University of Kentucky UKnowledge Legal Studies Social and Behavioral Studies 1996 Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents Joe Nickell University of Kentucky Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Nickell, Joe, "Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents" (1996). Legal Studies. 1. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_legal_studies/1 Detecting Forgery Forensic Investigation of DOCUlllen ts .~. JOE NICKELL THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 1996 byThe Universiry Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2005 The Universiry Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine Universiry, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky Universiry, The Filson Historical Sociery, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Sociery, Kentucky State University, Morehead State Universiry, Transylvania Universiry, University of Kentucky, Universiry of Louisville, and Western Kentucky Universiry. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales qtJices:The Universiry Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Nickell,Joe. Detecting forgery : forensic investigation of documents I Joe Nickell. p. cm. ISBN 0-8131-1953-7 (alk. paper) 1. Writing-Identification. 2. Signatures (Writing). 3. Legal documents­ Identification. 4. Evidence, Expert. 5. Forgery. 6. Graphology. 1. Title. HV8074.N53 1996 363.2'563---dc20 95-35048 ISBN-10: 0-8131-9125-4 (pbk: acid-free paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-9125-6 (pbk.: alk paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. ~A·A'.~ Member of the Association of ~~ _ American University Presses Contents ----~.~~~~:~~.. ----- Acknowledgments Vll Introduction 1 PART ONE. Handwriting 1. The Written Word 7 Evolution of Handwriting 7 Graphology versus Science 17 The Forensic Approach 20 2. Examining Handwriting and Typewriting 25 Class versus Individual Characteristics 25 Examplars and Standards 29 Identification Factors 35 Handwriting Comparison 42 Disguised Writing and Printing 48 Illegibility and Decipherment 50 Typewriting and Other Mechanical Forms 53 3. Forged Writing 59 The Forger's Techniques 59 Warning Signs of Forgery 65 Detecting N onforgery Fakes 78 PART Two. Additional Aspects 4. A Multi-Evidential Approach 95 Provenance 99 Internal Evidence 102 Writing Materials 108 Scientific Analyses 122 5. Macroscopic and Microscopic Study 127 Macroscopy 127 Microscopy 145 Photography 152 6. Spectral Techniques 154 Ultraviolet Light 155 Infrared Radiation 160 Laser Technology 166 Photographic Processes 170 7. Chemical and Instrumental Tests 177 Chemical Tests 178 Instrumental Analyses 185 Notes 196 Recommended Works 215 Index 220 Acknowledgments -----4.~~~~:~~•. ----- am grateful to the many persons who assisted in some way with this I book. I am particularly grateful to Charles Hamilton for getting me to begin this project and to Gideon Epstein for urging me to continue it. I also wish to thank John F. Fischer for critiquing the scientific aspects. Others to whom I am grateful for help in various ways include Seth Kaller, Kenneth Rendell, Joseph Rubinfine, and many others. Finally, I want to thank Robert H. van Outer for his professional photographic assistance and my mother, Ella T. Nickell, for typing yet another book manuscript. This page intentionally left blank Introduction ----~.~~~~:>3~•. ----- orgery is an ancient art. Egyptian law of several millennia ago endeav­ Fored to curtail its spread by serious measures: "The punishment was directed more particularly against the offending member; and adulterators of money, falsifiers of weights and measures, forgers of seals or signatures, and scribes who altered any signed document by erasures or additions, with­ out the authority of the parties, were condemned to lose both their hands."1 By the third century A.D., Roman jurists had found it necessary to set forth protocols for the detection and proof of forgeries, and during the sixth century the emperor Justinian established additional guidelines.2 In the fifteenth century, forgeries flourished in European churches: "Clerics comprised the majority of those who could read and write, and a number of them forged and sold papal bulls and dispensations for high prices. On occasion they also supplied themselves with documents that could improve their own power or position; university professors not infrequently en­ gaged in the same practice."3 Forgery became increasingly common as literacy advanced, and it became a statutory (rather than common law) offense in England in 1562. At that time, the forger could be fined, pilloried, mutilated (by having his ears cut off or his nostrils slit), or punished by perpetual imprisonment and/or confiscation of land.4 Blackstone's common-law definition of forgery, which included any fraudulent tampering with a document, is still useful: specifically, "the fraudulent making or alteration of a writing to the prejudice of another man's right" or "the false making, or making malo animo, of any written instrument for the purpose of fraud or deceit."s Forgery is also the appro­ priate designation for spurious printed documents, when the purpose of fraud is established (although the term counteifeiting is used when the printed document is dependent "upon pictorial devices or engraved de­ signs for identity or assurance of genuineness," as in paper money or se- 2 Detecting Forgery curities6). Fake art works, artifacts, and similar items of value are also com­ monly termed forgeries. An early forger who achieved notoriety was the teen-age poet Tho­ mas Chatterton (1752-70), who produced a remarkable series of poems allegedly written by a fifteenth-century monk named Rowley. They were penned in pseudo "earlie Englisshe" on parchment. Chatterton supposedly intended to reveal his deception once his verses had been acclaimed by the literati of his day; however, when they were instead denounced as forger­ ies, the teen-age prodigy committed suicide by drinking arsenic, provok­ ing lamentations from later romantics, including Coleridge and Keats. 7 Two forgers of Shakespeare have been particularly noteworthy. One was Lewis Theobald (1688-1744), an English man ofletters who in 1728 claimed to have discovered a Shakespearean play titled (ironically) The Double Falsehood. R The other was William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), whose father was an engraver and dealer in rare books. In addition to two imitative plays, Ireland faked legal contracts and various autographed re­ ceipts, even a love letter to Anne Hathaway, complete with an enclosed lock of hair. Ireland was exposed by Shakespearean critic Edmund Malone and later confessed.9 Other notorious forgers included Robert Spring (1813-76) and Jo­ seph Cosey (b. 1887), who produced numerous faked letters and docu­ ments of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other celebrated Americans. Cosey even produced an entire draft of the Declaration ofIn­ dependence in Thomas Jefferson's handwriting.lo More recent forgers have been author Clifford Irving, who launched a grandiose hoax involving an "autobiography" of the reclusive Howard Hughes; German artist Konrad Kujau, who penned the multivolume "Hitler diaries"; document dealer Mark Hofmann, who forged Mormon and other documents, including rare letters from Daniel Boone and Betsy Ross, then turned to bombing-murders in an attempt to prevent exposure; and the inept forger of the "Jack the Ripper diary" (to which crime the "discoverer"-an unemployed scrap dealer named Michael Barrett-con­ fessed, then reportedly retracted his confession)Y Among the best known forgers of artworks is Han Van Meegeren, who produced "lost" paintings in the style and with the signature of Jan Vermeer (1632-75). To silence skeptics who doubted a mediocre artist could have produced such works, a jailed van Meegeren produced yet an­ other "Vermeer," The Young Christ, before the watchful eyes of his custo­ dians. 12 Van Meegeren explained that his motive was revenge against the art critics who had rejected his early paintings,13 but manuscript expert Mary Introduction 3 Benjamin observes that forgers usually operate from a variety of motives, including "financial gain" and "personal ambition" (obvious factors in the Clifford Irving case) as well as "that curious form of arrested maturity which leads adults to perpetrate hoaxes."14 Interestingly, as Denis Dutton points out in Encyclopedia of Hoaxes, "forgers are often cheered on by a public eager for the embarrassment of the rich elite of the art world" (or the manuscript world, in the case of historic-document forgeries). Explains Dutton: "During his trial in 1949, van Meegeren became a folk hero, not only for having humiliated art snobs, but for having scammed the Nazi leader Hermann Goring, who paid a high price for one of van Meegeren's phony Vermeers. Even