On our monthly dinner meeting in April, the MWA-NY chapter was treated to a lecture by forensic linguistics expert Robert Leonard at the Salmagundi Club in Manhattan.
With a PhD in language studies from Columbia University, Leonard helped to pioneer the profession of analyzing language patterns in letters and notes in order to profile and identify criminals. In some cases, these writings are available for study because they were deliberately sent to the police or to a family by an unknown person—possibly the perpetrator—in crimes such as kidnapping. In others, they were obtained by the police in the investigation itself. Leonard’s method is to subject the text to an in-depth analysis of the vocabulary, grammar, and style of its author.
Using science and statistics instead of intuition and guesswork, Leonard has produced an impressive list of successful criminal profiles. He has consulted and testified as a forensic linguistics expert (a sort of semiotic Sherlock Holmes) for clients such as the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, the FBI, and even the Prime Minister of Canada.
After a few remarks about his unusual career path, which included a stint as a founding member of the band Sha Na Na, Leonard passed out copies of letters that were the focus of one of his cases and asked for our opinions about what we held in our hands. Were these notes genuine? How old was the writer? What was his (or her) education, and where did he or she come from? With rapt attention, our group plunged into the task, parsing pronouns and sifting through clues hidden in the words of the various passages. With Leonard’s guidance, “Team MWA-NY” did well in its fledgling effort, producing a profile that came close to what criminal investigators found to be the case. The experience whetted our appetite for more of these visits, and I, for one, am ready for another round of mysterious notes to decipher.
—Lokke Heiss
Lokke Heiss currently practices medicine in New York City. His published work includes fiction and nonfiction in such journals and newspapers as the South Carolina Review and the New York Post. He has just completed a medical thriller, Pronounced Dead, about a hospital in Los Angeles where people don’t always come out the same way they came in.