Lance55 said:
Hass anyone ever looked at how someone who learned English as a second language might have left clues?
Of special interest would be signs of Arabic as a first language?
That's been discussed. For one thing you have the one dollar sign that looks like a pound sign was written first, and then changed to a dollar sign. If you look in a dictionary, it lists countries that use the pound sign (ie: Egypt)
Some have mentioned the word attache' sounding more like a word a foreigner would use.....others have mentioned the note sounding too proper--like something a foreigner with English as a second language would come up with. On the other hand, I put suitcase in a thesaursus link, and attache' came up.
Then you have the movie lines---would someone that spoke with a heavy accent copy movie lines to show they knew more English then they really did? At one time, many foreigners viewing John Wayne movies really thought that was what the US was like.
There are some countries where kidnapping is big business, like Mexico...and the families pay--many times they don't involve the police, because for one thing, in some cases they're in on it. So the families pay and get the family member back. Someone of foreign descent may not have known it doesn't work that way in the US. That if they don't ask for at least a million dollars, even the FBI will think the note is bogus.
Wouldn't it be something if after all these years, the perp is part of a small foreign faction? Not an organized terrorist group---but a foreigner that thought he could get some fast cash by writing a scary-sounding letter.
There is an analysis I found one time on the internet, of the note based on someone that had English as a second language---I don't recall anything about it, though.
