Anonymous Letters Are Some of My Favorite Cases. Here’s What Makes Them Solvable.

The question of who wrote an anonymous letter can matter almost not at all — or it can change everything. The range between those two outcomes is wider than most people expect.

Someone leaves a nasty note on your windshield in a Miami-Dade parking garage. Annoying, but it’s a car. No real harm done. Now think about a murder. Think about Sirhan Sirhan. Think about cases where a few lines of handwriting became the central piece of evidence in a criminal investigation. That’s the spectrum these cases live on.

Anonymous letters are some of my favorite cases to work. They look simple from the outside. They almost never are.

When a Bathroom Wall Becomes Evidence

Here’s a case that stays with me. A student gets accused of writing something on a bathroom wall at school, gets suspended, and suddenly his college applications are in jeopardy. He told his parents he didn’t write it. They believed him. They came to us with a photograph of that wall and said, “We need proof.”

That’s not a murder case. Nobody’s going to prison. But for that family, in that moment, it mattered enormously. The stakes were real, the cost of a forensic examination was real, and it was worth it.

That’s the kind of case we call anonymous letter analysis. It comes up in schools, in HOA disputes in Broward County communities, in corporate HR situations where an employer needs to know which employee is behind the threatening notes. The setting changes. The forensic problem is the same.

The Three Things That Decide Whether a Case Is Solvable

Here’s what every anonymous letter case comes down to: the quantity of writing, the quality of writing, and the suspect pool.

The suspect pool is the starting point. You need viable candidates, people who could plausibly have written it. In a corporate setting, that might start as employee files from dozens of people, then narrow to the five or ten who had a reason to write it. In an HOA dispute, it might be the handful of neighbors with an active grievance. You need something to compare against.

Then the letter itself. If there’s enough handwriting in the document, and if the comparison samples from the suspects are clear and extensive, the analysis is relatively straightforward. The trouble is when someone says, “All we have is a short address and a zip code on the envelope, and it’s printed.” That’s very little to work with. Short printed writing is the hardest case. Long cursive letters are far easier.

The JonBenét Case and What It Showed

The JonBenét Ramsey ransom note is, technically, an anonymous letter. Nobody signed it. Investigators had to run dozens of suspects against it to see whose handwriting came closest.

That’s a case I can’t speak about publicly in detail, but I did have a conversation with John Mark Karr. His handwriting was the closest match of anyone examined against that note. But does being the most likely author of the ransom note make him the killer? That question is still up in the air thirty years later. Authorship and guilt are different questions, and a handwriting examiner answers the first one, not the second.

High-stakes criminal cases like that one are one end of the spectrum. At the other end is the parking lot note and the bathroom wall. Most of what I see in South Florida sits somewhere in the middle: corporate threats, HOA harassment, workplace disputes, and school incidents where someone’s future is on the line.

What You Need to Start

If you have an anonymous letter and you want to know who wrote it, start by thinking about the suspect pool. Who had reason to write it? Who had access to send it? Can you get handwriting samples from those people through personnel files, prior correspondence, or other documents?

Then look at the letter itself. Is there enough writing to compare? A page of text gives an examiner far more to work with than a three-word note. The more writing, the more data points, the stronger the analysis.

These cases are solvable when the evidence is there. They’re worth pursuing when the stakes are real, which, for the people living through them, is usually the case.

If you’ve received an anonymous letter or have been accused of writing one, a forensic document examiner can determine the truth. That’s exactly what we do.

FloridaHandwritingExperts.com

Or call us: 1-305-459-1544. Your first consultation is free.

Bart Baggett
Forensic Document Examiner | Expert Witness | Legal Consultant
The Nation’s Leading Forensic Handwriting Expert
CEO, Handwriting Experts Inc.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a forensic document examiner identify who wrote an anonymous letter?

Yes, when the right conditions are in place: a defined suspect pool, enough writing in the letter to analyze, and clear comparison samples from the candidates. When all three are present, authorship can often be determined. When writing is minimal or the suspect pool is undefined, the analysis becomes significantly harder.

How many suspects are needed to investigate an anonymous letter?

Typically, two or three viable candidates to start, narrowed from a larger group based on who had reason and opportunity to write the letter. In corporate settings, the investigation might begin with dozens of employee files before narrowing to five or ten realistic candidates. The quality of the comparison samples from those candidates is just as important as the number.

Does the length of the letter affect whether authorship can be determined?

Yes, significantly. A full page of cursive handwriting gives an examiner many data points to compare: letterforms, spacing, pressure, connections, rhythm. A short printed note with a zip code gives very little. The more writing in the anonymous letter, and the more natural that writing is, the stronger the potential analysis.

What kinds of cases involve anonymous letter analysis?

The range is wide: threatening notes in workplace or HOA disputes, school incidents where a student’s academic future is on the line, ransom notes in criminal investigations, and anything in between. In South Florida, corporate HR matters and HOA harassment cases involving anonymous letters are common. The stakes vary but the forensic problem is the same.

If authorship is established, does that prove the person is guilty of a crime?

Authorship and guilt are different questions. A forensic document examiner answers whether a specific person wrote a document. Whether that makes them legally responsible for the consequences of what it said depends on the legal context and requires the work of attorneys and courts. The JonBenét Ramsey case is a clear example: being the likely author of the ransom note did not settle the question of who committed the crime.

Can a forensic examiner analyze typed or printed letters?

Typed letters present different challenges than handwritten ones. A purely typed letter analyzed for authorship typically requires linguistic analysis rather than handwriting analysis, looking at word choices, phrasing patterns, and structural habits of the writer. If a letter was printed by hand rather than typed, the amount of printing and how naturally it flows will determine whether a handwriting comparison is feasible.

What evidence should I gather before contacting a forensic document examiner about an anonymous letter?

Preserve the original letter and envelope without handling them more than necessary. Gather any comparison samples of handwriting from people in the suspect pool — prior correspondence, signed documents, notes from personnel files. Note any context about who had reason or opportunity to send it. The more of this you can bring to the initial consultation, the faster an examiner can assess whether the case is solvable and what the analysis would involve.