So, I finally decided to analyze Sherlock’s and Moriarty’s epic struggle in a systematic way, and according to a criminal law perspective.

I’ll follow an episode by episode path, but I feel the need to start with a Canonical quote (FINA):

Starting from this quote, I want to point to your attention two very important things:

1) Even canonical Holmes was perfectly aware that the point, in order to destroy Moriarty and his criminal organization, was NOT to gather information whatsoever about him and his associates, BUT to collect EVIDENCE, that is, information LEGALLY usable in criminal proceedings, AND also STRONG enough to support a conviction. And he, too, found this EXTREMELY difficult - so much so, that I’m not even sure that his - quite irrational, on a legal point of view - plan to escape to the Continent while waiting for Moriarty’s arrest was really conceived just for personal safety reasons; instead, it’s possible that it was actually motivated by the idea of luring his enemy to some solitary spot, where he could have disposed of him without all the problems and intricacies of a trial… In fact, running to the Continent was the safest way to induce Moriarty to leave the English jurisdiction (in order to pursue Holmes), so removing him from the sphere of influence of British police and courts - not a very wise move, wasn’t it? But it could make sense, if we presume that Holmes already knew that the evidence against Moriarty wasn’t solid enough to ensure without doubt his conviction, and that the detective wanted to avoid AT ANY COST even the slightest possibility of an acquittal, which would have prevented any further prosecution for the same crimes (ne bis in idem principle); thus preferring to take personally care of “freeing society of him” (FINA), even if, whether necessary, with less legitimate means… (I don’t mean that he necessarily thought that killing Moriarty was his only option, but he must have considered it, too, as well as the idea, for instance, of inducing Moriarty to PERSONALLY attempt to kill him, and have therefore him charged and convicted in front of a Continental court - some of which provided for less guarantees for the accused, at the time - just like he would later have done with Moran.)

2) Even Canonical Holmes didn’t succeed to get a grip on Moriarty totally on his own, no matter how many efforts he made, and no matter how very brilliant he was: he, too (as I presume modern Sherlock did…), needed a TRIP - a MISTAKE - by Moriarty, in order to begin to “weave his net” around him. This reinforces my idea that modern Sherlock’s (and possibly modern Mycroft’s) plan against Moriarty was, in turn, centered around inducing Moriarty to take a false step, as even modern Moriarty is as much an elusive criminal as his canonical counterpart was…

This, by the way, would made our modern character MORE (and NOT less…) proactive than his canonical counterpart, as modern Sherlock would have actively induced Moriarty to make a mistake, while canonical Holmes declares that he just waited for canonical Moriarty to make one…

Before reviewing all BBC Sherlock episodes in their right order, let me introduce another preliminary little clarification. There are four main sources of evidence (I’m trying to not be too technical, I promise):

Material evidence , generally obtained through a technical appraisal, such as footprints, fingerprints, DNA, ballistics, chemical analyses, and so on;

, generally obtained through a technical appraisal, such as footprints, fingerprints, DNA, ballistics, chemical analyses, and so on; Tapping , which may consist of wiretapping (i.e., listening in on a telephonic conversation), environmental tapping (i.e., listening and/or watching what is happening in a place through bugs and/or cameras), computer tracking (i.e., monitoring someone’s e-mails and Internet traffic).

, which may consist of wiretapping (i.e., listening in on a telephonic conversation), environmental tapping (i.e., listening and/or watching what is happening in a place through bugs and/or cameras), computer tracking (i.e., monitoring someone’s e-mails and Internet traffic). Testimony , which is the account of relevant facts by a direct witness (whose credibility and reliability thus become central to the evaluation of this kind of evidence);

, which is the account of relevant facts by a direct witness (whose credibility and reliability thus become central to the evaluation of this kind of evidence); Accusation by an accomplice , which is the less reliable of the sources of evidence, as it could be biased by a plurality of factors, first of all an interest, by this kind of witness, to accuse another of his/her own crimes, or of other crimes, in order to obtain a reduction of his/her own sentence, and therefore always requires confirmation through other kinds of evidence;

, which is the less reliable of the sources of evidence, as it could be biased by a plurality of factors, first of all an interest, by this kind of witness, to accuse another of his/her own crimes, or of other crimes, in order to obtain a reduction of his/her own sentence, and therefore always requires confirmation through other kinds of evidence; (Of course, there is also the confession of the accused, which is generally considered conclusive evidence - even if sometimes it’s not reliable at all, as it could have been extorted, or generated by psychological problems of the accused, or by the desire to cover up for someone else, and so on).

I) A Study in Pink.

[Not one of Sherlock’s best moments…]

Here Sherlock gets a first hint to the existence of one “Moriarty”: an individual (or organization) that sponsors, consults for, etc., for other criminals; and someone who defines himself/herself a “fan” of his - who is watching him quite closely, expecting, sooner or later, some interference on his part.

But, apart from this, Sherlock, in this episode, has no way to learn anything else: the cabbie probably didn’t know anything more about “Moriarty”, but, anyway, he is dead and nothing more will ever be “extracted” from him. He is the first of a series of broken threads (I’m intentionally quoting the title of a chapter of HOUN, yes).

Of course, after this, Sherlock must have made inquiries amongst his informers in the criminal underworld and through his Homeless Network, but it’s reasonable to presume that he wasn’t able to gather anything more than rumours and wispers, without any substantial clue capable of bringing him nearer this enigmatic criminal force. After all, in Canon, Holmes needed several YEARS to discover the mere IDENTITY of the secret force he had perceived behind many crimes, during his career (FINA):

Of course, modern television couldn’t afford to show us “many years” of Sherlock’s effort to discover the name and face of the criminal mastermind, so, in a few months (i.e., by the end of series 1) we got to be personally introduced to Jim Moriarty…

Anyway, this was just to say that we can safely presume that modern Moriarty was not, in any way, less thorough in concealing his presence, his activities and his identity, than his canonical counterpart, and there is, therefore, nothing strange in Sherlock not being able to discover anything more about him after the feeble hint the cabbie gave him in ASiP.

On a side note, I’m personally persuaded that, differently from Canon, in modern BBC adaptation “James Moriarty” is not the true identity of Sherlock’s nemesis. I’m under the impression that “Jim Moriarty” is JUST ONE of many aliases Moriarty (let’s call him this way, for clarity’s sake) has built for himself during years of (dis)honourable criminal career, and which he picks and uses according to his different needs. This is his “commercial” identity, his “trademark”, the name under which he is known in the criminal underworld, and under which he may be contacted by all who seek his advice and help.

But he probably has many more useful identities. One of them is certainly “Richard Brook”: he might have built it in a few weeks, just producing and planting fake newspaper articles, show reviews, and so on; OR, he could have cultivated it over years, actually working as an actor under this name, every now an then… And in the same way he probably built other fake identities - for instance, it wouldn’t be so difficult to live somewere in the vast world as a repectable businessman always around the world for long periods, or as an equally respectable, kind and shy book illustrator living and working in the same house and seldom getting out (maybe because suffering from agoraphobia)… Plus all the more disposable aliases he could easily get by stealing other people’s identities, both on the Internet and in more traditional ways…

I’m quite sure that our modern Moriarty is much more a “ghost” than his canonical counterpart even was: on one hand, modern technologies, and a globalized world, would make this easier for someone skilled and clever enough; on the other hand, this modern Moriarty is a more unbalanced, more “sulphur”, more unsettling character than canonical one: while canonical Holmes used to compare his arch-enemy to a “Napoleon of crime”, modern Sherlock sees his Moriarty as the Devil - and the Devil has many faces, many identities, he is elusive by definition and par excellence.

II) The Blind Banker.

Here we only get to understand that Moriarty was involved in the whole Tong smuggling and revenge business at the end of the episode, when General Shan explicitly says that she and her men had obtained entrance in Britain thanks to Moriarty’s help. We don’t know if Moriarty and his organization had, even before, played a role of “facilitators” for the Tong’s illicit traffics in England (which is possible), but certainly here he helped them to trace their targets, very much alike canonical Moriarty did with the Scowrers in VALL.

We are not shown any hint that Sherlock was able to discover Moriarty’s involvement in this episode, and he probably DIDN’T, even if, given his new awareness of a secret criminal force at work in London (and possibly in Britain), he might have CONSIDERED the possibility that a gang of foreign gangsters just arrived in London could have asked for the help of some “local” criminal syndicate.

Anyway, even if Sherlock managed to sense Moriarty’s involvement in this case, he had - again - nothing more solid than his own intuitions, in his hands.

Again, General Shan is dead by the end of the episode, killed by one of Moriarty’s minions (and mind you: Moriarty alway appears to prefer that his people kill the intended victims by a distance, either with bombs or with sniper-rifles, so as to leave as little traces as possible…); and even she, we might safely assume, knew very little about Moriarty (she certainly didn’t know anything about his physical appearance, his voice, or his location, as we can deduce from the anonymous chat they were using to communicate soon before her death). Yet, Moriarty preferred to “overkill” a potential crack in the shield of secrecy surrounding him, than to take the slightest risk that even an insignificant information about him could leak to the police, and therefore had her killed.

In this, modern Moriarty appears even more ruthless than his canonical counterpart. Canonical Moriarty, we are told (FINA) generally found a way to shield his accomplices from the hardships of the law, in case they were discovered and captured, while death was the sentence for those who dared (think about) betray him (VALL):

This modern Moriarty, instead (accordingly to the generally more cruel tone of our modern fictions, if compared to Victorian ones), chooses to eliminate not only internal - potential or actual - traitors, but also clients and accomplices whom might be apprehended by the police and therefore represent a risk of sort for his own safety. Everyone appears disposable, to him, and no exceptions are made, even amongst his own people and clients.

Besides, we now know - from Sherlock-The Casebook (from now on, CASEB) - that Shan’s death was someway staged as a suicide. Sherlock, of course, realized - by the position of the wound and the kind of bullet - that she had been killed by a sniper (another reason to suspect the involvement of another criminal agent), but, as Dimmock reported it as a suicide, it’s quite evident that, after the killing, someone took care of arranging the crime scene in order to give the (at least superficial) impression of a self-inflicted death; and we might safely assume that, in the process, they took care of removing any element that could represent a hint of a third party’s involvement (for instance, the computer).

So, just another broken thread…

III) The Great Game.

Here Moriarty directly affects the whole plot of the episode, so I’m going to analyze it almost scene by scene - be warned.

III.1) The first explosion and the following bombs.

Even if the first explanation for the explosion in Baker Street was “gas leak”, we know that the police then discovered that it had actually been a bomb. We can be sure that they accurately collected and analyzed both the remains of the two exploded devices (this first one and the old lady’s one), and the bomb-jackets they retrieved after having saved the kidnapped woman, young man and child. But, as we hear nothing more about them, it’s quite evident that even this material elements weren’t enough to allow them to trace back the makers of the bombs (who, owever, were certainly just Moriarty’s minions, as I can’t see him directly handling the devices).

So, presumably, neither fingerprints, nor DNA; a quite common explosive (we are told that it was Semtex, which is now produced in small quantities and seldom exported from Czech Republic - Bohemia, again! - and also sold only under strict Government control, but was produced and exported on a VERY large scale during Cold War, and easily filtered on the black market, so that almost every terrorist and criminal organization has used it during the last decades, from IRA to Cosa Nostra, which employed it to kill judge Paolo Borsellino, for instance…); components easily bought in any hardware, electronic and hobby store and paid cash; and so on…

III.2) The letter and the phone.

Here we are clearly shown that Sherlock extracted every most minute bit of information from the envelope, an yet he didn’t gather any useful information. The paper was “bohemian”, the letter came from Czech Republic, the address had been written by a woman with a Parker Duofold… not very useful information, and, beyond this, no useful clues could be found in it. No fingerprints, and presumably no DNA - or, however, unregistered (and therefore meaningless) DNA. The phone had certainly been paid cash (and Sherlock himself says it’s “brand new”), and the SIM card must have been either a disposable, anonymous one, or formally property of a dummy of sorts, or even just a cloned one - in any case, we may be reasonably sure that Moriarty made sure it would be untraceable, before having it delivered to Scotland Yard and Sherlock.

III.3) Messages, not phonecalls, and stolen voices.

Moriarty only sends messages - SMS and MMS - to that phone, anyway. Messages are almost impossible to trace back, provided that their origin also is an anonymous or cloned SIM card - which we might be quite sure it was. No phonecalls means no possibility to trace the phone-cell of origin, and no voice recording for future vocal identification.

When he wanted a more direct communication, Moriarty “stole” other people voices (forcing them to call in his place, and also obstructing police’s attempts at tracing those phonecalls, as it’s explicitly told in the show), so as not ending up recorded by police (which, as we now know with certainty from CASEB, actually tapped the phone). Those people never saw him - actually, they didn’t see even his minions (we know that the men who kidnapped the first woman were masked, and we might safely presume also gloved and wearing hoods…) - and only received their instructions through untraceable pagers.

More generally, remember that tracing the source of origin of a phonecall or of an electronic communication, doesn’t authomatically mean to obtain relevant evidence.

Many things could go (or being made going…) wrong in the process - for instance: 1) it could be impossible to trace the owner of the source device (as I’ve written before, because the license is anonymous, is cloned, is formally in the property of an - sometimes unaware - dummy head or corporation, and so on); 2) even if the owner of the device is found, he/she might not be the actual user; 3) even if the actual user is traced, he/she might not know his/her actual customer; 4) sometimes, the source can be traced with “unorthodox”, irregular procedures (i.e., hacking), but in this way the resulting information can NOT be used as evidence in a criminal proceeding; 5) only information obtained through a warrant issued by a competent magistrate can be used as evidence in a trial, but in order to obtain a warrant you must already have some scrap of (legally acquired) evidence to ground your request upon (fumus boni juris) - so you can’t go to a judge with information illicitly acquired through a friendly hacker and just ask for a warrant, and the same is true for most of the information collected by Secret Service: the aim of Secret Services is mainly to PREVENT terrorist attacks and other similar crimes (such as crimes of espionage and the like), and NOT to collect legally usable evidence in order to convict the criminals after a crime has been committed (which is the task of police and public prosecutors); they are to some extent exempted from following the rules that police has to follow, but in turn the information they gather has NOT the value of legitimate evidence, and CAN’T - at least in the majority of cases - be used in a criminal proceeding.

(This, by the way, is the main reason why Mycroft had to kidnap and “interrogate” Moriarty, instead of just delivering him to the police after having apprehended him in tHoB… And, had Moriarty told him anything, this couldn’t have been used against him in a criminal proceeding: it might just have been used by the Secret Service to prevent further crimes and possibly to suggest to the police new lines of official investigation.)

Anyway, the only person who had actually heard Moriarty’s voice - the old, blind lady - he had killed before she could describe it in detail.

By the way, as Moriarty must have foreseen that, in case Sherlock solved the puzzle and the lady was released, she would have been able to describe his voice, I’m quite sure that he planned to kill her since the beginning and in any case, just to make Sherlock suffer for loosing a hostage no matter how clever he was… (and in this he succeeded perfectly).

III.4) The break-in in 221c and Carl Power’s shoes.

So Sherlock finds Carl Powers’ shoes in the basement flat of his own house: good opportunity to find some evidence, IF ONLY Mycroft actually kept his bother’s lodgings under the strict surveillance many people in the fandom believe… Unluckily, it seems that here we have the umpteenth contradiction of this idea: no CCTV records available of the interior or exterior of the building, and therefore no clues about the identity of the intruder. An intruder (probably one of Moriarty’s minions) who, evidently, also was careful to wear gloves, as the flat must certainly have been scanned for fingerprints by Lestrade’s men (standard procedure) - apparently whitout result, as we hear no more about this.

From the shoes themselves, again, Sherlock extracts any possible bit of information - he even disassembles one of them, and carefully scans it piece by piece with his microscope. He finds out the identity of their murdered owner, and also the poison which killed him; but apparently no traces of the murderer were left on the shoes. (Again, Moriarty must have keept faith, since his youth, to his reputation of caution and carefulness… And, mind you, the other crimes he pointed Sherlock to had not been executed - only planned - by him, so that all the material evidence that Sherlock and the police would have gathered from those investigations only implied his clients, who didn’t know anything about him, and had no way to trace or imply him, in turn. Neat.)

But, wait, Moriarty also gives a very direct clue to Sherlock, while “chatting” about Carl Powers, doesn’t he?

He practically says that he knew Carl, knew him PERSONALLY, and murdered him for PERSONAL reasons - because he “laughed at him”. So, knowing this, it should be possible, if not to immediately find him, at least to identify a shortlist of suspect people to keep under strict surveillance and whose lives, bank accounts, travels, communications, and so on, check and sort carefully.

Unfortunately, even this WAS done BUT led to nothing:

So, either Moriarty was not a classmate/schoolmate/neighbour, and so on, of Carl’s, but instead just an occasional acquaintance, someone Carl offended - by laughing at him - the one and only time he met him (maybe Moriarty, at the time, was just waiting for the right occasion, the right “provocation”, to undertake the realization of his first “perfect murder”, and this most conveniently occurred during Carl’s travel to London…), or he WAS actually one of them, but, later on, he managed to fake his own death so well, that nobody ever thought there was anything suspicious in it, and therefore he wasn’t even considered amongst the possible suspect’s for Carl’s murder, all these years later (which, btw, would match my previous theory about “Jim Moriarty” being just another alias…).

III.5) Showdown at the pool.

So, here, finally, our heroes seem to get some more solid element of evidence against Moriarty! - Or don’t they?…

So, let’s start from what should be the most obvious and incriminating evidence against the consulting criminal: two persons have seen him, know his face, can testify that he kidnapped John, stripped him to a bomb, an threatened both his and Sherlock’s life. Right? What else could we ask for, which could be more decisive?

Now, let me assume for a moment the role of Moriarty’s lawyer - better, of his team of lawyers, as Moriarty can afford all the best (which I’m not, btw, but I think I can give you at least a hint of the difficulties…).

What’s the material evidence to support Sherlock’s and John’s story?

The bomb jacket? But I’m sure that, in this case, as with the previous bombs, no fingerprints or DNA would be found on the bomb. Better, they COULD CERTAINLY find fingerprints: Sherlock’s and John’s ones.

And Moriarty was the one to lure Sherlock to the pool, not the reverse (as Sherlock initially believes); HE had a precise plan, which, we can be sure, included both the eventuality of killing him and John, and the eventuality of letting them go, alive. And can you really think that he had not provided for this second eventuality, ensuring that he could not be easily apprehended and charged, had he let them go? Well, I CANNOT. The first thought that occurs to me is that he must have ordered that John’s bomb was substantially different from the previous ones (different explosive, different wiring, different “hand”, and so on), so as that it couldn’t be related to the others, while, in case of necessity, his defence could have been that a delusional and maniac Sherlock had made it, just to frame him for crimes he never committed (after all, this wouldn’t be any different from the idea Moriarty would later develop in tRF).

And I suppose we can all agree upon the assumption that either there was no CCTV system in the pool, or Moriarty’s men had taken care of disabling it before the meeting.

So, we are left with John’s and Sherlock’s statements.

Great - we have two witnesses (as one alone would have been useless, because, in the absence of material evidence and/or footage, it would have been just a man’s word against another man’s word…) who confirm each other’s story. Wouldn’t this bee enough?

I’m afraid it wouldn’t.

I’ve written above that whether and how much a statement “holds” in front of a court depends upon the credibility and reliability of the witness.

If there is any (usable and unequivocal) material evidence (or, even better, tapping/footage) to support the testimony, it’s, of course, considered reliable. But when there is not, the accused’s defence has only to undermine the witness(es)’ credibility, to obtain that “reasonable doubt” which is enough to lead to an aquittal.

And now try and look at it from a different perspective - the defence perspective.

Who are the witnesses/accusers against the respectable Mr. James Moriarty, an honoured member of society with no past criminal or police record, a honest and law-abiding citizen, a man with an enviable social status, and possibly a benefactor to many well known charities?

An unemployed doctor invalided out the army because of PSYCHIATRIC problems, who recently got an ASBO for acts of vandalism, and who interrupted a prescribed psychoterapy against medical advice, and a self-appointed “consulting detective” (a sort of delusional avenger, surely!) with a PAST AS DRUG ADDICT (which Moriarty already knows, as we see that he passed this informaton to Jeff Hope, in ASiP), who is well known to stalk police and interfere with the work of police officers just because he “gets off on it” (and who, maybe, in the past also collected some police or criminal precedents…). And, to put the icing on the cake, these two “work” and live together, in a sort of morbid, equivocal, ambiguous relationship - so, nothing strange that they back each other’s story up.

And let me further illustrate this point through a canonical reference (VALL):

And now remember that modern Sherlock, like his canonical counterpart, appears to have a “good practical knowledge of British law” (we can deduce it both from his bookshelves, and from his way of correcting the public prosecutor during the trial in tRF). Thus, he was perfectly able to foresee the potential (and averse) consequences of pressing charges against Moriarty with what he (didn’t) have in his hands.

He - and John - would have risked to be the ones in trouble with the law, passing as the malignant (and possibly delusional) slanderers of a respectable citizen.

And this in order to press only a charge of kidnapping and menace, against Moriaty, as they had COMPLETELY NO WAY to relate him to any other crime, and particularly to the bombs and the murders (and, before you ask, no, they couldn’t have accused him of attempted murder, for what happened in the pool: no shots were fired, no one tried to press the button of a detonator, there was no unequivocal act suggesting the intent to kill - just the one to kidnap and threaten).

But the problems don’t even end here!

The risk of a civil lawsuit would have been the lesser of Sherock’s problem, had he decided to make a fuss with the police about the pool incident.

Because, in that case, Moriarty would easily have brought up the little question of Sherlock offering to give him a copy of some missile plans which were covered with State secret. And so Sherlock would have had to face a criminal charge for attempted revelation of State secrets (and possibly treason).

In fact, Moriarty would have risked nothing, in bringing up the question of the Bruce Partington plan: it had NOT been him to ask Sherlock for them, there was, actually, NO EVIDENCE that SOMEONE - anyone - had asked Sherlock for them (no message on the pink phone, this time!); while, instead, there was PLENTY of evidence - Sherlock’s public post on his website! - that it had been SHERLOCK to OFFER the plans to someone.

Better let the matter rest, don’t you think?

So, in all in all, at the end of the day, from a legal perspective, Sherlock eneded up again with only an handful of broken threads.

But, you might say, he at least now had Moriarty’s identikit - knew his face and voice - and possibly also his fingerprints (the handle of the door in the pool, some objets at Molly’s place…)!

Well, it’s true: Sherlock had a very good visual memory, so he could quite easily draw - or make someone draw - a precise identikit of Moriarty; and, provided that they were clear enough, he also presumably obtained Moriarty’s fingerprints.

But let me ask you a question: what use are someone’s fingerprints, when they are not registered in any criminal record for previous offences, and cannot be found on any new crime scene, so that that person could not be related to any offence?

Answer: NONE.

Having Moriarty’s fingerprints was totally USELESS for Sherlock, at this stage. They provided no evidence of any crime - just of his presence in the pool, but, apart from the fact that he could mantain that he had been there on a different moment - the previous day or some hours before - his simple presence here is still no evidence of any crime. And, about John’s and Sherlock’s testimonies, you may see my observations above.

As for Moriarty’s identikit, this is REALLY the only thing Sherlock gained from this adventure. This, and a knowledge of his character, of his personality, and of his intentions, to some extent. And THESE LATTER are the REALLY important things Sherlock obtained - even more than the identikit.

Actually, not having the possibility of support any criminal charge against Moriarty, his identikit was little more than useless.

Of course, it could be used to ease Sherlock’s (and I dare say also Mycroft’s, as he must have started to be involved in the chase after Moriarty soon after the pool incident, given the connection with the Bruce-Partington plans) researches about Moriarty, his men, his organization, his current location, and so on.

But all this intelligence, albeit useful to get to know him better, and to try and foresee his possible future moves, was NOT evidence. It was not usable in a criminal proceeding against him: rumours, tips, even a shadowing or electronic surveillance and wiretapping by Mycroft’s minions, would have not provided legally useful evidence (see above what I wrote about the vast majority of the information collected by the Secret Service and why it can’t be used in court).

As Mycroft’s himself tells, the task of the Secret Service is to know and to watch - in order to prevent. Their way of collecting information are not “hindered” by the majority of the guarantees that surround police procedure, but, in exchange, the information gathered in this way has no value of evidence. Sometimes can be passed to the police, in order to ease (giving a fresh start, suggesting sof spots, and so on) an official investigation, but that’s all.

I’m quite sure that, after the pool incident, Sherlock keep collecting as much information as he was able to, about Moriarty, through his informers in the criminal underworld, and also that Mycroft, too, started to activate the rescources of the Secret Service to track and monitor Moriarty and his organization.

But the problems are: 1) this brought them no EVIDENCE in the legal sense of the word; 2) this was exactly what Moriarty WANTED.

IV) A Scandal in Belgravia.

It’s in this episode that we can clearly see for the first time how Moriarty’s plan intentionally includes both the Holmes Brothers, and how being found - and abducted, and interrogated - by Mycroft’s men is actually part of his plan, too.

Now, I mantain here that I CANNOT believe that BOTH the genius Holmes Brothers could have missed the obvious point that, if a man like Moriarty wants to be caught, he must have both a safe way to get himself out of trouble, and some reason to get himself into it.

Therefore, I keep thinking that, from this moment on, Mycroft and Sherlock started to secretly cooperate against him, and that their plan was centered on playing along Moriarty’s own plan, in order to take advantage of his biggest weak point - overconfidence - so as to induce him to make that “trip” that, even canonically, Holmes needed to defeat Moriarty.

But let’s return to the main topic - i.e.: was there any useful (and usable) evidence against Moriarty, in this case?

Alas, the answer must - again - be “NO”.

The message Moriarty sent to Mycroft is not useful evidence, as we can safely assume that he used, as it’s customary for him, one of his untraceable phones. He didn’t even phone, so, even presuming that Mycroft’s phone is wiretapped for security reasons 24h per day, there is no record of Moriarty’s voice saying something even remotely related to the Bond Air debacle (not that his message is so much more telling, truth be told: “Jumbo jet. Dear me, Mr. Holmes, dear me” - it could be anything, even a person just mis-dialling the number of another Mr. Holmes while sending a message of disappointment for the delay of his plane…).

We can also safely assume that an examination of the memory of Irene Adler’s phone (NOT the camera phone, this would have been useless; the phone she used AS a phone…) didn’t bring them any more useful evidence, as the number she used in order to contact Moriarty must have been of an anonymous or cloned or dummy SIM card, as usual.

Of course, maybe it could have been used in order to LOCATE the user of the phone (provided that it was still active); BUT being located was, at this point, exactly what Moriarty WANTED…

And, as I’ve already rambled somewhere else about the reasons why Mycroft HAD to let Irene go, I don’t need to bore you again here to explain how Ms. Adler would have been a totally un-reliable, not-believable, and - most of all - VERY dangerous witness - meaning that her testimony about the Bond Air affair would have backfired worstly than John’s and Sherlock’s one about the pool incident, and would have backfired not only against Sherlock, but also against Mycroft.

Again, better let the matter rest - and rest DEEPLY…

V & VI) The Hounds of Baskerville & The Reichenbach Fall.

From this moment on, events precipitate and it’s not so much question of finding evidence against Moriarty, as of the evidence Moriarty makes up against Sherlock!

As I’ve already explained elsewhere why I think that “playing along” Moriarty’s plan was at the core of Sherlock’s (and Mycroft’s) strategy to trick him and defeat him, I’ll just place here a link to my main posts about this topic:

On the matter at hand, however (that is, about the question of the evidence against Moriarty), there is still something to say. More specifically, we still need to address the topic of the trial against Moriarty in tRF.

Here the business is totally different.

Here it was MORIARTY HIMSELF who gave to police and public prosecutors PLENTY of evidence to bring him in front of a criminal court.

He willingly had himself caught red-handed while attempting to rob the Crown Jewels. He even smiled at the CCTV cameras which were recording him. He even aknowledged his involvement in the Pentonville Prison and Bank of England breaks-in.

No CPS officer right in his/her senses would have refused to prosecute him! And no unbiased jury would have acquitted him!

Actually, we see that even Sherlock appears to hope (probably knowing that it was a hopeless hope, but nonetheless…) that Moriarty could be convicted, in the end - just because the evidence is so conclusive!

But the point is just this: Moriarty WANTED to be prosecuted. And to be prosecuted with irrefutable evidence againt himself. Because he wanted to fully display his power - by being acquitted in an “unacquittable” case (he didn’t even present any defence!) - and because he wanted to pre-establish the conditions to frame Sherlock for threatening the jury.

So, it was no more a question of evidence, here, but just a pure power play.

But, after all, in the end no evidence was needed… (not even the registration of Moriarty’s confession on Sherlock’s phone…).