Writing Wrongs

*Warning: this episode contains descriptions of emotional abuse and manipulation* 
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 November 12, 2018, Madrid, Spain. 47-year-old Galician man Rodrigo Nogueira Iglesias is arrested near the Puerta de Atocha railway station. His crimes stretched back more than twenty years. Rodrigo frequented social media platforms and dating websites where he used fake profiles, pretending to be different people with different names and professions, all with the initial goal of attracting the attention of women who could be potential victims.
 We are joined by Dr Sheila Queralt – a friend of the Institute and Spain’s top forensic linguistics expert, having consulted on some 300 cases over the past 15 years and testified as a linguistics expert witness in criminal and civil trials across 10 countries, with cases reaching courts including the ECHR. Her work in forensic linguistics at ForensicLab continues through her Laboratory based in Barcelona, which provides linguisticanalysis of recorded conversations and voice messages, as well as written documents.
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In the episode, we make references to episodes 1.4 Romance Fraud, featuring a conversation with Dr Lis Carter, and 3.2 The Multiple Personas of an Online Child Abuser, featuring DrEmily Chiang.

 Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode! 
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: 
https://medium.com/@AIFLblog  
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources: 
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/  
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help  
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Production Team:  Angela Walker, Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta 
Sound: James Cresswell 
Visual design: George Grant 
Editing: Angela Walker 
Additional voices: Salvador Alberich Castelló
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Illustration by Víctor Gomollón García. Reproduced with the illustrator's kind permission. The illustration was originally created for the book Estafas amorosas by Sheila Queralt Estévez (Larousse Editorial, 2022).
More information about the book:
https://www.larousse.es/libro/libros-ilustrados-practicos/estafas-amorosas-sheila-queralt-estevez-9788419250179/ 
Español
Ilustración de Víctor Gomollón García. Reproducida con la amable autorización del ilustrador. La ilustración fue creada originalmente para el libro Estafas amorosas, de Sheila Queralt Estévez (Larousse Editorial, 2022).
Más información sobre el libro:
https://www.larousse.es/libro/libros-ilustrados-practicos/estafas-amorosas-sheila-queralt-estevez-9788419250179/

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Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant- Aston Research Explorer 
 Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: NicciMacLeod - Aston Research Explorer 
 Dr Sheila Queralt’s home page: SQ-Lingüistas Forenses
 
Decalogue for requesting a linguistics expert report by Sheila Queralt  
 News of the Nogueira Iglesias case in the Spanish press
 A guide to spotting romance fraudsters
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Academic sources
 Carter, E.(2024). The Language of Romance crimes: Interactions of love, money, and threat. Cambridge University Press.
 Chatten, A., Baxter, K., Mas, E., Pena, J., Tabachnick, G., Duncan, D., & MacKenzie, L. (2024). “I’ve Always Spoke Like This, You See”: Preterite-to-Participle Leveling in American and British Englishes. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, 99(1), 3-46.
 
Queralt, S. (2022). Linguistic Profiling: A Spanish Case Study. Methodologies and Challenges in Forensic Linguistic Casework, 44–62.

* Warning: Today’s episode contains descriptions of child sexual abuse material. *
 
In today’s episode, Dr Nicci MacLeod and Prof. Tim Grant are joined by Dr Emily Chiang, one of our Research Fellows at AIFL, about her research into identity performance in online child sexual abuse conversations.
By tracing 17 different personas from a single perpetrator, Dr Chiang explored linguistic differences in identity performance and online grooming strategies. Together, Dr Chiang and our hosts go over how her research may help future grooming and child sex abuse cases.
 
Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode!
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free resources:
 https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
 
Production Team: Mark Round, Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta
Sound: Mark Round
Editing: Nicci MacLeod
Visual design: George Grant
Additional Voices: Karolina Placzynta
With our thanks to Dr Emily Chiang and Dr Zoe Adams
 
Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant - Aston Research Explorer
 Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: Nicci MacLeod - Aston Research Explorer
 Dr Emily Chiang’s home page: Emily Chiang - Aston Research Explorer
 
Both Tim and Emily are part of the Europewide Horizon SALVUS project looking at the investigation of online child abuse and exploitation across Europe. You can find out more about the SALVUS project here: https://salvusproject.eu
 
Research Papers:
Deceptive identity performance: Offender moves and multiple identities in online child abuse conversations
 Online grooming: moves and strategies
 Do Perverted Justice chat logs contain examples of Overt Persuasio⁠n and Sexual Extortion? A research note respondingto Chiang and Grant 2017 and 2018.

VOTE FOR US IN THE TRUE CRIME AWARDS 2026!

*Warning: this episode contains descriptions of terrorist mass-casualty events, and torture *
 
NOTE: This is Part 2 of a double episode. Please make sure you have listened to Part 1 before proceeding.
 
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These two episodes are dedicated to the memory of Dr Janet Cotterill (1968-2022) who contributed significantly to this case and to forensic linguistics more generally.  Her obituary can be found here https://iafll.org/2022/11/11/remembering-dr-janet-cotterill-1968-2022/
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August 2004. Dhiren Barot, a high-value terrorist, has been arrested in London, and police need to charge or release him within four days. To charge Barot, the police needed to prove to a criminal standard that he had indeed written the Gas Limos project, a document that contained the plot to attack underground carparks of landmark tourist destinations across London with multiple limousines filled with gas cylinders containing explosive gases.
 
In this second part we are joined by Professor Jessica Woodhams from the University of Birmingham who, alongside Tim Grant, Janet Cotterill, and Janet’s PhD student, was rushed to New Scotland Yard in the summer of 2004 to carry out an analysis of The Gas Limos project.
 
For a list of our sources and more information about this case, please visit https://www.aston.ac.uk/writing-wrongs
 
Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode!
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources:
 
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
 
Production
Production Team: Mark Round, Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta
Sound: Mark Round
Visual design: George Grant
Editing: Nicci MacLeod
Additional voices: Professor Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, George Grant, Stephany Grant, Dr Graeme Hayes,  Greg Fraser McLaren

Resources
Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant - Aston Research Explorer
 
Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: Nicci MacLeod - Aston Research Explorer
 
Professor Jessica Woodham’s home page: Professor Jessica Woodhams - School of Psychology - University of Birmingham
 
Research Resources
Academic Sources
-              Andrew, C. (2012). The defence of the realm: The authorized history of MI5. Penguin UK.
-              Carlisle, D. (2007)  Dhiren Barot: Was He an Al Qaeda Mastermind or Merely a Hapless Plotter? Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30:1057–1071 DOI: 10.1080/10576100701670979  
-              Grant, T.D. (2022) The Idea of Progress in Forensic Authorship Analysis CUP
-              Sean O’Neill and  Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and  the Finsbury Park Mosque(London: Harper Perennial, 2006) 
 
News sources 
-              Guardian 2006 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/nov/07/usa.terrorism
-              Times of India 2006 - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/articleshow/2168783.cms
 
Other Web sources
-              US Government 9/11 Commission Report https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT.pdf
-              House of Commons library on pretrial detention of terrorists - https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05634/

VOTE FOR US IN THE TRUE CRIME AWARDS 2026!

*Warning: this episode contains descriptions of terrorist mass-casualty events, and torture *
 
--- 
These two episodes are dedicated to the memory of Dr Janet Cotterill (1968-2022) who contributed significantly to this case and to forensic linguistics more generally.  Her obituary can be found here https://iafll.org/2022/11/11/remembering-dr-janet-cotterill-1968-2022/
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August 2004. Dhiren Barot, a high-value terrorist, has been arrested in London, and police need to charge or release him within four days. To charge Barot, the police needed to prove to a criminal standard that he had indeed written the Gas Limos project, a document that contained the plot to attack underground carparks of landmark tourist destinations across London with multiple limousines filled with gas cylinders containing explosive gases.
 
In this first part, we explore Barot’s story and background. How did he get from an average upbringing in an Indian family in North London to becoming a radical Islamist authoring a plan for mass destruction?
 
For a list of our sources and more information about this case, please visit https://www.aston.ac.uk/writing-wrongs
 
Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode!
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources:
 
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
 
Production
Production Team: Mark Round, Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta
Sound: Mark Round
Visual design: George Grant
Editing: Nicci MacLeod
Additional voices: Professor Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, George Grant, Dr Graeme Hayes, Dr Madison Hunter, Aymun Yasin Khan 
Resources
Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant - Aston Research Explorer
 
Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: Nicci MacLeod - Aston Research Explorer
 
Professor Jessica Woodham’s home page: Professor Jessica Woodhams - School of Psychology - University of Birmingham
 
Research Resources
Academic Sources
-              Andrew, C. (2012). The defence of the realm: The authorized history of MI5. Penguin UK.
-              Carlisle, D. (2007)  Dhiren Barot: Was He an Al Qaeda Mastermind or Merely a Hapless Plotter? Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30:1057–1071 DOI: 10.1080/10576100701670979 
-              Grant, T.D. (2022) The Idea of Progress in Forensic Authorship Analysis CUP
-              Sean O’Neill and  Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and  the Finsbury Park Mosque(London: Harper Perennial, 2006) 
 
News sources 
-              Guardian 2006 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/nov/07/usa.terrorism
-              Times of India 2006 - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/articleshow/2168783.cms
 
Other Web sources
-              US Government 9/11 Commission Report https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT.pdf
-              House of Commons library on pretrial detention of terrorists - https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05634/

Welcome Wrong’uns to this special episode of Writing Wrongs in conjunction with another Aston Originals podcast: CorpusCast with Dr Robbie Love!
Nicci, Tim, and Robbie revisit some of Writing Wrongs’ bestclips involving corpus linguistics. Take a trip down memory lane as our hosts call back to S1E3, S1E7, S2E1&2, and S2E6&7, and grill Dr Love about the ins and outs of the use of corpus tools in forensic linguistics.
Erratum: Robbie's upcoming performance of We Will Rock You is at the Alexandra Theatre, not the Hippodrome as Nicci mistakenly says. Tickets available here.

 VOTE FOR US IN THE TRUE CRIME AWARDS 2026!
 
For a list of our sources and more informationabout this case, please visit https://www.aston.ac.uk/writing-wrongs
 Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.ukand we may answer it during an upcoming episode!
 
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here: https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
 
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources:
 
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
 
Production Team: Mark Round, Jordan Robertson,Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta
Sound: Mark Round
Visual design: George Grant
Additional Voices: Prof Malcolm Coulthard, Dr Issy Clarke, Dr Andrea Nini
With our thanks to Dr Robbie Love
 
Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant- Aston Research Explorer
 
Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: NicciMacLeod - Aston Research Explorer

Dr Robbie Love's home page: Robbie Love - Aston Research Explorer