Published: September 4, 1996

Whodunit?

CONTINUED

The scandal arrived at the state's crime lab in mid-May packaged in two cardboard boxes. Inside, stuffed in manila envelopes, were the 153 answer sheets--two double-sided pages each--from the Iowa tests the Stratfield students took in January. The boxes also contained the March retests and another couple hundred tests taken by students at two other elementary schools, a sampling that would serve as a control group.

Henry Lee directed the lab's investigation, but James Streeter, a "questioned document examiner," did a lot of the legwork. Day after day, he peered through a microscope at the thousands of answer-sheet bubbles, searching for clues. Was there a pattern to the direction and length of the pencil marks? Children generally fill in test-sheet circles randomly, their scratchings varying with each answer. But adults are more consistent, often using the same strokes to darken every circle. Did the pencil marks slash through each bubble the same way? Why did the marks break the bubble's circumference on question three but not on question 23? Such were his days. And at night, Streeter says, the bubbles would float...