Evening star., 1928-10-25
TIPPING TEST MADE
IN ROBERTSON CASE
Word thereby" Written by
Expert Trying to Identity
Murder Note.
BY a staff Correspondent of The Star.

BY staff Correspondent of The Star.
FREDERICK, Md, October 25.-The
steady tap, tap" of typewriter pune
tuated the tomblike silence of Fred
erick County's Circuit room this
morning as a noted Government eX-
pert methodically punched seven keys
to form one short word-on the strength
of which, because of its peculiarit1es,
the State hopes to convict Samuel T..
Robertson of murder.
The word on which the State is
basing large part of its case against
Robertson. charged with the murder of
Edward l.. Mills, is hereby" used in
correctly in the note which the slayer
pinned to Mills body after he had shot
him to death at daybreak on July Z,
1927, on the latter's farm near Hunting
Hill, Md.
The typewriter note which the slayer
pinned to his victims body established
motive for the crime by stating that
Mills had been killed because of be-
coming involved in the murderer'S do
mestic affairs.
Note as Only Clue.
| With this note as the only clue,
Montgomery County authorities went to
the most famous experts in the country,
hoping they would be able to pick out
| individual characteristics in the note
and thus be able to locate the machine
used in writing it. With the typewriter
once found, police felt it would be an
easy matter to identify the man who
wrote the letter.
The State placed DR.. Wilmar Souder
| of the Bureau of Standards on the
stand this morning as its first witness.
| Picking up the murder note, DR.. Souder
| turned to the II men in the jury box:
You can see.' he said, pointing with
, his foref1nger that the word hereby
| has been hyphenated by the writer ard
that the hyphen is little above center
| and almost merges with the letter e.
You can also see that certain other
i letters, such as the capitals, A, d, S, p
and Y lean one way or the other. or
are shaded in peculiar manner. These
characters can be made only by the
typewriter with which this note was
| written"
! Examined Typing.
! DR.. Souder then explained that he
| had made an examination of typ1ng
| done by the defendant in a Baltimore
police station from dictation given by
a detective who read excerpts from the
murder note and of certain specif1ca-
tions taken from Robertson's home
after his arrest.
The same distinguishing character
istics appearing in the murder note
also appear in the dictation specimen
| and the specifications, he said.
"TheSe facts" DR.. Souder declared,
indicate that the several documents
were all written on the same ma
chine" He also stated that he had
reached his conclusions while working
| independently of other experts and that
he was to receive no compensation from
| the State for his work.
Under croSs-examination by Stedman
Prescott of defense counsel, however,
DR.. Snyder testified that there were
certain characteristics appearing in the
murder note which do not appear in
the other documents.
The discrepancies brought out were
| that the hook of the small letter "a"
is more pronounced in the murder note
| than In the others, and that one of the
diagonals on the letter wv" was slightly
different. DR.. Souder said, however,
that this might have been caused by
differences in the paper or stroking of
the letters.
Experiment Asked.
The court demonstration came about
when Attorney Prescott asked DR.. Sou
der to make an experiment in front
of the jury. Leaving the witness box,
lContinued on Page 2, Column 6.)