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Sworn witness · No. 04 of 12

Forensic Flossie

Swamp PD forensic flycatcher

Sworn to corroborate Exhibits A & B — the tongue-print match on the forged checks

Sworn Affidavit

Sworn statement of Flossie, certified forensic flycatcher, Swamp PD lab. Qualified as an expert in tongue-print analysis over the prosecution's objection. The objection was overruled. She then overruled the prosecution.

I catch flies for a living and I read tongues for a calling, and the two are more related than you'd think. A tongue tells you everything. Speed, reach, honesty. I have analyzed eleven thousand tongue-prints in my career and I have never seen two frogs share one — until this clutch. Identical twins print nearly identical. Nearly. The whole science lives in the 'nearly.'

I took the print off all seventeen forged checks in Exhibit B and laid each against PeePoo's reference cast from Exhibit A. Here is what I found, and I'll stake my whole proboscis on it: the base of the print matches. The mid-strike matches. And then, at the very tip, on every single check, the forgery curls to the left — a little hook, a little grab. PeePoo's tongue has never hooked in its life. It extends and it returns, flat and true, like a frog who has nothing to reach for that isn't already his.

That curl is not random. It's a signature. It's the tell of a frog who learned, somewhere, to take. I measured it seventeen times and got the same three-degree hook seventeen times. Random distortion doesn't repeat to the degree. A habit does. A twin who has spent his life curling his tongue around other frogs' things does.

So no — the tongue on those checks does not belong to PeePoo. It belongs, by every measurement I am licensed to take, to the other twin. The one across the pond. I've never met him. I don't need to. I've met his curl seventeen times and that's a more thorough introduction than most frogs get.

Cross-Examination

Flossie, three degrees is a small margin. Isn't it within the natural variation of a single frog's own tongue?
A single frog varies, yes — randomly, in every direction, print to print. This varies the same direction, the same degree, seventeen times. That's not variation. That's a fingerprint. The consistency is the whole point.
You've never taken a reference cast from the twin. How can you attribute the curl to a frog you've never printed?
I can't name whose tongue it is. I can prove whose it isn't. It isn't PeePoo's. When the negative is that clean, the pond fills in the positive on its own.
Could PeePoo have deliberately altered his own reference cast to appear flatter?
He gave the cast freely, on the first ask, wet from the pond, with no time to prepare. You don't rehearse an honest tongue. You just have one. His is.
No further questions.
Then I'll be in the lab. Seventeen checks, seventeen curls, one innocent frog. The math has never been simpler.

Testimony sworn, logged, and cross-examined. Exhibits A & B held under lab seal with all seventeen overlay measurements attached. Do not remove pins.

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