1. Forensic Science Questioned Documents
Part 1

2. Questioned Documents
Any object that contains handwritten or typewritten/printed markings whose source or authenticity is questionable.
(is it FAKE?)

5. Questioned Documents Duties of a document examiner:
*examination of handwriting
* use of microscopy, photography, chromatography (separating colors of ink)

6. Graphology…it says a lot about you

7. Types of Forgery
Simulated forgery—one made by copying a genuine signature
Traced forgery—one made by tracing a genuine signature
Blind forgery—made without a model of the signature

9. Handwriting Analysis What your writing says about you
Handwriting Sample of President George Bush
According to Sheila Lowe in her book, Handwriting of the Famous and Infamous, President Bush’s handwriting is “fast and highly simplified in fairly well-organized writing field”.
Is this a forensic document examiner or a graphologist??

10. What do you see?

11. Famous Forgers and Forgeries
Major George Byron (Lord Byron forgeries)
Thomas Chatterton (Literary forgeries)
John Payne Collier (Printed forgeries)
Dorman David (Texas Declaration of Independence)
Mark Hofmann (Mormon, Freemason forgeries)
William Henry Ireland (Shakespeare forgeries)
Clifford Irving (Howard Hughes forgery)
Konrad Kujau (Hitler Diaries)
James Macpherson (Ossian manuscript)
George Psalmanasar (Literary forgery)
Alexander Howland Smith (Historical documents)

12. Palmer Method Zaner-Blosser Method

14. Handwriting Comparisons
Unconscious handwriting of two different individuals can never be identical.

24. Characteristics for Comparisons
Line quality – Do the letters flow or are they written with intent strokes?
Spacing of words and letters – an average
Ratio of height and width of letters
Connecting strokes – Are capital letters and lower case letters connected?
Unusual letter formations
Pen pressure
Slant – Left, right, slight or pronounced
Baseline habits – Do the letters stay even on the baseline?
Placement of diacritics – How are the t’s crossed and the I’s dotted?

25. Handwriting Comparisons
Margins, spacing,
crowding, insertions,
and alignment are
personal habits.
Spelling, punctuation,
phraseology, and
grammar individualize
each writer.
A final conclusion of comparison between
two documents must be based on a
sufficient number of common
characteristics.

27. Jack the Ripper

28. Galileo

29. Signature Comparison

30. Writing Alignment

32. Collection of Handwriting Exemplars
In gathering known writing samples for comparison, or exemplars:
Known writing should resembled the questioned document
Should contain some of the words and combinations of letters present
Give the range of natural variations
Should be fairly recent, usually within 2-3 years