Beverly Young Nelson said she made notes on a yearbook inscription she had offered as crucial evidence about her claim that Roy S. Moore had groped her.
GEORGIANA, Ala. — The woman who offered a high school yearbook that she said was signed by Roy S. Moore as evidence in her sexual misconduct claim against him, said on Friday that she wrote some of the words beneath the signature.
The admission by the woman, Beverly Young Nelson, set off a new round of attempts by Mr. Moore and his supporters to undermine the allegations that have upended his Senate campaign.
But Ms. Nelson did not back away from her claim that Mr. Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate, groped her and squeezed her neck in the late 1970s, when she was 16 and he was about 30, or that he signed her yearbook a couple of weeks earlier, calling her a “sweeter more beautiful girl.”
Four days before the election, the inscription landed back in the spotlight when a reporter for Good Morning America asked Ms. Nelson if she had added her own notes beneath the inscription. She admitted that she had.
“Beverly indicates that she added that to remind herself of who Roy Moore was and where and when Mr. Moore signed her yearbook,” her lawyer, Gloria Allred, said hours later at a news conference, where she also said a handwriting expert, Arthur T. Anthony, had examined the signature and found it to be written by Mr. Moore. “We look forward to learning if Alabama voters will believe Roy Moore’s accusers or if they will ignore the evidence presented to them,” Ms. Allred said.
Mr. Moore’s campaign said it would address what it called the “Nelson yearbook forgery” at a news conference in Montgomery on Friday afternoon.
The inscription has become a major focus in Mr. Moore’s efforts to refute claims by nine women that he made unwanted advances or worse toward them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. The apparent difference in the lettering of the inscription and the words underneath, which include a date and the words “Olde Hickory House,” have spawned weeks of amateur analyses and conspiracy theories, and have led Mr. Moore to repeatedly suggest the yearbook was a fake.
“There are a lot of Alabamians who are looking for any piece of evidence to say this was all an attempt to trash the name of Roy Moore, and there will be a lot of people who do seize on it and try to make that argument,” said Elizabeth BeShears, a Republican consultant in Alabama who said she believes Mr. Moore’s accusers.
“The tide has turned in his favor in the last week and a half or so,” Ms. BeShears said, “and I think this really will probably help him.”
Mr. Moore, a conservative former judge, was expected to cruise to a fairly easy win over Doug Jones, a Democrat and former prosecutor, to fill the Senate seat left open by the appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general — until last month, when a series of women came forward with accusations. One woman said she was only 14 when Mr. Moore dated her, took her home and touched her over her underwear.
As Mr. Moore struggled to refute the allegations — which initially repulsed some voters and prompted Republicans in Washington, including Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, to call for Mr. Moore to drop out of the race — his allies focused on Ms. Nelson’s yearbook.
Ms. Allred, who has represented women in prominent sexual harassment cases for decades, refused multiple requests to review the yearbook, saying she would only release it to congressional investigators if a hearing was convened about the allegations against Mr. Moore.
Mr. Moore, who has posted almost daily on Twitter, calling the yearbook “fake,” on Friday wrote, in an apparent reference to Ms. Nelson, “now she herself admits to lying.”
The news about the yearbook came at the end of a week in which Mr. Moore enjoyed a new infusion of support from the Republican Party, including an endorsement by President Trump and funding from the Republican National Committee, which severed ties with his campaign last month.
Paula Cobia, a lawyer for Gloria Deason, who has said Mr. Moore took her on dates and ordered her alcohol when she was 18, said Ms. Nelson’s admission had not undermined Ms. Deason’s story or that of the other accusers.
“The inscription and his signature look completely authentic. The fact that she might have written and she says that she did the Olde Hickory House or whatever underneath it, so what?” Ms. Cobia asked.
“Each accusation,” Ms. Cobia added, “stands on its own.”
