A diamond valued at several tens of thousands of rand disappeared from a company dealing with precious stones.
The company approached me with a simple but difficult question:
Could handwriting help identify the person responsible?
Normally, forensic handwriting examination asks a familiar question:
Who wrote this?
In this case, however, there was no question about authorship. We knew who would write each statement.
The question was completely different:
What happens to a person's handwriting when the subject being written about becomes psychologically significant?
This is an area where forensic document examination and behavioural handwriting analysis can sometimes meet.
It also requires considerable caution.
A hesitation, tremor or change in pressure does not automatically mean:
“This person is lying.”
Graphology is not TMT – “This Means That.”
Stress can have many causes. Anxiety is not proof of guilt. An innocent person may become extremely nervous simply because he or she is being investigated.
But when several changes appear together, and particularly when they occur at psychologically significant points in a written account, they may provide important information and help direct an investigation.
An Important Qualification
My answer to the company contained an important qualification from the beginning.
I explained that handwriting analysis might help direct their investigation, but that the behavioural observations I might make would most probably not constitute sufficient evidence, by themselves, upon which a court could determine guilt. They could, however, provide supporting evidence when considered together with other evidence.
That distinction was important.
Even a very strong indication of deception or psychological stress does not, by itself, constitute direct proof that the person committed the theft. The distinction is between identifying behaviour consistent with deception and proving the act itself.
The principle is similar to a lie-detector examination, or to information provided by a person who was told about an event but did not witness it personally. Even when the interpretation of the handwriting leads to a very high degree of confidence, it remains different from direct evidence establishing that the person actually stole the object.
In effect, the handwriting examination was being used as a form of behavioural “lie detector” – not as proof of guilt, but as an investigative tool to help determine where further inquiry should be directed.
Giving Everyone the Same Task
I instructed the company to ask all employees who had been dealing with the diamonds to write an account answering essentially the same question:
“What did I do from the time I left the company yesterday afternoon until I arrived this morning and was informed that one of the stones was missing?”
I also asked every person to finish the account with exactly the same sentence:
“I'll do my utmost to assist the company in order to find the missing stone.”
There was a reason for this.
Everyone was being asked to deal with the same event and eventually everyone had to confront the same psychologically important subject directly: the missing stone.
This allowed me to examine not only what each person wrote, but also what happened to the writing behaviour as the narrative progressed.
Most People Simply Told the Story
Most of the employees completed the task relatively directly.
Their accounts were approximately eight to fifteen lines long.
They described what they had done after leaving work, what happened the following morning, reached the point at which they learned about the missing diamond, wrote the requested final sentence and finished.
One account was noticeably different.
The writer produced a considerably longer narrative.
She described in great detail what happened after leaving work: arriving home, preparing supper for herself and her boyfriend and numerous other details of the evening.
Then came another lengthy description of the following morning before she arrived at work.
The amount of information itself did not prove anything.
Some people naturally write more than others.
But in an investigation, an unusually elaborate account can raise a useful question:
Why is so much detail being supplied around the event while the critical point remains ahead?
Approaching the Critical Moment
As the writer's account approached the moment when she described being informed that the diamond was missing, I observed increasing signs of tension in the handwriting.
Then something particularly interesting happened.
When she reached the word “stone,” the quality of the writing deteriorated.
Her hand appeared to shake.
The word became unclear.
She attempted to overwrite or repair it, but instead of improving the word, the correction made it worse.
Eventually, she erased it and wrote the word again.
On examining the reverse side of the paper, the unusually strong pressure associated with this area of the writing was also apparent.
A tremor does not mean theft.
Heavy pressure does not mean deception.
An erasure does not mean somebody has something to hide.
But here several disturbances appeared together, precisely as the writer reached the central object of the investigation.
It was the combination, timing and location of the changes that made them significant.
The question was no longer:
“What does this particular handwriting sign mean?”
It became:
“Why did this writer's otherwise functioning handwriting become disturbed precisely here?”
Then Came the Final Sentence
There was another significant observation.
Every employee had been instructed to conclude with:
“I'll do my utmost to assist the company in order to find the missing stone.”
When this particular writer reached that statement, several characteristics of her handwriting differed from those appearing in the earlier, more neutral part of her account.
That interested me considerably.
The words themselves expressed willingness to cooperate.
But the writing behaviour accompanying those words had changed.
This is where the distinction between content and execution becomes particularly important.
A person consciously chooses the words to write.
The physical production of handwriting, however, involves a largely automated motor process governed by the brain and nervous system.
Under psychological stress, conscious verbal expression and automatic motor behaviour do not necessarily remain equally unaffected.
The combination of changes may provide a strong indication that a particular subject has triggered an abnormal psychological response. It may even lead the examiner to a firm opinion concerning deception.
What it does not provide, by itself, is direct proof of the act being investigated.
The Writer Becomes Her Own Comparison
This case illustrates another important aspect of behavioural handwriting examination.
I was not simply comparing this writer's handwriting with a theoretical list of graphological signs.
I could compare her writing with her own writing.
How did she write while describing relatively neutral events?
What happened as she approached the missing diamond?
What happened when she actually wrote the word “stone”?
And what happened when she was required to write the predetermined sentence declaring her intention to assist in finding it?
The writer therefore became, in a sense, her own comparison.
That can be particularly valuable because we are no longer asking whether a particular characteristic is generally associated with stress.
We are asking:
What changed within this particular person's writing, and precisely when did it change?
Behavioural Evidence Is Not Proof of Guilt
This distinction cannot be overstated.
An innocent employee may be terrified of being accused.
That fear itself could affect handwriting.
Another person may know something about the disappearance without having stolen the diamond.
A third may simply become anxious whenever questioned by authority.
Forensic graphology must therefore be considered within the wider investigation.
Its purpose is not to replace physical evidence, witnesses or other investigative methods.
Its value is that it may identify areas of unusual behavioural response that deserve further attention.
In this case, my analysis directed the company's attention towards one particular employee.
The company subsequently established that she was the person responsible for the missing diamond.
A Pair of Earrings
This was not the only occasion on which I used a similar approach.
On another occasion, a large law firm approached me after a pair of earrings disappeared from a drawer belonging to one of its lawyers.
Once again, the question was not one of handwriting authorship.
The purpose was to examine writing behaviour in relation to a specific incident and determine whether the written material might assist in directing the investigation.
A similar approach was used.
The circumstances were different, but the underlying principle remained the same:
Do not look only at what the person writes. Observe what happens to the handwriting while the person is writing about the relevant subject.
The application of the method in different workplace investigations illustrates the distinction between traditional forensic handwriting identification and behavioural forensic examination.
The Words and the Movement
Imagine somebody saying:
“I'm perfectly relaxed.”
The sentence communicates one thing.
But suppose that while saying it, the person's voice changes, the hands begin to tremble and the body becomes visibly tense.
Would we ignore everything except the words?
Probably not.
Nor would those physical reactions, by themselves, prove that the person was lying.
We would recognise that there is a discrepancy between the verbal message and the accompanying behaviour that deserves attention.
Handwriting can sometimes present a comparable situation.
The words provide the conscious message.
The writing movement provides another layer of behaviour.
Sometimes they proceed together without disturbance.
Sometimes something changes.
And when that change occurs precisely around psychologically significant material, the professional question becomes:
Why here?
Forensic Graphology and Forensic Document Examination
This distinction also helps explain two related but different areas of my work.
Forensic Document Examination may ask:
“Did this person write this document or sign this signature?”
Forensic Graphology may ask:
“What behavioural changes appear within the writing, and what might those changes contribute to understanding the matter being investigated?”
The first is concerned primarily with authorship and authenticity.
The second examines the behaviour of the writer in relation to the circumstances being investigated.
They should not be confused.
And the evidential weight of their conclusions is not necessarily the same.
A professional examiner must understand not only what can be observed, but also how far the evidence permits the conclusion to go.
Beyond the Obvious
The obvious part of a written statement is its content.
We read what the writer tells us happened.
But a handwritten statement contains another source of information.
It contains movement.
Pressure.
Rhythm.
Fluency.
Hesitation.
Corrections.
Changes.
The purpose is not to turn these characteristics into a mechanical formula for detecting dishonesty.
It is to notice when the behaviour of the handwriting changes, where it changes and what was being written at that particular moment.
Sometimes the most interesting part of a statement is not the sentence itself.
It is what happens to the handwriting while that sentence is being written.
The words tell us what the writer wants to communicate.
The movement may tell us where we need to look more carefully.
That is where Forensic Graphology becomes an investigative tool.
And that is Beyond the Obvious.