A federal investigation involving New Orleans landfill magnate Fred Heebe took a surprising turn this week. Heebe filed a court petition (PDF) claiming a frequent commenter on local-news site NOLA.com was in fact Sal Parricone, one of the prosecutors assigned to his case. Heebe turned out to be right.

The commenter took regular shots at Heebe and his family, seeming to know more about the case than an average reader of the site might. The American Bar Association and the Justice Department advise against making extrajudicial comments that make either side seem biased against an outcome.

So Heebe hired a former FBI forensic linguist, James R. Fitzgerald, to analyze 598 comments made over the course of 6 months by a commenter using the handle "Henry L. Mencken1951". Fitzgerald, who also worked on the arrest and prosecution of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, compared the comments made by "Mencken1951" to the language in a 9-page proceeding filed by three Assistant U.S. Attorneys, including Parricone, against the CEO of Heebe's company, River Birch Landfill. The language was strikingly similar. Given that Parricone was born in 1951, Heebe singled him out in the court petition. On Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten confirmed Perricone had used the "Henry L. Mencken1951" handle.

"The pleading and the Mencken posts share many similarities, including the use of particular archaic words—e.g. 'dubiety' and 'redoubt'—as well as distinctive punctuation and frequent use of the rhetorical technique of alliteration," Heebe's petition read.

In a December 2011 comment, "Mencken1951" wrote, "If Heebe had one firing synapse, he would go speak to Letten's posse and purge himself of this sordid episode and let them go after the council and public officials. Why prolong this pain....perhaps Queen Jennifer has something to say about that." Jennifer is the name of Fred Heebe's wife.

Perricone's 598 comments appear under many NOLA.com stories, not all addressing the River Birch Landfill Case. U.S. Attorney Jim Letten has recused Perricone from all federal matters that the assistant attorney discussed on NOLA.com. He did not enumerate which other matter might be included.

The real Henry L. Mencken was an American journalist best known for his satirical reporting on the 1925 Scopes Trial, which found teacher John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution in a Tennessee high school.