Doud, Donald

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Northwestern University Illinois, School of Law: Scholarly Commons

Journal of Criminal Law and CriminologyVolume 50Issue 3 September-October Article 14Fall 1959Report on the Reconstruction of Two TimePayment Ledgers Damaged by Fire and WaterDonald DoudFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclcPart of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and CriminalJustice CommonsThis Criminology is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons.Recommended CitationDonald Doud, Report on the Reconstruction of Two Time Payment Ledgers Damaged by Fire and Water, 50 J. Crim. L. &Criminology 291 (1959-1960)POLICE SCIENCEREPORT ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF TWO TIME PAYMENT LEDGERSDAMAGED BY FIRE AND WATERDONALD DOUDDonald Doud is a well known examiner of questioned documents who maintains offices in Mil-waukee and Chicago. He is Chairman of the Questioned Document Section of the American Academyof Forensic Sciences and an officer in the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners.Mr. Doud has contributed to this Journal on several occasions and has participated in numerousseminars and training programs including the Short Course for Prosecuting Attorneys and the Coursefor Defense Attorneys, both of which are held under the auspices of Northwestern University Schoolof Law.-EDrrORRecently, this office was consulted by theMontgomery Ward Co. which had suffered firedamage to two customer time payment ledgers atthe Bowling Green, Ohio, retail store. The interior,roof, and furnishings of the brick building were al-most totally destroyed by the fire but, fortunately,had been covered by insurance. The accountsreceivable ledgers, which were not insured, how-ever, were kept in a safe (assumed to be fireproof)which dropped from a second floor to the basementduring the intense fire. After the heat had subsidedsufficiently for officials to enter the building, thesafe was found to be resting in several inches ofwater surrounded by a pile of rubble.Upon opening the safe, the books were found tobe relatively intact, considering their two-storyfall, yet in a very badly charred and water soakedcondition.Acting upon instruction from this office, thebooks were carefully wrapped in cotton, placed ina suitable box, and transported from BowlingGreen to Milwaukee by personal messenger. In-structions by the Montgomery Ward Companywere to decipher as much material in these ledgersas possible in order to reestablish the account andto do so in the shortest period of time. Informationdesired included the name and address of the cus-tomer, the monthly payment, due date, the limit,,last charge, and final balance.In order to expedite examination of this mate-rial, the Montgomery Ward Co. furnished an oldlist of charge customers, names and addresses, to-gether with an itemization of those accounts re-constructed by the Company itself from otherrecords (these constituted about 40.7% of thetotal). This information eliminated the need for adetailed decipherment of every account in thebooks. On the other hand, the customer name andaddress at the top of every sheet had to be deci-phered in order to determine whether furtherdecipherment of the various entries was nec-essary or whether it was one of the accountspreviously reconstructed by the Company.LABORATORY PROCEDURELaboratory examination of the two ledger booksencompassing the alphabetical names A to L and Lto Z was conducted by removing the fabric coversand examining the pages one at a time, separationbeing accomplished with a thin metal strip whichwas carefully inserted between adjoining pages.Fortunately, the pages were quite flat and did notstick together noticeably.Detailed examination of the separated pagesdisclosed that the intensity of charring progressedfrom the edges of the page toward the center withthe outer two or three inches (unfortunately bear-ing the bulk of the information as to customername and status of account) being most badlyburned. Those sheets near the back and front cov-ers of each book proved to be more badly charredthan those in the center, due, apparently, to theirproximity to the intense heat. Inasmuch as thesebooks were burned in an enclosed container, it isprobable that the charring was due principally toheat rather than fire.In addition to the charring, one of the bookssuffered severe water damage which caused someof the inks, apparently aniline dye (non-permanenttype) to wash almost completely from the pageand to soak through and leave impressions onprevious and succeeding pages.DONALD DOUDFigure 1Ledger Book Before and AfterTop: Charred ledger book as it was presented for examination. Bottom: Reconstructed account in new 1n1cbook.[Vol, soRECO-STRUCTIOV OF LEDGERS DAMAGED BY FIRE AND WATERFigure 2Decipherment and Reconstruction of Charred Ledger PageTop: Charred page before treatment. Center: Appearance of page following treatment. Bottom: Reconstn ction of account on new ledger page.Since some 681 sheets were involved in this in-vestigation, it was necessary to devise a rapid yetcertain method of deciphering the blackened andwater soaked paper and recording the informationfor use in reestablishing the accounts. The latterproblem was simply solved with the company'ssubmission of two new books, identical to thedamaged ledgers, for use in transferring the de-sired information (figure 1).DECiPIRLRriNG CHARRED SHEETSThe primary problem, of deciphering the charreddocuments, was not so simple. After numerous ex-periments, however, some of which were describedin previous issues of this Journal,' the followi igprocedures were adopted:A. A solution of two parts Water, five parts cenatured alcohol, and three parts glycerin wasfirst prepared. A one-inch soft camel's hirbrush was dipped in this solution and gentl2applied to the charred portions of the !edgepage, a small segment at a time. At the sam,time an intense light, in this case a Spence"Decipherment of Charred Documents," DavA. BLACK. JOURNAL Or CRIMINAL LAW AND CRixNoLOOY, Vol. 38, No. 5, Jan-Feb, 1948. "Decipherment of Charred Documents," JoftN F. TveaR r.tJOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW AND CRIMINOLOX, Vol. 30No. 2, July-Aug, 1939.DONALD DOUD[VI f 0RECONSTRUCTION OF LEDGERS DAMAGED BY FIRE AND W:1I TER100-watt lamp, was directed at a 450 anglerelative to the surface of the paper. De-pending upon the original ink used, thewriting would sometimes pop up immedi-ately. Or, in other cases, the writing wouldbecome faintly visible only after some timehad elapsed. In a few instances it requiredthree or four applications of the solutionplus viewing under different angles of illumi-nation to recover the writing. After desiredportions of the charred documents weredeciphered, the information was immediatelytransferred to the new ledger page (figure 2).B. In a few isolated instances a viewing of thefragment under various angles of reflectedlight was sufficient to decipher the writingwithout application of any chemicals. Thiswas apparently due to the use of carbonor dense iron gall inks, which caused thewriting to stand up in relief from the surfaceof the paper.C. A third method was tried in three or fourcases involving very badly charred frag-ments. The fragment was placed betweentwo fine wire screens. A flame from an alco-hol lamp was then applied to the charredpaper, reducing it to a semi-white ash. In oneor two instances this created a remarkableclarification of the writing, but in others itfailed entirely. This method, of course, isrecommended only as a last recourse sincethe charred fragment is rendered unsuitablefor any other procedure.DECIPHERING WATER SOAKED SHEETSA. As stated previously, many of the ledgerpages in one of the books were badly soakedby water. Indeed, the damage was so severethat when the documents were inspected,some two months later, the pages still dis-played considerable dampness to the touch.Examination of these water soaked pagesinvolved entirely different procedures thanthe charred document fragments. For ex-ample, the ink in the central portions of thepages, which in the unsoaked documentsaided in the decipherment, was often smearedor completely washed from the paper andpenetrated through to other pages. Thistransferrance of ink from one page to theother complicated the examination consid-erably because it was difficult to determinewhich was the original writing and which wasthe writing transferred from a previous page.Examination of the water soaked area, bymeans of transmitted, oblique, and ,thertypes of lighting in conjunction with coloredfilters, however, disclosed either indentationsmade by the writing instrument, a faintyellow outline of the original writing, or both(orange and red filters seemed to provide thebest clarification). The offset writing couldusually be distinguished by its fuzzy appear-ance and the fact that the writing did notfall within the prescribed printed squa:es ofthe form (figure 3).Using the-above techniques, it is estimated thatall but one or two of the 681 ledger sheets weredeciphered sufficiently to enable a reconstructionof the account. The word 'sufficiently' is used be-cause in some instances a portion of the name,address, or balance was missing due to breakage,or the writing was partially undecipherable. Inthese instances, however, enough additional in-formation was available to reconstruct the ac-count. For example, if a name was missing, the ad-dress might be decipherable. Where portions ofthe name and address were missing. the placeof employment and occupation of the customeraided in reestablishing the account. In othercases data in the "Delinquent" or "History ofAccount" area of the form assisted in providingvaluable information.The decipherment of these time-payment ledgersentailed about a month and a half of work. As thevarious alphabetical accounts were deciphered andthe information transferred to the new AccountsReceivable Ledgers furnished by the Company,the information was forwarded directly to theMontgomery Ward office in Chicago for process-ing. At the conclusion of the entire project theMontgomery Ward Co. sent form letters with theirregular monthly billings in which the reconstructedbalance as determined by the decipherment wasset forth and asked for customer confirmationof this amount. The response in almost every caseconfirmed the results of the decipherment. At theconclusion of this project the Company reportedan outstanding balance in their Accounts Receiv-able Ledger of less than 2%.This story might have had a different ending,however, if it had not been for the wisdom andforesight of the Company management which tookfull advantage of the scientific decipherment pro-cedures available to modern business.19591

Report on the Reconstruction of Two Time Payment Ledgers Damaged by Fire and Water

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Report on the Reconstruction of Two Time Payment Ledgers Damaged by Fire and Water

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