Famous Forgery Case

Early in 1972 a Federal Grand Jury heard the testimony of a Questioned Document Examiner from the Crime Laboratory of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service regarding questioned documents allegedly written by Howard R. Hughes. In these documents permission was granted for a biography of Mr. Hughes to be written by Clifford Irving. Mr. Irving had used these questioned documents to convince the editors of McGraw-Hill Book Co. and Life Magazine that he had a deal with Mr. Hughes - an allegation hotly contested by Howard Hughes when he learned of it.

The testimony of the experts from the Postal Inspection Service was that the questioned documents were not written by Mr. Hughes. Often in forgery cases it is possible to conclude that the alleged author of a document did not do the writing, but it is more difficult to conclude that a particular person did do it. This is because the writing habits of the forger will often be buried in the attempt to simulate the pictoral look and style of the "target" writing. However, in this case, there was a large amount of writing in question. Mr. Irving had even had "Mr. Hughes" write a letter to the editors of Mc-Graw Hill to validate his agreement with Mr. Irving. The volume of questioned writing was enough that Mr. Irving was not able to keep up his "disguise" and his own individual writing characteristics showed through the veneer of the simulated "Hughes" writing.