The study of disputed documents essentially falls into two separate categories. The first deals with the provenance of handwriting—did such and such a person write a particular specimen of handwriting (note that disputed document analysis has nothing to do with graphology, which claims to discern personality through handwriting). The second deals with the actual document itself and is concerned with determining its veracity.

Probably all of us have noticed fluctuations in our handwriting, often from day to day. Any number of factors—mood, the position in which we sit, our physical well-being—can affect the way we put pen to paper. But to the accomplished observer, there is, beneath these superficial deviations, a distinctive style that comes through, defying any attempt at disguise. It might be the angle of writing, its uniformity across the page, or the manner in which letters are formed, such as whether letters like g and h are looped or not. Such analysis requires vast experience and a large investment of time before a considered opinion can be given.

With the advent of the typewriter, and more recently computer printers, the modern examiner must also be conversant with the history of print technology. Say, for example, that it could be shown that a document purportedly written in 1912 was typed on a machine that was not manufactured until 1938; then that document must be viewed with skepticism. Because the identifiable characteristics of each printing device increase with age as its mechanism wears and letters chip, the chances of another machine having identical defects becomes increasingly remote.

Other factors that have to be considered are ink and paper. Ink samples can be analyzed using thin-layer chromatography (see Explosives and Fire.) For comparison purposes, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has a reference collection of more than three thousand ink chromatograms. To overcome the risk of inaccurate ink dating, the bureau has suggested that manufacturers include a trace dye that changes annually. Another American agency, the Secret Service, maintains the International Ink Library, which it assumed in the 1920s from the police of the canton of Zurich, Switzerland. The library contains the chemical composition and other information, such as the date of formulation, on six thousand types of ink.

Determining whether a document has been altered is usually possible through use of an electrostatic detection apparatus (ESDA). A document is placed on top of an electronically charged metal mesh, and a thin plastic film is pulled tightly across it. As the document and the film are sucked tight onto the mesh, a mixture of photocopier toner and fine glass beads is applied. The mixture then clings to any electrostatically charged areas. When the original document is removed, all of the indentations on the film may be read. By matching all suspect original pages against each image, investigators can determine whether changes have been made to the original document.

Although primarily used in fraud investigations, disputed document analysis has played a significant role in all facets of crime detection, particularly homicide. 

1. John Magnuson

DATE: 1922

LOCATION: Marshfield, Wisconsin

SIGNIFICANCE: From just a few scraps of bomb-damaged paper, investigators gleaned enough evidence to capture the Yule Bomb Killer.

A package mailed to the Marshfield home of James Chapman, chairman of the Wood County board of supervisors in central Wisconsin, on December 27, 1922, turned out not to be the belated Christmas present that was expected. As his wife, Clementine Chapman, eagerly tore at the wrapping paper, the parcel exploded in her face, fatally injuring her and maiming her husband.

It is a curious feature of bombs that most of the deadly blast radiates outward, often leaving the mechanism itself surprisingly intact. While the deadly device had carried out the deed for which it was designed—although it missed its intended target—scraps of paper from the packaging were still extant, and on those fragments could be seen faint traces of the handwritten address. These were turned over to John Tyrell of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's top examiner of questioned documents.

The postmark told investigators that the lethal package had been collected from the mailbox of Thorval Moen, who lived on Route 5 outside Marshfield. Moen denied all knowledge of the deadly parcel, pointing out that anyone could have left it in his mailbox, which was on a public highway. Careful checking of his alibi soon eliminated him as a suspect.

Tyrell, meanwhile, painstakingly reassembled the fragments of packaging. They read "J. A. Chapman, R. 1., Marsfilld [sic], Wis." From just these few words he would unlock the key to a killer's identity. The writing was so awkward that he first thought it had been deliberately disguised, but closer study of the spacing, slope, alignment, and pressure convinced him that it had been written to the best of the author's ability. Because literacy standards of the times were high, misspelling the town's name so badly suggested a reliance on phonetics rather than formal education. Rolling the pronunciation around on his tongue, Tyrell felt sure that the writer was foreign, almost certainly Swedish.

As it turned out, there was only one Swede in the community, John Magnuson, and he lived less than two miles from Moen's mailbox. It was no secret that Magnuson, a surly forty-four-year-old farmer, hated Chapman; for months the two men had been locked in a bitter feud over an intended drainage ditch that would bisect Magnuson's land. Dredges had been blown up and barns belonging to Chapman had been burned. With every incident the acrimony deepened.

Handwriting Sample

On December 30, officers visited Magnuson at his farm. In a barn they found particles of wood similar to the type used in the manufacture of the bomb. That same day, Magnuson was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Unaware that the blast had not destroyed the wrapper of the fatal package, Magnuson had no compunction about supplying an example of his handwriting. At a glance, the similarities were apparent, although he did spell Marshfield as Marsfild instead of Marsfilld, as on the bomb.

Tyrell determined that the killer had used a medium smooth-pointed fountain pen with an unorthodox ink mixture: mostly Carter's black, but with a slight trace of Sanford's blue-black. When postal agents inspected Magnuson's farmhouse, they found that his daughter had a fountain pen with the very point Tyrell had described. Also, she always used Sanford's ink but had loaned her bottle to a schoolmate, who, when it ran dry, had refilled it with Carter's black ink, producing the exact mixture Tyrell had discovered on the death package.

To support Tyrell's findings, the prosecution enlisted the aid of a formidable team of handwriting experts, led by the redoubtable Albert S. Osborn of New York. He was joined by J. Fordyce Woods of Chicago. Both agreed that Magnuson had written the address on the package containing the bomb. Osborn noted fourteen distinct points of similarity, concluding that "by no coincidence could any two persons ever make the characteristic and peculiar repetitions as displayed on these documents."

An interesting lesson in phonetics was provided by J. H. Stromberg, professor of the Swedish Language Department at the University of Minnesota. Explaining idiosyncrasies in the Swedish language, he pointed out that the diphthong sh did not occur in the native tongue, and thus the word marsh would be pronounced mars and spelled that way, "especially by poorly educated Swedes." Similarly, the combinations ie and ei were also unknown in Swedish, leading an untutored immigrant to spell field as filld or fild. Such a person was likely to pronounce Marshfield as Marsfilld and write it that way.

There was other evidence against Magnuson. Arthur Koehler, the wood expert who would later achieve prominence during the Lindbergh kidnapping (see the Bruno Hauptmann case on page 302), matched fragments of white elm used in the bomb to shavings found on the floor of Magnuson's workshop. Metallurgist David E. Fahlberg of the University of Wisconsin described experiments comparing metal from the bomb's trigger with a sample of steel from Magnuson's workshop: "The two pieces of metal were examined and tested with chemicals in the process known as etching. Four separate tests were made by polishing with emery and with the chemical: it was found under a microscope which magnified one hundred diameters that the two pieces . . . are identical in pattern."

On March 31, 1923, Magnuson was found guilty. Two years later, Wisconsin's supreme court refused to set aside his life sentence.

Conclusion

In his final address, Magnuson's attorney, Charles Briere, fulminated against the "so-called experts" who had examined the scraps of the bomb, sneering that "half of them were here for their share of the gold bag of the state of Wisconsin. . . . The Almighty Dollar is what these men were after." It was a complaint about expert witnesses that echoes in courtrooms to the present day.

2. Arthur Perry

DATE: 1937

LOCATION: New York, New York

SIGNIFICANCE: So many factors were combined in this case that it has come to be regarded as an American detection classic.

Early on the morning of July 2, 1937, the battered body of a young woman was found on a vacant lot in the Jamaica district of South Queens. Beside the corpse, a baby girl lay crying but unharmed. The murder weapon—a bloodstained piece of concrete—was found some fifty feet away. Nearby, also caked in blood, were an electric iron and a man's black left shoe with a hole in its sole.

Initial theories that the woman had been the victim of a random attack while taking a shortcut through a deserted railroad underpass were soon discarded. If, as seemed likely, she had been carrying the baby when she was jumped, then how had the infant escaped injury? Immediately observers felt that the woman had been killed not by a stranger but by someone she knew and trusted. As crowds gathered, a woman stepped up who recognized the crying baby and was able to identify the victim as Phennie Perry, a twenty-year-old neighbor of hers who had recently moved.

The medical examiner fixed the time of death at not later than 2:30 A.M., and anywhere up to seven hours before that. A much closer estimate was provided by a night watchman from a local junkyard. Hearing screams at 10:10 P.M. the previous evening, he had called the police, but two patrol car officers, unimpressed by his drunken state, had left without investigating.

When the body was moved, a bundle of bloodstained papers was discovered. Rarely has a murder victim disclosed so many clues. As listed in the official record, the bundle included the following:

1. An envelope postmarked Trenton, New Jersey, Feb. 17, 1937, addressed to Mr. Ulysses Palm, 108-110 153rd St., Jamaica, with a letter inside addressed "Dear Son" and signed "Your mother, Marie Parham."

2. Another piece of paper addressed to Mr. Ulysses Palm.

3. A penny postcard addressed to Mr. Ulysses Palm, signed "Your niece, Ella Mae Parham."

4. A slip of paper addressed "Dear Member," and signed "C. K. Athetan."

5. An electric light bill bearing Palm's name and address.

6. Three photographs: a) a man in front of a car; b) a studio picture ofthe same man with a backdrop of a boat named SS Leviathan; c) a picture of a woman.

7. A church receipt book containing names and amounts of donations,receipts signed "J. Walker."

8. A bloodstained strip of blue broadcloth, about 3 inches long by halfan inch wide.

Dual Suspects

When detectives visited Palm's address, they found that Phennie Perry and her husband, Arthur, a twenty-two-year-old construction worker, lived upstairs. But it was what they found in Palm's apartment that set pulses racing—the missing right black shoe and a bloodstained blue shirt with a piece torn off that matched the strip found under the body.

Both Palm and Perry were taken in for questioning. Palm, a deacon of the Amity Baptist Church, was obviously the man in the photographs found at the crime scene, yet he seemed genuinely perplexed as officers reeled off the damning catalog of clues found by the body. He readily admitted that most of the items—including the bloodstained shirt—were his, but he professed utter amazement as to how they had arrived at the crime scene. On one point he was adamant—the shoes belonged to Perry; he had given them to him sometime previously.

Across the hallway, Perry was recounting his version of the night's events. He told detectives that Phennie had met him after a bingo game at the Plaza Theater. Tearfully, she explained how Palm had tried to break into her bedroom that morning; she also produced an indecent letter Palm had written to her, which included a death threat if she showed it to her husband. Perry had stormed over to confront the lecherous deacon, and a bitter argument ensued. Palm denied all knowledge of the charge or the letter and demanded that Perry bring his wife to make the allegation in person. As Perry left, he noticed that the time was 9:50 P.M.; he had then called at the house of Phennie's sister, but his wife was not there.

The listening detectives shifted in their seats; either Perry had made a mistake, or he was lying through his teeth. They knew that Palm, who was a store clerk as well as a deacon, was nowhere near his home at 9:50 P.M. That night, for the first time in years, his employer had asked him to work late to conduct a stock inventory. Working together with several other employees, Palm did not leave the store in Flushing until 10:10 P.M. He had then taken a trolley home, a journey of about one hour. Therefore, at the time of the murder—almost certainly 10:10 P.M.—Ulysses Palm had a perfect alibi, which was more than could be said for Perry. An usher at the Plaza Theater claimed that she saw him leaving the premises at 10:00 P.M. with a woman and a baby.

Frame-Up

Palm admitted arguing with Perry, but said it happened after 11:15 P.M. Of course, genuine confusion could have arisen over the time, but the investigators doubted that. Gut instinct told them that Perry had killed his wife, then attempted to frame his neighbor. But to gain a conviction, prosecutors need evidence, not just suspicion. So the officers turned to New York's Technical Research Laboratory.

One of the investigators, Edward A. Fagan, began with Perry's clothing. It was hot in the room, and Fagan, noticing that Perry had his shirt sleeves hitched up past the elbows, asked him to roll them down. On the right sleeve was a tiny speck of blood. Also, one of Perry's socks had a bloodsoaked patch on the sole that corresponded to the hole in the shoe found by the body. That same sock also revealed microscopic traces of earth, which Dr. Harry Schwartz matched to soil found at the crime scene.

It got better. Enlarged photographs of the torn blue shirt showed clearly that the tear had been started with a cut from a knife or scissors, then torn off by hand, to simulate a tear during a struggle.

The most damning evidence came from the threatening letter. Detective John A. Stevenson compared it to specimens of handwriting from Palm and

Perry. While his expertise allowed him to eliminate Palm as the author, he felt unable to express an opinion as to Perry's involvement. Two of the nation's top handwriting experts, Elbridge W. Stein and Albert S. Osborn, were asked for their opinions. Their conclusions corresponded in every respect: Palm was entirely blameless; the letter had been written by Perry. Each man in his report highlighted certain peculiarities in the letters u and b, which were present in both the letter and Perry's writing sample, even though an attempt had been made to disguise the handwriting in the threatening letter. When a search of Perry's apartment uncovered sheets of writing paper that in every respect—size, thickness, weight, quality, and texture— matched the letter sent to Phennie, he was charged with firstdegree murder.

Perry had planned every detail. In early June he stole the photographs from Palm's apartment. Then on June 20 he mailed the threatening letter, which set up the stage-managed argument with the hapless deacon. While Perry ranted, his wife was already dead and had been for an hour. Perry used the altercation to mask his theft of the receipt book. Later he returned to the crime scene and planted this further incriminating evidence on the body.

Sentenced to death after a five-day trial in November 1937, Perry then had his conviction overturned on a technicality. Retried a year later, he was again found guilty. On August 3, 1939, still protesting his innocence, Perry was executed.

Conclusion

It is unnerving to consider the possible outcome of this case had Palm not happened to work late that night. Without the twin interventions of fate and forensic science, it is entirely conceivable that he may well have taken Perry's place in the electric chair.

3. The Hitler Diaries

DATE: 1981

LOCATION: Hamburg, West Germany

SIGNIFICANCE: History's greatest publishing fraud was first legitimized, and then exposed, by scientific analysis.

On the morning of February 18, 1981, five men—all sworn to secrecy— gathered in the office of Manfred Fischer, director of the German publishing giant Gruner and Jahr, whose magazines included the bestselling Stern. Besides Fischer, there were other high-ranking company officials and one staff journalist, Gerd Heidemann. The reason for this conference lay on a table—three diaries, each bound in black and approximately one and a half centimeters thick. Handwritten in an almost illegible Germanic script, they represented the greatest publishing coup of the century—the diaries of Adolf Hitler.

Heidemann, who had located the diaries, was closemouthed about their source, other than to say that they came from a wealthy collector of Nazi memorabilia whose brother was a general in East Germany. By the meeting's end, without consulting a single document expert, scientist, or historian, Fischer committed his company to the purchase of twenty-seven volumes of Hitler's diaries at a price of eighty-five thousand marks each, plus a sum of two hundred thousand marks for the hitherto unsuspected third volume of Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf. At the 1981 exchange rate, this represented a total investment of approximately two million dollars.

Only later did Gruner and Jahr submit the diaries for authentication. Neither of the experts they chose was ideally qualified for such an undertaking, and neither could be blamed for the debacle that followed. Dr. Max Frei-Sulzer, former head of the Zurich police forensics department and a microbiologist by discipline, was asked to compare the script in the diaries with known examples of Hitler's handwriting. (Unfortunately for

Frei-Sulzer, several of the purportedly genuine samples of Hitler's handwriting had emanated from the same source as the diaries!) He promised to report back.

They also submitted the documents to Ordway Hilton, whose credentials could not be disputed. A questioned-documents expert from Landrum, South Carolina, Hilton was top flight; Gruner and Jahr knew that his imprimatur on the veracity of the Hitler Diaries would greatly enhance sales prospects in the United States.

Nevertheless, there were serious flaws in their choice. Hilton did not understand Germanic script at all, and therefore he had to work from observation alone. Like Frei-Sulzer, he was unaware that the purportedly genuine samples of Hitler's handwriting were from the same source as the diaries. Given these disadvantages, his opinion that the documents were genuine was entirely excusable.

After two months' intensive study, Dr. Frei-Sulzer concurred: "There can be no doubt that both of these documents were written by Adolf Hitler." Further confirmation came when a handwriting expert from the RhinelandPfalz police department concluded "with a probability bordering on certainty" that at least three of the documents were genuine.

Millionaire Lifestyle

The experts' conclusions were just what Gruner and Jahr wanted to hear. Suitcases stuffed full of cash were handed over to Heidemann for onward transmission to his source. Oddly enough, no one at Stern appeared to notice that these transactions coincided with an astronomical rise in Heidemann's standard of living—he began stocking up on cars and real estate at a prodigious rate.

As the publication date drew near, Gruner and Jahr began putting out feelers in America and Britain, looking for partners. In the United States, both Newsweek and Bantam Books expressed an interest. Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch decided to bid for the world rights, and on April 9, 1983, he offered $3 million, the first salvo in a bidding war with Newsweek that would ultimately boost the price to $3.75 million.

Earlier that month Murdoch had flown the distinguished British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper to Zurich to examine the documents. This was a masterstroke. In matters pertaining to Adolf Hitler, Trevor-Roper's reputation was global and unmatched. He was, he admitted later, overwhelmed by the vast amount of documentation on display, and Gruner and Jahr's insistence that three handwriting experts had declared the writing genuine. A trio of executives eagerly fielded all of Trevor-Roper's numerous queries about clear historical discrepancies. In the end, pressured by a consortium too heavily invested in the project to countenance the prospect of failure, Trevor-Roper declared himself satisfied that the diaries were authentic and set about writing an article to this effect, for publication in the Murdoch-owned London Sunday Times.

Well before this article appeared, West German police forensic scientists knew that the diaries were a hoax. At the request of Gruner and Jahr, they had conducted their own inquiry, and on March 28, 1983, Dr. Louis Werner filed a preliminary report of his team's findings. They had concentrated not on the handwriting, which had already been authenticated, but the actual paper used, to see if it stood the test of time. Werner was adamant: of the nine documents he had examined, at least six were forgeries. Under ultraviolet light all six appeared to contain a substance called blankophor, a paper-whitening agent that, as far as he knew, had not come into use until well after the Second World War. He was awaiting a second opinion, which came several weeks later.

Hoax

On May 6, 1983, German government scientists declared the diaries to be forgeries of the crudest kind. The paper—a poor-quality mixture of coniferous wood, grass, and foliage—had been treated with the chemical paper whitener blankophor, which had not come into use until after 1954. The book bindings also contained whitener, and threads attached to the official-looking seals were made from viscose and polyester, both modern products. Of the four types of ink used, none was known to have been widely used during the war; by measuring the evaporation of chloride from the ink, scientists established that the writing in the 1943 diary was less than twelve months old.

These revelations coincided with a crisis in Trevor-Roper's confidence about the wisdom of his article. His frantic attempt to stop publication failed by hours. When news of the hoax broke, Gruner and Jahr went looking for scapegoats. Gerd Heidemann, who throughout had been convinced of the diaries' veracity, faced double disaster—not only had he been duped, but millions of marks, originally earmarked for his source, had in fact wound up in his own bank account. Staring at a lengthy jail sentence, he at long last divulged the name of his source.

Far from being a wealthy collector, Konrad Kujau, forty-five, was the pettiest of criminals. In 1963 he had turned his dubious talents to the world of forgery, copying luncheon vouchers. From there he gravitated to forging paintings and Nazi memorabilia, and ultimately the Hitler Diaries.

On July 8, 1985, Heidemann was convicted of misappropriating his employer's money and sentenced to four years and eight months in prison. His erstwhile partner, Kujau, received four years and six months. The judge described Stern's recklessness as tantamount to that of an accomplice in the hoax.

Following his release from prison in 1988, Kujau opened a gallery in Stuttgart, where he sold "genuine" forgeries of Hitler's paintings. No mere one-trick pony, he also turned out what he called "reinterpretations" of Dali, Monet, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh, signing them all with his own and the original artist's name. These became so popular that by the time of Kujau's death on September 12, 2000, a thriving market existed for his fakes.

What may—or may not—be the final twist in this bizarre saga came in April 2006, when Petra Kujau, a distant relative of Konrad's, was charged with forging her great-uncle's signature on fakes imported from Asia and then selling them on the Internet. Marketing these "fakes of fakes" had proved very profitable, allegedly netting her $680,000. Experts declared that they "weren't of very high quality, not comparable with the good forgeries made by Konrad Kujau."

Conclusion

In all, through outright swindle, royalties, fees, lost advertising and sundry other commitments, the Hitler Diaries were estimated to have cost Stern more than twenty million marks (sixteen million dollars). The cost in careers, reputations, and personal humiliation was incalculable. 

4. Graham Backhouse

DATE: 1984

LOCATION: Horton, England

SIGNIFICANCE: This case provides an example of the interdependence of forensic disciplines that helps solve so many cases.

Among the rolling hills of England's West Country, Graham Backhouse and his wife Margaret had taken up farming in the small village of Horton. A previously successful hairdresser, Backhouse seemed by temperament and talent ill suited for the rigors of agricultural life, and so it proved. Two years of crop failures had spiraled his bank overdraft to an alarming seventy thousand pounds (more than one hundred thousand dollars) and had earned him nothing but contempt from his neighbors. They regarded the master of Widden Hall Farm as an arrogant interloper, and neither did they relish the sight of a forty-four-year-old married man cavorting so blatantly with numerous local women. The first indication that something more than mere village envy was at work came on March 30, 1984, when one of Backhouse's farmworkers found a sheep's head impaled on a fence. Attached was a handwritten note that warned: "You Next."

Backhouse stormed off to the local police station, where he detailed a lengthy and virulent campaign against him made up of threatening phone calls and poison-pen letters. Included among the calls, he said, was one accusing him of seducing the anonymous caller's sister and promising dire consequences if the relationship did not cease. Bereft of clues other than Backhouse's vague and petulant statement, the police could do little more than file the complaint and hope that the sheep's head episode had been an isolated incident. Unfortunately, such optimism proved groundless.

Explosion

On the morning of April 9, Backhouse asked Margaret to drive into town to pick up some medicine for the livestock. Inexplicably, her own car would not start, and after fruitless efforts to remedy the fault, she decided to take her husband's Volvo. When she turned the ignition key, a bomb hidden beneath the driver's seat erupted, ripping away half of Margaret Backhouse's thigh and causing countless lacerations to her body. She managed to crawl, screaming, from the smoking shell, but her cries went unheeded. Backhouse, some way off in a cowshed and with the radio at full volume, was oblivious to his wife's agony. Fortunately, the stricken woman was spotted by some school bus passengers and rushed to the hospital.

Combing the wreckage, explosives experts discovered that the bomb had been unsophisticated but deadly—a length of steel pipe packed with nitroglycerine and shotgun pellets wired to the ignition. Luckily, most of the explosive force had been deflected downward by the driver's seat. Even so, doctors had to remove thousands of pellets and fragments of shrapnel from Margaret's body. While she was still in the hospital recovering from her ordeal, Backhouse received yet another threatening letter.

This communication was sent to document examiner Mike Hall at the Birmingham Forensic Laboratory. He quickly realized that any attempt to identify the handwriting was pointless, as each letter had been gone over backward and forward repeatedly in order to disguise the hand. But when he inspected the "You Next" note, he came up with something of interest. On the back, barely visible, was the faint impression of a doodle, probably made on an adjoining sheet in a notepad. It wasn't much, but Hall carefully stored the note for later reference.

Meanwhile, Backhouse had been talking to the police. Clearly shaken by the incident—for he was convinced that the bomb had been intended for him—he maintained that he had no enemies, an odd remark considering his earlier complaint about the hate campaign. When pressed on this inconsistency, Backhouse reluctantly conceded that a neighbor, Colyn Bedale-Taylor, might possibly bear a grudge. The two men had been engaged in a lengthy and violent dispute over a right-of-way, an argument exacerbated by Bedale-Taylor's severe depression since the death of his son Digby in a car crash two years previously. Warming to his theme, Backhouse suggested another possible suspect. This person worked in a quarry and therefore had access to explosives. Questioned as to why this particular fellow might wish him harm, Backhouse admitted to having had an affair with the man's wife.

For his own safety, Backhouse was given police protection at Widden Hall Farm. This arrangement ended after just nine days, when Backhouse angrily phoned Detective Chief Inspector Peter Brock and ordered him to remove the officers from his land. Backhouse insisted that he was quite able to defend himself. Aware that Backhouse owned a shotgun, Brock warned him against taking the law into his own hands, then withdrew as requested. As a compromise, Backhouse agreed to the placement of an alarm button connecting the farmhouse directly to the local police station.

For two weeks, all was quiet at Widden Hall Farm, but on the evening of April 30, the alarm shrilled. Police rushed over. Just inside the front doorway, they found a scene of appalling mayhem. Backhouse, barely able to stand, was awash in blood, his face slashed several times down one side. Another, deeper gash ran from his left shoulder diagonally across his body. At his feet lay sixty-three-year-old Colyn Bedale-Taylor, dead from two shotgun blasts to the chest, his lifeless fingers wrapped around a Stanley knife.

Backhouse told police that the dead man had called to inquire after Margaret's health, but had suddenly gone berserk. Crying out that God had sent him, Bedale-Taylor admitted planting the bomb, but said it was because Backhouse had caused the death of his son. He then lunged at Backhouse with the Stanley knife, slashing him about the face. Backhouse fought off his demented neighbor and fled down the hall. "I ran into the hallway and grabbed a gun. Bedale-Taylor was still after me. I shouted I had got a gun, but he still kept coming and I shot him. He fell back and I shot him again and that was it."

Strange Engraving

Given recent events, it sounded like a plausible enough story: The Stanley knife bore the initials BT, and Bedale-Taylor's mental confusion was well known. Further corroboration came when officers searched the dead man's house and found the actual steel pipe from which the car bomb had been cut. But they also noticed something else. All of the tools in Bedale-Taylor's workshop—he had been a carpenter—were carefully engraved BT, unlike the crudely monogrammed Stanley knife. They found it curious, to say the least.

Experts who studied the crime scene were also perplexed. Dr. Geoffrey Robinson, a biologist, pointed out that the drops of blood on the kitchen floor were of the wrong shape. During a frenzied life-and-death struggle, blood splashes typically land with distinctive tails; yet these spots were uniform and round, as if they had dripped from someone standing motionless. Other factors didn't add up either. There was no trail of blood from the kitchen to the hall, the direction in which Backhouse said he had run for his life, and neither did he display any of the usual defensive wounds to his hands, customary when someone has attempted to ward off a knife attack.

Additional suspicion was cast by pathologist Dr. William Kennard, who expressed doubt that the Stanley knife would still be clasped in the dead man's hand and not lying on the floor. The only situation in which he could imagine such an occurrence was if rigor mortis had formed immediately, a physical impossibility. Kennard postulated that Backhouse had first shot Bedale-Taylor and then put the knife in his hand.

Even more incriminating was Robinson's examination of the envelope that had contained the first threatening letter sent to Backhouse. Beneath the gummed flap he found a tiny wool fiber. Microscopic analysis matched this with Backhouse's own sweater, strongly suggesting that he had mailed the letter to himself. Suspicion turned to certainty when detectives searched Widden Hall Farm and found a notebook in a drawer. Inside was the page that still bore the original doodle found impressed on the "You Next" note. Enlarged photographs of the impression superimposed over the doodle provided an exact match.

Even while in prison awaiting trial for murder, Backhouse continued plotting. He persuaded a fellow prisoner to smuggle out an unsigned letter to a local newspaper implicating Bedale-Taylor in the car bombing. The scheme backfired hopelessly when the handwriting in this letter was analyzed and found to be indisputably that of the prisoner.

Conclusion

Piece by piece, the magnitude of Backhouse's fiendishness became apparent. In early March, he had increased the insurance on Margaret's life from fifty to a hundred thousand pounds, waited a few weeks while spreading word of a nonexistent hate campaign, then planted the bomb that so nearly killed her. When that attempt failed, and to divert suspicion from himself, he had lured Bedale-Taylor to his house with the sole intention of killing him. The seriousness of his self-inflicted wounds almost fooled the authorities, but he had underestimated the astonishing scope of modern forensic detection. On February 18, 1985, Backhouse learned the price he would have to pay for that arrogance—two terms of life imprisonment.