In the Amerithrax case, the preponderance of facts show very clearly that a child almost certainly wrote the anthrax letters and addressed the envelopes. Yes, it is possible that the writing is that of an adult who knew exactly how to write like a child in every detail. But, while that may be "possible," it seems extremely unlikely.
| NOTE
added May 11, 2011 and modified May 18, 2011: On page 37 of David Willman's new book "The Mirage Man," it says: Bruce and Diane Ivins appeared to have a stable future in Frederick. Although he was no longer working as a nurse, she brought in a steady income from a day-care business she ran at the couple's modest home. The timing seemed right for starting a family. Bruce, however, could not beget children. The couple registered with a state agency, and in the fall of 1984 they adopted one-year-old twins, Amanda and Andy.So, according to David Willman, Diane Ivins was running a day care business in her home for almost two decades, starting many years before and continuing after the anthrax attacks. That confirms what I've been arguing for years: There were very likely young children in Ivins' home at the time the anthrax letters were being written and the envelopes where being addessed. |
The letters in the first mailing (the media mailing) were postmarked September 18, 2001. The letters in the second mailing (the senate mailing) were postmarked three weeks later, on October 9, 2001. Changes in the handwriting in the two separate mailings show exactly what a child would learn in first grade during those three weeks in September and October. It is extremely unlikely that an adult who is simply trying to disguise his handwriting would, purely by chance, duplicate those same specific changes in writing style.
Here are some of the key facts which point to the conclusion that is was not an adult, but a child of about 6 years old - just starting first grade - who wrote the letters and addressed the envelopes.
1. Learning the Uncial style of writing.
According to a web site named “www.brojon.org:
All upper case block letters are made quite simply from only four components: a vertical line (|), slanted lines (/), horizontal lines (—), and a curve or circle (C).
The handwriting on the anthrax letters and envelopes shows the writer is still writing all upper-case, uncial style as taught in kindergarten. But, at the time of the mailings, he was evidently just starting to learn some of the new things about writing that are taught in first grade.2. Learning how to draw the letter R.
The fact that points most clearly to a child doing the writing is the fact that, between writing the media letter and addressing the Brokaw envelope, the writer was taught and learned how to properly draw the letter R.
When the writer wrote R's on the media letter he drew the top of the R's as little circles like this:
The drawing of small circles seems to be a kindergarten style that the writer figured out by copying things written on a blackboard. It was not taught. When he addressed the Brokaw envelope, however, he no longer drew the tops of R's as circles, he drew them in a more proper way as is taught in first grade, like this:
One can actually see that the writer was told to start the loop at the top of the vertical line, since the 3 smaller R's show he started the loop near but not directly atop the vertical line.
All forensic handwriting experts agree that the handwriting examples (with the possible exception of the date on the media letter) are from the same writer. Yet, there is a small difference in abilities between these two writing samples. One would expect they would be written only minutes apart, but there are clear indications that enough time passed between the writing of the Brokaw letter and the addressing of the Brokaw envelope for the writer to learn the proper way to write R's. Was it minutes? Hours? Days? The first line of the text of the letter ("THIS IS NEXT") seemingly indicates the media letter was written on or after 9/11, even though the date on the letter was apparently added later by a different hand.
On the New York Post envelope we can see he was still having a hard time drawing arcs instead of circles:
The fact that he was taught the
proper way to
draw an R doesn't mean it immediately became automatic for him.
It takes time to get rid of writing habits, even habits developed in
kindergarten.
3. Learning to write smaller.
One of the first
things you are taught in
first grade is to write smaller. The
writing on
the media letter is roughly twice the size
of the writing on the senate letter.
And the
date on the media letter is roughly twice the size of the date on the
senate letter.
Even the writing on the Senate
envelopes is generally a bit smaller than the writing on the media
envelopes.
4. Learning when to capitalize and
when not to capitalize.
The handwriting shows that the writer had learned that
the first letter of a sentence is supposed to be larger than the rest
of the letters,
and so are the first letters of names and proper nouns.
While the writer may have learned “uncial” and the rule
about proper nouns in kindergarten, the writer isn’t certain about what
a “proper noun” is. The word “NOW” is not a proper noun, nor is “TO”,
yet they are capitalized in the media letter. In the Senate letter, the
writer capitalizes “YOU” and possibly another “TO”.
5. Learning
about punctuation.
Another of the things you are taught in first
grade
is punctuation.
The media letter has no punctuation, the senate letter does.
6. Learning about the question mark.
The writing on the senate letter doesn't just
contain periods. It also appears to show the writer's first
attempt at writing a question mark. He used three separate
strokes, and each of the strokes is full size.
Notice that the arc is the size of a reversed
C, the vertical line is the size of the letter I, and the period is far
enough below the vertical line to be a separate period.
What adult draws a question mark with three strokes, even if they were
making a BIG question mark in order to emphasize the question?
7. Developing better hand-eye coordination.
When you are about six years old and just
starting first grade, it's easier
to draw a large O than a small o, because you do not yet have the
hand-eye coordination of an adult.
Notice that on the media letter and the o
in Brokaw on the Brokaw envelope the writer draws a circle
and continues for about a quarter way around to make sure the circle is
complete. That is something a child does, not an adult.
Plus, there are indications that when drawing larger O's, he often
slows down when the circle is nearly complete, and he adjusts to make
certain the end of the circle connects with the start of the
circle. Completing a circle is automatic for an adult. A
six-year-old
doesn't have that level of hand-eye coordination.
The same holds true with the R's on the
Brokaw envelope. For the small R's, the writer didn't have
the hand-eye coordination needed to start the arc of the R atop the
vertical stroke. He got close, but not right on.
8. Learning to judge how much room you have to
write.
When you are first learning to write properly,
you do not have the experience needed to judge whether or not you'll
have enough room to get an entire line within the available
space. Notice how the writer starts writing smaller when it
becomes clear he's not going to have enough room for "of the Americas"
on the Post envelope:
And on the New York Post envelope, as on all
the envelopes, he steers his writing toward the farthest corner, which
will give him the most room. On the senate envelopes, where there
is a return address, he seems to try to avoid running into the stamp.
The writer also didn't abbreviate "Building"
when
he was running out of room as an adult would do.
Note that when writing on a large sheet of
paper such as the letters, where he didn't have a problem with running
out of room, and therefore, he wrote in relatively straight lines.
9. Learning new words.
The writer evidently saw CANNOT as two
familiar words,
CAN and NOT. An adult would write CANNOT, using a word that would
be unfamiliar to a first grader.
The writer evidently failed to copy the word
penicillin correctly, instead writing "penacilin." When copying
unfamiliar words, children are taught to read them phonetically,
remember then phonetically, and then to write them phonetically.
In the case of pen-i-cil-lin, the phonetic version ended up as
pen-a-cil-in.
| NOTE
ADDED February 24, 2010: The
FBI's case summary released on February 19, 2010, contains some
interesting new information about the misspelling of "PENACILIN."
The report says that the misspelling was deliberate and is part of a method of identifying that there
is a coded message hidden within the letter. Key to
understanding the identifying code is the fact the A in "penacilin"
is one of the A's and T's that were traced over, yet the A in TAKE in
the same sentence was not. The A does not belong, yet it is
highlighted by tracing over it. This new information doesn't alter the basic facts about the handwriting, it just adds evidence to explain something that could previously be interpreted many ways. The evidence says that the writer wrote the word "penacilin" as directed. That's all. |
10. Learning
to copy things with confidence. Eliminating pause marks.
Note that when addressing the Brokaw envelope,
the writer seems to have paused repeatedly at the end of many strokes
as if
he was checking the original to see that he was doing things properly
and to see what stroke he would draw next. He left little balls
of
ink at the end of each of the strokes underlined in red below.
He appears
to have written with much greater confidence on all the other
envelopes. Why he didn't leave pause marks on the media letter is
a question, since it was evidently done before the addressing of the
envelope. The best explanation seems to be: He felt the
addressing of an envelope with a stamp was much more important, and he really needed to
do it correctly.
11. Writing
with confidence. Using fewer strokes to draw a letter.
When writing M's or W's, very few adults write
them with four strokes as is done in the anthrax letters and
envelopes. And, N's are rarely written with three strokes.
When you write with confidence, you start to
use fewer strokes.
12. Adults generally do not doodle when writing death threats.
The letter writer doodled on the media letter,
but not on the senate letter.
Why the writer only traced over A's and T's is a good question. It's been pointed out that one of the 9/11 hijackers was named ATTA, which is spelled with only A's and T's. But only die-hard True Believers still think that Muslim terrorists had anything to do with the anthrax letters. And, if it was an attempt to highlight the A's and T's, why isn't the vertical stroke on the T's also traced over?
This type of doodling is common for children when they've completed a task and are awaiting instructions from the teacher on what to do next.
| NOTE
ADDED February 21, 2010: The
FBI's case summary released on February 19, 2010, contains some
interesting new information about this "doodling." It isn't
"doodling." It's a coded
message that Dr. Ivins evidently put into the media letters in
order to allow him to prove
he sent the letters if he should become a national hero for warning
America of the pending bioweapons attacks by Muslim terrorists, which
he
and many scientists thoroughly expected. Dr. Ivins obtained the coding method from a book called "Godel, Escher, Bach" which he tried to secretly throw away, but he was under FBI surveilance at the time, and the FBI saw what he did and recovered the book. The coded "message" is either "PAT" or "FNY" depending upon how you decode it. "Pat" would refer to a former co-worker with whom Dr. Ivins was fixated at the time of the mailings. "FNY" would mean "F**k New York," a city which Dr. Ivins seemed to hate and which another former co-worker loved. Ivins could have been aware of both ways to decode the message. This new evidence doesn't alter the basic facts on this page, it merely supplies a solid answer to something that was previously more of a puzzle. The actual fact remains a fact: "Adults generally do not doodle when writing death threats." As it turns out, the "doodling" wasn't really doodling and seemingly supports the idea that a child wrote the letters, since the "doodling" seems careless and childlike and not like something an adult would do deliberately to encode a message. If an adult had done the encoding, one would expect that he would be more clear in which letters were highlighted by tracing over. It looks like the adult told the child to trace over the letters that were highlighted in the original supplied by the adult. And the child did a so-so job of it. |
13. The new school year was just starting at the time the letters were written.
The letters were written at a time when children were just starting a new year in school - September and October. The learning process visible in the handwriting agrees with the timing of the letters.
14. The prime suspect had a lot of contact with children.
Eulogies for the prime suspect focused on his devotion to children. His wife filed for a license to run a day care center in their home a year after the anthrax attacks. People who start licensed day care centers in their homes typically begin by doing baby sitting work for children in the neighborhood. It is very common for someone like Diane Ivins to take care of a first grader or kindergartener who is dropped off by a school bus a few hours before his or her own parents get home from work.
The preponderance of facts clearly show that the handwriting on the anthrax letters and envelopes is a child's writing There can be no trial, so these facts will never be argued in court. However, there's no law that says that until the facts are believed, beliefs override all facts. The facts are clear. It's a child's handwriting.
Arguments that the writing belongs to an Arabic writer just learning to write Roman letters simply ignores most of the facts described above. Adult Arabs have adult hand-eye coordination. They know how to judge how much writing room they need. They write in one size. The question mark is also used in Arabic. Etc.
Arguments that the culprit was using rubber gloves and writing inside a glove box (biosafety cabinet) doesn't account for the difference is writing size, the change from no punctuation to full punctuation, the doodling, etc.
Arguments that the writer disguised his handwriting by using the wrong hand don't hold water, since that trick results in very awkward writing. The Troxler letter may be an example. FBI handwriting experts think that the writing is the natual writing style of the writer when writing in all capitals. That's why they sent out a hundred thousand postcards to people in Central New Jersey to see if anyone recognized the handwriting. Plus, of course, it doesn't explain the difference in writing size, the change from no punctuation to full punctuation, the doodling, etc.
Arguments that the writing is that of an adult pretending to be an Muslim terrorist or a child doesn't hold water, since it doesn't explain the fact that learning took place between writing samples and that particular type of learning is exactly what is taught in first grade.
I'm open to any proof that the writing is not that of a child. But all the arguments I've gotten are simply a total dismissal of the facts because no one can accept that an adult would use a child that way. And they evidently assume that all children watch TV news shows and would immediately spot their own handwriting on TV and run to tell their parents.
Maybe the anthrax culprit thought it was something no one else would think of. From his point of view, the cleverest and most sure way to completely disguise his handwriting may have been to trick someone else into doing the handwriting for him. Who would believe that anyone would do such a thing? Very few, evidently.