THE PERFECT CRIME

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 33, 2 November 1929, Page 31

THE PERFECT CRIME

.HUMAN FALLIBILITY MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE

According to Mr. J. Clark Sellers, a famous American handwriting expert and criminologist, “the ‘perfect’ crime never has been committed, and probably never will be committed. Every action leaves a clue as to who did it.” He says further, that: Often circumstantial evidence is much stronger and more conclusive than so-called eye-witness testimony. Some of the Interesting cases Mr. Sellers has worked upon illustrate remarkable,- corroboration, of that statement. For example, he states that "the mute, material evidence incorporated in every wrongful act, such as the baiting, hesitating stroke of the forger, the bullet in the murdered man, blood stains left- at the scene of a crime, speak volumes of-what actually occurred and who committed the act, arid more accurately, to.the trained observer than the testimony of excited witnesses, who are usually poor observers, arid are frequently prejudiced in favour of one side or the other. It is very rare indeed that two witnesses will make the same observation and then recount those observations accurately weeks or months-later in court.” But let us hear Mr. Sellers himself. Writing on the hardships of forgery m “The Police Reporter,” Los Angeles, he observes: , ■ The forger is confronted with a greater task than he usually realises, when he decides to imitate some one els'e’s handwriting, regardless of whether it is on a 10 dollar cheque or a 10,000,000 dollar will. Even though the forger is faced with a difficult task, many forged wills, deeds, contracts, etc., are accepted as genuine. It would probably be amazing, if known, , the h'umber of documents which are accepted as genuine, which in reality are forgeries, and are often never submitted to an expert, because suspicion of them is not aroused. Documents, which for some reason or other, are questioned, are usually of two general classes: first, documents which are suspected of being forged, and, second, documents such as extortion and blackmail letters. In the extortion or blackmail letters the writer desires to hide his own identity; therefore he attempts to disguise his own handwriting. To do this successfully he must divorce from his writing his own peculiar characteristics. Few people are acquainted with their own writing characteristics. These characteristics are developed over a period of years' and are not easily cast aside. As for a specific case, he gives us this recent spectacular crime: William Edward Hickman was confronted with the important problem pt hiding his own identity when he wrote the death-threat letters to Manon Par-, ker’s father. To accomplish this he chose as a disguise a system of bandprinting the letters. He not only painstakingly hand-printed each letter but, in most of the letters, he went back over every letter in each word two or more times, making extra strokes on .each, trying to still further disguise. Yet he did not succeed. Before Hickman was ever captured we knew he, and he alone, was the writer of the series, of death-threat letters. Members of the force of the police department had scoured the city for hand-printing of Hickman. Their efforts were rewarded by finding two places in Hickman, some months before, had ap nlied for a position where in each instance he had hand-printed his name and address. 'From these , genuine standards of Hickman’s writing ne were able to positively identify him as ihe writer of the death-threat letters Cunning as he tried to be, he could not get away from his own peculiarities. Tbev remained to expose him. The man-who attempts to forge another’s handwriting is confronted with even a much greater difficulty than the man who is attempting to disguise his writing. He must not only cast aside his own peculiarities, but he must take on all the peculiarities-in the handwriting of the person whose writing he Is attempting to forge. To produce a perfect forgery, the forger would first need to. make a thorough study of the handwriting of the person whose hAud writing he desired to forge; not only to ascertain the form of the letters used, but how each part of each letter is constructed, the manner n which the pen is held, where the nibs of the pen open and close, producing the shading; the.relation of the high letters to the small letters, and a myriad of other details. Then, he must study his own handwriting to ascertain which of his own characteristics he must leave out. Then, after he bos done these things, the most difficult act remains to be done—the actual forgery itself. The mere desire to do, even the knowledge of how an act should be performed, does not give one the power to accomplish that act However, signatures are only one part of a document. Frequently, “many questions arise iu relation to a document, other ’ than the signature , and sometimes a signature is questioned which in fact, is genuine, as in this ' In the forepart of March of this year one of tbe most important document cases in the history of California legal

annals was tried in Fresno before Judge Charles R. Barnard. The case occupied more than two weeks in trial, and was bitterly contested on each side, the value of the property involved being in excess of 800.000 dollars. E. W. Risley, a former Superior Court judge of Fresno County, died in 1918, leaving a large estate. There were two children living, a son and a daughter. The son, T. E. Risley, immediately after the death of his father, recorded three deeds transferring the property to him. He made a settlement with his sister, paying her,a largo sum monthly, which, he" testified, his father had requested him to do.

Nine years after the death of Judge Risley the sister started action against the brother for a half interest in her father’s estate, alleging the deeds were forged. At the conclusion of a lengthy trial, in which experts appeared on both sides of the case, Judge Charles R. Barnard of Fresno County immediately rendered his’verdict iu favour of the defendant, T. E. Risley. In commenting on the case, Judge Barnard stated he was absolutely convinced the deeds were genuine. Many interesting points relative to questioned documents were brought out during the trial. Not only the authenticity of the signatures ’ was questioned, b.ut also, whether or not handwriting characteristics change with age; whether or not the jurat, on certain documents,. was filled in after the notary had signed his name and affixed bis seal; whether or not the five pages of a certain deed were typewritten in continuity on tbe same typewriter and by the same typist, and whether or not the original backing paper, on one of the deeds, had been removed and certain pages substituted. A trip to Mr. Sellers’s office and laboratory is at once interesting and enlightening, continues Mr. Ferris as we return to his “Kiwanis Magazine” article. As he tells us: There you will see microscopes, little and big ones; cameras of different designs for different purposes, one of them five feet long, another one mounted on an iron base specially constructed to avoid vibration, for making photographs through high-powered microscopes; lenses for various specific purposes; micrometers for making measurements down to 1-10,000 bf an inch; specially constructed measuring instruments; ruled on glass for placing over a document to make accurate measurements, also chemicals for making tests. All of them instruments of precision to enable the examiner to come to accurate conclusions. “Forgery,” states Kiwanian Sellers, "dates back almost to the very beginning of the art of writing. In fact, the arts and wiles of the forger have kept pace down through the ages with the advance of the art of chirography. Some of the most interesting trials in tbe history of our courts have been those wherein the question of the authenticity of certain handwriting has been involved. ■ “Many weird tales have been told in the court-room about the strange fimlj ing of a lost will, the details of which usually bespeak a most active imagin ation. , “These are often forged wills and fake stories, but, strange to say, often find ready believers and credulous attorneys to argue the genuineness of them. Often the forgeries are so cleverlv done that only one who is experienced and who has the necessary microscopes, cameras, etc., can tear aside the veil and reveal such documents as forgeries. , , ... “Forgers have been so clever with the use of the pen that they have been able to successfully imitate bank drafts, engraved cheques, and even pen-and-ink imitations of greenbacks have been done with such minute detail and exactness that they passed for genuine currency until examined by a currency expert and the fraud exposed.’ Many persons believe that nil typewriters are alike, and that the typewriting furnishes “a perfect disguise for the swindler who inserts an extra page in a will, or adds an extra paragraph to a contract, or attempts to extort money by threatening letters. Nothing could be further, from the truth, the writer warns us as we continue our reading: _ The microscopic aids in searching out defective type, letters battered or out of alignment, which make each machine individual, and the typewriting can be definitely tied up to the identical machine on which the document was written, Mr. Sellers declares. Moreover, it is sometimes possible to establish that a certain document was written by a certain typist, as. typists form certain habits which are individual. Sometimes important information as to the age of a document can be told hr the paper on which it is written, or bv the ink with w’hich it is written. Frequently the examiner of questioned documents is called upon to determine whether or not a document was all written at the same time, with the same ink, and the same pen. Often experience, ink chemistry, the micio--1 scope, and photography enable the ex- ) amincr to establish the true facts.