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CORPUS DELICTI

A Corpus of Forensic Linguistics Cases

A Corpus of Forensic Linguistics Cases – Compiled by TFG STUDENTS AT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT UGR

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Sandra Weddell’s Case

23 June, 2022 por corpusdelicti Leave a Comment

Hi everyone!

I’m going to write about the case of Sandra Weddell, which, to me, was really interesting to investigate. 

Sandra Weddell was a 44-year-old nurse from Bedforshire, England. She was a kind and very religious woman. She was married to the police inspector Garry Weddell. Garry was a respected inspector who had been more than 25 years in the force. They had three children together, and they appeared to be a happy family (Wright, 2008).

One day everything changed when, apparently, she committed suicide and left a letter for her husband that said:

“Garry. 

I am typing this note, because I know that if I were to hand write it and leave it for you, then I know that you wouldn’t read it. 

I am so sorry for all the hurt I have caused you garry. I never meant to hurt you or to cause you so much pain. 

I made a stupid mistake and I betrayed your trust, and I betrayed my family at the same time. I don’t know what made me do what I did. I wish the whole thing had never happened. It all got out of hand. I have ended up with nothing. 

You are kind to want to forgive me. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. 

When you think of me, just try and think of the happier times. 

Sandra Jane Weddell”

Do you see anything out of context when you read this letter? At first, everything seems normal. But thank’s to the linguist John Olsson, it was known that Sandra was not the one who really wrote this letter. 

In 2006, Garry discovered that Sandra was having an affair and she wanted to divorce. Garry’s life fell apart, and he was really worried about losing his children, so he thought that the solution was committing the ‘perfect murder’ (Leafe, 2009).

In January 2007, Garry killed Sandra putting a cable tie around her neck, that is, strangling her. Later, he hung her body in the garage of their house, trying to make it look as if she had committed suicide. In addition, he tried to cover what he had done leaving a ‘suicide note’ nearby in a sheet of paper, as if Sandra had written it (Wright, 2008). 

As he was a police inspector, he knew about all the possible mistakes he could make and he tried to cover everything that could make him look guilty. He even wore gloves to make sure he was not leaving evidence on the paper (Wright, 2008). 

During the investigation, the police asked some neighbours and colleagues about the couple’s behaviour the day of the murder. Although at work Sandra was acting perfectly normal according to her colleages, that day there were some inconsistencies such as the fact that neither she nor her husband had picked the children up from school. Also, Garry asked his neighbour for help to find Sandra who,  according to him, had been missing for 24 hours (Wright, 2008). 

At first, police investigations pointed that it had been ‘probably suicide’ and Garry Weddell was not arrested. Some detectives disagreed with this and continued their investigation without him knowing. Some months later, Garry was suspended from his job and arrested as a suspect of murdering his wife.  However, after trial, he was free on bail and killed his mother-in-law before killing himself. 

As I previously said, John Olsson was the linguist who analyzed the letter and found three main relevant features in this letter that were odd:

  1. The full stop after the salutation.
  2. How she signed the letter with her full name and didn’t write only ‘Sandra’ but also the second name and surname. Also, it is centered and not left-sided.
  3. The use of very short sentences comparing to the other samples analyzed wrote by Sandra in which she used longer sentences. 

His testimony about this case was: at first he couldn’t believe that a police inspector could have killed his wife and at first he though there wasno linguistic value in the letter that could be admitted in court. (Olsson, 2020, “Garry Weddell’s case”)

He used the following technique: memorizing the letter with punctuation and line breaks and transcribing the letter over and over again until something emerges. Then he compared the features found in the alleged suicide note with Sandra’s previous written texts, and then with Garry’s. (Olsson, 2020, “Garry Weddell’s case”)

If we focus on the vocabulary there is not really anything relevant to point out. We should mainly focus on the structure of the sentences and the use of punctuation.  It is proved that Garry uses full stop after opening salutation, really short sentences and centered closing salutation.

Also, we can find some spelling mistakes and wrong use of the punctuation signs. This proves that he tried to write Sandra’s suicide note perfectly. However, he was not successful. All these characteristics pointed to an only suspect, Sandra’s husband. 

The end of this case was really tragic as Garry was arrested but he was immediately released and he killed his mother-in-law and took his own life. Also, investigations proved that he was planning to kill more people. 

 

 

 

 

References:

Leafe, D. (2009, Jul 3). “Dear Garry. I’ve decided to end it all”: How a full stop trapped a killer. Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197187/Dear-Garry-Ive-decided-end-The-stop-trapped-killer.html 

Olsson, J. (2003). Fakers and Forgers. Forensic Linguistics Institute. Forensic Linguistics First Certificate Course.  https://www.thetext.co.uk/docs/course/Unit-2-FL-Course.pdf 

Olsson, J. (2009). Wordcrime – Solving Crime Through Forensic Linguistics. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp 115-122.

Olsson, J. (2020). Garry Weddell’s Case. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSrJgE9hdFw

Filed Under: Authorship attribution, Cases Tagged With: Authorship attribution, Sandra Weddell

Danielle Jones’ kidnapping

21 June, 2022 por corpusdelicti Leave a Comment

 

Introduction to the case

Danielle Jones was a fifteen-year-old girl who disappeared on 18th of June in 2001 in East Tilbury, United Kingdom. She left her home that morning to go to school. She was last seen at the bus stop near her house waiting for the bus. She did not arrive her school, and no one knew where she could be. There were some witnesses who remembered seeing her talking with a man inside a blue van, but no one knew if she got in the car or not.

The police discovered that she had a close relationship with her uncle, Stuart Campbell. The police discovered that Campbell had a past related to the obsession with young girls. He had created a fake photography company called “Cinderella’s” to make photographs of young girls.

Few months before Danielle was kidnapped, Campbell approached two girls at the gym and proposed them to o some photoshoots at his house, showing the girls the card from his fake company. While the investigation, computer experts realized that Campbell had downloaded child porn pictures from some Internet sites, and they found some pictures of topless young girls in his computer. in 1989, Campbell finally received a 12-month sentence for retaining a 14-year- old girl in his house and taking topless pictures of her.

Another key aspect for considering him the principal suspect is that he had a blue van similar to the one which the witnesses had seen the day that Danielle was kidnapped.

It was found out that Stuart Campbell had a personal diary where he had a detailed record of his illegal conducts, including a daily record of his relationship with his niece Danielle. It was also found out that he left chilling notes to Danielle in her room while she and her family were out for holidays. In one note it said, “Hi princess, hope you have a lovely holiday. Text me when you get back – Love Stuart”. In the second note found in her room, it said, “Hi princess, in case you missed my last note I thought I’d pop in another to let you know I do miss your smile”.

A page from Stuart Campbell’s diary
Stuart Campbell’s chilling note to her niece

When the police went to talk to him, he assured to be far from the crime scene the day that Danielle disappeared, and that he had received some messages from his niece the same day, when Danielle was supposedly disappeared. The police investigated and they discovered that the signal of his phone and the signal of Danielle’s phone were located at the same place at the time the messages were sent. Both phones were exactly at the same place, so Campbell was supposed to be with her when she was already disappeared.

The linguistic point of the case

When the linguist of the case, Malcolm Coulthard (a linguist from the University of Birmingham), analyzed the messages, he discovered some inconsistencies in the way of writing; there were some things that did not concur with other messages that Danielle had sent days before her kidnap. The linguist started analyzing both messages and other messages written by Danielle in other moments, and he came to the conclusion that the messages that were supposedly sent by Danielle the day of her kidnapping and the other messages were written by two different persons.

The messages in question were the following:

  1. HI-YA STU WOT YOU UP I’M SO MUCH TROUBLE AT HOME AT MOMENT. EVEONE HATES ME EVEN YOU WOT THE HELL HAVE I DONE Y WON’T YOU JUST TELL ME. TEXT BCK PLEASE. DAN XXX
  2. HI STU THANKZ 4 BEIN SO NICE UR THE BEST UNCLE EVER! TELL MUM I’M SO SORRY LUVYA LOADZ DAN XXX

After Coulthard studied a huge amount of previous messages written by Danielle, he arrived to some undoubtful features from Danielle and, therefore, some doubtful features from Stuart:

  • She wrote in lowercase, never in uppercase. These messages were both written in uppercase
  • She used to write the word “why” completely, with no abbreviations or substitutions. In one of these messages, the writer uses the letter “y” as an abbreviation of the word “why”, but Danielle did not use any kind of abbreviation for this word
  • She wrote “every1” as a colloquial form. In one of these messages, it is used the word “eveone” instead of “everyone”, but Danielle used a numerical abbreviation
  • She used the abbreviation “at the mo”. The phrase “at moment” is used in these messages, but Danielle did never use this form
  • She used the form “wat” to refer to the word “what”. In these messages, “what” is replaced by “wot”, but Danielle did never write this word like this in any of her previous messages

According to a linguistic point of view, this case can be located in a specific field of Forensic Linguistic called Authorship Attribution. The linguist of this case had to take into account a lot of linguistic aspects, but lexis (spelling errors and morphological aspects) and punctuation are the basis of this case. The features studied in this case are the following:

  • Accent stylization –> the process of using phonetic spelling to convey a specific accent or to make the reader read the word as it is pronounced, as in this case. An example of this feature could be the use of “wat” and “wot”, of “thankz” and “loadz” to illustrate the final /z/ sound; and “luvya” to illustrate the pronunciation of the phrase “love you”.
  • Whole word letter homophone substitution –> replacing entire words with a single letter. For example “y” instead of “why” or “ur” instead of “you are”
  • Syllable number homophone substitution –> replacing syllables within words with a number in order to imitate their pronunciation. For example, “every1”, using the number 1 at the final syllable of the word to imitate the pronunciation of this final syllable
  • Shortening –> common words shortened to a few initial letters. A clear example is the use of the phrase “at the mo”, where the writer shortens the word “moment” to the first two initial letters and the result is the short word “mo”

The final decisions

Finally, Campbell was convicted of kidnap and murder of his niece Danielle Jones, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was convicted and sentenced on 19th December 2002. This is a fragment of the whole sentence document in which we can see all the evidence summed up (the highlighted parts). To see the complete document, click here: https://www.iclr.co.uk/document/2016076750/%5B2004%5D%20EWCA%20Crim%201130/html

In 2004, Campbell made an appeal against his sentence because he and his lawyer thought that the evidence of his obsession with her niece and his interest on teenage girls should have been excluded from his trial. The other reason of his appeal was that one of the jurors was closely “implicated” in the case: this juror was the neighbor of one of the police officers involved in the investigation. Campbell claimed that because of this, the juror should have been discharged. Campbell’s appeal was set aside in 2005 by the Court of Appeal.

 

These fragments are from the appeal that Stuart Campbell’s lawyer presented to the Court. In these fragments we can see the explanation of the lawyer about the grounds of appeal of his client. To see the complete document, click here: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2005/248.html

 

Bibliography:

Coulthard, Malcolm and Alison Johnson. 2010. The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

Garayzábal, Elena, Sheila Queralt and Mercedes Reigosa. 2019. Fundamentos de la lingüística forense. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis

Grant, Tim and Nicci MacLeod. 2011. “Whose Tweet? Authorship analysis of micro-blogs and other short-form messages”. In Proceedings of The International Association of Forensic Linguists’ Tenth Biennial Conference. 2011: 210-24. Aston University, Birmingham, UK.

Myall, Steve. 15 May 2017. “The Irish Mirror” [Accessed April 20, 2022]

Queralt, Sheila. 2020. Atrapados por la lengua: 50 casos resueltos por la lingüística forense. Barcelona: Larousse

Stuart Campbell’s appeal. ICLR (Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales). April 23, 2004. [Accessed March 12, 2022]

Stuart Campbell’s appeal dismission. ICLR (Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales). December 09, 2005. [Accessed March 12, 2022]

Stuart Campbell’s appeal summary. BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute). February 09, 2005. [Accessed April 25, 2022]

 

Filed Under: Authorship attribution

The Zodiac Killer

5 June, 2022 por corpusdelicti Leave a Comment

 

Hello all!

This is the Zodiac speaking. I hope that everyone is having fun in trying to catch me, but… I am sorry for the spoiler: you will never do so.

Let me introduce myself. I am an anonymous serial killer under the pseudonym of Zodiac, and I want to share with you my story.

Between the 60s and 70s I killed 37 people in Northern California. Yes, 37, you read well, in fact, I confessed so in one of my famous letters. I sent those letters in addition to some coded into cyphers ones to three different local newspapers: Vallejo Times Herald, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner.

Here you have one of my letters.
Mailed: July 31, 1969
Postmarked: San Francisco, Calif.
Sent to: San Francisco Chronicle

As you can see, I have always been honest. Not only did I prove that I had actually murdered those people, but I also left clues about my identity and I warned about the next attacks I had in mind to commit. Despite having provided all this information, the police was never able to catch me. And this is where the role of the linguist comes into play. Forensic linguists have also tried to find out who I am, or at least, to provide as accurate a description of my personality as possible. For instance, Gerald McMenamin provided a very interesting linguistic analysis of my handwriting and my words:

Not only him, but many other forensic linguists have tried to reach a conclusion. Unfortunately, all they managed to do was to get a little closer to my identity. However, I have to be honest I admire the fact that they have been able to create my linguistic profile. Different experts conclude that I am a middle-aged man with intellectual abilities which exceed the average. They state that I am quite a cultured person and that I am sophisticated and careful in the way I plan my murders and write about them. I guess that they are right, nobody knows who I am… It has also been concluded that I am trying to challenge you citizens and security forces, and that I am narcissist and manipulative, can you believe that? Well, I will never reveal it to you…

Watch this:

This is my facial composite. Those few people who survived my attacks remembered my face… these descriptions allowed the police to create it.

My facial composite along with my handwriting matched that of a man called Arthur Leigh Allen:

Allen was the prime suspect of this case, in fact, he did not have an impeccable past, as he was a teacher who bullied his students. Despite these matches, the police concluded that he couldn’t be the Zodiac because his DNA was not the one found in those multiple crime scenes.

Last but not least…

MISSPELLED: doo, buton, mistry, som.

SPELLED: do, button, mystery, some.

As I am a challenging person I produced in many of my letters an alternation of spelled and misspelled words. For example, I wrote the word ”do” and a few lines below, I wrote ”doo”; and so did I with the rest of the words that you can see in the table. Some linguists such as McMenamin and Labov state that, intentionally or not, I select the language forms that I am going to use.

Another thing that I want to tell you is that my calligraphy is characterized by being extreme right, and this reveals something about my personality: graphology identifies me as: lack of self-control, impulsive, unrestrained, intense, very expressive, low frustration tolerance:

If you are a curious person and you want to read all my letters, here you have a website, which not only contains my letters, but the envelopes and cyphers: http://www.zodiackiller.com/Letters.html

You can also watch David Fincher’s film: Zodiac (2007) , or Alexander Bulkley’s film: The Zodiac (2005).

And with all this… I think it is time to stop revealing things that concern me, lest you discover my identity… even though the FBI hasn’t been able to find me… can you? I don’t think so, however, good luck.

Zodiac.

 

Filed Under: Authorship attribution, Cases

New podcast and documents released on the Unabomber case by James R. Fitzgerald

1 May, 2021 por BeatrizBN Leave a Comment

Hello everyone!

We have good news!

Through the “Forensic Linguistics” mailing list, we have been notified that James R. Fitzgerald (the forensic linguist and FBI agent who caught the Unabomber by analyzing his writings) has recently published a new podcast where he talks about the series/documentary on Netflix: “Manhunt: Unabomber”. Moreover, he has also released two of the official documents that were used to prove that Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber, the person who wrote the “Unabomber Manifesto”. All this on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Ted’s arrest.

Thus, in that series the events that occurred between 1978 and 1998 are recounted. However, in the podcast, titled ” The Fitz Files – Manhunt: Unabomber”, Fitzgerald talks about the differences between reality and fiction, and he does so in eight episodes, as well as a prologue and a epilogue.

Here’s the link to his personal page with the links for the podcast episodes: https://www.jamesrfitzgerald.com/the-fitz-files-manhunt-unabomber/

In addition to the podcast, Fitzgerald also announced that he was going to publish two documents that were used for the arrest of the suspect. Thus, one was one of the documents written by Ted in 1971 (a 23-page document) and the other was the 47-page document/report/affidavit with the FBI Comparative Analysis between Ted’s writings and the Unabomber Manifesto, which was decisive to obtain the warrant for being able to search Kaczynski’s cabin.

Here is the link to episode seven of the podcast, where you will also find the two documents already mentioned: https://www.jamesrfitzgerald.com/the-fitz-files-manhunt-unabomber-episode-7-lincoln/

In addition to all this, Fitzgerald has also announced that he will donate all the Unabomber-related documents in his possession (about 6000 pages) to the California University of Pennsylvania. There, the documents will be digitized and made public for researchers.

This is great news for everyone interested in this famous and high-repercussion case. I also want to mention that I (Beatriz) am personally especially excited since it is a very good opportunity to expand and deepen more in this case. I leave you the link to the information that I have already published about it, so that you can take a look if you want, and it will soon be updated with this new information:

https://blogs.ugr.es/corpusdelicti/category/cases/unabomber/

 

Have a nice day!

Filed Under: Anonymous messages, Authorship attribution, Cases, News, Unabomber Tagged With: James D. Fitzgerald

Was Montse Careta the real author of the anonymous letters? Watch this video to discover it!

22 April, 2021 por corpusdelicti Leave a Comment

Hello!

I am going to attach a short interwiew video about Helena Jubany’s case, in which two Spanish forensic linguists, Sheila Queralt and Rosé Ximénez, explain some of the linguistic features which have lead them to find out that Montse Careta, the teacher who was accused of the authorship of the anonymous letters she received, were not in reality written by her.

En el punto de mira: Nuevas pruebas del caso Helena Jubany – Cuatro

This is my first post, I hope you enjoy it and find it entartainig -it’s only 3 minutes!

Filed Under: Anonymous messages, Authorship attribution, Helena Jubany, News Tagged With: Rosé Ximénez, Sheila Queralt

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