More Handwriting Evidence - Part 2

Let's move now to Cina Wong's written report, as reproduced at the Acandyrose website. Here's what she writes on the first line of her analysis: "The "R" is open to the left in the "Ramsey" written in S4, closely matches the "R" of "Ramsey" in line 1 of the QD." Exemplar S4 is a poster reading "Ramsey Xmas" in large letters, with a very small "Ramsey" near the right hand bottom corner. It's the small "Ramsey" she's referring to, as the large one is not open to the left. "QD" stands for "questioned document," i.e., the ransom note. Here are the two examples she's referring to, presented side by side:

I apologize for the poor quality of the exemplar on the left, but that's the best I could do given the image posted at the Acandyrose website. Despite the blurring, the striking differences between the "R" on the left and the "R" on the right should be abundantly clear. The overhang on the "R" from the poster is an extension of the vertical line forming the leftmost part of the letter. It extends upward and then, in a curve, down to the left. The overhang on the "R" from the ransom note does not extend from the left vertical, but from the squiggly line to the right that forms the rightmost part of the letter. While both exhibit overhang, the manner in which the overhang is formed is completely different in the two examples. And when examined closely, many other differences are apparent. The two most certainly do not "closely match."

Next line: "The "D" in S1 has an extended stroke to the upper left in the word "Dear" which closely matches the "D" of "Don't" in line 62 of the QD." S1 is Patsy's letter to Miss Kit, written in longhand.

Talk about a stretch! Yes, both letter "d"s have an extended stroke to the left, but in every other respect are totally different. The fact that, for Wong, the two "closely match," tells us far more about her standards of comparison than anything else.

Many of the comparisons that follow are based on similarly dubious comparisons involving the cursive writing of the letter to Miss Kit or the stylized lettering of the "Ramsey Xmas" poster and the "Marilyn Monroe" badge, all radically different in style from either the note itself or from examples that could be drawn from more relevant materials of Patsy's, written in manuscript style like the note.

I don't have the time to continue with this degree of detail, but I believe my point has been made. Wong is clearly cherry picking whatever letter pairs she can find that seem to match in any respect at all, regardless of whether they actually look alike or were formed in a similar manner.

I've already commented, in an earlier post, on Wong's most egregious error:

*The left margin slowly pulls left ward towards the base of the page in Si and S2, which closely match the margins in the QD

S1 is the letter to Miss Kit and S2 is a brief note, also written in longhand, to someone named "Bob." And yes, in both cases we see the left margin pull leftward as the document continues. Does this "closely match the margins of the QD"? Well, here's the first page -- see for yourself:

Sorry, but I don't see any margin drift on this page -- nor the other two either. I suspect Wong was working from a crooked xerox supplied to her and the others by Darnay Hoffman. Oh my!

Despite the serious issues raised above, making it clear that many if not most of Wong's comparisons are meaningless, these comparisons have been widely circulated on the Internet, convincing many that Patsy HAS to have been the one who wrote the ransom note -- no question. Why it's obvious, no? Well: NO! It's not obvious. What's obvious is her desire to please her client, Darnay Hoffman, who went to a considerable amount of trouble to convince the world that Patsy killed her daughter and wrote the phony ransom note.

I find it interesting that, in almost all cases, the "matches" found between Patsy's hand and the note are based on individual letters, which, of course, are especially easy to cherry pick. So let us at this point compare an entire document to a page of the note. Here is Patsy's version of the ransom note, penned at the request of the authorities, side by side with page one of the note itself:

Now let's compare John's writing with the same page of the note:

And by the way, with respect to the first comparison presented above, let's compare one of John's "Ramsey"s with the "Ramsey" from the ransom note:

What strikes one immediately is the strong match involving the last three letters of each. But look more closely at the initial "R"s. While the resemblance is less clear, the manner in which they are formed is the same: an isolated vertical line on the left, complemented by a single complex curve on the right, with the overhang extending from the right hand curve in both. Unlike the "R" Wong points to in the Ramsey poster, where the overhang extends from the left vertical.

In sum: To my eyes, Patsy's writing is completely different in style from that of the note. She writes clearly and consistently, while the note is rather messy, inconsistent and heavy handed by comparison. John's writing, on the other hand, looks much more like that of the note. Both tend to be messy and inconsistent and certain letters or words in both examples are crushed or distorted to the point of illegibility. This does not, in itself, tell us he wrote it. Any more than the differences with Patsy's hand tell us she could not have written it. But taken as a whole it seems clear that, contrary to popular opinion, the evidence points more strongly toward him than toward her. At the very least, the evidence makes the decision to rule him out highly questionable.

[Added at 4:10 PM:

One more point. From what we can see from the above comparisons, it becomes especially difficult for anyone to claim, as some have been claiming here recently, that Linda Hoffman Pugh wrote the note as part of an effort to frame Patsy for the murder of her daughter. As should be evident, there are too many differences between the exemplars attributed to Patsy and the ransom note, both in the details and the overall look, to see the note as an attempt to forge Patsy's hand. Linda would have had many opportunities to study Patsy's writing and, if she'd wanted to, she could have at least attempted to make the note resemble Patsy's style, but this is not the case. There is in fact no evidence whatever that Linda wrote it, or was involved in any way with JonBenet's murder. Interestingly, Linda claimed the note looked "just like" Patsy's writing, but there is in fact no real evidence to support her contention. And as we know, the unbiased document examiners enlisted by Boulder law enforcement considered it "unlikely" that she wrote it. For good reason.]

[I've been asked to compare the "Ramsey" from Patsy's pageant form with the "Ramsey" in the note. (Actually there are two in the form, but both are very similar, so I chose the first). Here they are:

Seems to me this is a better representation of how Patsy writes capital "R" than the exemplar found by Cina Wong, taken from a poster rather than a written text. In this case, the overhang on the R is an extension of the curves on the right, unlike the R in the poster. And by the way, my purpose in the comparisons above was not to compare representative examples of Patsy's hand so much as reveal the bias inherent in Wong's methodology. The two "R"s nevertheless still look very different, even though they were formed in a very roughly similar manner. The only similarity I see is with the "s"s, otherwise all the letters are clearly different.]