Handwriting and Handwringing: Who Wrote the Note and Letter Attributed to Sean Phillips?

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Are the Two 'Confession' Letters Allegedly Written by Sean Phillips While Incarcerated Written by the Same Person?

Sean Phillips has been convicted of unlawful imprisonment against his daughter who is still missing, Katherine Shelbie Elizabeth Phillips (Baby Kate), and now is in the midst of a preliminary proceeding that will determine whether his case will be retried with open murder charges against him.  Except for some non-committal statements that occurred while he was being interrogated on the afternoon of the disappearance, Sean has been verbally mum about the details.

Details have come out in two written notes/letters attributed by authorities to Sean Phillips, though not conclusively even though one has been in the prosecution's hands since July 2011.  This note was retrieved by Mason County Correction Officer John Long in Phillips' laundry, after Sean realized he left it in them and asked for its retrieval.  That fact would lend one to believe that Sean was not overly concerned with the authorities getting this note, for if he was, he would have undoubtedly hoped it would have went through the wash undetected.  A perusal of the note shows that it indicates that the writer gave Baby Kate to a guy who would continue with a black market adoption to some lucky couple:

The timing of this note's appearance was a couple of weeks after the disappearance, about 9 months before the original trial.  At the trial, the author was assumed to be Phillips, but it was never verified.  It was introduced just before the weekend recess of the trial to give the jury extra time to think about its significance.

Most people, including the jury, did not take the note at face value.  They considered it an attempt by Sean to avoid the stiffer penalties that were being considered at the time for murder, and were again considered after his trial for unlawful imprisonment.  The prosecution used it effectively to convince the jury that Sean was withholding the truth from them, and that the truth was not what was written on the note.  He was found guilty in April 2012 and given ten to fifteen years in prison.

In the fall of 2012, letters were exchanged between Sean and Baby Kate's mother, Ariel Courtland, whom both contemplated marriage during that time.  Responding to a letter that Ariel wrote, Sean allegedly responded with what has been called the 'confession letter', in where he explains in fair detail what happened with him and Baby Kate that afternoon she went missing.  This letter described an accidental death that happened when Sean was trying to get to a ringing phone.  Some or all of this letter is believable at first look, because it doesn't contradict any evidence that came out in court.  It harmonizes with the timeline without divulging anything really new regarding Baby Kate's whereabouts.

sean-phillips-letter-watermark-091112%20%281%29.pdf

In the open murder preliminary hearing this month, the prosecution entered without forensic proofs that these two 'confessions' were written by the same person:  Sean Phillips.  The defense rightly called for some proofs, and asked if they would be able to check their authenticity, and have been given three months to do so.

In the remainder of this article, I will give my decidedly non-expert opinion on whether the authorship of both letters is by the same person.  Since I have no definite writings of Sean Phillips, there will be no attempt to decide which, if any, is his.

The beginning of the prison confession letter (PCL) starts off with the writer switching between cursive and normal writing:

But by the end of the letter, the writer goes back to almost exclusively writing without resorting to cursive.  One can see that the jailhouse note (JN) is written without resorting to cursive at all, which gives an indication the writers may be different.

Another indication that the writers may be different is that the JN respects the left margin and to a lesser extent the right, top and bottom margin, whereas the PCL is written from left to right, top to bottom, of the full page.   This could be the result of other considerations, and is thus far from conclusive.  The grammar and sentence structure in the JN also seems to be more sophisticated in nature, but once again that is inconclusive.

Handwriting analysts focus not on similarities between two samples but on the differences.  There can be a load of similarities between two writings, like in this case the 'a', the 'l', the 'o', the 'r', the 't', the 'u', and the 'I'.  Because of the limited amount of material in the JN, most capital letters and uncommon letters like 'j', 'q', 'x' and 'z' cannot be compared.  The following 'differing' letters I attempted to transcribe were what I seen in these two writings, the first letter column is from the JN, and the second column is letter(s) from the PCL.  I have asterisked the letters that seem to differ rather significantly:

The inconsistencies among the standard writing (since cursive is absent from the former JN) seem more than one should allow to suggest that the authors are the same.  In similar manner, when one looks at the words common to both writings, there are significant differences in many of them, even though some (like 'that') containing several stylistically  similar letters make a different case.  The first column below is from the prison letter, the second column is from the jail note:

Looking at the style of the letters used in both writings, the looping and broad strokes in the PCL seems to indicate a different author, but remember:  I am no expert, I do not have access to any other writings, and I do not have access to the original documents, just copies.  If you think otherwise, please leave a comment below with your justification.

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Let's check the math on these investigators and their investigation:

Six months to begin to forensically test the soil and plant material on shoes suspected of being the ones Sean wore to the hospital (but weren't).

Ten months to check some leads on adoptions that should have been looked at immediately.

Nineteen months and counting to forensically test the prison confession letter after being handled by just about everyone.

Thirty-four months and counting to forensically test the  jailhouse note.

Thirty-five months and counting of ineptitude in tracking the trail of Baby Kate.