Category: Newspapering

The Unlucky Forger

When I was an investigative reporter for The News & Observer inmates wrote to me every once in a while saying they were innocent  — and asking me to prove it.   

I was near the end of another help-me-I’m-innocent letter when, almost as an afterthought, the inmate switched subjects and told me about a failed escape attempt that he thought was funny.

barsHe said a man serving time for forgery had tricked the N.C. Department of Correction into releasing another inmate who was serving a life sentence for burglary. But when the forger tried to trick DOC into releasing him, he got caught.

Funny, huh.

I didn’t think so, I thought it was interesting.  I called the DOC records office and asked where the lifer was being held. He wasn’t. I was told that he had been released.

I made more inquiries and here’s what I learned:

The forged paper ordering DOC to release the lifer arrived in the mail, but it wasn’t embossed with the seal of the Clerk of Court of the county where he had been convicted. The forger didn’t have the embossing stamp, or the tools to fake it. But, it turned out, that didn’t matter. DOC sent the paperwork back  to the Clerk of Court along with a note saying someone had forgotten to emboss it. The seal was quickly affixed, the paper was returned, and the lifer was released.

But that’s only part of the story, and not the best part, either.

The forger had been convicted in a different county and he didn’t have that Clerk of Court’s seal either.  When the forged release paper arrived at DOC a paper shuffler noticed that the seal was missing, returned it to the county where the forger had been convicted, and reminded the clerk responsible for that apparent oversight that she must affix the seal of her office.

But she didn’t — she knew immediately that the release paper was a forgery.

How?

She was left handed.  She made her check marks backwards. The check marks on the release paper had been made by a right handed person.

Coming Friday: Never Again!

My Billy Goat Gruff

In the early 1990’s, when I was learning to acquire, load, and analyze government databases for The News & Observer, I needed a big Billy Goat Gruff on my side.

It didn’t take state computer nerds long to figure out how little I knew and when they did they abused me, pretending it was harder — in other words, more expensive — than it really was to copy government records my newspaper  was entitled by state law to have.

Dan Woods, my Billy Goat Gruff
Dan Woods, my Billy Goat Gruff

I needed Dan Woods, a one-of-a-kind newspaperman I had met in Indianapolis at a newspaper conference.

Woods had earned a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He had written Nine Track Express, a software program used by newspapers all over the country, including The N&O, to unpack databases with packed fields.

I recommended him and The N&O decided to try to hire him away from The Record of Hackensack.  He was covering banking stories,  a waste, in my opinion, of a person with his expertise.    Frank Daniels III, the executive editor of The N&O, went to New York  and took him to dinner  and, soon after, Woods came to Raleigh to visit the paper. It looked like everything was falling into place and I would have my Billy Goat Gruff.  I could hardly wait.

While he was in Raleigh Woods and I took a walk around downtown  to get to know one another better and to make sure this was going to work.

I asked Woods if he knew FoxPro, a database management system.

He said, “No.”

“That’s a problem,” I said.  And we walk another half a block in silence.

In those days most newspapers used Paradox or FoxPro.  FoxPro was more robust — it could handle bigger databases and it was faster but it was also more difficult to learn. I was committed to FoxPro and so was The N&O, committed to big and fast. 

And then Woods said, “I know the language FoxPro was written in. I can learn FoxPro in a weekend.”

We hired Dan, and he made short work of those state trolls that hadn’t let me pass. How I enjoyed seeing the look on their faces when they realized that The N&O had hired someone who knew more than they did.

Postscript: Dan returned to New York in 1995. He now runs his own  company, Evolved Media. He and his team have written more than 25 books about business and technology. We remain close friends.  For more than 20 years he has come to see us in October, when the N.C. State Fair comes to town. He and his wife, Daniele Gerard, have already made plane reservations for this year.

Coming Monday: A Taste Of Poor