Lie detector: Hidden secrets in handwriting

Are you dating a ‘fake-­out’ artist?
Charlie sat there in front of me with a handwriting sample of Kathy Sue. Charlie was looking for answers. How could he have been so wrong about his sweet Ms. Kathy?

“She seemed perfect,” he said. “She was beautiful, athletic, and smart. I felt very lucky. After dating her for several months I introduced her to my family. Everybody liked her. I was planning on asking her to marry me.

“A few weeks ago, she told me that she wanted to visit her mother, who lives out of town. She said that she was short of cash, so I told her that her visit to her mother was my treat and I let her put her airplane ticket on my charge card. Well, it turns out that the airplane ticket wasn’t the only thing that she put on my credit card. She wound up staying at a very expensive resort and spa at my expense. She told the people at the spa that I was going to join her. I ­didn’t know about ‘our’ vacation, of course, so I ­didn’t show up. I later found out that someone else did show up: her ex-boyfriend.

“She came up with all kinds of excuses. She even blamed the whole thing on me. Needless to say we are no longer together.”

Look at the way Kathy Sue wrote the word “honey.” Do you see that it could say something like “hiney” or “huny” or possibly even “Levej”? Now, look carefully at the way she combines the e and the y in “honey.” Is that an e or a y? Both? Neither? Her ambiguous letter and word formations show that she knows how to disguise the truth. ­She’s tricky and leaves the interpretation of events unclear so that she always has an out when she needs it.

Kathy ­Sue’s numbers are also ambiguous. Notice the way she wrote the date. Is that 3/29/05? Or is it 6/21/02? When you meet someone who writes with ambiguous or trick numbers, you are almost always dealing with a bamboozler or an embezzler.

“Charlie,” I told him, ­“don’t feel too sorry that you missed your vacation. Look on the bright side. You lost your baggage without even leaving home. And in this case, ­that’s a good thing!”

Family business
The Kimes family business was a multinational enterprise with a broad range of practices and services, including arson, con games, forgery, fraud, grand theft, grifting, and the occasional murder.

They ­didn’t need the money. They ­didn’t have to work. Sante ­Kimes’s husband (and ­Kenneth’s father) was worth over $10 million. But this mother and son team had a drive to succeed on their own terms. They conned their way from Hawaii to New York, burning buildings, defrauding friends, enslaving housekeepers, robbing stores, forging documents, and murdering people.

In 1998, mother and son were arrested for the murder of Irene Silverman, a wealthy New York socialite. After Sante ­Kimes’s trial for robbery, burglary, forgery, conspiracy, illegal possession of weapons, and murder, Justice Rena Uviller described her as “surely the most degenerate defendant who has ever appeared in this courtroom.” Sante Kimes, who received a 120-year sentence, will spend the rest of her life in prison.

Take a close look at the first word. Can you make it out? In context, most people will be able to see the word “All.” Now, cover all the other words with your fingers. Does it still look like “All”? Or does it look like “Ell” or “Gee” or maybe “Gel”?

Can you make out the word above “Mom”? Is that also “All” or “Ale”? ­It’s quite different from the first “All.” And ­what’s that comma doing there, before the end of the word?

And ­what’s that little dot to the right? Is it a period?

Not sure? Well, ­that’s how a con artist works.

This sample of Sante ­Kimes’s writing was on a photo she gave to her older son, Kent. She told Kent it was a photograph of her as a young woman. Years later, Kent realized that the subject in the photo was Elizabeth Taylor. Like so many others, he had been conned.

Excerpted from “Sex, Lies, and Handwriting” by Michelle Dresbold and James Kwalwasser. Copyright (c) 2006. Reprinted with permission from Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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