A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the field of forensic linguistics and what kind of work you can do in that field. I wrote a little about the Unabomber case, the most famous use of forensic linguistics to solve crime. Today, I go over the Unabomber case in more detail along with three more cases which involved forensic linguistics.
The Unabomber
Between 1978 and 1995, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski mailed a series of homemade bombs. These bombs killed three people and injured nearly two dozen others. The FBI task force tasked with catching Kaczynski was code-named UNABOM from his UNiversity and Airline BOMbing victims. This is how he got the name “Unabomber”.
In 1995, Kaczynski’s 35,000 word manifesto was delivered to the FBI and published in the Washington Post. After its publication, several people reached out with suggestions to its author. One was Kaczynski’s brother, David Kaczynski.
After David provided the FBI with writing samples from his brother’s letters and other documents, the task force used authorship analysis to identify Kaczynski’s unique writing style in both his personal writings and the manifesto. For example, he misspelled “clue” as “clew”.
These idiosyncracies helped determine he was the author of the Unabomber manifesto and he was convicted of the bombings in 1998. He died in prison in 2023.
Wearside Jack
From 1975 to 1980, Peter Sutcliffe murdered 13 women and attempted to kill seven more in and around Yorkshire, England. Survivors of Sutcliffe reported his Yorkshire accent to police prior to his arrest.
However, from March 1978 to June 1979, a series of letters and an audio tape were delivered to police during the investigation claiming to be from the Ripper. In the tape, the speaker was identified as having a Sunderland accent. This identification led to the investigation being redirected to Sunderland. During that period, Sutcliffe murdered three more women before he was arrested for false number plates in 1981.
Meanwhile, the hoaxster, named Wearside Jack, was unidentified until 2005. Then, a DNA test performed on saliva from one of the envelopes from his letters identified Jack as John Humble. Humble was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2006 for perverting the course of justice. He was release in 2009 and died in 2019.
Timothy Evans
On March 9, 1950, Welsh lorry driver Timothy Evans was executed for the murders of his wife Beryl and infant daughter Geraldine. Though Evans initially confessed to the murders, he later retracted his confession.
Following his execution, suspicion turned to his downstairs neighbour, John Christie, after three bodies were found hidden in the kitchen alcove in March 1953. Police found six bodies in total on the property, including Christie’s wife. Christie was arrested and executed in July, 1953 for his wife’s murder.
In 1965, the British government launched a second inquiry into the murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans. As part of the inquiry, Swedish linguist Jan Svartvik was tasked with evaluating the statements Timothy Evans gave to the police in Mrthyr Tydfil, Wales and Notting Hill, London, respectively. At the time, audio/video recordings were not made of police interviews. Instead, they were recorded by a police notetaker, usually after the interview.
Svartvik noticed the police interviews in Wales had Evans using “I then…” statements to describe his less damning actions. Meanwhile, the interviews in London had Evans using “then I…” statements to describe more damning actions like the killing and disposing of his wife’s body. Svartvik conducted a chi-squared test on the “then I…” statements from the London interview and found a statistical significance. He determined that the “then I…” statements were written by the police instead of being transcribed from Evans’ statement verbatim.
In 1966, Evans was pothumously pardoned for killing his daughter Geraldine, which he was originally convicted for. Another inquiry took place in 2003, which concluded that both Beryl and Geraldine had been murdered by Christie and not Evans.
Jenny Nicholl
(source: BBC News)
19-year-old Jenny Nicholl disappeared after leaving her Richmond, North Yorkshire home on June 30, 2005. Police found her car abandonned on July 4 and friends and family began receiving text messages from her phone in the days following.
Forensic linguists analysed those text messages alongside those sent by Jenny prior to her disappearance. They also looked at text messages from her boyfriend David Hodgson. They concluded that the text messages sent after Jenny disappeared were written by Hodgson because they featured certain unique characteristics of Hodgson’s texting style like his use of “meself” instead of “myself”, which Nicholl would use.
In addition to the text messages, some of Jenny’s personal belongings were found in a wooded area which Hodgson had knowledge of. Hodgson was ultimately arrested and convicted for Jenny Nicholl’s murder. Her body has never been recovered.
Final thoughts:
Now you’ve read about four forensic linguistics cases. Some show how forensic linguistics helps solve crimes. Others show how it contributed to the misdirection of police investigation.
If you would like to read more on forensic linguistics, click the link above to read my blog post about that. If you have an idea of another blog post, maybe a different forensic linguistics case I can write about, leave a comment below or follow me on Instagram and send me a DM!
References:
- Unabomber – FBI
- How the Unabomber’s unique linguistic fingerprints led to his capture | The Conversation
- Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer Wearside Jack dies | BBC
- Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe dies | BBC
- Timothy Evans: A case for forensic linguistics (video) – Writing Wrongs Podcast
- “The case for forensic linguistics” by Elizabeth Mitchell | BBC News
- “Older man killed his teenage lover Jenny Nicholl” by Joe Willis | Darlington & Stockton Times
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