Following the Script in France

By SCOTT KRAFT

July 24, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MOUGINS, France —

When the police found Ghislaine Marchal’s body sprawled in the basement of her hilltop villa here on the Cote d’Azur, the identity of a prime suspect was hard to miss. Written in blood on a wall were the words: Omar m’a tuer (Omar to kill me). And, lo and behold, the wealthy widow’s gardener was named Omar Raddad.

Had someone tried to frame the gardener? Or had the 65-year-old victim, dying from a dozen stab wounds, summoned the strength to identify her killer? If Marchal was the author, she had made a grammatical error, surprising for a woman of her education, by using the infinitive tuer (to kill), rather than the past participle tue (killed).

But the court-employed handwriting experts, peering at the bloody words, testified to “an absolute resemblance” between the letters painted in blood and Marchal’s crossword puzzles. One expert, Gilles Giessner, concluded: “Mrs. Marchal is the author of the message.”

On that evidence, Raddad, 29, an immigrant from Morocco, was convicted last year and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Without a confession. Without an eyewitness. Without a murder weapon.

The verdict still reverberates across a nation fascinated by the tragic tale of the Moroccan gardener, the wealthy French widow and the mysterious message in blood. But, more important, l’affaire Omar has forced the French to pose serious questions about the practice of handwriting analysis, or graphology, for years an accepted and respected part of French life.

“This case has been catastrophic for our profession,” acknowledged Alain Buquet, a judicial handwriting expert in Paris. “The public now thinks we are all charlatans; that is sure. We’re going to be teaching this case to graphologists for years to come.”

Many now believe, as Gerard Beaudoux, one of Raddad’s lawyers, put it recently, that “the best way to be wrong about a case is to follow the graphological evidence. People are beginning to realize that one expert is an opinion, two is a decision and three is confusion.”

A ‘Human Science’

From the boardrooms to the courtrooms, the French since the 19th century have put great stock in the ability of graphologists, with proper training, to identify handwriting--and to draw dozens of conclusions about the personality and intellectual aptitude of the writer based on nothing more than the cursive on a page.

Graphology, which the practitioners here call a “human science,” is a multimillion-dollar business in France. Virtually every major corporation uses graphological studies to assess job candidates. Many also order a graphological “personality profile” to help executives decide whom to promote and how to resolve personality conflicts among co-workers. Lawyers use it as well, sometimes to seek the truth in disputed divorces.

While graphology has believers in the United States and in other European countries, most people consider it about as scientific as astrology or palm reading. And rare is the American company that uses it to help decide whom to hire and fire.

But the practice has mainstream support in France, a country that has been fascinated by the handwritten word since the days of kings. In France, the more formal the communication, the more imperative that it be in longhand.

While a job-seeker in the United States is expected to type a formal letter of application, job applicants in France may type only their curriculum vitae. The letter of application simply must be written by hand. That handwriting sample is then analyzed, by an outside consultant or by an in-house graphologist. The results are used to weed out unsuitable applicants and, later, to help determine which of the finalists is right for the job.

Graphologists study hundreds of facets of a handwriting sample, including the choice of ink (black generally indicates a strong personality); the amount of space between lines (leaving space means emotional stability); and the signature (signing on the right suggests friendliness; signing legibly, that the writer is flexible).

Even American executives transferred to French offices are subjected to the ritual, though graphologists must take their background into account.

“A graphologist’s report will carry enormous weight with the people you’ll need to impress--personnel directors, recruiters and headhunters,” say Carol Pineau and Maureen Kelly in their book, “Working in France.” “If you want to compete in the French job market, put away your word processor and pull out your pen.”

Applicants who insist on typing their cover letters “must realize that they will stand out in a negative way,” the authors say. And in any event, a handwriting sample will be demanded at some point in the interviewing process.

“It’s an enormous responsibility we have,” said Chantal Messin, president of the National Federation of Graphologists in Paris. “And it’s not an exact science. Some handwriting is very easy to analyze, and others are very complex. But you can’t deny that each sample is individual. It goes directly from your brain to your hand without stopping. And that can tell you things.”

The study of handwriting in Western societies dates at least to 1622, when an Italian philosophy professor wrote a book on the subject. But it was dressed in the cloak of science by a French priest, Abbe Michon, who developed a method of detecting personality traits from handwritten documents in 1873. And, at the turn of the century, the seminal book on the subject, “A.B.C. of Graphology,” by another French writer, Jules Crepieux-Jamin, listed 170 writing characteristics and placed them in seven categories.

The Germans and Swiss also have shared an interest in graphology through the years, but neither country has embraced the practice as wholeheartedly as France, where mysticism long has played a role in daily life.

In France, the profession is divided between graphologists, who develop psychological profiles for company personnel departments, and experts ecriture, who work for the courts. About 500 graphologists work in France, and although they are not licensed by the state, they earn certificates in one- to three-year training courses run by graphology associations.

Only a few dozen experts are employed by the courts. Those experts function as U.S. forensic scientists would, identifying the authors of handwriting on such things as suicide notes, wills and contracts.

But, in practice, the line between the two is blurred. Many graphologists work as writing experts as well; some writing experts for the courts offer opinions on the psychological state of an author.

Written Out of Work

Even before the Raddad case, graphologists were beginning to come under fire because of the desperate job situation in France. With an unemployment rate of 12%, there are hundreds of applicants for every open job here. Some frustrated job-seekers blame graphology for their inability to get work, and a few have even paid for their own graphological tests, which cost about $150 each, hoping to learn how to improve their scores.

Graphologists defend their craft by arguing that handwriting analysis helps as many job candidates as it hurts.

“Americans think graphology is like astrology,” said Bertram Durand, a graphologist and head of a business consulting firm. The firm, CNPG Conseil, is the largest of its kind, with 15 graphologists on staff.

“Graphology cannot predict the future,” Durand said. “But it is an expression of personality, like any other expression. And we feel it’s an important element in analyzing job candidates.”

Still, Durand said, “two or three lines by a person who has been stabbed? This is no way to do an analysis. I wouldn’t give much importance to that. The judge should never have relied only on that.”

In fact, French justice has been burned in the past by its unbridled faith in graphology. The most notorious case involved Alfred Dreyfus, a French soldier convicted of spying for Germany and sentenced to life in prison a century ago. His conviction was based entirely on a handwritten, unsigned letter found by a French spy in the German Embassy--and identified by a court expert as written by Dreyfus. Although the real culprit later was found, Dreyfus spent five years in prison before he was pardoned by the French government.

By any measure, the Raddad case was a tough test for the profession. It began June 24, 1991, with the discovery of the body of Marchal, daughter of an industrialist and widow of Jean-Pierre Marchal, whose family made its fortune in the automobile accessories business.

Marchal lived alone in a remote hilltop estate at the end of a fir-lined lane near the Mediterranean Sea resort of Cannes. Raddad, employed part time as Marchal’s gardener, had worked the morning of her death, left around noon to eat lunch alone in town, then spent the rest of the afternoon at a neighbor’s house.

Marchal, wearing only a robe, was found face down on her basement floor. Her attacker had hit her on the head with a piece of wood, and she had been stabbed repeatedly in the stomach and throat, police said. On the wall of the wine cellar was written Omar m’a tuer in large, legible block letters. Nearby, in the boiler room, was another inscription, Omar m’a t, an apparent attempt to repeat the phrase.

Investigators’ Errors

The investigation was bungled from the beginning. Marchal’s body was cremated before a time of death was established, though investigators said it could have been during Raddad’s lunch hour. The cremation also made it impossible for experts to measure the victim’s fingers to help them determine whether she had, in fact, written the message.

The prosecution advanced the theory that Raddad, a regular loser in the local casinos, had asked Marchal for a loan to pay off his debts and, when turned down, killed her in a rage. Raddad denied the charges.

During the trial, the chunks of wall showing the inscriptions were hauled into the Nice court and examined by two judicial experts. They were not dissuaded by the grammatical error, saying notes they found in the house indicated that Marchal “overused infinitives” when writing instructions to her gardener.

The defense countered that many French use verb infinitives rather than commands when asking someone to carry out a task. For instance, they said, someone might write nettoyer le jardin for “clean the yard” when nettoyez le jardin is more appropriate.

But, the prosecution attorneys argued, only a poorly educated person would substitute an infinitive for a past participle.

Giessner, one of the experts, said he noticed a “physiological degradation” between the first phrase and the second, incomplete one. He also dismissed differences between Marchal’s writing and the wall inscriptions as “insufficient to contradict my hypothesis.”

The guilty verdict was denounced across France. In a rare breach of judicial etiquette, lawyers signed petitions calling the evidence insufficient, and many handwriting experts agreed.

Earlier this year, President Jacques Chirac, acting on a personal appeal from the king of Morocco, reduced Raddad’s sentence to two years.

Nevertheless, the debate continues. Lawyers representing Raddad have launched their own investigations, hoping to find new witnesses to reopen the case and clear their client.

Whatever the outcome, l’affaire Omar has cast a long shadow on one of France’s most respected professions.

“Everyone used to think these graphologists were infallible,” said Beaudoux, Raddad’s lawyer. “I’m perfectly sure there was not enough evidence to declare Omar guilty. But the problem in this case is that there were no other explanations.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

According to the Script

Basic handwriting characteristics and how they are analyzed in France.

Writing in black ink: strong personality

Leaving space between lines: emotional stability

Writing that slants neither uphill nor downhill: psychological well-being

Keeping an adequate left margin: adaptability

Small right margin: openness and friendliness

Changes in writing style within the same letter: instability and a tendency to become easily bored

Larger than normal handwriting: writer wants to call attention to himself

Smaller writing: writer doesn’t want to be noticed

Large, decorated capital letters: writer feels self-important and doesn’t react well to criticism