BALTIMORE—Concluding that the murderer left evidence containing a distinctive style of penmanship, police handwriting expert Elizabeth Simeon, 29, confirmed that an inscribed piece of paper found at the scene of a homicide Sunday morning was almost certainly a note written in cursive. “By the looks of these long, looping, interconnected shapes, which are arranged in regular proximity to one another but leave space between what I believe to be words, I’m willing bet that whoever killed this man meant for us to find this—a note, written in hand-drawn ‘cursive’ script,” said Simeon, staking her 25 years of experience in reading things on the theory that the killer had not just scribbled random lines on a sheet of paper. “See here, how this weird shape almost looks like an ‘F’ from a certain angle? I believe it is, in fact, an F—that’s the sort of thing we might expect from someone using cursive. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if this individual had some sort of formal training.” Simeon requested the services of an FBI specialist in order to decipher the note, but has, in the meantime, conducted a chemical analysis of the ink splatter and claims to be 99 percent certain the killer’s implement of choice was, in fact, a pen.

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