Joelle Steele’s Biography

I’m a high-IQ polymath, and a court-certified expert in face and ear identification and handwritten forgery detection. I’ve written and illustrated eight books on these subjects (two of which are out of print).

In the mid-1970s, I became interested in the use of facial features and ears for identifying faces in photographs. I studied under the late ear identification expert, Alfred V. Iannarelli. During the 1980s, I was traveling widely throughout the United States and sought out and studied under other experts in anthropometry and craniofacial anatomy (Leslie G. Farkaš, Ray Iwata, and W.R. Stark) and forensic anthropology (Clyde C. Snow and Simon Fuchs). And, I read and continues to read many books about or related to face and ear identification and handwritten forgery detection.

In 1992, I published a short book, now out of print, titled Anthropometry and the Human Face in Photographs. In 2013, I released a greatly expanded version titled Face to Face: Analysis and Comparison of Facial Features to Authenticate the Identities of People In Photographs. I am also the author of The External Ear: Anthropometry, Biometrics, Anatomy, Development, Measurement, Analysis, Forensics, and Authentication of Human Identities, published in 2018. That same year, I also published What Did They Really Look Like? The Art and Science of Depicting the Human Face in History. In 2019, I published a very short book, The Quick Guide to Comparing Faces in Photographs, and in 2021 I published another book, Identification Dilemma: The Effects of Decomposition on the Human Face. I’ve also written a dozen or so articles on anthropometry and face and ear comparisons.

As a teenager, I became interested in interpretive graphology that attempts to profile a writer’s personality. I found it lacking, and so I quickly shifted my interest to forgery detection. I am also proficient in forensic stylistics (linguistics, semantics, content, spelling, word choice, syntax, and phraseology), and non-cursive (printed) writing. In 1999, I wrote Detection of Forged Handwriting and Signatures, now out of print. In 2021, I published Sign Here! Detecting Forgery in Handwritten Signatures. I’ve also written several articles on handwriting and forgery detection.

In addition to helping with identifying people (living or dead) and analyzing handwriting, I also like to encourage police and sheriff departments to take better photographs of suspects, victims, and the deceased, including profiles in which the ears are cleared of the three H’s: hair, hats, and hoodies. I would also like to see law enforcement agencies obtain better photos of missing persons, And, I also want to see law enforcement agencies help educate people in general about the importance of photographing the ears of their loved ones from birth onward, and of their elder loved ones as well. While fingerprinting and DNA are great for identifying people the results take awhile. The ears are a lot easier to use as ID when it comes to identifying a person, or their remains, on the spot.

I provide my services throughout the United States and internationally. My clients include businesses, family historians, genealogists, historical societies, auctioneers, appraisers, libraries, museums, university archives, private investigators, law enforcement officials, attorneys, publishers, film-makers, and television documentary producers.

I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Language Arts (a double major in English and Linguistics) and I’m the author of 60+ published books and 800+ articles.