Keep Eastside Brick: Two Handwriting Analysts Weigh In

The first handwriting expert, Michelle Dresbold, is a graduate of the United States Secret Service's Advanced Document Examination training program, and is the author of Sex, Lies, and Handwriting: A Top Expert Reveals the Secrets Hidden in Your Handwriting. She also pens a syndicated column, called "The Handwriting Doctor."

"If you [spoke] with [the person who wrote the note], they would talk about God or church or righteousness," said Dresbold. Based on the letters leaning slightly to both the left and the right, she said, "This is probably someone who is a little bit unstable, but fits in on an everyday basis."

She thought that the person was moderately educated, with at least a high school education, and someone who goes to church and has a little bit of a martyr complex (“pity me” were her words).

She went on to say that the letters appeared to have been heavily gone over. "This is a person who, when a thought is in his or her head—that thought is hard to get out." Hurts, she said, tend to linger.

A second handwriting analyst, Treyce d’Gabriel, had a slightly different take. Gabriel is a psychologist who used to live in Austin and has done work for the police.

"He writes like someone who is 12-13 years old," wrote Gabriel in an email. Echoing Dresbold's comment, she wrote that he "has trust issues and unresolved anger."

Gabriel thinks he might have been encouraged by someone else to do this. And finally, she speculated that "he is defiant but charming in public." This analysis, commonly called graphology, is not the same as forensic handwriting analysis—the results are more speculative. A skeptic would say that many of these traits could be associated with anyone who tosses a brick at a house; the act itself suggests protest and anger.

The brick is now a piece of evidence, and in the interest of full disclosure, this writer has not seen it, either. Dresbold commented, almost off-handedly at the end of our interview: “This is probably someone who thinks they know how to plan, but who is not a great planner.” Based on the neatly tied string, the careful lettering, and the brick, that remark felt as odd as this episode.