righteous life and do His will in all things. But it will come as no surprise that a police officer dashes over to Checkered-Shirt to deal with him. And so it is, that there are Multiple Sightings of Checkered-Shirt..one? Or more? If one, then he has an amazing ability to appear in so much of the footage at the Liverpool end of the pitch on that fateful day.

I noted that if you were caught in a crush at the back of the pen, there was yet one more option for saving your life. If you were unlucky enough to not be wearing a Checkered-Shirt, unlucky enough to be pinned up against the radial fence or the concrete wall at the back of the pen, knowing that enough people couldn’t possibly climb the perimeter fence or push their way through the perimeter gates fast enough to save your life; knowing that they will finally pull the perimeter fence down into Pen 3 far to late for you, you have one more option. This:

So much of the story doesn’t seem to make any sense. But this does. Look at the middle of the picture…at the yellow sign. You see two people being pulled up out of the pen by people on the terrace above. Pulled up out of the back of the pen. Notice the time. This is almost the time at which the Crush Barrier broke.

And now more people. It seems like there are a lot of people out on the pitch. If the crush is at the front, why would people pull you up to the terrace above? In the footage, more and more people are pulled up out of the back of the pen and into the upper terrace. If there was a sudden surge through the Tunnel, which created a horrible crush at the back, not being able to push forward, then you might suddenly see a bright light. You fight to move, but you can’t. You gasp for air. You feel yourself passing out. Then you see figures appear; they seem to be floating above you. And as the light slowly starts giving way to darkness, an angelic figure reaches down out of the sky, grabs you by the arm, and pulls you up into what must feel like Heaven. Moments later, everything changes. You can breathe now, and you find yourself standing in Heaven amongst the angels, looking down on a terrifying scene. Then someone looks up into the darkness in time to see you reach down and grab them by the arm. Perhaps you never thought of yourself as an angel before. But he does; and that’s all that matters. Of course, none of that ever happened. And the Canonical Story is very clear. But the strange thing about cover-ups is that you may not know whether there is one cover-up, or whether there is a cover-up to cover something else up. Could a shameful cover-up actually cover up something far more sinister? Perhaps in a movie or some work of fiction. It is strange, and purely coincidental. It seems like so many things came together to produce such a terrible disaster. And so too the fact that those who suffered so much, victims and families alike, were supporters of the same football club whose supporters were held to be responsible for the death of so many people…people who were, for the most part, crushed to death. It may be that strange details are like strange people, subject to so many Multiple Sightings. Can it be that one should stop looking at the trees after all, and gaze instead upon the forest? Why is it that looking at details so confuses what appears to be such a simple Canonical Story? Canonical Stories? After all, there is much comfort in simple things…simple explanations…simple stories. I’m not convinced. Still, it is easy to get lost in the darkness created by details. But maybe it is only when you feel the darkness swirling around you that suddenly someone reaches down, grabs you by the arm, and pulls you up into the light. And everything changes. That just might put you into a contemplative frame of mind. Perhaps that’s when you can gaze at the forest and see that it all makes sense. But that only happens in visions. Like that of Jacob, who saw angels climbing up into Heaven, and then climbing back down. If Jacob were at a football match that would end in such a horrible tragedy, and was stuck in one of the pens, I wonder if he would know just who it was that suddenly pulled him out. After all, they are strangers, and quite possibly…Angels Unaware; at least from his perspective. Or maybe from my perspective. Perhaps Relkin has a card for that too.