Marcel Elfers has an opinion about the guilt or innocence of Casey Anthony.
Doesn’t everyone?
Anthony was found not guilty of killing her daughter in Florida. It seems the world took umbrage to the verdict, a la O.J
Simpson, who was found not guilty of a double murder in California.
Elfers based his opinion on what used to be a hobby, but is now his business — handwriting analysis. He owns Elfers Profiling Services in Mountlake Terrace.
He dissected Anthony’s handwriting, as he did with writing examples in the famous JonBenet Ramsey murder case in Colorado. He did both analyses on his own.
As a handwriting expert, he does forgery detection, looks for character traits, and personnel placement. He works for attorneys who would like to know if a member of a jury or a judge, he said, has particular character traits.
He was born in 1958 in the Netherlands. He came to the United States in 1986 and worked as a physical therapist.
“My interest in handwriting started in the late 1970s when I noticed a behavioral aspect in a person who signed a document,” he said. “I knew instantly that whatever you write is heavily influenced by your thinking processes.”
He studied for many years, and in 2006 bought a book about the Ramsey case. For a time, the parents of the murdered girl, John and Patsy Ramsey, were suspects. There was a mysterious note left at the scene of the crime.
“I studied the case in detail and came to the conclusion that Patsy wrote the note,” he said. “The questions to be answered are why did she write it and why did John and Patsy decide to cover for each other?”
Authorities in 2008 cleared Patsy and John Ramsey of any wrongdoing.
Elfers said handwriting analysis of serial killer Gary Ridgway shows he is a planner, and serial killer Richard Ramirez is impulsive.
In the Anthony case, Elfers looked at a handwritten statement to police by George Anthony, in which he wrote about his spouse, his son, their granddaughter and Casey, his daughter, without a relationship reference.
Elfers took that to mean that George Anthony is not family oriented, that he’s a stand-alone person.
Elfers believes the sample implies that he distanced himself from his daughter and that he had an expectation of what happened.
“Or he feels detached from Casey on a more permanent basis that started well before events unfolded.”
Casey Anthony’s handwriting in general is slow and deliberate, Elfers said.
“It is called ‘facade’ writing as her script attempts to control her impulses,” he said, adding the mid-zone letters like a, o, e and the body of b, p, etc., “is indicative of a person who lives in and for the moment. This is often seen in teenage girls who are awaiting their knight on a white horse. It implies Casey is a social bee and immature.”
Facade writing is not written with emotional enthusiasm and is far more cautious and thought out, which opens the possibility of deception, he said.
“Casey has a lack of commitment to clarity as the ‘on’ of Monday shows, as well as the ‘5’ that looks like an ‘S’.”
He didn’t send his remarks along to Casey Anthony prosecutors, but he is entitled to his opinion.
Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451, oharran@heraldnet.com
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
