I was thinking of a timeline of the last few days only, involving that
one thread on Murphy's forum and the naming of Erik Kraft, User:Erik's edits, Murphy's phone calls, Erik Kraft's responses, ANI and talk page responses, the mysterious IP-only responses, and how they might all imply some sort of possible interplay between them.
These
two edits are important. How it unfolded in the very beginning is more important than the fog that rolled in later.
If you can make a circumstantial case that User:Erik engaged in legally-actionable behavior as serious as what I'm suspecting, Murphy could write to Mike Godwin and demand all available checkuser data on User:Erik.
I don't see how Godwin could refuse.
I could see collusion between the two Eriks, where User:Erik is being clever and playing good guy with Erik Kraft, while Erik Kraft is unaware of the long history behind Murphy's bio, and the long-standing inclusionist bias of User:Erik. At one point Kraft asked somewhere whether anyone had any evidence about whether Murphy might be a physical threat. He really was ready to go to the police (assuming, for a moment, that this really was Kraft). Since Murphy was already the bad guy for Kraft, User:Erik could play on this and reinforce Kraft's fears of Murphy. This way Kraft feels like he has a comrade in arms, and User:Erik can use Kraft more easily in his fight against Murphy.
Just speculation, you understand.