Speaker 1: M. Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
Speaker 1: Saturday Select Stuff you should know, I'm doing handwriting analysis.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. It's from October two thirteen, and uh
Speaker 1: I just selected this one because I thought it dovetailed
Speaker 1: nicely with our Secret Service episode this week. So enjoy.
Speaker 1: M Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles c V, Chuck Bryant and
Speaker 1: this stuff you should know. Cherry's over there. That's right,
Speaker 1: we're all here. Yeah, we're at the ready for another
Speaker 1: yet another forensics podcast. Yes we are. I thought we
Speaker 1: were done. No, I don't know that wherever we're gonna
Speaker 1: be done? He and Chuck not only are we never
Speaker 1: going to be finished. This one, like every other forensics
Speaker 1: episode we've ever done, traces back to Alphonse Bertillon. Oh
Speaker 1: is he the first dude? He's the guy he did fingerprinting,
Speaker 1: he did um like facial characteristics. Yeah, the the mug shots, Yeah,
Speaker 1: mug shots and um, what's it called the facial sketch
Speaker 1: artist dree, police sketches and crime scene photography even um
Speaker 1: maybe so it's entirely possible. Well, we owe a great
Speaker 1: debt to that man. Yeah, he was basically like he
Speaker 1: had his finger on the pulse of like forensics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like every subdiscipline of the field of forensics. Like this
Speaker 1: guy virtually started it at a Paris police station. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be you know, unless you were doing the
Speaker 1: research and found out he was kind of a jerk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but who cares. Well, no, then you have to like
Speaker 1: kind of beef his character up and maybe he was
Speaker 1: what is he like? Um, like he was alted or
Speaker 1: something like that. Does he need like an orphan to
Speaker 1: come into his life? Elected with Gandhi? Remember that movie?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, made him look like a saint. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I think at the very least people if not uh
Speaker 1: you may not be able to become forensics experts, but
Speaker 1: at the very least you can watch all those TV
Speaker 1: shows now with a better understanding, right, you know? Is
Speaker 1: that what we're trying to do to help people better
Speaker 1: watch TV? Chuck? Yes, have you ever written anything by hand?
Speaker 1: You laugh? But think about this, Pale. There's a time
Speaker 1: that's coming when there's not gonna be much need whatsoever
Speaker 1: for that. I know there is currently a legitimate debate
Speaker 1: on whether or not to keep teaching cursive handwriting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that the debate has been answered, and the
Speaker 1: people who want to keep teaching cursive just haven't quite
Speaker 1: accepted their fate yet. Those the answer, No, sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was looking at a copybooks, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a second, um, And apparently the whole
Speaker 1: point to teaching penmanship lie in the in the in
Speaker 1: an era where if you had good penmanship, you were
Speaker 1: like that was a part of business, Like you needed
Speaker 1: to look respectable, put together. Yeah, like your your business
Speaker 1: transactions were carried out through handwriting too typically, and you
Speaker 1: needed to have good, clean handwriting said a lot about
Speaker 1: your character. This is also at a time when people
Speaker 1: were burned to the steak for witchcraft shortly after, so
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you don't put that much stock into it,
Speaker 1: but there was a point in time when like handwriting counted.
Speaker 1: It doesn't count any longer. And I'm I'm not saying like,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not waving like the flag of glory over
Speaker 1: the corpse of cursive writing, right, I'm not. You're doing
Speaker 1: it right now? No, I don't mean to, And that's
Speaker 1: why I said I'm not doing that because, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm saying is the writings on the wall,
Speaker 1: as it were. I'm not necessarily about it now. It's
Speaker 1: the last thing anyone ever wrote in cursive was that
Speaker 1: cursive is dead. Yeah, you know, I can say that.
Speaker 1: I don't write by hand that much anymore, and um
Speaker 1: when I do now, I get weird with it. I
Speaker 1: leave out letters and have to go back and put
Speaker 1: them in here. I'll write out of order, and even
Speaker 1: this word I put c additional. I left out like
Speaker 1: three letters and had to go back and put them in.
Speaker 1: But I do it really quickly. It's not like I'm stumped.
Speaker 1: But um, like if I was writing in cursive, i'd
Speaker 1: be stumped. Yeah, I tried to know how. I've tried
Speaker 1: to write cursive here there, just to see if I
Speaker 1: still have it, and I do not lost it. I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever really had the Z. It's a
Speaker 1: tough one, remember the Z. Yeah, I could write a
Speaker 1: Z right now, um spreak in uh okay, but yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: it's weird. It's almost like a dyslexic thing happens now
Speaker 1: when I write. You would use this spa. You could
Speaker 1: spray pain and cursive. Z I could do that right now?
Speaker 1: I think I be better at spray painting and cursives
Speaker 1: even writing it, yeah, because it'd be large and yeah yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the point is its cursive is probably dead. Writing things
Speaker 1: down by hand is becoming less and less. Um, what
Speaker 1: is that? I'm sorry everyone, I don't mean to interrupt myself,
Speaker 1: but Chuck has held up one of his pages of
Speaker 1: notes and there's some weird writing on the back. What
Speaker 1: is that? You know? What? That is? My parents signatures?
Speaker 1: Because I was seeing if I could still duplicate them
Speaker 1: as I could back in high school. You used to
Speaker 1: do that? Sure? What for You're a good kid in
Speaker 1: high school? What did you need to know your parents signatures?
Speaker 1: Here's what I would do. I was a good kid,
Speaker 1: but I would skip school and class sometimes. What did
Speaker 1: like go fishing with rad and Uh that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I wasn't good. I wasn't like doing drugs or drinking.
Speaker 1: I would skip school and like go fishing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I would write notes then forge my parents signature,
Speaker 1: which is not right kids. But um, it wasn't like
Speaker 1: I was off being a vandal or anything. I was
Speaker 1: is catching some trout, catching some trout and beating foxes
Speaker 1: in the head of the hammer, huffing Scotch guard. But
Speaker 1: I used to could really do with my parents signature
Speaker 1: spot on, and I was very proud of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so how is it? How is it hold up comparing
Speaker 1: before because I don't I don't have what's called an exemplar.
Speaker 1: My mom's little initial signature is still pretty right on
Speaker 1: m T d MB, but my father's is UM. I
Speaker 1: used to could do that one a lot better. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a fine signature. Can I see it all
Speaker 1: more time? James Allen Bryant, that's a nice one. Yeah, huh,
Speaker 1: all right. You've never forged your parents signature? Don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: neither one of them. I may have tried, I think
Speaker 1: I remember even practicing. I think because my dad seems
Speaker 1: like just looking at it, it's highly duplicable. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's not really like you. You can you can tell that.
Speaker 1: I I want to say the person because I refer
Speaker 1: to myself a third person A lot um was trying
Speaker 1: to recreate it. Just make a potato stamp and your set.
Speaker 1: I've never tried that one. You got your signature for
Speaker 1: life with a potato snamp like you just carve out Yeah,
Speaker 1: you never did that in craft class. You carve out
Speaker 1: something in a and press it on inc and a
Speaker 1: potato and then press it on ink and you basically
Speaker 1: can make your own stamp. No it makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: potato stamps. No, we didn't make those. You missed out, buddy,
Speaker 1: um chuck. I feel like we've kind of covered a
Speaker 1: lot of like points of handwriting analysis, little teasers before
Speaker 1: we start too. I think we should point out that
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, and I was just made to
Speaker 1: find on the internets that when you search handwriting analysis,
Speaker 1: what comes up is actually graphology. Yeah, that's that comes
Speaker 1: up a lot. Which if handwriting analysis, friends of handwriting
Speaker 1: analysis is really struggling forging ahead to become a science,
Speaker 1: graphology is quite happy to not be whatsoever. It's all, um,
Speaker 1: very un scientific. That's like, can let me write down
Speaker 1: a sentence and you tell me what kind of person
Speaker 1: I am? Exactly Like if you write using small letters,
Speaker 1: you're actually afraid of the world and very self conscious
Speaker 1: and you want to hide or disappear. Or another example
Speaker 1: is if um, like the first letters in your first
Speaker 1: and last name are big, your signature. Yeah, you you
Speaker 1: crave attention or you think overly of yourself. None of
Speaker 1: this is founded at allever. It's HOKEM. Handwriting analysis while still,
Speaker 1: like I said, struggling to be a science is um
Speaker 1: much less. HOKEM has one fatal flaw that's possibly not fatal,
Speaker 1: but it's the same flaw that UM fingerprint analysis has.
Speaker 1: Subject subjectivity, that's right, which we'll talk about. But maybe
Speaker 1: now is a good time for a message. But hey,
Speaker 1: now we're back. Um, let's talk about handwriting analysis in
Speaker 1: handwriting in general. Chuckers Okay, Um, well it's it's questioned
Speaker 1: documents is the legal term for what they're analyzing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just handwriting. It could be like forgeries. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: it could be a lot of stuff. These people UM
Speaker 1: questioned document examiners q d s. Uh. They examined typewriting,
Speaker 1: computer printed documents, photo copies, uh, decipherment of altered, obliterated,
Speaker 1: or charred documents. Yeah, but that's a tough one. Um.
Speaker 1: Examination of inks and papers, erased entries, indented writings like
Speaker 1: you know, you wrote something on a pad and ripped
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah. There's a whole division of people who
Speaker 1: just rubbed pencils on a piece of paper to see
Speaker 1: what comes up, counterfeit currency, and examination of commercially printed matter.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of all over the place, but the
Speaker 1: sexy stuff is and a lot of times, just in
Speaker 1: the private sector, it's not even for forensics. It's hey,
Speaker 1: examine the signature on this document, right, like, real it,
Speaker 1: did Mickey Mantill sign this baseball? Yeah? Exactly. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: what they're looking for, and what the entire field of
Speaker 1: forensic handwriting analysis is based on, is called the principle
Speaker 1: of uniqueness, which has been around since at least the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, and it is the idea that everybody has
Speaker 1: their own brand of handwriting and that um, while maybe
Speaker 1: you make a cursive Z in a certain way, that
Speaker 1: I might make the same Z in the same way.
Speaker 1: If you take all of the characteristics that you have
Speaker 1: and put them together, you form a unique package. Your
Speaker 1: handwriting is unique in that sense. So the individual weird
Speaker 1: characteristics might be similar to other people's weird individual characteristics,
Speaker 1: but you can't put twenty or thirty weird characteristics of
Speaker 1: hand writing together and compared to anybody else's. And so
Speaker 1: based on that, you should logically be able to look
Speaker 1: at one person's handwriting and compared it to a sample
Speaker 1: of another person's handwriting or the same person's handwriting, and
Speaker 1: see whether they match or whether they were written by
Speaker 1: two different people based on the the number of differences
Speaker 1: or similarities between the two samples. Boom, Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about handwriting. Yeah, and those are individual characteristics. Um.
Speaker 1: Before that, you have what's called or everyone has an
Speaker 1: underlying style characteristic, and that is based on the fact
Speaker 1: that when you were a little snot nose kid in school,
Speaker 1: they gave you what's called a copybook which had I know,
Speaker 1: we all remember this words on one line and then
Speaker 1: an empty line where you had to copy it and
Speaker 1: make it look like that. And depending on where you
Speaker 1: live and when you live and went to school, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a different copybook. So you're underlying style
Speaker 1: characteristics are going to be based on this original copybook
Speaker 1: that you might have some similarities with people like for
Speaker 1: me that grew up in the mid seventies and elementary
Speaker 1: school in decapp County, Georgia. Right exactly because you use
Speaker 1: the same copybook. What's awesome is a handwriting analyst could
Speaker 1: tell you what copybook you used or where you were
Speaker 1: from and when based on that that structural analysis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I imagine teachers even informed that somewhat you know,
Speaker 1: individual instruction for sure, Yeah, because the teacher is going
Speaker 1: to be like, that's not in our and like smack
Speaker 1: your knuckles and say try again. Um. So the copybook
Speaker 1: how we learn to actually write handwriting UM is based
Speaker 1: on or creates this um the style characteristic. Right. But
Speaker 1: then once we actually learn how to produce a letter
Speaker 1: using our hands, just through repetition, we start to add
Speaker 1: our own style to it. Um. And that those are
Speaker 1: the individual characteristics. We stopped thinking about how to make
Speaker 1: the structure of a letter and we're thinking about, um,
Speaker 1: how you know what we're actually writing about. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: when it comes to forensic examination, style characteristics aren't really
Speaker 1: what's important. Maybe that could help rule out certain geographic
Speaker 1: areas or something, but mainly what they're looking at are
Speaker 1: those individual characteristics. That's that's kind of where the key
Speaker 1: is when you want to track down a purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like we said, I mean the chances of the
Speaker 1: same person having the same set of individual characteristic pretty much. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, they're not just looking for similarities.
Speaker 1: They say in this article. It's probably easy for even
Speaker 1: a layman to look at two sentences and compare them
Speaker 1: and say, well, look, these letters are the same. What
Speaker 1: they're looking for are the differences, and there in lies
Speaker 1: the key the differences and two different pieces of text.
Speaker 1: One is the exemplar, which is basically a comparison sample.
Speaker 1: The exemplar is a preview, this document that you've written
Speaker 1: in the past, written by a known author. Yeah, like, hey, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you wrote We found this diary entry for you from
Speaker 1: five years ago. This will be your exemplar. Now we
Speaker 1: want you to write some stuff now exactly. Um. So
Speaker 1: that would be a requested exemplar if they asked you
Speaker 1: to write something now, um. But either way, they know
Speaker 1: that this came from you. So it's an exemplar, an
Speaker 1: example document, and they use those to compare to the
Speaker 1: question document. So whenever you're talking handwriting analysis, you have
Speaker 1: to have two kinds of documents. An exemplar in a
Speaker 1: question document, that's right, you want to talk about Lindbergh
Speaker 1: for a minute, Yeah, a question document very frequently, um,
Speaker 1: is a ransom note. That's right. And in the case
Speaker 1: of the Lindbergh baby, which Grandpa Simpson everybody knows kidnapped,
Speaker 1: um or is that's what it was. Yeah, Um, there
Speaker 1: were fourteen ransom notes, yeah from uh. Well depends on
Speaker 1: who you asked. A lot of people think Bruno Houtman
Speaker 1: was innocent, maybe an executed uh as an innocent man.
Speaker 1: But there was still fourteen ransom notes. Still fourteen notes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they when Bruno Holtman came in, they couldn't find,
Speaker 1: um many exemplars from his past, so they said, well,
Speaker 1: let's just get him in custody and have him write
Speaker 1: some things down, right, And that's just put putting it lightly,
Speaker 1: which that's fine, good idea procedurally speaking, that's a requested exemplar.
Speaker 1: All right. The thing is the police had this guy
Speaker 1: right until he was exhausted over and over again. Apparently
Speaker 1: he wasn't producing what they wanted him to produce. So
Speaker 1: they said, here see this ransom note, copy this, yea,
Speaker 1: and the guy did it. Um. And apparently every bit
Speaker 1: of handwriting analysis that they are a sample that they
Speaker 1: got from this guy was coerced um and questionable as
Speaker 1: questionable as the question document. That's right, Um, But he
Speaker 1: was still convicted and executed, right, yeah, and who knows
Speaker 1: if he was innocent or not. There's all kinds of
Speaker 1: varying opinions on the Internet, of course, but at the
Speaker 1: very least, the handwriting documents in his his samples that
Speaker 1: he gave were definitely coerced and probably not the best
Speaker 1: thing to put your case on. And that was an
Speaker 1: early obstacle that handwriting analysis has had to overcome, was
Speaker 1: creating procedures for the police to say if you're going
Speaker 1: to request an examplar, like, here's how you do it,
Speaker 1: here's what to ask for. Do not show them the
Speaker 1: question document, don't ask them to copy, just have them right.
Speaker 1: That's why you should always cut your ransom note out
Speaker 1: from the funny papers and individual letters. Plus it looks
Speaker 1: cool and creepy. Yeah. Um, so, what what you're looking
Speaker 1: for if you're going to compare things is not hey,
Speaker 1: look at the sentence and compared to the sentence, because
Speaker 1: that doesn't tell you much. You want numerous exemplars. You
Speaker 1: want like ten documents that you can compare to ten
Speaker 1: other documents. The reason behind that um is because when
Speaker 1: you write something, so you're writing a letter. When you
Speaker 1: start you're all fresh faced and bushy tailed, and then
Speaker 1: as you go further down the page, you get a
Speaker 1: little more tired, a little more fatigued, and your writing
Speaker 1: starts to fall apart. So you're never gonna write the
Speaker 1: same way twice. Um, which even within a document, right,
Speaker 1: which is a characteristic in and of itself. What's more, Um,
Speaker 1: starting a word with the letter A, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to produce that A differently than an A that comes
Speaker 1: in the middle of a word or at the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do that for sure. And like certain letters will connect, um,
Speaker 1: but only certain letters, Like I might connect to my
Speaker 1: T to my H in the middle of a word,
Speaker 1: you know, but not at the beginning that kind of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: So what are they looking for, Well, they're looking for
Speaker 1: several things are looking for They're looking for a letter form,
Speaker 1: which is like, um, you know the curves, um, the
Speaker 1: saw eyes of the letters. But you know, the relationship
Speaker 1: between a letter that's supposed to be small like an
Speaker 1: S and a letter that's supposed to be big like
Speaker 1: maybe an H. Yeah, even the width within a single letter,
Speaker 1: maybe the slant the slope, um, whether or not, like
Speaker 1: I talked about, you connect certain letters together links between them. Um.
Speaker 1: And then like we mentioned where that letter falls. So
Speaker 1: if you want to analyze an A a lower case A,
Speaker 1: and we should point out to that, apparently you can't
Speaker 1: analyze upper case letters only. Is that right? You can
Speaker 1: you can analyze those just against each other though, Okay,
Speaker 1: upper case and lower case or like they yield nothing.
Speaker 1: That's right apparently. Um. But let's say you have a letter,
Speaker 1: a lower case A. You want to find within the
Speaker 1: document an example of an A at the beginning, one
Speaker 1: in the middle, one at the end um and see
Speaker 1: how those compared to each other before you even compare
Speaker 1: it to the other exemplar. Yeah, like, if you really
Speaker 1: thorough in detailed stuff, it really is. It's it's like
Speaker 1: very tedious words to super tedious, which we'll get into
Speaker 1: in a second exactly how tedious it is. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the point is, if you are a handwriting analyst, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna put an A at the beginning of a
Speaker 1: word next to an A or compare it to an
Speaker 1: A in the middle of the word. They write two
Speaker 1: different things as far as you're concerned. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: laughed at if you do that. In in class line forms,
Speaker 1: another thing they look at um, how smooth it is,
Speaker 1: how dark it is, indicates what kind of pressure you're
Speaker 1: you're using on the paper? How U Yeah, the speed
Speaker 1: formatting of course, spacing between letters, spacing between words, um,
Speaker 1: whether where your margins are. Like they'll give you a
Speaker 1: blank sheet of paper that's not lined and see you know,
Speaker 1: if you, like most people, typically the sentence will go
Speaker 1: down if you don't have a line paper, or what
Speaker 1: kind of margins you just instinctively use, or if you're
Speaker 1: like a serial killer and you don't use margins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just pretty scribble all over the page. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: just should just let you up right there, right exactly,
Speaker 1: Like that's you're basically confessing to something horrible. Where do
Speaker 1: if it is line paper? Where if you make like
Speaker 1: a lower case why, how does the bottom of the
Speaker 1: Y or the G or the curse of Z intersect
Speaker 1: with the line? How far down does it go? How
Speaker 1: big your loops? Where do you cross your tea? It's
Speaker 1: like it's mind numbingly details. Do you skip lines? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you dot your eyes with little hearts? That kind
Speaker 1: of thing, the bubble letters? I know some females it's
Speaker 1: still sort of right that way, not with the with
Speaker 1: the hearts, but definitely that very distinctive you can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of love notes like that, you know,
Speaker 1: in my day with the little heart eye. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I would right back like the serial killer. Those were
Speaker 1: my just like words on a single piece that they
Speaker 1: do like you. It isn't a matter of fact, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting outside of your house right now, I know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Just a big, one long run on sentence. Um. Okay.
Speaker 1: So one thing that they will do, here's one method
Speaker 1: that they will use is they will actually create tables. Yeah,
Speaker 1: three tables and all of us what you want. So
Speaker 1: you make your first table. You start with the letter A,
Speaker 1: and you go through the the um question documents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is all on the article by the way,
Speaker 1: it's even has the little tables and the sample sentence
Speaker 1: they used is I have your daughter. Yeah. It's kind
Speaker 1: of creepy, it was, but it was like appropriately creepy.
Speaker 1: Why couldn't they just put let's play some basketball. I
Speaker 1: hadn't even thought of that. It seemed like, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: I have your daughter. Okay, alright, what that says about?
Speaker 1: So the three tables? Uh so the first table, what
Speaker 1: they're gonna do is go through all the question documents
Speaker 1: and they're going to write start with the letter A.
Speaker 1: If the letter A is present in the documentary, they're
Speaker 1: gonna put all the letters that are present in the documents.
Speaker 1: So for example, I have your daughter, UM has uh right, Well, no,
Speaker 1: yes it does. But they they they sentence itself doesn't
Speaker 1: have all the letters of the alphabet. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: go through and figure out what letters are present in
Speaker 1: your question document put those down one side, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna go through, starting with the letter A, and
Speaker 1: um find every different letter A. So if there's a
Speaker 1: letter A that slants to the left, you're gonna put
Speaker 1: that down next to A in row one. And then
Speaker 1: if you've come across another A that science the left,
Speaker 1: you're gonna skip that one because you've already found it.
Speaker 1: What the point is you're going to create a table
Speaker 1: of every characteristically different example of a particular letter yea.
Speaker 1: And they're doing this with digital cameras, right, So in
Speaker 1: the article they did it by hand. They try to
Speaker 1: recreate what the weird letter looked like. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: going to take a digital photo of just that letter
Speaker 1: and then compile it into a table. That's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at the end what they are doing is comparing
Speaker 1: the tables making sure they have a match for each
Speaker 1: letter in the exemplar, right, because they went through the
Speaker 1: question document, then they the exact same thing for the exemplar,
Speaker 1: and they put the two tables together and created a
Speaker 1: third table. And from that third table they should be
Speaker 1: able to see pretty clearly whether um, the person, whether
Speaker 1: the two things were written by the same person. And
Speaker 1: so if you're an FBI analyst, you're gonna come up
Speaker 1: with one of um five uh possible outcomes. There's identification,
Speaker 1: where you're pretty much putting your career on the line
Speaker 1: or your professional reputation on the line, say this is
Speaker 1: written by the same person. There's may have, which means
Speaker 1: that the similarities outweigh the differences, but you're still not
Speaker 1: a percent sure identification level. Sure, yeah, that's a real
Speaker 1: woo way to go, right. There's no conclusion, which is
Speaker 1: like the similarities and the differences are pretty much the same,
Speaker 1: or um, there's just not enough evidence there or enough
Speaker 1: material to go with. Then there's may not have, which
Speaker 1: is the differences outweigh the similarities, but you're still not sure,
Speaker 1: and then there's a eimination where you're sure that they
Speaker 1: weren't written by the same person, which is probably as
Speaker 1: equally a bolder statement as they were. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I imagine those are few and far between, the identification
Speaker 1: and eliminations in a major case, you know. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, So coming up, we have something on forgeries
Speaker 1: and simulation, like if you're trying to sniff someone off
Speaker 1: the gates. But first we have a message break. Okay,
Speaker 1: So um, we're talking about simulation before we broke. And
Speaker 1: that's like a big part of this is if you
Speaker 1: give and I can't imagine, Like let's say someone like
Speaker 1: an officer picked you up and of course you didn't
Speaker 1: do anything, but they bring you into a room and
Speaker 1: they're like, we we need some handwritting examples. You can
Speaker 1: be freaked out for sure, like how you're writing, and
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna write weird, um, or if you did
Speaker 1: do it, you might try and fool them by writing
Speaker 1: weird And by weird I mean different than you normally, right, yes, um,
Speaker 1: not like he's in strange letters or something. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna maybe um write a little more slowly or
Speaker 1: just right, like bigger than you do, or smaller than
Speaker 1: you do, or just different. Um. I saw a picture
Speaker 1: of a ransom note, not a ransom note, a stick
Speaker 1: up note, and like it was obviously done with like
Speaker 1: squiggly lines and like words were purposely misspelled. Um, so
Speaker 1: that if they, if anybody ever did analyze the handwriting,
Speaker 1: what they had wouldn't match up to any anyone's normal
Speaker 1: hand that's a good idea. Yeah. So on the front
Speaker 1: end of the crime, you do the different handwriting, that's
Speaker 1: that's not bad. I didn't mean this any would be
Speaker 1: bank robbers, but yes, but after the fact, if they
Speaker 1: have the two things and you try to simulate different writing,
Speaker 1: they're pretty good at trying to determine whether or not
Speaker 1: you've done that. They are. I mean you you can
Speaker 1: completely throw off handwriting analysis sure to where just where
Speaker 1: you get a no conclusion at least right, Um, But
Speaker 1: like you said, handwriting analysts you have ways for they
Speaker 1: have ways of knowing whether you're simulating your handwriting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like you said, there'll be more pin lifts. Um,
Speaker 1: definitely be slower and basically they'll they'll root you out.
Speaker 1: Is not just writing naturally right, like at a normal
Speaker 1: speed even right, because you're you're really putting a lot
Speaker 1: of thought into the words you're writing rather than just
Speaker 1: writing like you have nothing to hide exactly. UM. So
Speaker 1: this is all good and well and fine, and it's
Speaker 1: a legitimate field. It's not always allowed in court though, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's subjective. Yeah, I want to say,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why I developed an affinity for
Speaker 1: handwriting analysis because I think fingerprinting is b s frankly,
Speaker 1: and I remember saying pretty much that effect in the
Speaker 1: fingerprinting episode. For some reason, handwriting analysis struck me as
Speaker 1: more legit. Yeah, And I don't know why, but it did. UM.
Speaker 1: And so I kind of looked around and found as
Speaker 1: recently as June, they had a major national conference for
Speaker 1: handwriting analysts that was UM. Its aim was to further
Speaker 1: the science and the measurements in the field in uh Gaithersburg, Maryland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Measurement Science and Standards and Forensic Handwriting Analysis Conference. UM.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's not a new the it's not
Speaker 1: a new field, and they've subjected it to scientific testing
Speaker 1: like over the years. Like UM, the principle of uniqueness,
Speaker 1: the founding principle of handwriting analysis It's been tested many,
Speaker 1: many times. One of the favorite tests they like to
Speaker 1: do is to get identical twins to provide handwriting samples.
Speaker 1: Same DNA, same environmental factor, same physiology, all of these
Speaker 1: things that affect your handwriting, because I mean, like your
Speaker 1: your handwriting is changed by the fine um motor neurons
Speaker 1: that you have in your in your body. If you're
Speaker 1: an identical twin, you're gonna be similar. You think your
Speaker 1: handwriting would be similar. No handwriting analysts routinely can tell
Speaker 1: the difference between twins penmanship. Wow. Um, So they have
Speaker 1: tested this stuff and they are I guess aware that
Speaker 1: they it's not a fully scientific field, and they're taking
Speaker 1: steps to make it more scientific. Yeah, because they want
Speaker 1: to protect their jobs and be they want it to
Speaker 1: be like at the end of the day, they want
Speaker 1: it to be allowed in court. You know. They don't
Speaker 1: want to be offered for podcast fodder. Oh I imagine.
Speaker 1: Also they don't want to put away any innocent people.
Speaker 1: Sure you know. Um, So let's talk about another brilliant plan.
Speaker 1: If you want to be a forger of things, provide
Speaker 1: the both exemplars yourself. Right, this is pretty amazing. And
Speaker 1: this guy had a killer name Conrad. Code you could?
Speaker 1: You could? Joe could Conrad? Could you? I think it's
Speaker 1: Conrade k u j A you all right? Conrade Coja,
Speaker 1: let's call him that. The nineteen eighties, the Couge was
Speaker 1: a supposed collector of Nazi memorabilia. First of all, those
Speaker 1: people freaked me out. You know remember American beauty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so he was a collector of this stuff. And um,
Speaker 1: a German publishing company he approached them and said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I've got sixty handwritten journals written by tar
Speaker 1: Fur himself. Yea, they were found in a plane wreck,
Speaker 1: just found him and they seemed to be genuine. And
Speaker 1: they paid him two point three million dollars. And uh
Speaker 1: this the same company, the German newspaper also owned that
Speaker 1: publishing company. They printed stuff. They said, hey, let's syndicate
Speaker 1: this out. The London Times said sure, we'll write about this.
Speaker 1: But they said, but you know what, we're the London Times.
Speaker 1: Let's get a handwriting analysts chow this stuff out. Three
Speaker 1: of them they had three like high end handwriting analysts
Speaker 1: analyzed this stuff and all three of them said, yep, um,
Speaker 1: the same person wrote these samples, who wrote the diary,
Speaker 1: So yeah, these are these are Hitler's diaries. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they got they got the exemplars that were supposedly written
Speaker 1: by Hitler himself said it's the same thing. It was this.
Speaker 1: These are legit, right, So cou Joe walks away with
Speaker 1: cool two point three million in nineteen eighties dollars, no less,
Speaker 1: and the world has sixty previously unknown journals from Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 1: We think within a year it was uncovered as a fraud.
Speaker 1: That's right, thanks to the London Times. Um. They used
Speaker 1: ultra violet light examination and found out that the paper
Speaker 1: wasn't around until a little bit of a problem. Anyone
Speaker 1: that knows Hitler knows that he died in Open your eyes, chuck. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they did some more for in Success and
Speaker 1: said the ink actually was applied on the paper about
Speaker 1: twelve months ago, within the past year, and he's a fraud.
Speaker 1: And he wrote both sets and I don't know why
Speaker 1: they didn't check. And they said, well, we need some
Speaker 1: real examples of Hitler's writing, and he's like, uh here, no,
Speaker 1: I think that's what they did. He had gotten I
Speaker 1: think he was just that lucky wow that he had
Speaker 1: flooded the market with fake Hitler handwriting, and so that
Speaker 1: the authenticated samples that they used as exemplars just happened
Speaker 1: to be ones that he'd also forged. So it passed
Speaker 1: the handwriting analysis. Handwriting Actually, handwriting analysis came out on
Speaker 1: top in that instance, but it was still a fraud.
Speaker 1: It was still a forgery. So amazing it came out
Speaker 1: on top as a technique, but overall it took kind
Speaker 1: of a hit because it's still failed. Unbelievable yet believable.
Speaker 1: What about John Mark Carr? You remember him? Oh, dude, man,
Speaker 1: And I gotta I gotta admit if there was ever
Speaker 1: a case of judging a book by its cover. When
Speaker 1: I saw that guy, I was like, yep, he did it.
Speaker 1: He's the creepiest guy I've ever seen. He is creepy.
Speaker 1: You got that right, Yeah, But he was creepy for
Speaker 1: another reason, because of course we're talking about the John b. A.
Speaker 1: Ramsey case. He falsely confessed to killing John bin A Ramsey,
Speaker 1: which I think he did it to get a free
Speaker 1: ride from Thailand back to the US, I think so.
Speaker 1: I think he'd like the attention and everything too, but
Speaker 1: I think he just didn't have any money. And wanted
Speaker 1: to get back to the States, so he confessed to
Speaker 1: John Benet's killing. Well, he's living as a trans woman now,
Speaker 1: he is, and apparently trying to UM recruit six year
Speaker 1: old and younger, preferably preferably brunette girls for a sex cult.
Speaker 1: Apparently he's just trying to found a sex cult. And
Speaker 1: I only saw this one article that was on several
Speaker 1: different networks in June of like what was and I
Speaker 1: didn't see anything else after that. I think that is
Speaker 1: very very grown up of you to say, because it
Speaker 1: is hearsay. One one accuser, Yeah, and it was somebody
Speaker 1: who he was formerly close to, a girl he had
Speaker 1: been engaged to UM who was saying she was coming
Speaker 1: forward to try to protect people. But there was no
Speaker 1: follow up, no nothing, So who knows, Chuck. It was
Speaker 1: very good of you. But back to the handwriting part
Speaker 1: of this, he um. They compared the ransom note to
Speaker 1: a couple of exemplars from his past. The Secret Service
Speaker 1: does a lot of this, by the way, and Um.
Speaker 1: One was a high school yearbook that he signed, and
Speaker 1: one was a job application from Thailand and they couldn't
Speaker 1: match it because it was inconclusive because the high school
Speaker 1: year back yearbook was old and apparently in a quote
Speaker 1: artistic writing style quote, So I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: I guess he did, like you know, in high school,
Speaker 1: you do those like bubble letters. And then the job
Speaker 1: in Thailand he used all upper case letters and they
Speaker 1: couldn't compare that to the ransom note because that was
Speaker 1: both upper and lower. And then the the and A
Speaker 1: obviously sniffed him off the case. And he was not
Speaker 1: the guy. He was just weird. It was an odd duck. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think they still never caught anyone, did they? No,
Speaker 1: they never arrested anybody. Yeah. I think last thing I
Speaker 1: heard was that the case was reopened and they thought
Speaker 1: they had enough evidence for the parents, but they didn't
Speaker 1: or something to indict them. Oh yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: few years back. Yeah, very sad um. And I don't
Speaker 1: see why it was so hard to get these exemplars.
Speaker 1: Is it that tough to find handwriting examples from someone,
Speaker 1: especially if they're not cooperating too well? I guess that's true. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, what do you have lying around that's
Speaker 1: got your handwriting on it? I got a bunch of
Speaker 1: notebooks and stuff with tons of stuff in there. Well
Speaker 1: then you'd be an easy case. Alright, Well I better
Speaker 1: not kild never kill anyone right anytime, so and keep
Speaker 1: your nose clean. Um. What else you got? Um? I
Speaker 1: think that's about it for me. Well, there's the fish
Speaker 1: system they're they're trying to h bring this into the
Speaker 1: non subjective modern age. The forensic Information system for handwriting.
Speaker 1: That basically they take a large body of handwritten material,
Speaker 1: digitize it, and then plot it is arithmetic and geometric values.
Speaker 1: So basically it'll be a numeric database, sort of like
Speaker 1: a fingerprint database. So instead of just having like this
Speaker 1: big diary and a locker, you have an actual numeric
Speaker 1: value that you can compare it to. Now, and that
Speaker 1: just using computers is like flak jacket from criticism. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: the computers just carrying out program subjectivity, isn't it. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: probably so, But I mean it's really just a database.
Speaker 1: It's not saying that like any better way of doing things. Um.
Speaker 1: And I just saw this from two thousand nine. Um,
Speaker 1: sort of the same thing. There's in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Applied Cognitive Psychology. They did a test to see if
Speaker 1: people differently when they're lying or not and they do.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they had them right, truthful sentences and lies
Speaker 1: and apparently right differently when you lie, the content of
Speaker 1: the sentence, whether it is a liar truthful, Yeah, changed
Speaker 1: the handwriting. Yeah, wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't I guess I could help with forensics for sure.
Speaker 1: It could act as a sort of secondary lie detector
Speaker 1: at least, right, you could be like I am the kidnapper, right,
Speaker 1: you have them right there, But I mean you couldn't.
Speaker 1: Then it's not for comparisons. If it doesn't work for yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work out for comparison, you have a
Speaker 1: handwritten confession. Pretty cool. And there's no schooling for this,
Speaker 1: by the way, you just really yeah like most of
Speaker 1: their most of this forensic stuff, it's all just like
Speaker 1: training job. Yeah, but there's certification. Well there's no college program, no,
Speaker 1: but I think you still have to become certified. I
Speaker 1: don't think you have to. I think like you can
Speaker 1: advertise in the Internet and just be Joe Schmo then
Speaker 1: writing analyze that kind of thing. But I think, um,
Speaker 1: there is a certification or creditation out there. Okay, it
Speaker 1: says that, um, the training period is a minimum of
Speaker 1: two years of full time training under the tutelage of
Speaker 1: a qualified expert, a wizard. So yeah, forensics, the game continues. Nice. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see you got anything else. No, we still have
Speaker 1: to cover shadow analysis and smell yeah, smelly people. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about forensics, you should
Speaker 1: type that word into the search bar. It will bring
Speaker 1: up this handwriting analysis um article and a ton of
Speaker 1: other stuff. Uh just typed in, like I said, to
Speaker 1: the search bar how stuff works dot com? And since
Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this email from a feminist lesbian. Okay,
Speaker 1: self described guys, your timing is amazing. I'm listening to
Speaker 1: old episodes and I listened to micro Loans yesterday. It's
Speaker 1: amazing how lined up my universe is with you guys
Speaker 1: right now. Um, so I guess she was into micro
Speaker 1: Loans or something. Um, it's a I love you, guys,
Speaker 1: to the point where my mental tape, the dialogue that
Speaker 1: plays in one's head is sometimes even in your voice.
Speaker 1: As a northern feminist and lesbian, I was leary of
Speaker 1: two Southern dudes educating me. But I poo poo, all
Speaker 1: your critics. So she listened to us. She's like, what
Speaker 1: are these bumpkin hate? See, it's gonna teach me. I'm
Speaker 1: a feminist lesbian from the north. She Poopoo's is that
Speaker 1: once you get the hand of your dry wit and humor,
Speaker 1: you are the most awesome and epic truth tellers who
Speaker 1: have grace, dignity, and a humility about your own mistakes
Speaker 1: and limitations that I find unparalleled. You embrace all people's
Speaker 1: choices and lives, and you are silly to boot. I
Speaker 1: must say that I just learned so much and I
Speaker 1: have fun. Whatever you're talking about relates to my life
Speaker 1: and your excellent teachers. I sit outside by the river
Speaker 1: in the back of my house draw or place you
Speaker 1: do go Dodoku, So it's the most difficult word and
Speaker 1: to pronounce it is when if you don't learn it right.
Speaker 1: The first puzzle that game right right with people plank
Speaker 1: you predict what number is gonna go in where it's
Speaker 1: pretty neat. You should try it all right, It's it's challenging.
Speaker 1: Do you like crosswords? I love crosswords. You will like
Speaker 1: this not the exact same thing by any stretch, and
Speaker 1: it definitely includes some some math, but um, you'll like it.
Speaker 1: If you like crosswords, give it a shot. So she
Speaker 1: plays this out by the river and listens to us
Speaker 1: for hours after long days. Uh. In short, everyone needs
Speaker 1: to be nice because I am all knowing and I
Speaker 1: say you are wonderful. Words can hurt your kind decent
Speaker 1: human beings first and foremost, and being in the public
Speaker 1: eye makes people forget that. So they're And that is
Speaker 1: from Karen Shaw and Western Maths. Nice. Thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: Karin Shaw. That was a very very nice letter. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I picture her out there by the river playing
Speaker 1: that sudoku weird game sudoku okay suduko sidokuk. It ends
Speaker 1: with you now it ends with an Oh, no it
Speaker 1: doesn't unless you mispelled it. She spelled it s u
Speaker 1: d u k o suduko. I think it's so doku. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll agree to disagree. Uh again, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for that very nice letter. UM, if you want to
Speaker 1: send us a very nice letter or criticism, we we
Speaker 1: have a thick skin after all these years. Um, you
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: We will tweet back at you angrily probably and rally
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Speaker 1: Make you feel bad if you make us feel bad, Right, Chuck,
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