Read Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection for Free Online Page B

Bertillon, France’s best-known expert on crime. Since he had identified
     and helped convict the anarchist Ravachol two years earlier, Bertillon’s reputation had only increased. Police forces throughout
     Europe, the United States, and Latin America were keeping records of criminals and suspects according to Bertillon’s identification
     system.
    Unfortunately, Bertillon had no expertise as a handwriting expert, but at the urging of his chief, he acted as if he did —
     thus stepping into a morass from which his reputation never recovered. He pronounced his own judgment after a single day of
     examining the handwriting on the
bordereau:
“If the hypothesis of a document forged with the utmost care is eliminated, it appears clear to us that it was the same person
     who wrote the various items submitted and the incriminating document.” 42
    In court, during Dreyfus’s initial court-martial, Bertillon’s testimony was far from compelling, for he tended to speak in
     a convoluted manner, complete with charts and diagrams that seemed dauntingly confusing. Moreover, the defense produced experts
     who contradicted his conclusion. By now, openly anti-Semitic publications, notably
La Parole Libre,
edited by the notorious bigot Édouard Drumont, had inflamed the public with their declarations that Dreyfus was a traitor.
     It was clear that if he were
not
convicted, the heads of those who accused him would roll. Desperate, Major Henry and others forged documents that added to
     the weight of “evidence” against the defendant. These were presented secretly to the judges, with the caution that “national
     security” would be compromised if they became public. Bertillon had no role in the forgery, but because he was the chief prop
     of the prosecution’s case, he would eventually be tarred by the dishonorable conduct of those who sought to pillory Dreyfus.
    The court, influenced by the forgeries, sentenced Dreyfus to a life term in the French penal colony at Devil’s Island. But
     that was only the beginning of the Dreyfus affair. His brother and wife never ceased their efforts to clear his name, even
     while he sat in an isolated hut inside a walled compound off the coast of South America. In July 1895, Major Marie-Georges
     Picquart became chief of the Intelligence Bureau of the army and found that Germany was still receiving secret information,
     apparently from a French officer, Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. When Picquart reported this discovery to his superiors, he was
     reassigned to Africa to get him out of the way. Relentlessly, he continued to press the case against Esterhazy, who demanded
     a court-martial to prove himself innocent. He was, indeed, acquitted by the military judges, prompting the novelist and journalist
     Émile Zola to write “J’accuse,” an open letter to the president of France, denouncing those who had conspired against Dreyfus.
     The minister of war successfully sued Zola, forcing him to leave the country.
    By now, Esterhazy’s handwriting had been compared to that on the
bordereau,
and the resemblance seemed compelling. France was divided into two warring camps: pro- and anti-Dreyfusard. Anti-Semitic
     mobs in the streets, urged on by demagogues, chanted “Death to the Jews!” Even some of those who doubted Dreyfus’s guilt worried
     that the French army’s prestige would suffer an irreparable blow should his conviction be reversed. Some asked whether reviewing
     the conviction of one innocent man was worth weakening the nation’s security at a time when many feared that a new war with
     Germany was imminent.
    But Dreyfus’s defenders were encouraged when Henry (by then promoted to lieutenant colonel) committed suicide after his forgeries
     were discovered; Esterhazy then fled the country. At last, in August 1899, the government yielded to public pressure and brought
     Dreyfus back from Devil’s Island for another court-martial.
    The military judges were determined to uphold the