Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Handwriting Analysis Works

Episode Date: September 16, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, one of the fields of forensic investigation, handwriting analysis is based on the principle of uniqueness - that each person writes in their own peculiar way. Learn about this interesting area of crime fighting and how it's worked to advance itself as a real science. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's Saturday, select stuff you should know. I'm doing handwriting analysis. It's pretty awesome.

It's from October, 2013, and I just selected this one because I thought it dovetailed nicely with our Secret Service episode this week, so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Savie Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

Jerry's over there. That's right. We're all here. Yeah. We're at the ready for another, yet another, forensic podcast. Yes, we are. I thought we were done.

No, I don't know that we're ever gonna be done. Oh, and Chuck, not only are we never going to be finished, this one, like every other forensic episode we've ever done, traces back to Alphonse Bertillon. Oh, is he the first dude? He's the guy. He did fingerprinting. He did facial characteristics.

Yeah, the mug shots. Yeah, mug shots, and what's it called? The facial sketch artist, Dree. He did that. Please sketches. Yeah, and crime scene photography, even? Maybe so. It's entirely possible.

Boy, we owe a great debt to that man. Yeah, he was basically like, he had his finger on the pulse of forensics. Like every subdiscipline of the field of forensics, like this guy virtually started it. That'd be a cool movie. At a Paris police station. Yeah.

It would be, you know? Unless you were doing the research and found out he was kind of a jerk. Yeah, but who cares? Well, no, then you'd have to like kind of beef his character up and maybe he was, what is he, like he was jilted or something like that? Sure, yeah.

Does he need like an orphan to come into his life? Yeah, I like to do it with Gandhi, remember that movie? Oh, yeah. Made him look like a saint. Wow. So I think at the very least, people, if not, you may not be able to become forensics experts, but at the very least you can watch all those TV shows now

with a better understanding. Right, you know. Is that what we're trying to do to help people better watch TV? Sure. Okay. Chuck. Yes.

Have you ever written anything by hand? You laugh, but think about this, pal. Yeah. There is a time that's coming when there's not going to be much need whatsoever for that. Oh, I know there is currently a legitimate debate on whether or not to keep teaching cursive handwriting. Yeah, I think that the debate's been answered

and the people who want to keep teaching cursive just haven't quite accepted their fate yet. That was the answer, no. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I was looking at a copy books, which we'll talk about in a second. And apparently the whole point to teaching penmanship

lie in an era where if you had good penmanship, you were like, that was a part of business. Like you needed to look respectable, put together. Have good handwriting. Yeah, like your business transactions were carried out through handwriting typically, and you needed to have good clean handwriting and said a lot about your character.

This is also at a time when people were burned at the stake for witchcraft. True. They're shortly after. So, you know, maybe you don't put that much stock into it, but there was a point in time when like handwriting counted. It doesn't count any longer. Yeah.

And I'm not saying like, I'm definitely not waving like the flag of glory over the corpse of cursive writing, right? Yeah, you are. I'm not. You're doing it right now. No, I don't mean to, and that's why I said I'm not doing that because-

Well, to put that flag down. Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is the writings on the wall as it were, I'm not necessarily happy about it. No, it's the last thing anyone ever wrote in cursive. Was that cursive is dead? Yeah, you know, I can say that I don't write by hand that much anymore.

And when I do now, I get weird with it. I leave out letters and have to go back and put them in. Same here. I'll write out of order. Yeah. And even this word, I put C additional. I left out like three letters and had to go back and put them in, but I do it really quickly.

It's not like I'm stumped. Right. But like if I was writing cursive, I'd be stumped. Yeah, I tried to. I don't even know how anymore. I tried to write cursive here or there just to see if I still have it and I do not. You lost it.

I don't think I ever really had the Z. It's a tough one. The Z. Remember the Z? Yeah, I could write a Z right now. Rarudo. Give me a spray can. Okay.

But yeah, anyway, it's weird. It's almost like a dyslexic thing happens now when I write. You could spray paint a cursive Z. I could do that right now. I think I'd be better at spray painting a cursive Z than writing it. Yeah, because it'd be large and... Yeah.

The point is, cursive is probably dead. Yeah. Writing things down by hand is becoming less and less. What is that? I'm sorry, everyone. I don't mean to interrupt myself, but Chuck has held up one of his pages of notes and there's some weird writing on the back.

What is that? Do you know what that is? No. My parents' signatures, because I was seeing if I could still duplicate them as I could back in high school. You used to do that? Sure.

What for? You're a good kid in high school. What did you need to know your parents' signatures? Here's what I would do. I was a good kid, but I would skip school and class sometimes. What? Did like go fishing with Rad. Okay.

And that's the thing, I wasn't like doing drugs or drinking. I would skip school and like go fishing. And then I would write notes and forge my parents' signature, which is not right, kids. Yeah. But it wasn't like I was off being a vandal or anything. I was just catching some trout. Catching some trout and beating foxes

in the head with a hammer. No. Huffing scotch guard. But I used to could really do my parents' signature spot on and I was very proud of that. Yeah. So how is it? How does it hold up compared to before?

Cause I don't have what's called an exemplar. Yeah. My mom's little initial signature is still pretty right on. DMT. DMB, but my father's is, I used to could do that one a lot better. That's a fine signature. Can I see it one more time?

Yeah. James Allen Bryant. That's a nice one. Yeah. Huh. All right. You've never forged your parents' signature at all? No.

Neither one of them, I may have tried. I think I remember even practicing, I think. My dad seems like just looking at it, it's highly duplicable, but it's not really. Yeah. Like you can tell that I, I wanted to say the person, cause I refer to myself in third person a lot, was trying to recreate it.

Yeah. Just make a potato stamp in your set. I've never tried that one. You got your signature for life with a potato stamp. Like you just carve out? Yeah. You never did that in craft class. You carve out something in a,

and press it on ink in a potato and then press it on ink. And you basically can make your own stamp. No, it makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Potato stamps. No, we didn't make those. You missed out, buddy.

Chuck. Yes. You kind of covered a lot of like points of handwriting analysis. Yeah. Little teasers. Before we start too, I think we should point out that what we're talking about,

and I was just made to find on the internet that when you search handwriting analysis, what comes up is actually graphology. Yeah, that's, that comes up a lot. Which if handwriting analysis, forensic handwriting analysis is really struggling, forging ahead to become a science, graphology is quite happy to not be whatsoever.

It's all very unscientific. Yeah. That's like, let me write down a sentence, and you tell me what kind of person I am. Exactly. Like if you write using small letters, you're actually afraid of the world and very self-conscious, and you want to hide or disappear.

Or another example is if like the first letters in your first and last name are big. You have your signature. Yeah. You crave attention, or you think overly of yourself. Yeah. None of this is founded at all.

It's Hocom. It's Hocom. Handwriting analysis, while still like I said, struggling to be a science, is much less Hocom. It has one fatal flaw that's possibly not fatal, but it's the same flaw that fingerprint analysis has. Subjectivity. Subjectivity.

Yeah. That's right. Which we'll talk about, but maybe now is a good time for a message. Stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, now we're back.

Let's talk about handwriting analysis and handwriting in general, Chuckers. OK, well, it's questioned documents is the legal term for what they're analyzing. Yeah, and it's not just handwriting. It could be like forgeries. Yeah, dude, it could be a lot of stuff. These people question document examiners, QDEs,

they examine typewriting, computer printed documents, photocopies, decipherment of altered, obliterated, or charred documents. Yeah, but that's a tough one. Examination of inks and papers, erased entries, indented writings, like you wrote something on a pad and ripped it up. Yeah, there's a whole division of people

who just rub pencils on a piece of paper to see what comes up. Counterfeit currency, an examination of commercially printed matter, so they're kind of all over the place. But the sexy stuff is, and a lot of times, in the private sector, it's not even for forensics, it's, hey, examine the signature on this document.

Right, like, is it real? Did Mickey Mantle sign this baseball? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but what they're looking for and what the entire field of forensic handwriting analysis is based on is called the Principle of Uniqueness, which has been around since at least the 1920s. And it is the idea that everybody

has their own brand of handwriting. And that while maybe you make a cursive Z in a certain way, that I might make the same Z in the same way, if you take all of the characteristics that you have and put them together, you form a unique package. Your handwriting is unique in that sense. So the individual weird characteristics

might be similar to other people's weird individual characteristics, but you can't put 20 or 30 weird characteristics of handwriting together and compare it to anybody else's. And so based on that, you should logically be able to look at one person's handwriting and compare it to a sample of another person's handwriting or the same person's handwriting and see whether they match or whether they were written by two different people based

on the number of differences or similarities between the two samples. Boom. Yeah, so let's talk about handwriting. Yeah, and those are individual characteristics. Before that, you have what's called, or everyone has, an underlying style characteristic. And that is based on the fact that when

you were a little snot nose kid in school, they gave you what's called a copy book, which had, I know we all remember this, words on one line and then an empty line where you had to copy it and make it look like that. And depending on where you live and when you live and went to school, you're going to have a different copy book. So your underlying style characteristics

are going to be based on this original copy book that you might have some similarities with people, like for me that grew up in the mid-70s in elementary school into Cab County, Georgia. Right, exactly, because you used the same copy book. What's awesome is a handwriting analyst could tell you what copy book you used or where you were from and when based on that structural analysis.

Yeah, and I imagine teachers even inform that somewhat, individual instruction. For sure, yeah, because the teacher's going to be like, that's not an R and smack your knuckles and say, try again. So the copy book, how we learn to actually write handwriting, is based on or creates this style characteristic. But then once we actually learn how

to produce a letter using our hands just through repetition, we start to add our own style to it. Those are the individual characteristics. We stop thinking about how to make the structure of a letter and we're thinking about what we're actually writing about. Yeah, and when it comes to forensic examination, style characteristics aren't really what's important. Maybe that could help rule out certain geographic areas

or something, but mainly what they're looking at are those individual characteristics. That's kind of where the key is when you want to track down a perp. Yeah, because like we said, the chances of the same person having the same set of individual characteristics. Impossible. Pretty much, yeah.

And here's the thing. They're not just looking for similarities. They say in this article, it's probably easy for even a layman to look at two sentences and compare them and say, well, look, these letters are the same. What they're looking for are the differences. And therein lies the key.

Yeah, the differences. And two different pieces of text. One is the exemplar, which is basically a comparison sample. The exemplar is a previous document that you've written in the past. Written by a known author. Yeah, like, hey, Chuck, you wrote, we found this diary entry for you from five years ago.

This will be your exemplar. Now we want you to write some stuff now. Exactly. So that would be a requested exemplar if they asked you to write something now. But either way, they know that this came from you. So it's an exemplar, an example document. And they use those to compare to the question document.

So whenever you're talking handwriting analysis, you have to have two kinds of documents, an exemplar and a question document. That's right. You want to talk about Lindbergh for a minute? Yeah, the question document very frequently is a ransom note. That's right.

And in the case of the Lindbergh baby, which Grandpa Simpson, everybody knows kidnapped, or is, that's what it was, there were 14 ransom notes. Yeah, from, well, depends on who you ask. A lot of people think Bruno Hauptman was innocent. Maybe. And executed as an innocent man. But there were still 14 ransom notes.

Still 14 notes, yeah. And when Bruno Hauptman came in, they couldn't find many exemplars from his past. So they said, well, let's just get him in custody and have him write some things down. Right. And that's putting it lightly. Which, that's fine.

Good idea. Literally speaking, that's a requested exemplar. Yeah. All right. The thing is, the police had this guy write until he was exhausted over and over again. Apparently he wasn't producing what they wanted him to produce. So they said, here, see this ransom note?

Copy this. And the guy did it. And apparently every bit of handwriting analysis that they, or sample that they got from this guy was coerced. Yeah. And questionable. As questionable as the question document. That's right.

But he was still convicted and executed, right? Yeah. And who knows if he was innocent or not. There's all kinds of varying opinions on the internet, of course. But at the very least, the handwriting documents and his samples that he gave were definitely coerced and probably not the best thing to put your case on.

And that was an early obstacle that handwriting analysis had to overcome was creating procedures for the police to say, if you're going to request an exemplar, here's how you do it. Here's what to ask for. Do not show them the question document. Don't ask them to copy. Just have them write.

That's why you should always cut your ransom note out from the funny papers and individual letters. Plus it looks cool. And creepy. So what you're looking for, if you're going to compare things, is not, hey, look at the sentence and compare to the sentence, because that doesn't tell you much.

You want numerous exemplars. You want 10 documents that you can compare to 10 other documents. The reason behind that is because when you write something, say you're writing a letter, when you start, you're all fresh-faced and bushy-tailed. And then as you go further down the page, you get a little more tired, a little more fatigued. And your writing starts to fall apart.

So you're never going to write the same way twice. Even within a document. Right. Which is a characteristic in and of itself. What's more, starting a word with the letter A, you're probably going to produce that A differently than an A that comes in the middle of a word. Yeah, or at the end.

Right. Yeah, I do that for sure. And certain letters will connect, but only certain letters. Like I might connect my T to my H in the middle of a word. No, but not at the beginning. Right. That kind of thing. So what are they looking for?

Well, they're looking for several things. Letter form. What are they looking for? They're looking for a letter form, which is like the curves, the size of the letters, but the relationship between a letter that's supposed to be small like an S and a letter that's supposed to be big like maybe an H.

Yeah, even the width within a single letter maybe. Right. The slant, the slope, whether or not, like I talked about, you connect certain letters together, links between them. And then, like we mentioned, where that letter falls. So if you want to analyze an A, a lowercase A, and we should point out too that apparently you can't analyze uppercase letters only.

Is that right? You can analyze those just against each other, though. OK. Uppercase and lowercase are like they yield nothing. That's right. Apparently. But let's say you have a lowercase A. You want to find within the document

an example of an A at the beginning, one in the middle, one at the end, and see how those compared to each other before you even compare it to the other exemplar. Yeah, like if you really thorough and detailed stuff. Yeah, it really is. It sounds like very tedious work, too. Super tedious. Which we'll get into in a second exactly how tedious it is.

But yeah, the point is, if you are a handwriting analyst, you're not going to put an A at the beginning of a word next to an A, or compare it to an A in the middle of the word. They're two different things as far as you're concerned. Yeah, you'll get laughed at if you do that in class. Line form is another thing they look at. How smooth it is, how dark it is, indicates what kind of pressure you're using on the paper.

How quickly you're writing. Yeah, the speed. Formatting, of course. Spacing between letters, spacing between words, whether where your margins are, like they'll give you a blank sheet of paper that's not lined and see if you, like most people, typically the sentence will go down if you don't have a line paper.

Or what kind of margins you just instinctively use. Or if you're like a serial killer and you don't use margins. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Scribble all over the page. Yeah. They should just like you up right there. Right, exactly. You're basically confessing it's something horrible.

If it is line paper, where if you make a lowercase y, how does the bottom of the y or the g or the cursive z intersect with the line? How far down does it go? How big are your loops? Where do you cross your t? It's like mind numbingly detailed. Do you skip lines?

Yeah. Do you dot your eyes with little hearts? That kind of thing. The bubble letters. I know some females that's still sort of right that way. Yeah. Not with the hearts, but definitely that very distinctive You can tell.

I got a lot of love notes like that in my day. With the little heart eye? Yeah, and I would write back like the serial killer. Those were my love notes. Just like 20,000 words on a single piece of paper. Yes, I do like you. As a matter of fact, I'm sitting outside of your house right now. I know what you're doing.

Yeah, just a big one long run on sentence. OK, so one thing that they will do, here's one method that they will use, is they will actually create tables. Yeah. Three tables, and all is what you want. So you make your first table, you start with the letter A, and you go through the question documents.

Yeah, and this is all in the article, by the way. It even has the little tables. And the sample sentence they used is, I have your daughter. It's kind of creepy. It was, but it was like appropriately creepy. Why couldn't they just put, let's play some basketball? I hadn't even thought of that. It seemed like, yeah, of course I have your daughter.

OK, I don't know what that says about. So the three tables. So the first table, what they're going to do is go through all the question documents. And they're going to start with the letter A, if the letter A is present in the document. They're going to put all the letters that are present in the document.

So for example, I have your daughter has two As. Right, well, no, yes, it does. But the sentence itself doesn't have all the letters of the alphabet. So you're going to go through and figure out what letters are present in your question document. Put those down one side. Then you're going to go through starting with the letter A

and find every different letter A. So if there's a letter A that slants to the left, you're going to put that down next to A in row one. And then if you've come across another A that slants to the left, you're going to skip that one, because you've already found it. What the point is, is you're going to create a table of every characteristically different

example of a particular letter. Yeah, and they're doing this with digital cameras. Right, so in the article, they did it by hand. They tried to recreate what the weird letter looked like. But yeah, they're going to take a digital photo of just that letter and then compile it into a table. That's right. And at the end, what they are doing

is comparing the tables, making sure they have a match for each letter in the exemplar. Right, because they went through the question document. Then they did the exact same thing for the exemplar. Then they put the two tables together and created a third table. And from that third table, they should be able to see pretty clearly whether the two things were

written by the same person. And so if you're an FBI analyst, you're going to come up with one of five possible outcomes. There's identification where you're pretty much putting your career on the line or your professional reputation on the line saying, this is written by the same person. There's may have, which means that the similarities outweigh

the differences, but you're still not 100% sure. Identification level, sure. Yeah, that's a real woozy way to go. There's no conclusion, which is like the similarities and the differences are pretty much the same, or there's just not enough evidence there, or enough material to go with. Then there's may not have, which is the differences

outweigh the similarities, but you're still not sure. And then there's elimination where you're sure that they weren't written by the same person. Which is probably as equally a bold statement as they were. Yeah, you know. I imagine those are few and far between the identification and eliminations in a major case, you know? Yeah.

All right, so coming up, we have something on forgeries and simulation, like if you're trying to sniff someone off the case. But first, we have a message break. Stuff you should know. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

OK, so we were talking about simulation before we broke. And that's, like, a big part of this is, if you give, and I can't imagine, like, let's say someone, like, an officer picked you up, and of course, you didn't do anything. But they bring you into a room, and they're like, we need some handwriting examples. Yeah. You're going to be freaked out.

For sure. Like, how you're writing. And you're probably going to write weird. Or if you did do it, you might try and fool them by writing weird. And by weird, I mean, different than you normally write. Yes. Not like, he's in strange letters or something. Right, yeah.

You're going to maybe write a little more slowly, or just write bigger than you do, or smaller than you do, or just different. I saw a picture of a ransom note, not a ransom note, a stick-up note. And it was obviously done with squiggly lines, and words were purposely misspelled, so that if anybody ever did analyze the handwriting,

what they had wouldn't match up to anyone's normal handwriting. That's a good idea. Yeah. So on the front end of the crime, you do the different handwriting. Right. That's not bad. I didn't mean to assist any would-be bank robbers, but yes.

But after the fact, if they have the two things, and you try to simulate a different writing, they're pretty good at trying to determine whether or not you've done that. They are. I mean, you can completely throw off handwriting analysis. Sure, just where you get a no-conclusion, at least. Right.

But like you said, handwriting analysts do have ways of knowing whether you're simulating your handwriting. Yeah, and like you said, there'll be more pen lifts. Definitely be slower. And basically, they'll root you out as not just writing naturally. Right.

Like at a normal speed, even. Right, because you're really putting a lot of thought into the words you're writing, rather than just writing like you have nothing to hide. Exactly. So this is all good and well and fine, and it's a legitimate field. It's not always allowed in court, though,

because like you said, it's subjective. Yeah, I want to say, and I don't know why I developed an affinity for handwriting analysis, because I think fingerprinting is BS, frankly. And I remember saying pretty much that effect in the fingerprinting episode. For some reason, handwriting analysis struck me as more legit.

Yeah, and I don't know why, but it did. And so I kind of looked around and found, as recently as June, they had a major national conference for handwriting analysts. Its aim was to further the science and the measurements in the field. Yeah, in Gaithersburg, Maryland? Yeah.

Measurement, science, and standards in forensic handwriting analysis conference. Right. And I mean, it's not a new field, and they've subjected it to scientific testing over the years, like the principle of uniqueness, the founding principle of handwriting analysis. It's been tested many, many times.

One of the favorite tests they like to do is to get identical twins to provide handwriting samples. Same DNA, same environmental factors, same physiology, all of these things that affect your handwriting. Because I mean, your handwriting is changed by the fine motor neurons that you have in your body. If you're an identical twin, you're

going to be similar, right? You'd think your handwriting would be similar. No, handwriting analysts routinely can tell a difference between twins' penmanship. Wow. Yeah. So they have tested this stuff, and they are, I guess, aware that it's not a fully scientific field,

and they're taking steps to make it more scientific. Yeah, because they want to A, protect their jobs, and B, they want it to be like at the end of the day, they want it to be allowed in court. They don't want to be offered for podcast fodder. Oh, I imagine also they don't want to put away any innocent people. Sure.

So let's talk about another brilliant plan if you want to be a forger of things. Provide the both exemplars yourself. Right, this is pretty amazing. And this guy had a killer name, Conrad Koju. Koju? Kujo. Kujo?

Conrad Kujo. I think it's Conrad Kujo. K-U-J-A-U. Say Kujo. All right, Conrad Kujo, let's call him that. Yeah. The Kuj. 1980s, the Kuj was a supposed collector of Nazi memorabilia.

First of all, those people freaked me out. You know? Remember American Beauty? Yeah. So he was a collector of this stuff, and a German publishing company, he approached them and said, you know what, I've got 60 handwritten journals written by Der Führer himself.

Yeah, they were found in a plane wreck. Just found him. And they seemed to be genuine, and they paid him $2.3 million. And the same company, the German newspaper, also owned that publishing company. They printed stuff. They said, hey, let's syndicate this out. The London Times said, sure, we'll write about this.

But they said, but you know what? We're the London Times. Let's get a handwriting analyst to check this stuff out. Three of them. They had three high-end handwriting analysts analyze this stuff. And all three of them said, yep, the same person wrote these samples who wrote the diary.

So yeah, these are Hitler's diaries. Yeah, because they got the exemplars that were supposedly written by Hitler himself, said it's the same thing. These are legit. Right, so Kujo walks away with a cool $2.3 million in 1980s, no less. And the world has 60 previously unknown journals from Adolf Hitler, we think.

Within a year, it was uncovered as a fraud. That's right. Thanks to the London Times, they used ultraviolet light examination and found out that the paper wasn't around until 1954, a little bit of a problem. Anyone that knows Hitler knows that he died in 1945. Open your eyes, Chuck. And then they did some more forensic tests

and said the ink actually was applied on the paper about 12 months ago, within the past year. And he's a fraud. And he wrote both sets. And I don't know why they didn't check. They said, well, we need some real examples of Hitler's writing, and he's like, here. No, I think that's what they did.

He had gotten, I think he was just that lucky that he had flooded the market with fake Hitler handwriting. And so the authenticated samples that they used as exemplars just happened to be ones that he'd also forged. So it passed the handwriting analysis. Handwriting actually, handwriting analysis came out on top in that instance, but it was still a fraud. It was still a forgery.

Amazing. It came out on top as a technique, but overall it took kind of a hit because it still failed. Unbelievable. Yet believable. What about John Mark Carr, you remember him? Oh, dude. Man.

And I got to admit, if there was ever a case of judging a book by its cover when I saw that guy, I was like, yep, he did it. He's the creepiest guy I've ever seen. He is creepy. You got that right. Yeah, but he was creepy for another reason because, of course, we're talking about the John Benet Ramsey case.

He falsely confessed to killing John Benet Ramsey. Which I think he did it to get a free ride from Thailand back to the US. I think so. I think he'd like the attention and everything too, but I think he just didn't have any money and wanted to get back to the state. So he confessed to John Benet's killing.

Well, he's living as a trans woman now. He is. And apparently trying to recruit six-year-olds and younger, preferably Burnett girls, for a sex cult. Apparently he's trying to found a sex cult. Yeah. I only saw this one article that was on several different networks in June of like, what was it, like 2010?

And I didn't see anything else after that. I think that is very, very grown up of you to say. Because it is hearsay. You had one accuser. And it was somebody who he was formerly close to, a girl he had been engaged to, who was saying she was coming forward to try to protect people. But there was no follow-up, no nothing.

So who knows, Chuck? That was very good of you. But back to the handwriting part of this, they compared the ransom note to a couple of exemplars from his past. The Secret Service does a lot of this, by the way. And one was a high school yearbook that he signed. And one was a job application from Thailand. And they couldn't match it because it was inconclusive

because the high school yearbook was old and apparently in a, quote, artistic writing style, so I don't know what that means. I guess he did in high school, you do those bubble letters. Right, and fill them in. Yeah, like a reflection on the curve of the S. And then the job in Thailand, he used all uppercase letters. And they couldn't compare that to the ransom notes that was

both upper and lower. And then the DNA obviously sniffed him off the case. And he was not the guy. No. He was just weird. He was an odd duck. Yeah, and I don't think they still never caught anyone, did they?

No, they never arrested anybody. Yeah, I think last thing I heard was that the case was reopened and they thought they had enough evidence for the parents, but they didn't or something to indict them. Oh yeah, that was a few years back, right? Yeah. Very sad. And I don't see why it was so hard to get these exemplars.

Is it that tough to find handwriting examples from someone? Sure. Especially if they're not cooperating, too. Oh, well, I guess that's true. I mean, what do you have lying around that's got your handwriting on it? I got a bunch of notebooks and stuff with tons of stuff in there.

Oh, well, then you'd be an easy case. All right. Well, better not kidnap or kill anyone any time soon. Keep your nose clean. What else you got? I think that's about it for me. Well, there's the FISH system. They're trying to bring this into the non-subjective modern age,

the forensic information system for handwriting. That basically, they take a large body of handwritten material, digitize it, and then plot it as arithmetic and geometric values. So basically, it'll be a numeric database, sort of like a fingerprint database. So instead of just having this big diary and a locker, you have an actual numeric value that you can compare it to now.

Isn't that just using computers as like a flak jacket from criticism? I mean, really, the computer's just carrying out program subjectivity, isn't it? Yeah, probably so. But I mean, it's really just a database. It's not saying that it's like any better way of doing things.

And I just saw this from 2009, sort of the same thing. There's in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology, they did a test to see if people write differently when they're lying or not. And they do. They had them write truthful sentences and lies. And apparently, you write differently when you lie. The content of the sentence, whether it's a lie or

truthful, changed the handwriting. Wow. That's really interesting. Yeah, so I guess I could help with forensics. For sure, it could act as a sort of secondary lie detector, at least. Right, you could be like, I am the kidnapper. Right.

Have them write that. But I mean, it's not for comparisons. Well, if it doesn't work out for comparison, you have a handwriting confession. Pretty cool. And there's no schooling for this, by the way. Really? Yeah, like most of this forensic stuff, it's all just

like training on the job training. Yeah, but there's certification. Well, there's no college programs. No, but I think you still have to become certified. I don't think you have to. I think you can advertise on the internet and just be Joe Schmo handwriting analyst. That kind of thing.

But I think there is a certification or accreditation out there. OK, it says that the training period is a minimum of two years of full-time training under the tutelage of a qualified expert. A wizard. So yeah, forensics, the game continues. Nice.

Let's see, you got anything else? No, we still have to cover shadow analysis. And smell. Yeah. Smelly people. If you want to know more about forensics, you should type that word into the search bar. It'll bring up this handwriting analysis article and a

ton of other stuff. Just type in, like I said, to thesearchbar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Mail. Yeah, man. I'm going to call this email from a feminist lesbian. OK. Self-described.

Guys, your timing is amazing. I'm listening to old episodes. And I listened to microloans yesterday. It's amazing how lined up my universe is with you guys right now. So I guess she was into microloans or something. Right. I love you guys to the point where my mental tape, the

dialogue that plays in one's head, is sometimes even in your voice. As a northern feminist and lesbian, I was leery of two southern dudes educating me. But I poo-poo all your critics. So she listened to us. She was like, what are these? Bumpkins.

Bumpkin. Hayseeds. Hayseeds going to teach me. I'm a feminist lesbian from the north. Yeah. She poo-poo's that. Once you get the hand of your dry wit and humor, you are the most awesome and epic truth-tellers who have grace,

dignity, and a humility about your own mistakes and limitations that I find unparalleled. You embrace all people's choices and lives, and you are silly to boot. I must say that I just learned so much, and I have fun. Whatever you're talking about relates to my life, and you are excellent teachers. I sit outside by the river in the back of my house, draw or

play Sudoku. Sudoku. What's that? Sudoku. Sudoku. It's the most difficult word to pronounce. It is. If you don't learn it right the first time.

It's like they'll puzzle a game, right? Right, with team people playing it. You predict what number is going to go in where. It's pretty neat. You should try it. It's challenging. Do you like crosswords? I love crosswords.

You will like this. It's not the exact same thing by any stretch, and it definitely includes some math. But you'll like it if you like crosswords. Give it a shot. So she plays this out by the river and listens to us for hours after long days. In short, everyone needs to be nice, because I am all

knowing, and I say you are wonderful. Words can hurt. You're kind decent human beings first and foremost, and being in the public eye makes people forget that. So there. And that is from Karin Shah in Western Maths. Nice. Thanks a lot, Karin Shah.

That was a very, very nice letter. Thank you. Yeah, I picture her out there by the river, playing that Sudoku. Weird game. Sudoku. Sudoku. Sudoku.

Sudoku. It ends with a U. No, it ends with an O. No, it doesn't. Unless you misspelled it. Sudoku. She spelled it S-U-D-U-K-O. Sudoku.

I think it's Sudoku. Well, agree to disagree, Karin. Again, thank you very much for that very nice letter. If you want to send us a very nice letter or criticism, we have a thick skin after all these years. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. We will tweet back at you, angrily probably, and rally everybody else against you.

You can join us on facebook.com, where Chuck will comment on your post to make you feel bad if you make us feel bad. Right, Chuck? He's a master at that. It's good. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.