Bulacan State University

COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE EDUCATION

City of Malolos, Bulacan
Tel No. (044) 919-7800 to 99 Local 1061 & 1062
Email Add: ccjebulsu@yahoo.com

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 MODULE 2
HISTORY OF FORENSIC DOCUMENT EXAMINATION

Duration: 1-week discussion

Topics:

1. History of Writing
2. History of Forgery
3. Expert Witness
4. Pioneers of Document Examination
5. Historical Cases of the 20th Century

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this chapter, the student will be able to:

✓ Narrate the history of writing and forgery

✓ Enumerate the important events in the USA involving the pioneers of
document examination
✓ Cite historical cases on the development of questioned document
examination

HISTORY OF WRITING

Writings - are letters or symbols that are written or imprinted on a surface to

represent the sounds or words of a language.
- it consists of messages that convey ideas to others.
- Its evolution is based on man’s desire to communicate his thoughts
with others.

Early Writings

Cave Drawings are of course the most familiar of early writings. They are, in
fact, the first record of prehistoric people. Cave drawings are called petroglyphs or
petrograms and they developed between 20,000 and 10,000 BC.

Hieroglyphics are paintings gradually developed into word pictures or

ideographs which were used by Sumerians, Chinese, Aztecs, Mayas and Egyptians.

Word pictures developed into symbols which were then used to represent
sounds or syllables called phonographs .This then developed into simplified phonetic
symbols called phonetic alphabet, an alphabet of characters intended to represent
specific sounds of speech The Sumerians are credited with the development of the
first alphabet.

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 The Phoenician alphabet was used and spread by them throughout the world
was between 1700 1500 BC. It consisted of 22 letters and was written right to left.

The Greek alphabet was derived from the Phoenician alphabet and has been
used by the Greeks since the 8th Century BC. The word alphabet was derived from the
Greek alphabet’s first 2 letters, alpha and beta. Their alphabet consisted of 24 letters
and included vowels The Greeks changed the writing direction from left to right.

The Greek alphabet evolved into the Roman alphabet or the Latin alphabet,
which initially consisted of disconnected capital letters for several centuries Roman
scribes invented the lowercase letters that were patterned from the capital letters
These letters simplified the forms and made it easier to copy manuscripts.

HISTORY OF FORGERY

The crime of Forgery has been practiced since ancient times where writing
existed. The following are important events in the history of forgery

Romans prohibited the falsification of documents that

80 BC
transferred land to heirs
Middle Ages Forgery became prevalent in Europe
England passed a statute prohibiting forgery publicly recorded
1562 and officially sealed documents, specifically those pertaining to
titles for land
False endorsement on an unsealed private document became a
1726 crime punishable by pillory, fines, imprisonment, and even
death
England issued one pound bills inscribed on ordinary white
paper with a simple pen and ink, resulting in massive forgeries
1819
and the arrest of 94,000 people, 7,700 of which were sentenced
to death
The United States enacted the principal federal forgery statute
1823 that prohibited false making, forgery, or the alteration of any
writing for the purpose of obtaining financial gain
The American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code simplified and
1962 defined the elements of forgery and became the standard for
defining the crime of forgery

EXPERT WITNESSES

In 539 AD in Rome, the Justinian Code permitted judges to appoint experts to

give testimony in court regarding the genuineness of a writing based on a comparison
with other admitted genuine writings. (Koppenhaver, 2007)

The United States of America based their laws on the English Common Law and
permitted comparisons in court cases. Below are the important events in the history
of document examination in the USA:

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 The earliest record of expert comparison testimony in America
was in Sauve v. Dawson, where a signature on a promissory
1812
note was proved genuine. However, handwriting identification
did not become popular until much later in the 19th century.
In Homer v. Wallis, 11 Mass. 309, the court permitted the
1814 submission of writings and the evidence of witnesses on the
comparison of a disputed writing
Congress enacted the Statute of 1913, which accepted such
1914 comparisons to be used as competent evidence in court to
prove or disprove the genuineness of a person’s handwriting
The first significant forgery cased was tried in Massachusetts
involving the traced signatures of Sylvia Ann Howland of New
Bedford. The most significant testimony came from Dr.
Benjamin Piece, a mathematician from Harvard who testified
1867 on the mathematical probability of identical strokes being made
in two different signatures. He claimed that the likelihood of 30
strokes occurring in two separate signatures could occur only
once in 931,000,000,000,000,000,000. His methodology was
subsequently proven to be inaccurate.
Handwriting identification became sufficiently well-known that
two New York experts published books on the subject: William
1894
E. Hagan published Disputed Handwriting and Persifor Fraser
published A Manual for the Study of Documents
Daniel Ames wrote Ames on Forgery, one of the first books on
document examination. Around this time, handwriting experts
who were mostly calligraphers began to testify in court as
expert witnesses.

1900 Roland B. Molineux was convicted for first degree murder.

Molineux mailed a bottle labeled ‘Emerson’s Bromo-Seltzer’ but
has powder containing cyanide of mercury. It was ingested by
an innocent victim who died by poisoning. The landmark case
involved at least 17 handwriting experts, including Albert
Osborn, the father of document examination
Albert T. Patrick was convicted for conspiring to murder his
millionaire client, William Marsh Rice. The Rice Will case
required handwriting testimony to prove that Patrick forged
Rice’s name on several checks and a will after he has murdered
1902
Rice. Albert Osborn testified in this case to the fact that the
checks and will were traced forgeries. He was allowed to use
photographs on transparent paper to show that the four
questioned signatures were identical.
John H. Wigmore wrote The Law of Evidence which
1904
revolutionized the legal profession regarding expert testimony
Albert Osborn published his seminal book Questioned
1910 Documents, the first comprehensive book on the subject and
considered as the “bible” of document examination. The

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 principles of handwriting identification that he described are still
the basis for the comparison of handwriting today
1930 The first scientific police laboratory was established
The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened their laboratory
1932
with one document examiner

HISTORICAL CASES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Below are some historical cases that involved questioned documents and
contributed to the advancement of forensic document examination as a discipline in
the 20th century.

The Dreyfus Affair in 1894

Handwriting identification played a major role in the Dreyfus Affair, a political

scandal in France that began in 1894. Captain Alfred Dreyfus French General Staff
Officer, was accused of treason by court martial and sentenced to life imprisonment
for allegedly communicating French military secrets to Germans (Tilstone, Savage &
Clark, 2006)

The questioned document was a one-page handwritten document listing secret

French army documents discovered by a French spy in the German embassy. The
main evidence against him was the testimony of highly esteemed Alphonse Bertillon
who is recognized the father of forensic criminal identification because of his research
in anthropometry. Bertillon has no training or true expertise in handwriting
identification, but his testimony that the incriminating document had been written by
Dreyfus was sufficient to result in a conviction.

The Bobby Franks kidnap and murder in 1924

Another case that advanced the discipline of questioned document examination

was the kidnap and murder of Bobby Franks in the affluent suburb of Kenwood, near
Chicago in 1924. Booby Franks, the son of a millionaire in Chicago, was picked up in
a car on his way home from high school and murdered on May 21, 1924. The family
of Bobby received a phone call that Bobby had been kidnapped and a typewritten note
demanding ransom the next morning. They notified the police, but while considering
their response to the kidnappers’ demands, a dead body was found a little distance
away. (Tilstone, Savage & Clark, 2006)

Leopold and Loeb were tired and convicted for murder and kidnapping of Bobby
Franks. The case is significant in the field of forensic document examination because
it established the acceptability of typewriter examination as evidence, that by chance,
police discovered that the suspect used the typewriter of his study group in law school.
Pages of notes used in this typewriter were compared to the ransom demand and
demonstrated to be identical.

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The Lindbergh Kidnapping Trial in 1935

The case was considered by many to be the most significant case in the history
of document examination. The eight document examiners who testified for the state
included Osborn; they demonstrated that Bruno Richard Hauptmann was the author
of the ransom note. (Koppenhaver, 2007)

Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of famous aviator Charles

Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the family home in New Jersey on the evening of
March 1, 1932. A handwritten ransom note was found at the scene. The case became
one of murder when the child’s body was discovered two months later.

After an investigation that lasted more than two years and a highly publicized
trial in 1935, Bruno Hauptmann, an illegal German immigrant, was found guilty of
murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. The handwriting on the ransom
note was compared to samples from Hauptmann by several document examiners who
concluded that the note had been written by Hauptmann. Document examination was
one of three items of evidence central to the case. The others were tracing of special
bills used to pay the ransom and the physical nature of a ladder found at the scene.
Tilstone, Savage & Clark, 2006)

The Clifford Irving and the Howard Hughes Biography in 1972

Howard Hughes was an American business magnate, investor, aviator,

aerospace engineer, film maker and philanthropist. He was remembered as an
eccentric and one of the wealthiest people in the world, however, he did not make
public appearances and preferred privacy and solitude.

In 1971, Clifford Irving convinced the publishers of McGraw-Hill that Howard

Hughes authorized him to write an autobiography. Irving forged letters from Hughes
to support the claim that he was requesting Irving’s assistance in writing his
autobiography. Irvin even fabricated a contract between himself and Hughes to divide
the money paid by McGraw-Hill for the book. Life magazine also purchased the rights
to run excerpts of Hughes’ autobiography. (Koppenhaver, 2007)

Forensic document examiners then became involved, specifically the firm of

Osborn, Osborn and Osborn, Brothers Paul and Russell Osborn compared samples of
Hughes’ known writing with the Irving forgeries and declared that the letters were
written by the same hand.

The Mormon Will in 1978

Howard Hughes died in 1976, apparently without leaving a will. Numerous

documents purporting to be the true will of Hughes surfaced, thus becoming the most
valuable and challenged will-related case that document examiners have testified on.
The most notorious of these questioned wills include the “Mormon Will”, a handwritten
will discover at the headquarters of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. The
will left a huge sum to the Mormon Church, although Hughes only employed many

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LDS members and was not a member of the church himself. (Tilstone, Savage & Clark,
2006)

The will had many strange discrepancies, most glaring of which was that it left
one-sixteenth of the estate to a Utah gas station operator named Melvin Dummar.
The purported will was three pages long, allowing ample volume of material for
document examiners to study. Their unanimous conclusion was it was not authentic.

The Hitler Diaries in 1983

In 1983, the world was stunned with the “discovery” of the Hitler diaries.
Document examiners and historians declared mixed reports regarding its authenticity.
However, forensic laboratory testing revealed that elements in the paper contained
modern ink that was not manufactured until 1956. The Hitler diaries were the most
ambitious hoax of the century. (Koppenhaver, 2007)

Linguistic and historical experts initially vouched for the authenticity of the
purported diaries. Document examiners supported this claim because the diaries
matched the samples from which they compared Hitler’s handwriting. However, the
handwriting experts were current in claiming that the diaries and the samples were
written by the same person. This is because the samples themselves were forged. The
forger was Konrad Kujau, a dealer in military memorabilia, who had forged Hitler’s
handwriting for many years even before fake diaries. The Hitler exemplars used by
the examiners for comparison were forged by Kujau. This was significant in the field
of forensic document examination because it highlighted the importance of selecting
a competent examiner and ensuring adequate control of samples for comparison.
(Koppenhaver, 2007)