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Miss me? Yes, Moriarty is NOT dead!

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2016 11:04 pm    Post subject: Miss me? Yes, Moriarty is NOT dead! Reply with quote

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I can make a strong case for the idea that Moriarty was able to fake his own death much easier than Sherlock did. Here's how.

(1) Sherlock did not actually see the gun fire or the back of Moriarty's head blow off, because Sherlock lurches backwards and closes his eyes a split second after Moriarty stuck the gun in his mouth —



— and (2) Moriarty did not fall straight back and land hard on the rooftop, which would have caused Moriarty too much pain to allow him to lay still and pretend to be dead.



Watch the scene closely and you'll see that as Moriarty falls (and goes out of frame) he bends his knees and turns to his right, with his arm stretched towards the roof behind him to cushion his fall. If you watch Moriarty's fall very closely (with some freeze frame pauses to study it) you'll see that it appears he actually landed on his butt before falling onto his back!

Sherlock may-or-may not have seen this, because his eyes were closed as he lunged away from Moriarty (use your freeze frame to verify this, too). But that doesn't really matter because I'm sure Moriarty did a convincing job of looking like a dead men falling down. From about twelve feet back Sherlock stares at the motionless body with blood oozing onto the roof — from a bag of blood taped to Moriarty's back, under his clothes. A tube would led up to his collar at the back of his neck.

As soon as he laid on his back, the pressure would squeeze the blood slowly from the end of the tube (which would have been loosely plugged until that moment) and ooze out around his head just as we saw it do.



So, did Moriarty fire a blank into his mouth? No, that would have probably penetrated his brain almost as well as bullet. However, Sherlock heard a loud bang, so the gun must have fired either a bullet or a blank, right?

Not necessarily.

Sherlock certainly heard a loud bang, but he was several feet away from Moriarty when that happened, and a loud bang fairly close to a person tends to overwhelm the ear's ability to determine precise direction. A good old M-80 firecracker (or it's equivalent) going off in front of Sherlock within fifteen feet would have sounded about the same as a shot from Moriarty's gun, twelve feet away.



And if the explosion occurred directly behind Moriarty (but three feet further back), Sherlock would think the gun was the source of the noise.

Suppose a small explosive had been rigged to go off under the ledge of the structure shown below —



— which was located directly behind Moriarty when he "shot" himself.



I'm not sure how Moriarty set off the charge at the precise moment he wanted. I suspect he used the same simple strategy he employed to break into the Tower of London.

An accomplice.

Somebody was watching from a high window across the street, with binoculars and a remote device, ready to blow the little bomb locate a few feet behind Moriarty when he put the gun in his mouth.

So, let's recap this wacky theory. (Hey, I heard that! Everybody groaned. Come on, I'm being brilliant here! Cool )

Moriarty knows Sherlock won't kill himself unless he believes Moriarty is dead and cannot call off the snipers. So he has an accomplice nearby set off the small, hidden charge three feet behind him when the accomplice sees Moriarty place the unloaded gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Sherlock recoils in shock at the sight of the gun in Moriarty's mouth, just six little inches from his own face, and then —



Bang!

Moriarty falls back (quickly but carefully) and plays dead. He hopes the fish-eyed stare and the spreading pool of blood around his head will convince Sherlock not to look too closely — which he doesn't.

In fact, the three screen grabs I've displayed here represent the only times Sherlock forces himself to look at the body, briefly and from a distance. The third time, he just glances over his shoulder while standing on the edge of the roof, even further away than his first to horrified stares.

And notice that there really wasn't a lot of blood at first — which I think is a telling clue. A man with his head blown off bleeds out a lot, very quickly, and then the bleeding stops.



But with Moriarty, he bled very little at first, and then it just kept seeping out, even though his heart had supposedly stopped. I think this blood is coming from that bag taped to his back, under his body, being pushed out through a short tube leading up to the back of his neck.

Simple and foolproof.



Lo and behold, Sherlock is fooled. (Yes, I know, Sherlock is an adorable genius, but even he screws up sometimes, right?)

Moriarty's plan succeeds . . . sort of. He doesn't know that Sherlock faked his own suicide moments later, and even when he gets up after Sherlock is gone, walks casually over to the ledge, and looks down to gloat a little, he sees Sherlock appearing to be just as dead as Moriarty did a moment ago, because the "ground crew" has set up the scene in seconds, hiding the fireman's safety net and splashing the blood around Sherlock while he played dead!

Either that or Mycroft's men rushed out onto the roof from their hiding place in the stairway, ready to arrest Moriarty — which was Sherlock's plan all along. After all, the sniper was positioned lower than the rooftop, so he wouldn't have seen Mycroft's agents apprehend the master criminal!

So, what are your thoughts? Did I miss any major problems?

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun Jun 12, 2022 1:34 pm; edited 6 times in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

___________________________________

After watching The Abominable Bride twice (which is not as often as anybody on the BBC Sherlock Fan Forum has seen it already), I've come to an important realization.

We need to approach this question a little more like Sherlock and a little less like fans who hang on every word of dialog written by the creators of Sherlock, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat.

The Christmas special that aired on January 1st — The Abominable Bride — is wonderful, but it isn't exactly a treasure trove of hard evidence on the subject of whether or not Moriarty is really dead. It's mostly a drug-induced dream by a tortured man who has Moriarty chasing him in his nightmares.

Therefore, we should look for concrete proof that Moriarty shot himself on the roof of the hospital in The Reichenbach Fall — or indications that he did not.

If Moriarty is actually dead, there's a very important question that's been plaguing me for years. Where is Moriarty's body? In fact, why is there absolutely no official public acknowledgement that Moriarty is dead . . . or even missing?

The fact that the whole area around the hospital was crawling with Mycroft's agents means the body of Jim Moriarty might have been spirited away, and neither the public nor the police were ever told that Moriarty died on the roof.

But wait a minute. That doesn't work, for several reasons.

First of all, Anderson's crazy theory (as told to Lestrade) clearly proves that he somehow knew Moriarty was on the roof and had killed himself.

And yet his theory assumed that the body had been removed by Sherlock's "assistants", fitted with a mask, thrown down to the street, and then deliberately misidentified as Sherlock Holmes.

So, who actually told Anderson (a member of Scotland Yard at the time) that the body of Jim Moriarty was up there? If the police had recovered the body from the roof, why did Anderson think it ended up in the street, masquerading as Sherlock Holmes, five minutes after Moriarty died?

And what about Lestrade? Please note that he did NOT shout, "Anderson, you moron, your theory is bogus! The coroner removed the body from the roof after Sherlock jumped!"

If Greg Lestrade knew Moriarty had died on the roof, he should also know who removed the body and what happened to it afterwards. Did the coroner take it away? Was an autopsy performed? Was he buried?

We have no idea — which is pretty odd when you think about it.

Lestrade did not refute Anderson's theory based on any official knowledge of what happened to the body — and he didn't deny that Moriarty's body was on the roof. So, he too must have known it was there.

The big question here is; what do both men think happened up there, and who provided the info?

The news media certainly wasn't getting reliable information, were they? Immediately after the incident, the media had the story so screwed up their reports were 100% wrong! They were telling everybody that Sherlock was a fraud, Richard Brook was an actor, Moriarty was a made-up identity, all the crimes had been faked, and Sherlock had hired an actor to make him look brilliant.

What they never even mentioned, however, was that Richard Brook was dead! Wouldn't that be considered a fascinating aspect of this sensational news story? At least two members of Scotland Yard knew Richard Brook was dead (Lestrade and Anderson).

So why didn't the press know this?

In the promotional short entitled The Blog of Dr. John H. Watson - News Broadcast (the TV news report concerning Sherlock's disgrace and death) not one blessed word is said about the alleged murder of Richard Brook at the hands of the bogus detective who killed himself. To me, that's both amazing and very significant. The reporters talk at length about how Sherlock created Moriarty with the help of actor Richard Brook — but they never say that Brook was found dead on the roof of the hospital!



Conclusion: The media didn't know anything about the death Brook/Moriarty on roof. How is that possible?

And the quick shot of a newspaper headline on the day Sherlock jumped only mentions Sherlock's suicide, not Richard Brook's death on the roof. At the time that headline was printed, the press was claiming that Sherlock was a fraud, so the body of "Richard Brook" would have been deemed a murder by the "fraudulent detective" who had killed himself after shooting the actor.



Even the small blurb at the bottom of the front page ignores this fact. Instead of saying "Fraudulent detective takes his own life" — which is redundant in view of the big honkin' headline — shouldn't it have said "Fruadulent detective murders actor?"

You know, like this? Very Happy



Consider this odd omission in relation to the news montage near the beginning of The Empty Hearse, in which the media fully vindicates Sherlock, as well as acknowledging that Richard Brook was a fictitious character created by Moriarty. These newsmen are enthusiastically reporting this high profile story and criticizing the police for "letting things get so far" — and yet they still don't say that Moriarty died on the roof of the hospital, or that the authorities are looking for this dangerous criminal!

That's quite remarkable when you consider that Jim Moriarty was the accused in what the media called "The Trial of the Century" after he broke into the Tower of London. And this same man threatened jurors to get an acquittal. If the police thought he was still alive, Moriarty would be the most wanted criminal in England.

On the other hand, if Moriarty died on the roof of the hospital, that would make the story about Sherlock's suicide even more sensational — especially after the press did a dramatic "about face" and reported that Sherlock had been framed by Moriarty, under the false identity of Richard Brook, the real villain of this amazing drama.

When you tally up all these sly omissions of evidence that Moriarty is dead, a pattern emerges. The only person who seems to believe from first-hand experience that Moriarty is dead . . . is Sherlock himself!

And when you start looking for evidence of Moriarty's death among the other main characters, you find a suspicious lack of confirmation. None of them seem to have anything but Sherlock's word that the suicide actually happened. For example, they never talk about what happened to Moriarty's body. And as I've said, there's absolutely no mention in the news media that he's even dead.

At the airfield, when Sherlock said there was "no question" that Moriarty was dead, what evidence did he offer? Did he say, "I saw his body in the morgue just before Molly started the autopsy," — or — "I looked at the back of his head, and his brain matter was splatter all over the place!"

Nope, he didn't say anything like that. He just said, "Of course he's dead. He blew his own brains out. No one survives that."

This is undeniably true — but which of these two ways did Sherlock mean his statement?

(1) If a person blows their brains out, they cannot be alive.

(2) If a person is alive . . . they could not have blown their brains out.

Remember, he's basing his initial assumption that Moriarty is dead (which he might be starting to doubt) solely on this gruesome scene, viewed from even further back than the camera was for this shot.



And I've demonstrated in my other post just how easy it would be for Moriarty to pull off that trick. So, apparently the only indication we have that Moriarty is dead is the strong conviction of one distraught witness who never actually saw the back of Moriarty's head, never watched him long enough to see if he blinked, and never took his pulse!

Imagine what Perry Mason could do with someone on the witness stand who claimed there was no possible way they could have been tricked. Rolling Eyes

Sherlock is certain that Moriarty is dead because he heard a loud bang, and he was convinced that the gun went off in Moriarty's mouth. But he had his eyes closed when the loud noise occurred, and he was a dozen feet away when Moriarty fell.





He only looked at the body three times (watch the scene again to confirm this), and he was even further away when he took his second and third horrified glances — the last of which was while standing on the ledge, talking on the phone with John.



In short, the poor hyperventilating detective wasn't doing a very good job of observing the situation. Otherwise, our astute master slueth would have wondered how a dead man could fall backwards and still be clutching his pistol so dramatically! Shocked

However, we all assume that Mycroft saw the body afterwards, and therefore his reasons for believing Moriarty is dead are irrefutable. Right?

Well . . . maybe. But has Mycroft ever said anything like this? "We cremated him, just to make sure, little brother." — or — "We held the body for his next of kin, but they never claimed it."

Nope, Mycroft has never said a word about the fate of the body. And yet we know damn well that Mycroft and many other people would have examined the remains after the rooftop incident. Even though poor Sherlock might have been fooled by a clever trick Moriarty employed, Mycroft would have absolutely proof. And if that's true, he couldn't possibly have the slightest doubt.

Right?

Of course . . . and yet . . . if Mycroft was absolutely certain that Moriarty was dead, the nationwide media blitz with the "miss me" message would have been viewed as nothing but a spectacular computer hack that disrupted England's communications. Nobody in authority would think for an instant that Moriarty had caused it. And they wouldn't have scrambled to bring Sherlock back after issuing an immediate pardon!

I mean, how could this be the work of Moriarty? The man is dead!

But that's not how they reacted.

Mycroft and the other government officials didn't act like they were just concerned about an elaborate hoax — they acted like the nation's most dangerous criminal had return to threaten England, and they desperately needed the help of the world's greatest consulting detective to combat him.

In other words, they all knew Moriarty was not dead.

If Moriarty is alive, what really did happen on the roof of the hospital after Sherlock jumped? At the risk of sounding just a tad bit repetitive — what happened on the roof was exactly what I've been describing on this board for the last few years.

Mycroft's men rushed out onto the rooftop the moment Sherlock jumped, and they apprehended Moriarty to prevent him from looking over the edge of the building and spotting the "ground crew" as they put the fireman's safety net back into the laundry truck and splashed blood onto Sherlock so he could portray a convincing corpse.

The danger, of course, was that Moriarty would realize the watching sniper across the street had been tricked by the fake suicide. And then Moriarty would simply call all three assassins and tell them to murder their targets.





As a matter of fact, preventing that from happening was a big part of the plan by Sherlock and Mycroft from the start. It would have neutralized Moriarty on the spot.

And what happened to Moriarty after he was taken into custody? (You know what happened because I've been posting versions of this theory here for a long time. But I'll say it anyway. Cool

Moriarty has been in custody since he was captured by Mycroft's people, but somehow the brilliant criminal mastermind has escaped. And THAT'S why Mycroft and all the government big wigs are in a panic. They thought they had Moriarty locked away, but now he's on the loose, and he's coming back to make their lives hell!

That's what I predict for season 4.

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 12, 2022 2:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

__________________________________________________

None of my predicted story ideas proved to be true, and what the series did do was just plane disappointing. In fact, I can't remember damn thing about season 4. That's how unimpressive it was.

Oh well . . . Sad

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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