Marcel Matley: There is nothing in the questioned document that would support any finding of forgery. And the things that are brought forth - the apparent fragmentation - and those things are explained by the fact that we have a deteriorated copy and that fact that the man was under some emotional stress at the time.
Robert Stack: Marcel Matley is convinced that the other experts are wrong. Q1 on the left side represents the "suicide" note. K1 through K11 on the right side represents the known samples.
Robert Stack: Did Vince Foster write the "suicide" note? Were these the final thoughts of a man overwhelmed by the cold realities of politics in Washington or, as critics of the Clinton administration contend, is the note part of an elaborate coverup?
In the end there are still many, many questions to be answered. The ongoing investigation of both the Whitewater scandal and Vince Foster suicide in all likelihood will continue for some time to come. Given the explosive political nature of the case, it is quite possible we will never know the entire story behind the death of Vince Foster.
Anyway, here was this TV story on Foster coincidentally appearing at the same time I was giving my own talk. Fortunately, a few years ago my wife and I had bought a VCR out of self-defense, because people kept lending us snippets of things on tape that they wanted us to watch, so I was able to record the segment and view it later. (We bought a VCR will full-bandwidth stereo sound, so we could archive some of the many classical music concerts we record for radio broadcast.)
After a brief synopsis of Foster's death, the "Unsolved Mysteries" segment entirely focused its attention on the so-called "suicide" note. A short clip was shown of the October 25, 1995 Strategic Investment press conference at which graphologists Reginald Alton, Ronald Rice and Vincent Scalice delivered their opinions that the note is a forgery. Narrator Robert Stack then said "Unsolved Mysteries" had assembled the experts in Boston, where they explained their reasoning on enlarged and color-highlighted versions of the handwriting samples.
Ronald Rice was identified as "a handwriting expert who has worked for the state of Massachusetts"; Reginald Alton as "of Oxford University in England" without further reference to Alton's world-class credentials; and Vincent Scalice as a "retired homicide examiner", "certified document examiner" and "forensic handwriting examiner". Also present was Anthony Iantosca, identified as a "forensic handwriting examiner" (who was not at the October 25, 1995 press conference).
Rice stated that he had spent more than 40 hours examining the documents, and he elaborated on differences between forged and genuine letters, particularly the "B" in the phrase "The FBI lied" from the note, the same example I used in my talk. Rice said the forger had written the B in four strokes (Alton had said "at least three" at the press conference), while Foster wrote his capital Bs with a single stroke.
Alton pointed out the difficulty the forger had emulating Foster's elegant style of handwriting; but perhaps the most convincing evidence was from Iantosca, who pointed out the "hesitation dots" in the note, where the forger's pen had started and stopped. The inordinate number of these dots indicates the note was painstakingly copied, according to Iantosca, who illustrated his point with the four dots in the capital letter "N" from the phrase "No one".
Scalice pointed out the differences in "th" letter combinations in the note and genuine handwriting samples, and clearly stated that Foster's handwriting would not change under stress, except maybe to be "sloppier".
Then the program turned to Marcel Matley, identified as a "handwriting examiner" with no further credentials given, who offered his opinion that the "suicide" note is genuine. Matley believes that the "deteriorated copy" of the note.... that is, it's been copied over too many times.... and the "stress" Foster was presumably under account for the differences in handwriting. He then went on to show how Foster used different styles of letters in the genuine samples, such as both cursive and block letter "s", for example, and how the same multiple styles appear in the note; and from this he concluded that the same person wrote both the note and the samples known to be genuine.
One problem with Matley's statements is that it is impossible to determine to what extent the copy of the "suicide" note used by the experts has deteriorated from the original.... because the government has yet to release any official copy of the original, much less a high-resolution one. I just don't see how Matley can point out examples of "deterioration" in copies of the note without having seen the original note.
Matley is exactly right in pointing out the multiple letter styles used by Foster; I can vouch for these, as I have picked off images of the documents from the Internet, printed them out and examined them, and I am familiar with them. But for me, these variations are an argument in favor of the forgery; for if the letters in the note were painstakingly copied as the other experts suggest, one would expect the forger to also copy the letter variations in an effort to lend an air of authenticity to the forged note. Matley did not refute any of the major points made by the other experts, notably the number of strokes making up the letters, and the "hesitation dots", in the note.
I suspect Matley was put on the show so its producers would not be accused of being biased on a highly-charged political issue, and so they wouldn't wind up on the Clintons' sh*t list. At any rate, it shouldn't take too long for those intrepid Internet sleuths who follow every twist and turn of the Foster story to ferret out Matley's credentials and to find out how much he was paid to appear on the program.