Cooperman’s Signature on Check Is Fake, Expert Says

The signature on a $90 check that murder defendant Minh Van Lam claims Cal State Fullerton Prof. Edward Lee Cooperman gave him just before Cooperman was fatally shot is a fake, a handwriting expert hired by The Times said Wednesday.

The $90 check was found in Lam’s possession on Oct. 13, a few hours after Cooperman was killed at his office in the Cal State Fullerton Science Building. Lam, who claims he shot the physics professor by accident, told police that Cooperman gave him the check a short time earlier to pay some of Lam’s traffic tickets.

Lam, through his attorney Alan May, insisted late Wednesday from the Orange County Jail that the signature on the check was Cooperman’s. He said Cooperman was in an awkward stance when he signed the check because they were shaking hands at the time.

Lam, a 21-year-old Vietnamese refugee, is scheduled to go to trial next week on murder charges in connection with Cooperman’s death. Cooperman, 48, who was highly popular with students and much respected by his colleagues in the physics department, was killed with a single shot through the neck from a .25-caliber gun.

Befriended by Victim Lam was one of many Vietnamese students befriended by Cooperman, who was deeply involved in providing humanitarian aid to Vietnam through a scientific committee he founded.

The $90 check has been a key issue in Lam’s defense so far. May observed during the preliminary hearing in November that Lam had no apparent reason to kill a man who was “a father figure” to him, especially after he had just given him a check for $90.

Cooperman’s bank registry shows no listing for the $90 check, yet all the checks preceding that one are meticulously noted in the bank book, according to court records.

Sources close to the investigation into Cooperman’s death say the prosecution is diligently trying to determine whether Cooperman actually signed the $90 check.

W. A. Hatch, a former handwriting expert for the Santa Ana Police Department who was paid by The Times to study the “Edward L. Cooperman” signature on the $90 check, called the signature “a pretty bad job by someone who tried to simulate Mr. Cooperman’s name.”

Results of Analysis Hatch said his analysis shows that Cooperman did write the word “Ninety” on the check, but that the date and the signature were “definitely” written by someone else. Hatch said he was unable to determine whether Cooperman wrote out the name “Lam Minh” on the check.

Hatch announced his findings after comparing more than 250 photostat copies of known examples of Cooperman’s signature with a photostat copy of the “Edward L. Cooperman” signature on the $90 check Lam gave to police.

May, when told of Hatch’s findings, said he considered the matter irrelevant.

May said that the fact Cooperman’s own handwriting is on the check is evidence he gave his consent.

May said he considered it premature for anyone to determine the legitimacy of Cooperman’s signature on a photostat copy when his own handwriting expert and the expert hired by the district attorney’s office were still studying the original document.

But Hatch said it is necessary to see the original only when the comparisons are close.

“This is such a sloppy job, I doubt it would make any difference if I saw the original documents for comparison,” Hatch said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen has refused to comment on the check or any other part of his case.

But law enforcement sources say proof of a forged signature might either help show a motive for the shooting--Jensen alleged at Lam’s preliminary hearing that a struggle took place in Cooperman’s office at the time of the shooting--or might at least damage Lam’s credibility with the jurors when they hear a tape of Lam’s explanation of events that day.

Lam told police in a taped conversation after his arrest that he made a routine visit to Cooperman’s office that day, a Saturday, at Cooperman’s request. The two of them had a friendly wrestling match, as they often did, Lam said, then they talked awhile. During the conversation, Lam said, he told Cooperman he needed about $90 to pay the traffic tickets.

(In an interview with The Times at the Orange County Jail shortly after his arrest, Lam said that Cooperman gave him a check, but never specified that Cooperman actually signed it.)

Playing With Gun Lam said that after he got the check, the two began playing with the .25-caliber gun. Lam claims the gun was Cooperman’s, and that the professor had told him to take it home with him the week before but to bring it back that Saturday.

The gun went off, Lam said, when Cooperman grabbed his right arm and brought it up to show him how to aim it.

Asked whether the $90 check might have been a point of dispute between the two that day, Jensen refused to comment and May said the idea was absurd.

“Dr. Cooperman isn’t the kind who is going to get killed over $90,” May said.

Lam did not admit shooting Cooperman until several hours after the incident. He finally acknowledged that after the shooting he went to the movies with a girlfriend, then returned to Cooperman’s office, planted the gun in Cooperman’s left hand, and then called campus police and acted as if he had just found the body. It wasn’t until after he had talked to several police officers that Lam admitted his involvement.

Attorney’s Argument “If he’d taken that $90 check after some kind of argument with Cooperman, then why didn’t he get rid of the check? He had plenty of time,” May said.

May did call a handwriting expert to the witness stand during the preliminary hearing in November. But May’s expert testified to other Cooperman signatures on Lam’s behalf, not the signature on the $90 check.

Cooperman’s wife, Klaaske Cooperman, told police early in their investigation that she did not believe the signature on the $90 check was her husband’s. She repeated that contention when she testified at the preliminary hearing.