FORGERY DETECTION

Joelle Steele Interviewed by Robert D. Carr, September 3, 2007

Robert Carr: How did you become interested in forgery detection?

Joelle Steele: I was originally interested in graphology and the psychological interpretation of handwriting. That was when I was about 15 years old, but I abandoned it by the time I was about 19 or 20. I had read an old graphology book that had a large section about handwriting forgery and that felt more real to me.

RC: More real?

JS: Yes. Even as a teenager I felt like the psychological interpretation of someone's handwriting was just not logical somehow. I mean, you can't apply it to all languages because in some the handwriting is so different.

RC: Like the way German handwriting is different than American handwriting.

JS: Yes, or it was at the time I first studied graphology. The individual German letters were different, and everything was more upright, vertical, less slanted than American letters.

RC: I supposed this same thing applies to different alphabet systems too?

JS: Definitely. You would have to somehow find a completely different graphological system for psychologically interpreting, say, the Chinese alphabet or the Cyrillic alphabet, and so on. That's why the interpretation of handwriting just kind of fell apart for me. I still find it interesting, just not realistic, not a valid scientific construct.

RC: How does this fit in with forgery? Would analyzing forged documents in other languages work differently?

JS: No, not at all. In forgery detection you are looking at all the same handwriting traits you do with graphological interpretation. You just don't interpret the traits. With forgery detection you are comparing two handwriting samples or two signatures. You are looking for the differences between them, so you can do this with any language or any alphabet.

RC: What kinds of differences do you look for?

JS: I start out with the bigger stuff: size, slant, width, proportions, connectors, speed, and any idiosyncracies. These are the most obvious aspects of handwriting, and that's where you will be mostly likely to find the easily identifiable differences that so often indicate a forgery.

RC: What about the letters themselves?

JS: If a signature or a body of writing matches up with the bigger stuff, then I start looking more carefully at the letters. There can be anywhere from 10 to 20 different things to look at in a letter. So unless you suspect a forgery because of the big stuff you don't want to waste your time on the finer details of the individual letters.

RC: How do you measure those bigger things?

JS: Rulers and protractors are what I started with back in the day. Nowadays I use Photoshop. I scan the handwriting and then examine it onscreen where I can enlarge it enough to really see everything. I pull down the gridlines and size the letters in each sample so that the vowels a, e, o, and u are the same size. That shows me immediately where there might be discrepancies between two bodies of writing or two signatures. I also draw diagonal lines onscreen that indicate the degree of slant in each sample.

RC: If you were examining signatures - which I know is your specialty - how do you deal with changes in a person's handwriting as they age?

JS: Well, ideally I prefer to have known signatures that were written within a year or so of the one that's a suspected forgery. But this isn't a perfect world, so I have to work with what I'm given. Fortunately, with signatures the changes with age or health are usually in the speed of the writing, the overall size, or with the addition of a tremor to the writing. The rest is usually pretty much intact.

RC: Doesn't that make it easier for someone to forge a signature?

JS: Not really. I mean, there are some people who are very skilled at forgery. But your average forger is actually pretty poor at it. It's very difficult to try to write like someone else because handwriting is a neuromotor activity, and to write like someone else, you would have to be able to overcome the things you do automatically when you write.

RC: What kinds of documents are most often forged?

JS: In my experience it's holographic Wills and signatures on Wills. But I have had to deal with some letters and diaries as well.

RC: Holographic?

JS: Holographic means handwritten. The testator has handwritten the entire document and signed it, without witnesses, and no notarization.

RC: Is that legal?

JS: Yes.

RC: I take it you have testified in court?

JS: A long time ago. It was, I think, 1987 when I first became court-certified as a handwriting expert. Only had to testify again once since then, and that was in about 1992 or so.

RC: Is that because there isn't a lot of forgery happening?

JS: No, but most of these kinds of cases just don't go to court. Usually it's because the handwriting experts are hired by the attorneys during the discovery process, and the handwriting experts almost always agree. I am often the only handwriting expert hired, and I make it very clear that I don't advocate for either side. My sole job is to examine handwriting to see if a forgery even exists, and my declaration as to whether or not there is a forgery is written solely by me. I won't sign it if it's been edited by an attorney in even the tiniest way.

RC: Such as?

JS: Adding words like "maybe" or "possibly" or "almost," etc. Words that indicate that I'm not certain that something is or is not a forgery. If I can't tell that it's a forgery, or if I have any doubt that it's authentic, I will state that. But most of the time it's obvious when something is forged and when it's authentic. I also explain why something is or is not a forgery. And I attach a graphic that shows what I saw in the handwriting I analyzed.

RC: Do you work with historic documents at all?

JS: Only with the handwriting. I am not a document examiner. I don't test paper or ink or do infrared or anything of that nature. Just handwriting.

RC: How often do you get hired for forgery detection?

JS: Not as often since I moved to Washington state. But when I was in California it kept me pretty busy.

RC: Any idea why that is?

JS: Probably just the smaller population here. California has a population of around 37 million, which is greater than Canada and several other countries. Washington state's population is only about one-sixth of California's, hovering around 6.5 million. Smaller percentage of forgers.