Text Version:
(Introduction to show begins)
TODD MATTHEWS (Missing Pieces Host): This is Missing Pieces. I’m Todd Matthews, and we have Peggy Walla here with us today. How are you, Peggy?
PEGGY WALLA (Handwriting expert): I’m great thanks, Todd.
TODD: I’m glad you took a few minutes off to talk to us and tell us a little bit about what you do. I actually heard about you a long time ago from Vicki Siedow, so in fact, we have one good friend in common.
PEGGY: Yes, we do.
TODD: So, you have actually worked with Vicki on a few cases. Now Vicki is a P.I. in the Los Angeles area.
PEGGY: Yes, I have worked on several cases with her with handwriting analysis and for document examinations.
TODD: And you’re a private investigator as well, right?
PEGGY: I’m a licensed private investigator with the state of Texas, yes.
TODD: Now Vicki kept saying, “I’ve got this great lady. Her name is Peggy, and if you ever need any handwriting analyzed, holler at her. So, until now, I didn’t really have anything so now time has brought me around to where I do have a few things for you to work on. It’s one of our last guests where we’re actually doing handwriting analysis on some of the documents where she had signed a postcard, and there’s a document in question and we should have more information on that soon. But, tell me exactly, how do you become a handwriting analyst?
PEGGY: Handwriting analysts…I’ve been interested in handwriting analysis since the ‘70s. It wasn’t until the ‘90s that I actually took a certification course. Handwriting analysis involves a lot of memory on how letters are formed when they are being handwritten. It’s not necessarily what is written, as so much as how the letter is formed.
TODD: hmmm
PEGGY: Because we consider handwriting to be brainwriting...
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …and people think, “What’s that?” Well, say for instance, you’re going into surgery and you have already been given your first sedative, and the nurse forgets to have you sign a document…if your brain is starting to fall asleep, your hand will not be able to sign because the brain is unable to instruct the hand what to do. Another instance of…say the audience sitting there, if they were to…if they’re sitting in a chair where they can, where one of their legs is dangled; it doesn’t matter which leg. Have that leg go in a circular motion; it does not matter if it’s clockwise or counter-clockwise. After you get it going in a circular motion, with your writing hand in the air; it’s what we call air-writing, keep the foot moving, but I want you to write the letter ‘a’ with your hand in the air.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: Write the letter ‘o’ with the same hand. What is happening to your foot?
TODD: My foot is trying to write with me.
(Both Todd and Peggy laugh)
PEGGY: That is one of the tests that we do. We also have people for different tests, what we call brainwriting. There are actually 3 different ways…I know I’m getting off from…
TODD: Oh no, you’re doing great. This is exactly what I’m looking for.
PEGGY: Okay. We like to form research that is scientific proof that handwriting is brainwriting. With your hand, for those in the audience, with you hand, have it on a writing surface like a desk or table. Have pencil and paper in your hand, in your normal writing hand. Have the pen actually on the paper, like you are going to write and with the opposite hand, put your palm up against your wrist like you were going to take your pulse with your wrist…
TODD: Okay.
PEGGY: …and wrap the rest of your hand around so that your opposite hand is actually on top of your hand…
TODD: Okay.
PEGGY: …is the way it would look. As you are writing, it doesn’t matter what you write but as you are writing, you can feel the ligaments and the tendons. You can almost feel the electrical impulse that is in that hand as you are writing. Those come from the brain. What we have been able to find out is that, because this is brainwriting, the formation of letters can detect traits of personality that you have. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you will act on them, but it means that you have a particular trait and/or behavioral personality. If you change the way you form a letter…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …you can change the behavior. It takes approximately 40 days of daily writing for 20 minutes, certain letters in a certain order, to change the habit in the brain, which is phenomenal. Having friends that have worked with the juveniles in boot camp where nothing is working and helping. I have one colleague that worked with 750 kids and, of them, after working with their caseworkers and having them go through what is called graphotherapy and/or graphoformation changes; not one has been a repeat offender.
TODD: So, you are actually saying that, if I write in a more positive manner, I can actually have a more positive outlook on life and impact on my life?
PEGGY: Yes.
TODD: It’s that easy?
PEGGY: It sounds too simplistic.
TODD: It does. It does sound…
PEGGY: Your handwriting, at your age now…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …you have particular habits that are very hard to break. It’s easier to put the old shoes on, so that’s why it takes handwriting specific letters in a specific order. The reason why I say that, let’s just say for instance, the handwriting that you had me look at that was sent to me as your handwriting…
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: …and I saw in your handwriting, you procrastinate about things.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: You put things off. There were 2 different strokes in your handwriting that have those indications. One was the way you crossed the ‘t’ and another was the loop on your ‘y’.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: Crossing the ‘t’ mainly on the left side of the t-bar and not following through all the way across on the right so that it is balanced, that’s where we find procrastination. So if you were to cross the ‘t’ so that it’s balanced on both sides…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …your follow through is going to be more likely, however, if you had, say suicidal or murderous or thievery tendencies in your handwriting, but you also had this procrastination stroke…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …if I was to have you complete that t-bar, you would follow through with that murder or that suicide.
TODD: Wow, that makes sense.
PEGGY: It’s very, very important that the people in the audience don’t just start changing their handwriting.
TODD: Yeah.
PEGGY: It could be detrimental. You have to have someone that knows what they are doing and who knows graphotherapy before you start changing your handwriting.
TODD: Well, I’m sharing everything. Everything that you…there were 3 separate notes that you did for me, and I did them at different times because I was thinking the opposite about handwriting. I thought mood; my mood affects how I write. If I’m in a better mood, I’ll write more neatly. If I’m in a hurry, it’s messy, and I might change the formation of my letters; it just depends, and I tried not to even look at the other notes when I wrote those 3 notes to you. I put the other note away so that I wouldn’t imitate something that was on a previous note.
PEGGY: Correct.
TODD: I wanted to get real clean on that, and we’re going to show this to everybody on your episode page here, it will be here because I’ve got nothing to hide from anybody. There was…you said, “Talkative, desire to learn something different, low goals, enthusiastic, good listener, fluidity of thought with or without people, worries, stays with law, thrifty, head rules decisions.” You hit so many things right there in a row that, you know, your inner thoughts are what you feel like you do, and that’s just a lot to read from this note that it’s unbelievable that you can get that much information…
PEGGY: …from such a short, little bit of writing.
TODD: Yeah.
PEGGY: It is extremely eye-opening to be able to see the personality of someone from their handwriting. I do criminal profiling and have found traits within the handwriting, like I said, the research that I’m in, we’re getting together, say, strokes that a pedophile has in common with other pedophiles. And in doing the research and writing the book, we have had people say, “Well, if a pedophile gets a hold of this and changes his handwriting, you won’t be able to tell he’s a pedophile.” And I said, “Exactly, because he won’t be one!”
TODD: Wow.
PEGGY: He would have had to change personality to fool me, or people that know what I know. That’s something that’s very encouraging because there are a lot of people that won’t write around me, but your handwriting yourself, in a normal day…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …your mood changes approximately 12 times, so if you were to continually write all day long, you’re going to see a minimum of 12 changes in those handwritings. Let’s have the audience, pen and paper again, I prefer an ink pen to pencil because pencils have graphite in them and graphite causes the pencil to move easier across the paper, and if I am looking for health indicators in handwriting, pencil won’t always show up, whereas ballpoint ink pen will. What I would like the audience to do is get in a happy mood and just write the word ‘joy’ and ‘happy’ and just really, really be happy. Look at that handwriting and when they’re finished just put it aside for a little bit, and then in a few moments, I want you to get in an extremely mad mood; something that has angered you that is still with you, and I want you to take the same pen and paper and I want you to write me a sentence about that, and I want you to see the drastic change in the handwriting, just from happy to mad. Lastly, I want the audience…I mean they can take their time in between this and they can do it with different family members, that’s what makes it fun. I want them to get in a sad mood, to where they are almost to tears, and I want them to write and as they are writing, I want them pay attention to…what is your hand doing when you are writing sad. Most commonly, people find it hard to grip the writing utensil. They keep repositioning the writing utensil. The writing utensil doesn’t want to connect with the paper. It’s like, the feeling, you don’t want to express it on paper. You don’t want that feeling at all and your connection with that feeling. That’s another audience-type exercise we have people do to show that, sure, your mood is going to change, and it’s definitely seen in the handwriting, and the audience who is participating in this, without me being there, they can see the differences in their handwriting. It’s the same person writing with the same writing utensil, on the same writing surface but with the drastic changes. Now, microscopically, there are things in the handwriting that are specifically yours that you cannot remove; you do not know it’s there. You can’t make it happen, but you can’t make it go away. Like, say for instance, the first handwriting sample that you sent me of yours…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …when you look at that handwriting, the health indicator that I saw in your handwriting, you will see that as…there are blank spaces, or what we call breaks in the handwriting. Say, for instance, in the first sentence, you have the word ‘you’ for thank you…
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: …you will notice in the letter ‘o’ the space is missing.
TODD: Yeah. And we’ll show this; all the visuals will be here so we can really point these out to everybody.
PEGGY: Okay. You will notice, throughout the handwriting that is looks like something was wrong with your pen.
TODD: Yeah, it looks like maybe the pen was a cheap pen and it was skipping in places.
PEGGY: Correct. But, what you will notice is, if you were to take all the letters and stack them up one on top of the other, the pen only acted up in certain areas.
TODD: Yeah, the same areas.
PEGGY: The same areas. That’s when I said that there is something involving your chest. There was a scar or a tattoo or a piercing; something that started in the chest and went to the mid-torso.
TODD: How did you get chest though? That is so neat that you actually got chest.
PEGGY: Where I got chest from is from looking at your handwriting and being able to blow it up…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …you will see what looks like spots where your pen touched in places that it doesn’t belong…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …those are breathing indicators; that there is trouble with the chest, the breathing. Your ink flow on paper, when looking for health indicators, is actually blood flow, what we call blood flow. So your blood flow in these areas is not the same as it is in other areas, and it wasn’t until you validated it that you do have a scar…
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: …and that you have had some surgery.
TODD: It’s 30 years ago. Open-heart surgery. A scar that goes completely…it’s at the center of my chest, all the way around underneath my shoulder blade. It’s smaller now, but I was 8 years old at the time, but it’s still quite an enormous scar. And it was on my left side rather than on my right side, so I thought that maybe it might have affected the muscles in my left hand, because it has, but I am right-handed, so I’m just curious as to the rest of the story, which you are really explaining very well.
PEGGY: Yes. That’s why I said that when people say, “Oh, it was the pen.” Well, take the letters…
TODD: And stack them up.
PEGGY: …and stack them up and you are not going to see stuff in areas that, if a pen is going to mess up, it’s going to mess up…
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: …regardless of where or what you are writing. I find it extremely fascinating. I changed some things in my own handwriting and other personalities started coming out. In fact, when I became a private investigator, a deception stroke came up in my handwriting and it so disturbed me, I contacted a colleague.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: And I was like, “What is going on?” I consider myself highly ethical, highly honest but, as a P.I., sometimes you have to draw the line to get the truth out, and you have to pretend you’re something that you’re not. That’s where that deception came from. She was removed from the analysis and was able to explain to me why I now have that ability to be deceptive. (Peggy chuckles deviously)
TODD: Wow, that is…it’s just amazing. So, if I actually do have a health problem, can I improve my health?
PEGGY: Well, not necessarily with handwriting.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: We have helped people with brain injuries…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …strokes, cognitive thinking, continuous thinking, ADD, those types of things, with graphotherapy, yes, so that you have a continuous thought. I have clients that are adults with ADD and they can’t continue a single thought. In fact, they almost stutter because their brain is clicking and they are on 20 subjects at one time; well, simply sitting and making the figure 8…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …over and over and over and over again, you get your brain…of course, we use the different hand, we use mirrors, there is a lot to it and it takes anywhere from 6 to 9 months, minimum, to go through a complete graphotherapy change, but that particular thing is one of the easiest things to continue thought. What we do with graphotherapy…say, for instance, your…you’re in Tennessee?
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: Where you live, say there’s a bank down the street…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …and you usually go to the bank the same way every day.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: But, there might be 2 or 3 different ways to get to the same bank starting from the same point and ending up at the same point. What we do with graphotherapy is, we just re-route how you get to your destination so that you are actually using another part of your brain to complete the same thing so that you bypass a certain behavior. I told you that you were talkative.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: You can tell the difference in…we’re still in the first handwriting that you sent to me…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …I want you to go to the 3rd sentence down where it where it starts with the word ‘matter.’
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: ‘I hope to,’ in the word ‘to’ what I’m looking at is the letter ‘o’.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: Notice how it is open at the top.
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: It’s the same way in the word ‘often’ which is in the sentence just below it.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: ‘O’s and ‘a’s and the tops of ‘d’s and ‘g’s, consider that your mouth, and if your mouth is open, you’re talkative. So if I have a student who’s having a problem in class by not being able to control his mouth and blurts stuff out and won’t shut up, that’s what they have to do; they have to close all their ‘o’s, all their ‘a’s, all their ‘d’s and all their ‘g’s. It was a matter of days, the teacher is calling me, “What did you do?” Because, the student, all he’s doing is writing his letter different and it actually changed the behavior.
TODD: So, before we change our handwriting, we have to actually see if this is going to be a positive change and, in my work, I probably shouldn’t close my ‘o’s; I probably need to leave them open.
PEGGY: Correct. That’s why you weren’t instructed to do so.
TODD: And you didn’t, but you did give me some really good instructions on this, and this is why I think this needs to be a 2-part interview, because I think I need to try to follow through with some of these things and then ask you to come back and then do another, and see what’s changed and see if we can see a real change in this. So, I definitely am going to have you back.
PEGGY: Well, what I’d like to do in between now and the next time, since I have given you several things to work on.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: I would like to see you work, at least copies of your work, weekly. I want to make sure that the instruction given to you is being followed through correctly. If you don’t follow through correctly, you could be harming yourself, and that’s the last thing I want you to do.
TODD: The thing is, when you’re at work, if somebody else is considering this, often I get in a hurry and I might not be able to put a lot of thought into handwriting, and a lot of times I typing more so than writing.
PEGGY: Most people are nowadays.
TODD: Yeah, so that really takes away from, so it would be something that I would have to say, “I think I’m going to write this rather than type it.” and make a handwritten note so that I can practice the instructions that I have been given.
PEGGY: Well even practicing, I have certain fonts on my computer that I type with so that my eye sees a positive font, and with that, I encourage the same things. When you are writing a grocery list, do it in cursive. We want cursive back in the schools, and the reason for that is, the connection between the letters is, actually, a connection with people. Today’s kids, nowadays, it’s, “I want it now.”
TODD: Yeah.
PEGGY: “I deserve it. Why do I have to wait? I’m anti-social. I don’t care.” It’s like a lack of empathy. “What you have; why can’t I have it?” They’re all the same. They dress the same. Act the same; talk the same; walk the same. They all want the same things. Whereas, cursive changes that, and if we could get cursive back into school…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …you’re going to see a drastic change in the way our teenagers act.
TODD: That’s a lot to think about.
PEGGY: Yes. Yes. That’s a heavy blow because school systems are ‘taxed’ with, “We have to teach this. We have to teach this.” Ninety-nine percent of first-graders are more computer-able than I, myself.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: Put a pen…put a crayon in their hand, they can’t even draw a stick figure. So, what is going to happen the day when all the electricity is turned off? When there are no batteries?
TODD: We’re in trouble.
PEGGY: How are they going to work?
TODD: We’re in a lot of trouble.
PEGGY: We’re in trouble. So learning, not only communication, but letting the brain exercise so that your brain is being used in a way that is socially acceptable, so that you have social skills, so that you have the ability to listen, and you have the ability to follow through, and you have the ability to learn something. Kids are very intelligent nowadays. Their head rules their decisions instead of their heart, and printing nowadays is almost the American way, but we have forms and things that we need to fill out that require printing. You look at some teachers’ handwritings nowadays, if you’ve been in the school systems, you’d think a 10-year-old wrote what the teacher is writing, and you are like, “This person is teaching my child!”
TODD: Well, we’ve definitely lost a talent. Earlier, I used to be a big fan of calligraphy, and I’ve done that before, and that’s writing with a little bit of effort behind it; that more, to me, I think of it more as if I’m drawing rather than writing.
PEGGY: Yes, that the key word right there, drawing.
TODD: And that’s exactly it. I can really make good calligraphic printing, but I am drawing.
PEGGY: But how do you feel when you are doing it?
TODD: I fell like I’m drawing.
PEGGY: It’s more mechanical.
TODD: Yeah, because I am actually looking at something because I have a guide that I am going by and I am. So, if I am doing that, and I make it look just like the calligraphy that I see online or on the paper before me, identical, what if I want to create a forgery? Now, we are actually looking at the Angie Yarnell case (Episode 63), and it’s one of our earlier guests. I won’t say exactly what all we are looking at in the episode, but we are looking at the validity of the postcard written by Angie after she went missing. We are going to try to do a comparative analysis and Peggy is helping us with that. And you did notice over a period of time, and we are going to look a little bit deeper, were there differences in her personality coming through in her handwriting over a period of time?
PEGGY: Oh yes, to the point where looking from the first postcard to the second postcard, I think there was…I can’t really see the date on it, I thought there was several months in between those first two. It brought me almost to tears looking at the significant difference in the personality of this person.
TODD: And that’s more than just these 12 mood changes of the day; this is a significant…
PEGGY: Oh, this is definitely more. This is significant. It started off, the first postcard was extremely bubbly and out-going, and very enthusiastic, very self-orientated and very energetic. You could just look at it and get all bouncy and happy, and like to read the postcard over and over and over again, whereas the second postcard is gappy.
TODD: Now, she used the same terminology though. Her terminology, if you were typing this letter, you would see she’s saying pretty much the same thing, but you’re seeing a different…
PEGGY: She said it differently.
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: She said it differently. It’s not necessarily robotic, but there was a sense of, “I have to do this, but not for me.”
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: And that’s what was troubling to me.
TODD: “It was expected of me to do this. This is who I am supposed to be,” maybe?
PEGGY: Yes. It’s like, part of the behavior was trying to follow through, but the most significant part of the behavior was not able to continue with it. That’s why I asked for more handwriting, which I have not deciphered yet, to see where the change is. That’s why I was asking you if this person had a drug problem…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …if this person was known to have a psychiatric problem. I asked you about children; the ages of the children, if there were children.
TODD: Things that would cause a problem; that would possibly affect her mood.
PEGGY: Yes.
TODD: Well, and we’re getting more of that, I think we’re going to be able to come to a greater conclusion on this, but what if I knew how she writes….I’m pretty good at calligraphic writing; mimicking other people’s handwriting if I want to; why can’t I copy her handwriting and write a note and make her mother believe it?
PEGGY: Like I said before, there are certain things that are microscopic, that are in your handwriting, that you’re not aware of; you cannot remove them. These thoughts that are in your handwriting…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …you can’t make those go away.
TODD: So it is possible to identify the writer of a note; it’s very possible to do that, to find out who wrote this note?
PEGGY: Oh, definitely, because as a forensic document examiner, that’s what I look for.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: I look for the microscopic…like, say for instance, you have a suspect…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …I get as much handwriting of that suspect, then and now, so that I have the same time period, and now, pick up those…let me…I’ll just, for the lack of a better word, call them ‘spots’ but they’re called ‘natural variations.’ I pick up those spots that they’re not aware of…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …that’s going to be in every, single handwriting. Well, Angie had her own ‘spots.’ You can’t put them into a handwriting, nor can you take yours out of your handwriting, and that’s why forgers get caught.
TODD: But it takes a trained eye, though?
PEGGY: Yes.
TODD: I’m probably not the person to find a forgery.
PEGGY: No, but your work with calligraphy, using the word ‘drawing,’ that’s what a forger does. They draw this other person’s handwriting, but they are lacking in the emotion. That’s why, if someone sends me their handwriting, if they copied something out of a book, it’s handwriting, but it’s almost useless because they’re copying something; their feelings aren’t in it. So, just writing me a note about your day, even how goofy you feel about writing, anything. (Peggy apologizes for coughing) I want emotion in it. Forgers don’t have that emotional connection with the handwriting. In fact, most forgers that…what was the movie with Leonard, what was his name, ‘Catch Me If You Can.’?
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: He learned…that was a…you saw how he wrote something over and over and over…
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: …and over and over and over again. Well, that’s significant. You write somebody else’s signature long enough, you can pretty much get a lot of the…how they make a ‘t’ and an ‘o’ and an ‘e’.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: But, you are not that person so you could never have that personality.
TODD: You know, I did work for a lady at one time where I ended up signing more of her documents than she did, and she would look at them and say, “Did I sign this or did you sign it?” And she didn’t even know, and I think, I did draw it and it was a pretty good forgery and I got to where I could do it really quickly, but it was definitely…I was using a different personality when I was signing it because I was her when I signed it.
PEGGY: But, see, you recognize that.
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: You became her for that short, brief period of time.
TODD: Yeah. And you even feel like, she had a British accent, and I could even hear her say her name in a British accent as I was writing it…as I was drawing that name.
PEGGY: Right. Correct. You have been able to experience something that people in the audience don’t.
TODD: Well, I did do something fun at work. Now, I do have a day job too; I still work as a quality control in the engineering quality control, and we had a note that had come across our desk, it was handwritten, and I added to it to create a little bit of a controversy. I didn’t mock that person’s handwriting; I added more to it to see what it would cause, you know, but it was for a real joke, and nobody detected it, but I could look at it and I could see the difference. I could clearly see that my handwriting was very different, but nobody else did. I created chaos for a while. I mean I had people ready to riot. Then I had to tell them, “No, I did it. I did it. I was just playing with you guys to see what you would do.” How come I could see clearly that my handwriting was a lot heavier-handed?
PEGGY: Yeah, that’s why kids, today, will write an excuse and take it to class, because living in a family, the...what we call ‘class characteristics’, you are going to pick up the habits of your parents, siblings, because you probably, more or less, learned how to write in the same area, from the same school system, from the same period of time, so that’s why kids think that they can get away with it, but an adult eye can generally tell.
TODD: My mother’s handwriting is very similar to my handwriting and I think it’s because she was my earliest handwriting teacher.
PEGGY: Correct.
TODD: So I learned from her, how to write so I think those traits are just the same as anything else I might have inherited from my mother.
PEGGY: But, at the same time, your signature, you formed a signature that appealed to you.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: You probably practiced it over and over and over, over the years, and once you found something that you liked, you stuck with it. When I’m doing handwriting analysis for personality, I like to have a signature, as well as the handwriting itself, because your signature is just your badge.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: That’s the personality you want to show the rest of the world. That’s what you want to sell to the rest of the world, whereas your handwriting, is your actual personality, and when I see a drastic difference in the two…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …then I’m like “Why is this person trying to pull the wool over my eyes?” you know. No, I don’t want my daughter dating this guy. No, I don’t want to hire this employee, or this prospective employee. No, I know that out of 5 people, I know which one stole the money.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: All those kind of things can be found in handwriting.
TODD: Do you still learn things now? I know everybody is different, but things that you might see, do you still like, “Wow, I’m learning something every day from this. I’ve learned how to be better at doing this.”
PEGGY: Definitely. Definitely. I learned something just the other night, seeing health and handwriting and, in fact, it helped me in a case that I testified in yesterday. There was a…let’s say the letter ‘B’, the capital letter ‘B’; there was a question if a certain signature was a forgery, and the only other known handwriting that I had of the deceased person, was 53 years old, but the person was 34 years of age when they signed their name so they had created a habit…you usually, once you sign your name in your 20s, that same signature is with you throughout the rest of your life. Well, the questioned document was so different, let’s say everybody make the letter ‘B’. Say there’s a signature line, you are going to start your pen at the line…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …and you are going to draw your line up, and in one stroke, come around and make your, what I call a letter ‘3’, to form the letter ‘B’.
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: So it’s all in one stroke.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: It’s just one swipe and you’re finished, where you start and stop almost at the same place. The questioned document had the ‘B’ starting at the top of the space of the line, drawing a straight line down to the signature line; then the person had to stop, lift their pen, and come back up to the top, to form the ‘3’ to make the ‘B’. So that was actually a two…it looked like a three-stroke ‘B’. Well, as we age, we simplify things, so this person isn’t going to start, stop, start; because this signature supposedly happened at the age of 84.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: The thing that I learn this past week that helped me with this case, opposing counsel was trying to say that, because of age, this person changed how they made their letter ‘B’. I saw handwritings of Alzheimer’s patients; they formed their letters the same way, even though when they sign their name, they might put the same letter in there 2 or 3 times to where they misspelled it…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …but the formation of that letter remained the same.
TODD: That’s still in the brain. It’s still there.
PEGGY: It’s still in the brain. It’s trained in the brain.
TODD: And we’re going to show this, I think we have a copy of Adolph Hitler’s handwriting that I found from one of your websites, which will be there, and maybe we’ll put a link to that so that people can look at his handwriting; it almost completely degraded to where it was illegible.
PEGGY: Yes. He was schizophrenic.
TODD: He was special. He’s not your average person. He had a lot of things going on in his life, obviously.
PEGGY: But, he has the ability to control other people.
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: I think Richard Nixon’s handwriting is very significant also, as the years went on, because of the…what he did; where he actually…if you look at his handwriting (signature), say, stick it on the wall and back away from it, it looks like a big ‘X’.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: The way he signed his name while he X-ed himself out. Ronald Reagan, after he was shot…significant difference in his handwriting. Significant! And it had nothing to do with his writing hand, but how it affected his brain.
TODD: Totally different.
PEGGY: Totally different. People that have suffered a brain injury…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …whether it be a stroke or car wreck, their handwriting changes.
TODD: Now, can you diagnose something or premonition something? You suggested something in my first one, a possible stomach problem, and I am, now that I pay attention to it, I am starting to have a stomach problem; it’s nothing…I don’t think it’s serious, but now that you have actually stated it as well, it’s just something I was thinking, “You know, this is different now,” but I’m 37.
PEGGY: What I would like is for you to go to the doctor, because of what I see in the handwriting. I am never and have never diagnosed anything.
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: In the research that we are doing, we are finding that we can find certain health indicators; diabetes, heart, cancers, up to 20 years before it’s actually seen in symptomology in people.
TODD: I’ve noticed that I used to be able to eat things that I can’t eat now and I seems like it’s getting stronger, stronger, stronger, and it’s funny that you mentioned it, because it was something that I really didn’t think a lot about; it’s something that you notice and I tended to, “Well, I don’t want to eat that” and the reason was, it bothered my stomach now, and it didn’t used to bother my stomach, and then the fact that you actually saw an indicator, tells me that, it brought it to reality to me. Maybe I need to pay attention to this; maybe I need to look at it a little deeper.
PEGGY: Yeah, and get a professional.
TODD: Absolutely.
PEGGY: Someone that does medicine.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: Because I don’t. I’m not a psychologist either, because if I see something in the handwriting, I recommend them to go for therapy or to see a doctor. And if I know that they are seeing a doctor, I will call the doctor. The doctor is usually the last person to know that there is a problem.
TODD: Now, I have 2 separate signatures. There are 2 different ways I sign my name and I find I use one almost as often as I use the other, and a lot of this is mood based. Is that normal?
PEGGY: Yes.
TODD: Because they’re drawings. I mean, basically, your signature is a drawing. It’s simply a drawn thing; it’s not really writing, it’s drawing…at least for my case.
PEGGY: Well, it’s a badge.
TODD: Yes. Yes.
PEGGY: It’s your badge.
TODD: Well, I do the felon’s claw, on one of my pieces, and you called that the felon’s claw.
PEGGY: Yeah. If you were to go into any prison…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …and have the prisoners write…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …they’re going to have that stroke, and so that’s why I said, “Don’t do that.”
TODD: It’s just something better to avoid because of the perception out there, right? Is that it, or…?
PEGGY: It takes that behavioral trait out of your body completely, so that it won’t even occur to you. We just wiped it out.
TODD: See, I wouldn’t want to use that particular handwriting now because 85% of the felons use this, and that’s not something positive. You know, I don’t think that it’s going to make me a felon if I decide to use this exclusively, but it does have a relation.
PEGGY: Yes. The propensity for you to do something felonious, I guess is the word, it would be higher because of that particular stroke.
TODD: And that’s not my handwriting; that’s what’s inside of you. That’s your personality that you are just pushing out in your handwriting. Your handwriting is a mirror of yourself, right?
PEGGY: More of less. It’s a mirror of your personality.
TODD: Personality. Okay.
PEGGY: Right.
TODD: I’m having fun with you. This is really neat.
PEGGY: (Laughs)
TODD: Cross my ‘t’s, loop my ‘y’s. Okay, you’ve given me some really good instructions.
PEGGY: Yeah… Oh good he stopped it. (referring to phone ringing in the background.) The way you sign your name, what looks like a lower case ‘t’…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …you have put yourself at a…you have diminished yourself.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: You’ve diminished your size, how you are seen by other people, what you thought of yourself at the end of it.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: That’s why I want you to capitalize that ‘T’ and, in fact, if you compare the size of the letter ‘T’ with the letter ‘I’…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …in your work, that showed me that you’re okay in that area; that you really didn’t diminish yourself because of the size of your personal pronoun, ‘I’.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: But, at the same time, looking at it from a distance, it makes it juvenile, I guess you could say.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: It immatures you. I’m not sure what your thought process was at that time.
TODD: I think it was more playful. I was happy to be talking to you.
PEGGY: That’s a good word, playful.
TODD: You’re a new friend, and I guess it’s just like when you are children, you know, I’ve got a new friend, I’m excited to be talking to you and this is going to be fun, that is kind of what I was thinking. That’s why, to do a real analysis, you need full documents, you need fully written things so that you can actually study over a period of time, over the length of a document, because those little playful characteristics don’t necessarily take place all through the document.
PEGGY: Correct.
TODD: Okay.
PEGGY: Correct. And, having a handwriting that someone isn’t aware that they are going to be analyzed, is usually the best.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: If you know that I do what I do…
TODD: Yes.
PEGGY: …your tendency to write for me…you’re on edge.
TODD: And that is what I was trying to avoid. See, that’s why I was trying to be playing with a new friend, just like I was really writing a letter to a new friend, and trying to put completely out of my thought process what you were doing and why I was writing you the note.
PEGGY: Right. And, if you’ve never had your handwriting analyzed, you had no idea what I was going to say.
TODD: No, I really didn’t. I was curious. Now, if I want to continue with this, probably what I’ll do is, I’ll probably pull out something that I have handwritten within a relatively short period of time, before we actually discuss this.
PEGGY: Yeah.
TODD: If we’re to kind of continue and you’re going to try to help me work on this and then bring it back to our audience to show them some of the changes and…wow.
PEGGY: I think a daily journal of you writing of how your day went; it’s not going to be so significant that you’re going to wake up in the morning and go, “Hey, I’m going to follow through with that.” It’s not going to be so slap-you-in-the-face obvious.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: It’s going to be very gradual, to where you’ll be almost in the middle of completing the project, or whatever you have been putting off, before you realize, “Hey, I put this off for 20 years, and I’m almost done with it.
TODD: hmmm
PEGGY: It’s going to be that kind of, “Oh my God…I did it!” -type significance. It’s not going to be that you are going to wake up in the morning and that list of things to do is going to have checkmarks all off of it, it’s not that.
TODD: Well, it’s life; it’s life itself. And, everybody listening to this, and reading this watching the progress as we go along with this, you need to have some responsibility behind it because if you’re a serial killer that just hasn’t exactly made it through to following through with something, you don’t want to do something that’s going to cause you…that’s just a joke; an example, but you don’t want to follow through with something that’s going to create a negative impact on your life, and you need to have a professional.
PEGGY: You don’t want to do something without a professional looking at it.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: You don’t want that. It’s like people that self-diagnose themselves; they get a medical book and they have every disease and every symptom in the book. Well, if you don’t know what you are looking for, how can you change it?
TODD: Now, you didn’t instruct to close my mouth like if I was a kid in school.
PEGGY: No, I didn’t.
TODD: You told me to keep my mouth open basically so I’m not saying that. It just depends on what’s negative in your life; what’s negative in the person’s life, and your life and my life might be totally different, and you need someone to help you determine that.
PEGGY: Right. If you were a 10-year-old in class, yeah, those ‘o’s would have definitely been closed. Definitely. And, the ‘e’ in the word ‘future’ would have been open, so that you sit and listen to the teacher.
TODD: Ahhh. Well, we’re going to have a lot of links to your website so that people can look at it and determine if they want to follow through and contact you, or somebody like you.
PEGGY: There is a lot of this that I don’t have on the website yet because I fear that people will self-train themselves…
TODD: Yeah.
PEGGY: …or they’ll go to another website and that has you click in answers to questions. Well, again, you are self-diagnosing yourself. You’re thinking that you are seeing something in the handwriting that might not be there, and might be there.
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: So, I’m not saying that you can’t go to those other sites; it’s just self-awareness. Be aware that if you don’t have a personal contact with the professional…
TODD: uh huh
PEGGY: …then, you know, you could be doing yourself harm.
TODD: Well because there are generalities out there. There’s the general thing like the closing of the ‘o’ means to kind of quieten yourself down; that’s a generalization, but there are really specific things that need a professional, so we’re probably going to send about 50,000 people to you for personal…that’s impossible, I know that, but there are things set up so that if somebody does need a valid…even with a crime, or just a personality trait, they can go to these websites and contact somebody and actually begin this process.
PEGGY: Yes.
TODD: Okay.
PEGGY: Yes.
TODD: There is a system to it.
PEGGY: That’s why I like this because it is something that is helpful; something that can either prevent a problem or solve a problem.
TODD: Everything brings something new into my life in a different way. So, Angie Yarnell’s case, where we were actually needing to look at this, I feel like I am getting a blessing back from it because I met somebody like you. I knew about you, but I just never really…that connection was there but there was no reason to say, “Hey, Peggy, how are ya?” you know? But, the opportunity came up to talk to you and now I think it’s brought up a positive improvement in my life. We’re looking at the way that you look at crimes, and everybody can click on some of your cases; how handwriting analysts are used in real courtrooms. A lot of that stuff is going to be linked on this website.
PEGGY: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s my daily prayer, for God to use me to keep my skills, my eyes open, and the ability, because for justice and stuff, He gets the last word…
TODD: Yeah.
PEGGY: …but sometimes he will use us to do that.
TODD: Absolutely. We’re definitely going to bring you back. We’re going to talk about the Angie Yarnell case again; we’ll just have to let time take itself to that point, and then we’re gong to talk to you about how you’ve managed to show me how to make some improvements, and we’ll see how it goes. And I will keep a journal; it might be a very short, handwritten journal, but I will try to write daily.
PEGGY: Well, yeah, that would be something for you to keep, but I would like to see your handwriting once a week if you would just, you know, send it to me like you did these samples, just so that I can make sure that you’re doing as instructed.
TODD: Okay, well that sounds great. You’ve been a great guest. I’ve enjoyed this, and I have a great new friend, too. I have a feeling that we’re going to work together on a lot.
PEGGY: Great.
TODD: And, I’ll wring you out like a dishrag, as we say in the South. (Laughter) I hope…I think we’re going to be able to use you a lot, and maybe help people realize that there are resources like you out there in criminal and in personal improvement. I just really hadn’t thought about it, so it’s great to have you. It’s great to have you as a friend.
PEGGY: Thank you so much, Todd. Thank you so much.
TODD: We’ll say goodbye to the audience. Peggy and I are going to chat a little further, and until then, talk to you again next week. Bye bye, everybody.
PEGGY: Bye.
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