A handwriting expert has told a Truro court that she found significant differences in signatures on alleged forged wills and specimens she had been sent.

Forensic scientist Dorothy Allan was giving evidence in the trial of Falmouth bus driver Percival John Harris and Big Issue seller Michael Davies-Patrick taking place at Truro Crown Court this week.

Harris, aged 59, of Turnaware Road, Falmouth is charged with theft, two charges of conspiracy to make a false instrument by forging two wills, perverting the course of justice and fraud.

Davies-Patrick, aged 38, of no fixed abode, is facing two charges of making a false instrument and one of perverting the course of justice.

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Both Harris and Davies-Patrick plead not guilty to the charges.

Harris is accused of forging the wills of Kathleen and Desmond Moyle from Falmouth to benefit himself, leaving him £85,500.

It is alleged he got two homeless men, Davies-Patrick and Eric Cullen, who has since died, to sign as witnesses to Mr Moyle and Mrs Moyle signing the new handwritten wills separately - Mr Moyle’s after he had died in September 2016.

The alleged forged wills gave Harris 95% of Mrs Moyle’s assets after her death on February 14, 2018, rather than the 25% he was supposed to get in an official will - written in 2015 through solicitors Hine Downing.

He is further charged with forging the will of Kathleen’s husband Mr Desmond Moyle after his death in September 2016.

It also alleged that Harris took £220,000 from the accounts of Mr and Mrs Moyle after he was granted lasting power of attorney over the couple in 2014, but before that it is alleged he had already stolen £4,000.

Forensic scientist Mrs Allan told the court today (Wednesday) that she had been sent ten specimen signatures from Mr and Mrs Moyle ranging from 1997 up until 2015. The alleged forged wills were said to have made between September 2016 and February 2019.

Mrs Allan said when she compared the two they were “pictorially similar” but when she investigated further she discovered many differences between the specimens and allegedly forged signatures.

“They do look the same overall, but look like a picture [of the specimen signatures],” she said. “In this instance they look similar so we did a comparison looking for similarities and differences. We found very few similarities but many differences.”

She said when she looked at the specimens of Mrs Moyle’s genuine signatures compared with the alleged forged ones she said it looked like the copying of genuine signatures by someone else.

She said the O in Moyle was the most significant difference. She said that when left hand people write an O it is nearly always written anti-clockwise, while right handed people’s go clockwise.

She said in both questioned signatures they were written clockwise, while in the specimen signatures they went anti-clockwise.

Mrs Allen said there were also significant differences between the Y the L and there was a “lack of fluency” in the questioned signatures, as if someone had written them very carefully rather than quickly as someone normally would with a signature.

“If someone is copying a signature, in order to get it right they will often go very slowly and that will show up in a lack of fluency,” she said.

Mrs Allan did say, however, that illnesses such as dementia, which Mrs Moyle had suffered from since 2003, may effect the fluency of someone’s signature but in the signatures she had been given from 1997 to 2015 she had not seen this.

The trial continues.