By Budd Hopkins

In her latest YouTube offering, Carol Rainey has made the claim that the handwriting on an envelope sent to me by witness Janet Kimball and the handwriting of Linda Cortile are one and the same. In fact, there are many dissimilarities among several letters and numbers in the two meager samples Rainey presents in her latest attempt to discredit Linda and debunk the case. A more in-depth examination by experienced researchers, and an email from graphologist Roger Rubin whom Rainey interviewed on camera, shows that it cannot possibly be established that the writers are the same person based
on her weak presentation.

The well-known, reliable investigator Don Ledger posted the following on UFO Updates on March 7:
“What I saw did not convince me, Carol. In fact if anything I question your expert. You have the two different Budd Hopkins written in each case and not only in my estimation did the 'Hs" or 2s not match but identical letters in the names - either before or after - didn't come close to matching. BTW - a recent forensic case here in Canada involving a doctor's expert testimony - basically he lied - resulted in seeing some 30 people wrongly convicted over a period of some 20 years. Some of whom spent a decade of more in prison for something they did not do. He was no expert and has since lost his license to practice however for some reason has not been charged with giving false testimony. My advice, find three or four more experts to come up with the same opinion.”

To my knowledge, Rainey has not replied to this post of over a week ago. Based on input I have received from other astute observers, I note the following from observing the video:

S: Almost all of Linda„s S‟s have tails that slant radically up. The one example of Janet‟s S is tucked at the end and does not have a tail. There is a word in one of Linda„s documents when the S is not tucked but every other one has a tail.
H: Linda starts with a straight downstroke for the first line of the H. Janet starts with a curved line going down and then up leading to the top of the downstroke for the first line of the H. The downward slant in the middle of the H is common and is not idiosyncratic. Linda„s and Janet„s H s are not virtually identical as Rubin states.
B: Linda„s B starts at the top and loops around to the left and to the top to complete the
right side of the B. Janet„s B starts at the bottom below the address line and comes straight up to the top to begin the formation of the right side of the B.
O: Linda„s O‟s all have loops that go straight through the O to begin formation of the next letter. Janet„s O does not have a loop and looks more like an A.
2: Linda„s documents have three 2 examples. In two of them they are completely different from Janet‟s 2‟s. There are two examples of the 2 in Janet„s writings. Both of Janet„s 2‟s are slanted to the right, and have a line at the end of the loop in the 2 that goes straight down below the 2. Linda„s other 2 is not slanted right and has a line at the end of the loop that starts up and then curves down very slightly below the 2.
N: Linda„s small N is tight at the beginning of it. Janet„s small N is tight at the end of the letter. They are not the same.

The above clearly visible information shows that it is obvious that the two handwriting samples are not from the same person. And Rubin does not stand by his “opinions” (as he describes his findings) with any real conviction today. Contacted by a member of my team, he replied in an email on March 12 that “this case is very old and unfortunately I don't have a file under her [Kimball‟s] name or Carol Rainey's. I only retain a vague recollection of my encounter with the writing and shooting the video…Not remembering the case prevents me from asserting what standards or tests I used.” He goes on to say that “All findings are open to interpretation and challenge. My findings are not considered as factual or evidentiary, they are opinions and can be contested by opposing opinions.”
.
All interested readers can examine for themselves the letters and numbers in Rainey‟s tape and check out the dissimilar details Mr. Rubin apparently overlooked. Also I have found in my files more handwriting by Janet Kimball which could help any future graphologist make a more accurate analysis of the similarities/dissimilarities in the writing. If need be, I will take these samples and the Kimball envelope to new experts, along with additional samples of Linda‟s writing.

In her taped piece, Rainey also tries to raise doubts about two independent drawings of the UFO incident, with the goal, apparently, of claiming that Richard‟s and Janet‟s drawings were done by the same person, as she did with the handwriting samples. She mentions the fact that both sets were made with colored pencil, and finds this suspicious. Now for a would-be illustrator untrained in oil or watercolor, the range of media available to produce detailed colored drawings comes down to crayons and magic markers - which are both awkward and unwieldy for rendering details - or colored pencils, the closest thing to writing in color. Unsurprisingly, both chose that
medium.

One must remember that each witness is trying to render the same scene; therefore it is not surprising that details such as the colors of the brilliant light from the UFO are approximately the same. Janet Kimball sent several drawings, and the one Rainey selected for her tape was, of course, the one least dissimilar from Richard‟s drawings.
One of Kimball‟s drawings shows a mostly yellow light beneath the UFO, something not present in Richard‟s drawing. Next, we must remember that Richard was much closer to the UFO than Kimball, and that he had binoculars for an even clearer view. Thus his renderings of the craft were far more detailed than hers and clearly included a dome on the top side of the UFO‟s silhouette which Kimball did not include in her drawing. Instead, Kimball gives a simple, unbroken arc for the top of the UFO. This obvious discrepancy illustrates the witnesses two greatly different distances from the scene of the lighted UFO.
Following are two additional drawings of the scene, the first by Richard and the second by Janet. The difference in drawing skills is painfully obvious. Richard, in his illustration of the floating and "rolled up" figures, renders the perspective of the UFO as seen from below correctly, and its details with apparent accuracy, even down to shading to indicate the concavity at the UFO's bottom. (In a helpful note to me he mentioned that his drawing of the UFO is not to scale with the figures below it; the UFO, he said, was
much larger.)
In contrast to Richard's obvious drawing skill and use of correct perspective, Kimball's handling of the perspective in her depiction of the same scene is almost childishly awkward. Her lack of drawing ability is also illustrated by her vague rendering of the trees at the bottom of her sketch, the perfunctory handling of the rolled up figures, and the fact that she depended upon a ruler or other hard- edge everywhere in her
drawings. Richard, by contrast, obviously depended upon his free-hand skills to render his subject. To any artist or critic with even a fair to middling eye, there is no connection between the two illustrators other than their attempts to render from memory the same extraordinary scene. (The white panel in the Kimball drawing is the folded-over backside of the paper she attached to her image which showed the roughly stick-figured images unrolled.)
And in case Rainey tries to make the absurd claim that Linda Cortile drew both sets of drawings, I have samples of Linda‟s drawings that date to 1989 when she tried to illustrate UFO encounters from her past, and they reveal an even more awkward drawing style than Janet Kimball‟s. I'm afraid this latest grand conspiracy theory just doesn‟t fly. Janet Kimball, Linda Cortile, and Richard are three distinct people, as
anyone should be able to see by now.

Budd Hopkins
March 15, 2011