How to Identify an Anonymous Writer

To identify the anonymous “culprits” – writers of anti-state letters or texts, the State Security used criminology methods that were supposed to help limit the group of possible suspects or directly point to a specific person. Here are some examples of how these criminology methods worked in practice.

Example 1

The first example shows denunciation verses sent to several employees of the G.V.Akimov State Institute for Protection of Materials. The letter and the envelope are placed in an impermeable wrapping which was put in a paper envelope with the instructions. The State Security carried out dactyloscopic, biological and graphological analysis.

Example 2

Anonymous letters were often handwritten. This example is interesting in several respects. The anonymous letter was allegedly written by a former State Security officer and sent to his former colleagues. The handwriting for the analysis was obtained from an informer file which the alleged writer had earlier kept.

Example 3

This letter is not typical, as it is composed of single characters cut out from a magazine. In this case, too, the serological and dactyloscopic analysis was made.

Example 4

This writer did not need paper to express what he thought of the Communist Party officials in the building of the Municipal Court of Prague. The anti-state writing was made on the wall and despite its small size, it drew great attention of the security services and the site had to be searched very carefully. It is apparent from the investigation file that the State Security officers only interrogated the witnesses, who hadn’t seen anything, and documented the offence. They may have understood that any greater effort would not bring any greater results.

Example 5

These are two cases of threatening phone calls. In the first case, a tapping device was installed in order to identify the culprit who was supposed to call a private number in the apartment of a prominent family in Prague. The second case shows that if you wanted to make a call to the Operative Desk of the Prague and Central Bohemia Police Headquarters, it wasn’t too wise to use your home telephone. The so-called phonic test is also described herein.