#024 – Bryan Kohberger’s Phone 'Off'? Plus Digital Forensics, and Kirby Smith Trial w/ Jim Persinger

First up- some important announcements, and an expression of our gratitude! Sara and Jimmy G. then welcome forensic cell data expert, Jim Persinger to the podcast to discuss his extensive training and background in the constantly changing field of digital and cell phone technology. They talk with him about phone and cell tower analysis software, as well as some of the common misconceptions and mistakes that can be made in the collection and preservation of cell phones and digital data during an investigation. As the conversation wraps up, the trio dig into the Bryan Kohberger and Alex Murdaugh cases in terms of the investigative flaws and plausible explanations related to cell and digital data in each. They close the interview with Jim’s work as an expert in the 2004 Kirby Smith murder case.

Art – Simon & Associates
Music – Caleb Fletcher

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hi everyone, Welcome to the Presumption. I'm Sarah with my friend Jim and

(00:27):
my friend Matte, just three friendshaving a chat. I was thinking Mattie,
Mooe and Jack, and I waslike, well it should be Jane,
I guess. Anyway, we areback with another great episode. We
have a great guest after the briefbreak. But we also have some great

(00:48):
and important announcements I should say,which is that we've always said that we
our priorities are practices, our clientsare law practices. And has a couple
of trials coming up, the holidaysare coming up, and then we go
into January. There's some other stuffthere, but the programming will continue.

(01:11):
But we do have a standing agreementguys, right that we go dark when
one of us is in trial.Yeah, exactly, and especially with Thanksgiving
coming up and you know again JimBean and trial for I think you said
maybe three weeks is the estimate.Just yeah, yeah, right now,
it's just like you know, startingNovember twenty seven for three weeks and then

(01:32):
come out and we got Christmas andthen have another trial starting up in mid
to late January. But that doesn'tmean we're not going to do programming it's
just there may be some gaps,right, Yeah, exactly. We continue
to be recording a ton of greatcontent for you guys, but I just
wanted to let you know if youdon't hear from us for a couple of
weeks, that's why. So yeah, and the announcements will go up on

(01:55):
our Instagram page and Twitter page,just alerting you that an episode is dropping,
like we always do. But Ijust, you know, I think
we just didn't want one to thinkwe're like, am I a disappeared on
them? Anyway? And then Ithink talking about the holidays, you know,
I don't know, do we havean episode dropping before Thanksgiving or this

(02:17):
is it? You're you're about tohear it? Yeah, yeah, so
from my part, and I'll letyou guys speak to it as well.
You know, I want to wisheverybody a really happy and safe holiday.
I also want to say that,look, holidays are not easy for everyone.
Some of us don't have families.I don't have a family. My

(02:40):
family's my sister who doesn't live withme. And it can be tough because
you're thinking about, you know,people you've lost, people that you used
to spend Thanksgiving with, and andit's not. It's not an easy,
pleasant time for everyone. But it'sso important to keep close to those who
are your family or chose and familyor friends, you know, do friends

(03:01):
givings or whatever it is. Andafter all, you know, we are
dedicated to mental health as well.Here. We haven't been doing a lot
of that. We need to dothat, but but I just thought it's
good to check in with our subscribersand say that you know, we see
you, we hear you, andwe we get it. And uh and

(03:23):
I you know, I think whereveryou are, just stay close to friends
and uh, you know, havea safe and healthy holiday. Yeah,
I'd like to add Sarah that there'snothing more rewarding over the holidays than volunteering
your time, yes, at someyou know, homeless shelter, a food

(03:43):
bank, you know, ringing thebell for you know, the Salvation Army.
I mean, so that that reallyis important. You know, we
forever we've adopted a family, youknow, in our firm for Christmas,
and you know, I would justencourage people to give back back and think
about the world around you. Imean, it is tough and those of

(04:05):
you who do experience severe depression,you know, I've lost a friend over
the holidays to suicide, and soyou know, I don't want to get
dark on this show, but youknow, reach out and if you're feeling
desperate, you know there's there's agreat suicide hotline that there are people there
that can answer and talk to you. But reach out to a friend,

(04:27):
don't you know, Jim, Youguys are lucky because usually I do this
drive go fundme, which you're familiarwith, to raise money for a Thanksgiving
every Thanksgiving morning because I live aboutten minutes away from skid Row, which
a lot of people know, Imean if you don't live in La And
so every Thanksgiving morning, no matterwhat I'm doing in the afternoon or evening,

(04:50):
I go to Skiedrow and I setup a table and I give away
stuff. I learned that they don'twant hot food because they get a lot
of hot food and it goes bad, so we take I take socks.
Socks are like a big item costcois you know where I go this time
of year, and I usually dothis go fundme so everyone can pitch in

(05:10):
and I can just get more stuff. I didn't do it this year.
I didn't move on it. Quicklyenough. Otherwise I'd be hitting you guys
up. But that's what I do. And giving Jim nailed it. Giving
is just such a It's so cathartic. You know. It really takes you
out of yourself and it creates asense of community and oneness, and that

(05:32):
takes away from a loneeness. Youknow. Wow, Well that was beautifully
said by both of you, guys. I don't think there's really any level
of sincerity I can add to anyof that. I'm so glad that you
guys have these this sense of altruism. It just comes through and everything that
you guys do, whether you're workingon cases pro bono or in this case,

(05:53):
setting up a table and giving outfood to homeless people. I do
not lead a life like that.From my part, I was just going
to say, more lightheartedly, Hey, if you're going to a friends giving,
let's bring dishes that are actually fiendto Thanksgiving food. Last year I
went to a friends giving and somebodybrought fish soup. That was our Thanksgiving
lanche. It was fish soup.And I know we're all supposed to be

(06:15):
thankful on this day, but I'lltell you I'm not doing fish soup again
this year. So this is mymessage to the listeners. Bring real Thanksgiving
food to your friends giving. Thereyou go, yeah, there you go.
You know, listen, it wasso funny because last year we I
got I had COVID. I didn'tknow ad COVID, and I was packing
these brown bags to take down there, like five hundred of them. So

(06:38):
I was putting the items in there, and my neighbors started helping me,
and I had like little toothbrushes andtoothpaste, like one of the items was
was that? And and he saidhe was trying to like get it done
quicker. And he goes, youknow, you're catering to a population that
probably doesn't have teeth or a dentalhygiene, so you might want to throw

(07:00):
this one. I was like,no, I got this thing. They
need to have it. But yeah, it's uh, you always have to
think of what, you know,what, thanks guy, Listen. Thanksgiving
is about gratitude, and I don'tthink we have enough gratitude, any of
us. You know, we allhave so much to be grateful for,
so many blessings, and it's justa time to really kind of connect and

(07:23):
stop and be grateful. So anyway, it is by far my favorite holiday
and nothing chaps me more. Andthey started decorating for Christmas before thanks And
so question for you, Matt,I'll tell you. I'll go first,
favorite Thanksgiving dish. You mentioned fishsoup, But my favorite dish is stuffing.

(07:44):
But it's it's stuffing made with oystersand it is. It is really
good. It's a Southern delicacy.But oyster stuffing is where can we get
that? Wow? Yeah, wellI'll send you the recipe. It's awesome.
No, no, we're not allright, Matt, what what's your
favorite? You know? I gotto say I'm a fan of the homemade
cranberry sauce. I'm not really agravy guy, which I know is verboten

(08:07):
to a lot of people, butI always dip the hammer the turkey into
the cranberry sauce. And there's onethat my wife makes with a little bit
of like an orange zest, alittle bit of cinnamon to it, maybe
a little on the free through end, but that to me, that's the
only time of year I'm ever goingto eat that. So that's what usually
what I'm looking forward to. Awesomesarah uh pie because I have a sweet

(08:30):
tooth, but not any pie.You know, I like good stuff.
Usually I make it so I bakereally well. So I don't know what
I'm doing this year. I thinkI'm doing cherry, not pumpkin. But
and I'm sending a lot of I'mbaking this weekend, and I'm sending a
bunch of cookie boxes out to people, including gem and other people down there

(08:54):
in New York. And my friend'sall over right. I always do that,
So cookies and then pie for thetable. All right, I love
it. Well. Speaking of beingthankful, we should say thanks again to
all of our fans for supporting usover the last Wow, it's been like
six months now we've been doing theshow. I think amazing. And you
know, if this is your firsttime listening, welcome, Please tell a

(09:16):
friend, Please subscribe check us outon YouTube, YouTube dot com, slash
at the presumption, or you couldsubscribe on really any podcast network. We're
also on social media at the presumption. And let me tell you we have
a fantastic guest coming up for youguys, Jim Persinger who he works in
the in the world of cell phonetower analysis. And it sounds like how

(09:41):
exciting can that be? But hewas absolutely one of the best guests we've
ever had on the show in myopinion. I don't know what you guys
think. But Jim Persinger coming upright after that. He's the phone man,
no doubt. Yep. All right, we'll be right back after a
quick break. Welcome to the show. Jim Persinger, How are you.

(10:05):
I'm fantastic in you. I'm good. I've been in court, but I'm
good. So Jim Persinger. Forthose of you who don't know him,
you should know him, especially ifyou are a criminal defense attorney. He
is a cell data and forensic cellexpert with extensive CASTE and cell tower knowledge
and experience, which is really whatis of most interest to us today.

(10:30):
Given your very robust background. He'sa retired law enforcement officer from Cobb County,
Georgia. He's also certified post standsfor Police Office Standard Training Instructor for
law enforcement as well as an instructorfor private investigators. He has nearly forty
years of experience in technology and canprogram in six different programming languages. He's

(10:50):
been an expert witness and a bevyof cases including homicides, child pornography,
and intellectual property theft, hacking,intrusion cases, embezzlement matters, and also
civil cases. Jim has been anexpert in over thirty five hundred cases for
both. These are criminal cases forboth prosecution and defense, and that work
has involved either analyzing a hard drive, an SD card, third party data,

(11:13):
cell phone extracted data, or similarissues. He has also designed and
developed a product called PIN and Essentialsthat works with the same data that CAST
analyzes. He's had a number ofcases where an FBI agent assigned to CAST
and CAST, for those of youwho don't know you, hear that word
a lot and recent high profile casesstands for Cellular Analysis Survey Team with the

(11:37):
FBI, and so Jim has performedtheir analysis essentially double check in their work
because we always have to do that. He's analyzed over six hundred phones and
developed special software drivers to obtain datafrom odd cell phones. And he's been
the principle of PM Investigations for twentytwo years. PM is a Georgia and

(11:58):
South Carolina licensed private investigation agency.So welcome Jim. And the first thing
I want to ask you, becauseI thought it was really clever, is
what does PM stand for? PMInvestigations So I learned very early on when
I decided to form this agency,that most discromed employees went home in the
evening and did the dirty work,tried to get into the server, tried

(12:20):
to get into somebody's email, wasdoing the spy where And so I said,
you know, I'm spending an awfullot of time in the evening.
I think i'll call my company PMinvestigation. So that's how it got together.
Okay, So I thought it wasbecause the alleged crimes were occurring in
the PM hours, but the samething. Yeah, that activity was just

(12:41):
so robust in the evening, andit really kind of proved itself, even
more so with COVID because people areat home and you know, they were
upset because they weren't getting paychecks andso yeah, yeah, were very busy.
Yeah. So the first question fromme before I turn over to GEM
is cell towers. You know,it comes up in our cases all the

(13:03):
time now, but they can,but not always do, place people within
the range of coverage that a givencell tower, you know, essentially covers
in a given area. So thefirst question is really general. I want
you to explain to our listeners andviewers how cell towers work in a perfect

(13:24):
world, and what records and informationas defense attorneys would we want to see
and review if we're dealing with celltower data placing our clients near a specific
crime scene. I'm sure Matt willneed this information too. Yeah, that's
a great question to always start with, because, you know, we drive

(13:46):
down the interstate, we see thesehuge towers that are just you know,
way up in the air, andwe're wondering what exactly is that thing doing?
And I think it's important to kindof know that it's made up of
different components to begin with, becausethat metal structure that we see that is
not the cell tower, you know, that is just what's holding the guts
that's at the very top of it. That antenna is what's sending out the

(14:11):
signal to the phone, and thenthe phone sending the signal back to that
antenna is what is getting kind oflocked in at that particular phone call.
So you know, the tower's job. It was not designed to be a
tracking device. It was more fulfillingpurposes, and so what it's had to
do is it had to say,Okay, well, I've got this person

(14:31):
who's making a phone call, andnow it's trying to regulate it. It's
trying to determine is it a goodsignal, is it a you know,
something that may actually drop or whatever. So that tower itself, at the
very top of it is what's keyand important. And then, you know,
trying to determine its range. Andthe range can be so many different
variables. It can be based onyou know, what the horizon has it,

(14:54):
it has a building in the way, you know, if it's older
technology, if it's struck my lightning, or whatever the case may be.
But that particular tower's job is totry to keep you connected. And then
as kind of a second thought tothat, it will determine, Hey,
I'm about to lose this individual.So what does it try to do.

(15:15):
It tries to find you another tower. It tries to snap you over to
somewhere else to keep that call going. Well, when you say billing purposes,
what do you mean? I mean, if I'm in an area,
obviously I want to make sure Ihave good coverage, I'm connecting to a
cell tower. But for billing purposes, I mean we're all getting like sort

(15:35):
of monthly plans or how does itplan to billing? Yeah, remember that
way back in the time, itwas a charge per minute. Oh,
that's true, the flat rate.And you know, now they're trying to
do different things with the towers,but it was always based on that per
minute scale. The longer you stayconnected, the more money they make.

(15:56):
So essentially, we need these celltowers to stay connected, We rely on
them for connectivity. Is that's wouldbe accurate to say? Yeah, correct,
yeah, absolutely, Okay, NowI want to ask a question.
Sarah mentioned I might be interested inthis as well. To be clear,
it's not because I commit crimes andneed to know about my cell phone locations.
One of my sig gigs is writingtrue crime stories, and so a

(16:17):
lot of the cases I've written aboutthey deal with these cell phone towers,
and I'm really interested to hear alittle bit more what you were just describing.
How when you go into a certainarea, if that tower goes down,
it'll snap you to another tower.How often does that and how often
is that you know part for Sarahand Jim. How often is something like

(16:37):
that involved in these cases that you'redoing. You know, it's a really
tough question because the first and foremostthat you should get when you get those
self tower records is the service andmaintenance records of that tower, because you
and you need to know if thattower has suffered some kind of internal technological
issue where it's not performing like itshould. And when that happens, the

(17:02):
tower's job. It may be dividedinto what we call sectors. So you
have an alpha, beta, anda gamma. Those just think of a
pie. You got three pieces ofthat pie. And what it's trying to
do is keep you satisfied, keepyou connected. And if that tower is
weak, it is going to say, well, you know what, maybe
I'll put him over at this othertower because it's not as congested or because

(17:23):
it has the better technology. Andthat's critical because again, what cell phone
providers don't want to have happen isthat you get dropped. You get dropped,
you're going to another provider, right, and that what Matt just described.
You know, I think Jim andI are going to get into a
triangulation is a thing where in oneof my cases, I mean I was

(17:48):
able to my client got acquitted becausethey couldn't place them properly within the range
of the crime scene. He wasalmost twenty miles away. Yeah, you
know of triangulation you think of atriangle, it's exactly what a triangle made
of three points. You got threetowers. The best thing that you can
do in a situation is be ableto put that person on the inside of

(18:11):
that tower's triangle. Between those threedifferent towers. Now you've got a little
bit more to work from, becausenow you can actually say he's within this
area. You see, there's amisnomer out there. The towers want to
talk to the closest tower. That'snot necessarily true because just because it's closest

(18:32):
doesn't mean it doesn't have an overabundance number of users and it can't handle
the load, so it's going toshift you to somewhere else again, snapping
you over. It's very important totry to get as many towers that are
talking to that one phone to kindof corner him in, corral that phone
into that triangle so you know exactlywhere he's at. Got it and Jim,

(18:53):
I think it's pretty obvious from whatwe're talking about. But these towers
record, gosh, you know,millions of phone connections a month or a
week. I mean, and how'sthat data? I mean, how does
someone like you get the data tosay Jim Griffin's phone hit the tower at
Sector Gamma at three pm on aFriday afternoon. I mean, how's that

(19:18):
data available? Yeah? Okay,so by way of subpoena, you've got
to send it to the provider.The provider is acting like a big sponge.
It's taken that data, cultivating itso that it's in some sort of
format, you know, like youtake AT and T for example, and
they're going to give you a PDF, and they're going to give you a
text file, and the text fileitself can be broken up so that you
can see not only the tower identificationnumber, the phone number, the duration

(19:44):
of the phone call, but thelatitude and longitude of where the base of
that tower is. Not its mailingaddress, but it's actual location, physical
location. So you could go outthere with a mapping software tool and actually
stand at the base of it,and that's where it's going to say that
you're at right and the uh youknow we've had experience with. You can

(20:08):
get phone numbers from the cell phonecarrier or the tower owner. I mean
tower owner doesn't necessarily mean it's Verizonor or or what have you. Some
of these private companies own these towers. But you get numbers, and then
it's another task to try to unmaskthe number to find out whose phone that
is. Isn't that right? Oh? Absolutely? You know they're not going

(20:29):
to put a name with it.You know, the best way to really
get a name in a case isanalyze the client's phone because if that phone
number was important to the client,he's probably got it stored in his contacts.
So now you can do that crossreview of the phone number that you
get from say AT and T,and see what it shows in the phone's

(20:52):
contact that says who the person is. Because we all know, you know,
cell phones today, our phone numbers, we can pour them out.
We can. If I'm tired ofAtti, I want to go to Verizon,
I want to go to Team Obior whatever. I can take the
phone number with me. Well thatcan happen two days after an incident.
Well wait a second, jimp.When you subpoena, like what Jimmy g

(21:14):
asked you, when you subpoena therecords on the cell tower, right,
you find out the cell tower belongsto Verizon. You subpoena those records and
you're looking at a specific date andtime, a window of time, and
you look at what does that giveyou? That gives you the phone numbers
that connect it to that tower?Yeah, during it okay, yeah exactly,

(21:37):
And then you have to subpoena thosenumbers for the ownership of essentially the
identity of the person those numbers wereassigned to, right am, I correct,
yes, unless you can get itfrom the contact list of the device.
So if my client hands me hisphone and I extract all the phone
numbers in contacts, I can matchit up that way. So I think,

(22:00):
jim you were going to ask aboutthe funk the you know, the
factors that Jimmy, Jimmy g Wellyou were going to ask about the factors
that could interfere Yeah, yeah,So well A you mentioned maintenance records,
and I guess you know, Ahow do you determine that the cell tower
is functioning properly and giving proper readingson on on sectors and what have you?

(22:22):
And then you know what what factorsgo into you know, when you
analyze cell phone data to to ensureits reliability. I mean, what are
you looking for to make sure thatthe information is accurate? Well, it's
just that because the maintenance records aregoing to say this tower was updated or
upgraded, or that there was somekind of enhancement done, or that it

(22:45):
was taken offline. And so ifthat's going to be the case, I'm
just going to raise that flag andsay we've got a tower here that was
under some kind of maintenance issue,and then we can't trust its reliability anymore.
It's sort of like if you goto a mechanic and have your tires
changed out and you don't put thelugnuts on and the tires fall off.
Where do you go back? Yougo back to the mechanic and say did

(23:07):
you tighten the lug nuts. Whenyou're talking about the tower, if it
shows it had some kind of technicalissue, you need to address that and
say this tower can't be relied uponbecause the maintenance record says it was having
issues. Right, So I guess, okay, but what are the factors

(23:27):
that can impact the functionality of acell tower? Like is it weather?
Is it you know, lack ofmaintenance and what could mess it up?
In other words, lightning can certainlydo it even though they ground it.
You know, lightning's knocking down trees. So I don't know that a cable
is necessarily going to stop that towerfrom getting hit from lightning, but just

(23:51):
its own what we call firmware.So you know, in technology, right,
there's firmware, their software. Firmwareis usually deals with the hardware itself
and then you got software that youknow, is what we see kind of
more or less on our phones ofthe apps and that sort of stuff.
That firmware developed an issue. Let'ssay that it did get overcrowded, and
that that caused that tower to dosome kind of weird reboot system. Well,

(24:17):
if it rebooted at the time thatthe client was using it, what
happened to a signal? You probablygot dropped. But did the AT and
T service on the back end didit detect that? And what did it
do about that? Did it juststort and say it's okay? Well?
What about temperature? I mean theCoburger case for examples of snowy cold,

(24:42):
you know night when these other quadruplehomicides occurred, Like does temperature impact the
accuracy and how far back does adefendant need to go to look at you
know, these records. Well,to answer your first question about temperature,
we know that you know, technologyhas a nickname of Murphy being involved.

(25:06):
You know, when something goes wrong, it's Murphy's fault. Electronics likes it
to be cool, but it doesn'twant it to be cold. It wants
to function and it can't all thetime when things are really cold. So
you do have to take those intoconsiderations. Now when you're getting these records
back and you're looking at it,and you're taking that into consideration. I

(25:29):
always tell my clients, go backtwo weeks before the incident. Let's see
what that tower was doing. Sothat fourteen days before, did it have
some magical reboot, did it havesome other service going on with it?
And then two weeks after the incident. So I want to put that one
month worth of data that I cannow work with. I don't want to
isolate it to just one or twodays. That's not enough to give me

(25:52):
a good baseline. Good, Okay, So look the Kuberger case. Were
following that case, Jimmy G andI because it is fascinating and a lot
of our listeners and viewers are justabsolutely fascinated by it. There's a probable
cause affidavit that I sent you JIMPthat places Coburger in the general area of

(26:18):
the crime scene on Kings Road,well on twelve prior occasions, okay,
around that same time that the murdersoccurred. But on that night, the
night of the murders or early morninghours, in the window of the murders,
his phone did not connect. Now, people have taken this probable cause
Avidavid and started to say his phonewas off, he turned his phone off,

(26:41):
and it doesn't say that. Itjust simply says that the towers that
serve that area did not connect hiscell phone. Okay, so looking at
this might get a little in theweeds, but it is something that our
viewers, I know, really havebeen wanting to know about. So looking
at the probable cause, Affidavid andmy assistant and I think just marked the

(27:02):
portions that are relevant. Like onpage ten it says that you know,
his last four diage is eight fouror five eight was an AT and T
number, and that they matched uphim as the subscriber to that number with
also a white alauntra car that wascaught on surveillance essentially moving in the direction

(27:27):
away from the crime scene towards hishome in Washington State. Okay, so
that's just like an added fact.And in they got the search warrants to
look at what cellular devices this ison page eleven utilize cell towers in close
proximity to the murder scene, andthat on that day between three and five

(27:48):
am, Essentially they determined that well, they determined he was associated with the
car and the phone, and theyshow the movement of the car and they
show that he Let me see whatit says here. It says that they
look for cellular devices that utilize thosetowers around the time of the murder.

(28:11):
And however, they're saying his phonedid not pick up signal on that occasion,
even though it had on twelve otheroccasions around the same time. And
then they're appining that individuals can eitherleave their cell phone at different locations before
committing a crime, or turn theirphone off prior to going to a location

(28:32):
to commit a crime. This isdone by subjects in an effort to avoid
alerting law enforcement that a cell deviceassociated with them was in a particular area
where a crime is committed. Imean, I've come across this and it's
a bad fact, but it's notas bad except for there's twelve other times
that his phone did connect in thatarea. How do you plausibly if you

(28:56):
were working with Jimmy G and Ion this case and we have to go
to a jury and explain why juston this night his phone didn't connect,
Like what would be some plausible explanationsor even possibilities for the prosecution. Well,
the first thing comes to mind isa dead battery. I mean,
how many times have we gotten tothe point we've used our phone and then

(29:18):
all of a sudden the call gotdisconnected and we're thinking, what happened there?
My call got disconnected? You lookdown and your phone battery is dead.
You know, it doesn't just magicallycharge, But does the phone?
Does the phone record? Given thatit records everything when you charge it?
Is there a place on the phonethat tells you when you charge the phone,

(29:41):
like a record of when you chargethe phone? Yeah, exact,
they do. Now you have toconsider phones or sponges. They are sucking
in everything and there are so manydifferent you know, apps on there.
There's so many different controls, somany databases, and so much of that
that it does keep up with.Hey, he just connected the phone into
a power source. And this iswhere I was at thirteen percent, And

(30:03):
I'm going to now start charging,So it does do that. Now you
know again, you can also haveareas where, for whatever reason, even
though you've been in that same pathgoing you know, to back and forth
to working home, you can hita dead spot. There can be still
a dead spot that you didn't haveyesterday that it just I don't know what
happened. It just knocked me offline. Because we've all experienced that with phones.

(30:30):
So yeah, I got to tellyou did some mystery to me.
But more often than I think,more than my fair share, my phone
goes on airplane mode. And Ididn't even know I put it on airplane
mode. I mean, so youcan fat thumb it like that, right,
somebody? Absolutely? Because it doesn'tnot use an iPhone. I mean,
let's be really new to it.So you know, it's interesting because

(30:52):
way back in the day you lookat an iPhone and to find where airplane
mode was wasn't easy to find.So why is it more regularly available today?
I'll tell you why. It's TSA, it's going through the airport,
it's going to church. It's theydon't want to hear the phone ringing you're
in a theater, so they madeit more accessible. It's right, there

(31:14):
on the surface, and you're exactlyright, Jim g that you could put
that thing in airplane mode and noteven realize it. I've done it,
done it a lot, you know. Well, it's amazing. So you
what is it because you can swipeand then on an iPhone you can swipe
and then all the buttons are there. You can easily swipe and hit or
something like that. Well yeah,and with an Android phone, they even

(31:36):
have this setting that says, don'tremind me, so automatically you do the
swipe and it doesn't say, hey, are you really wanting to go in
airplane mode? It just puts youin airplane mode. Yeah. Got we
got Jim off of the off thatterrible phone service and over to iPhone.
Oh my god, he's living ina twenty per century now on SMS because

(31:56):
it goes green. It just Ican't stand it. So I like would
ask Jim to text me on WhatsApp, so thank god, But you know
I didn't. I've had an iPhonefor years and I didn't know really about
I mean, I was like,why do I need airplane mode? But
when you fly, you put yourphone on airplane mode so you can connect

(32:19):
through the wife of the you know, WiFi of the flight, the airline,
and then and also you know,I sometimes I'm doing media and I
give the phone to a producer totake pictures or something, and I don't
want my text messages coming in ormy client's private stuff popping up on my
phone, so I just put onairplane mode so they could use the camera.
I mean, there's there's like nonnefarious, legitimate reasons to put your

(32:43):
phone on airplane mode, but italso is a bad fact in your case.
If you can tell from a phonethat your client put it on airplane
mode before, you know, beforethe time of a crime that he's accused
of, instead of perhaps a burnerphone or not having a phone at all,
you know, it's probably the bestthat goes back into what we call

(33:07):
anti forensics, you know, whereyou're doing something out there in the technology
arena to avoid being detected, rightright right. I mean it's just so
hard. And that's why I askedyou about the battery is because anything you
remove, turn on, turn off, I put down the phone. I

(33:28):
mean that came up in Jim's casein Murdoch. You know, the movement
and the steps and all this Imean everything is recorded. I think that
you know, up until recently,I mean I learned these things as just
from my cases. You know,as time goes by, I keep learning
about new technology, new new things. But you know, there was a

(33:49):
time where it was just about whatyou put in the phone, you know,
what you keep in the phone,you know, and now it's like
you don't even know what's in yourphone, like every movement, you know.
You know, let's go back tothis this example in coburger where you
know, apparently his I mean we'reassuming he's driving the white Elantra. We're
assuming that he's got his phone withhim and it's not hitting the cell phone

(34:13):
tower. And you know, oneplausible explanation is the battery's dead. Now,
Sarah, you say, oh,well, the phone would show it.
But no, we don't have hisphone from that night or the next
day. I mean it was monthslater. And Jim, you tell us,
I mean if you if law enforcementever got that actual phone, but
you know, months later. Imean there's a lot of data that overwritten

(34:35):
very quickly, right, So thatdoes happen, Yes, you're exactly right.
Now, there's a process that USforensic technology people say it's called fi
phone. First in, first out. The databases are designed to only really
hold so much, and as soonas it starts to work its way down
the channels and become overwritten, it'sgone. The chance of recovery is very,

(34:59):
very very slim. Now maybe fragmented, maybe all broke up, and
all these little jigsaw puzzle pieces andyou're trying to put it back together and
guess what's missing. The time thatyou need, it's not going to be
there. So yeah, that doeshappen. But I've had the reverse happen
too. I've analyzed a phone thatwas six months old and it's still there.

(35:21):
So there's no like set rule,like like you know, if I
come to you with two clients,one has an Android, one has an
iPhone, and there's no set likeyou can't say to me, like for
example, you know when you talkabout social media platforms and subpoenas, you
know, my the gimp not asgood as you that I work with has

(35:44):
told me. You know, forexample, Snapchat holds the data on their
server for X amount of time,TikTok for x amount of time, this
one never goes away. Like there'sdifferent sort of set parameters but you're saying
there's no telling when that data canbe overwrit that's correct. And here's the
thing to remember about your apps.Where they say it's thirty days, ninety

(36:05):
days, one hundred and twenty daysor whatever. It really depends on what
version of the app you're using.When did Snapchat or WhatsApp or whatever.
When did they change their policies?You know we all know, like Facebook,
right, they're constantly changing their termsof services. You never know what's
there. It is truly a rollof the dice. You can send your

(36:29):
subpoena, you can look at yourphone and it may not have anything there.
I prep my attorneys to expect meto come back to you with nothing.
Get that expectation of getting nothing,so that maybe at the end of
the day I can surprise you.Now, now we didn't you know this
was a good point. We doknow that these third party providers, you
know that you sign up for Snapchat, but they're collecting your data and they're

(36:52):
holding your data offside in their servers. But you know what we're talking about
now is you know what is inthat little computer in your phone and how
long that that lives, and thatthat's that's a that's a random guess.
Oh truly, you know, youstood a better chance with a computer.

(37:13):
It had a bigger device in astorage and there was a much greater chance
for recovery. But you're talking abouteven these iPhones, the five hundred and
twelve gigabytes. I just did onethe other day where I had to image
it. It took nine hours tomake a forensic image of that. Even
though I have that much data,there's still a good chance it's not going
to be there. You know,Go ahead, Jim. You may have

(37:37):
followed some of the Murdock case,may not, but you know, I
made a big deal in my closingargument. It was a big deal in
the case that you know. MaggieMurdoch's phone was tossed to the side of
the road about a mile and ahalf down from the murder scene, and
when it was recovered, the phonewas recovered, the law enforcement did not

(37:57):
put the phone in the fair daybag. They left a little location services
going. They put it in airplanemode, but the location services were still
on and by the time they wereable to guide around to analyzing the phone,
the location from that day has beenoverwritten and it's the only location data
on the phone was the phones thatSLT and so you know we were deprived

(38:20):
of that. And so you know, that's sort of one example of where
the data on the phone just getsjust written over and tell us, you
know your experience, how to preserveforensically a cell phone and the crime scene.
What you're supposed to do, whatyou're not supposed to do, and
and what do you see the biggestmistakes law enforcement are making in that regard.
Well, you know, because cellphones are what we consider to be

(38:44):
alive and breathing, they're active.If that's on that phone is doing something,
either on the background or on theforeground, something is doing going on
with it. So you know,you do have to handle it different than
a computer. With the cell phone, the first thing I want to do
is put it not only an airplanemode. I want to turn off Wi
Fi and I want to turn offBluetooth, because those are the three deal

(39:04):
killers right there. Once I takethat precaution, I put it in a
Faraday bag. Now, the ideabehind a Faraday bag is that I don't
care what kind of you know,uh and ten of waves that are coming
to that phone. It's not goingto get to it's going to be blocked.
And that way, when I goto make my image, I know
it's as pure as when I pickedit up. So you have to do

(39:27):
that turning off airplane mode or turningit on airplane mode actually, and then
taking the Wi Fi, taking itout, and then taking Bluetooth and turning
it off, then putting it inthat faraday bag. Law enforcement seems to
pick it up, put it inairplane mode and then walk to their lab
with it. Yeah, that's whathappened in our case. Now and when

(39:51):
followed that case, learn as weall did that there's an enormous amount of
information stored in that little gadget inyour hand. And can you sort of
give our viewers and listeners a rundownof the type of data that your cell
phone is collecting about you every day? Yeah? Your health apps, I
mean they're massive in there. They'veeven expanded in the latest iPhone the size

(40:14):
that it can now store. Andthat health app has given you walking distance,
It's given you what we consider tobe the health of the phone,
the health of the battery, thenumber of apps that are running, the
number of apps that are in sleepmode, the versions of those apps because
they are The version of the appsby themselves play an important role because if

(40:37):
you're analyzing, say you've got aWhat's App seven and you know today it
may be fifteen. Well, thesettings aren't going to be the same,
the data collection may not be thesame. So you have to almost become
an encyclopedia of those apps to beable to determine what should I expect to
find. So you've got app data, You've got the health monitoring, You've

(40:59):
got the regular operating system that keepsthat phone going, that keeps it,
you know, running, what's versionof the operating system that's on there?
When was the last patch put onit? There is just a plethora of
different things that you have to consider. Can I jump in with a related
question, which is you're saying thatyou have to be like an encyclopedia of

(41:20):
all these different apps and updates,and I just wanted to ask you personally,
how do you keep up with allof this constantly changing technology so that
you can keep your you know,clients informed. I feel like we were
just talking about putting it into airplanemode on accident, but you need to
really know every part of every apphow do you even get that information?
Well, you know, because eachcase is individually focused on a particular app.

(41:45):
Let's take text messaging and let's saythat you are using Snapchat. I
want to see what the version ison the phone. Then where do I
go for my best source? Rightover to Snapchat I want to see most
of the time those apps will havesome kind of log as to what changed
over the different versions. Now Ican apply that knowledge to the database that

(42:06):
I can find on that phone.That's a great start right there, because
now I can say, you know, it wasn't saving my autolog on before,
but now it is, or thatI was deleting the message manually versus
automatically. Those different settings are goingto be found at the provider, the
developing company. So it's really youhave a case by case basis and then

(42:28):
you kind of work backwards from there. Yeah, and even make your head
hurt more about that. You cantake two iPhones identical. They can both
be iPhone fourteen's Promax's two hundred andfifty six gigs identically bought at the same
store. But there's something different aboutthem, and that's the user. You
see, every user uses their phonedifferently, some will update their apps,

(42:53):
some will never update their apps.Some set it for automatically. As soon
as I go in and and getWi Fi will automatically up at Those are
the things you have to learn fromthe phone, and sometimes talking to the
user can find out what he wasdoing. Now, Jim, you know
you do this daily and we allhave this picture in our mind of you

(43:13):
getting the phone itself if you're hiredby the defense, But that's really not
what you're getting, right, You'regetting the extraction, and can you explain
that process? Well, sometimes,Jim, sometimes I will ask, Hey,
let's go in front of the judgeand let's see if I can get
the phone and make my own image, because for whatever reason, I don't

(43:34):
like what law enforcements provided me.You know, you take one of the
main applications out there that we probablyall have heard about is that Celebrate and
they have the very expensive end andthen they have what they call the reader
edition, and the reader is basicallywhat the investigator at the law enforcement agency
put in for the reader to analyze. So you may actually come up short

(43:59):
if all you're doing is looking atthe reader version of it, because that
reader version is based on what thegovernment's investigator felt was important to the case
and get and often you get thumbnailsand you don't really even know what the
thing is, what the item is, or whatnot. You know, one
thing, jimp with respect a coupleof points that you made with respect to

(44:24):
this getting the device itself. I'vebeen able to get orders to get the
actual phone for the same exact reasonto have my own expert do the analysis
and the imaging. But almost always, I mean, I don't remember any
time where it hasn't been the case. We have to agree that the government

(44:45):
does its own imaging before that phoneis given to us, and that we
will not essentially contest the authenticity ofwe will stipulate to the authenticity of that
imaging at trial, because once theygive us the phone, it's no longer
you know, it's the chain ofcustody issue, right, it's no longer
with them. So you have toalmost always agree to that. When you

(45:07):
talk about the Faraday bag, whatis the how does that protect the data?
Can you explain what that is andhow it protects the data? Yeah,
it's got this like for the easydiscussion, it's got like a layer
of aluminum foil. If you willon the inside of this that prevents signal

(45:28):
from entering the bag. So thismesh that actually is on the layers of
the bag, once I put itin there, I can then roll the
top of it several times and itseals it. So it keeps that phone
from having any signal interruptions coming toit. Got it. So following up
on question that Jim asked you,you know, part of your expert work,

(45:52):
you also maybe you didn't answer thisin the greatest details. I'm sorry
if it's were done, Itt,but you evaluate how law enforcement has handled
the cell phone to preserve the integrityof the data. What are some of
the common mistakes that they make thatessentially, you know, we can cross

(46:14):
examine them on. You know,one of the great things is about time.
They'll get mixed up over UTC versusEastern Standard or Pacific or daylight savings,
you know, and that adjustment.You know, if you're looking at
the phone and you're inside the database, you have to know enough about those
column headings that may actually say thisis in UTC time. I have seen

(46:37):
before where they have built their entirecase on a timeline with the wrong factors.
And there were four hours off,five hours off, and they put
their PowerPoint up on the screen andall as we do is ask questions about
UTC and Eastern. Then you canalmost see the look on their face where
they realize they've made that much.Oh, I hate UTC. I hate

(46:57):
it comes up on when I tryto schedule things with the Jim and Matt,
you know, sometimes it comes upand I'm like, what the hell
is that? That's like a youknow, it says UTC and that has
like some weird location next to itor whatnot. Okay, so the time,
the time zone, what else?So the time zone is going to
be your most important thing. Butthen the other thing that you want to
be able to look at is thestring of the characters. For example,

(47:19):
let's say that we're talking about aphotograph. There's a mathematical calculation we call
hashing. It's not the stuff yousmoke. It's a mathematical formula that actually
will tell you if that picture matchesthe picture that's in the phone. That
gives you kind of a digital fingerprintthat what you're talking about, what you've
seen in that photograph as well asthe picture itself. Now that is different

(47:43):
than metadata, because metadata is typicallywhen the picture was created, what created
it, if it was the phoneor if it was passed on by a
different kind of camera, the flashsettings, and everything else. So metadata,
although it's important, hashing that informationis more important because that gives me
the reason to believe that this pictureis real. It can be matched up

(48:05):
inside the phone. So have yougotten photos that were that doesn't match to
the phone. I mean, there'san All you have to do is change
one of the pixels, just oneof those little bitty dots that you can't
really see with the naked eye.You have to kind of zoom in and
see that a white dot turned intoa red dot. You got a different
hash value, So you know,I mean that's a really good point.

(48:28):
I mean, you know, wegot digital photographs now, and they're so
easily manipulated, and people that justaccept that what they the photograph that they
see is is what the actual imagein real life was. But that's not
necessarily the case is very true.I had a case several years ago where
what they the individual did is tookscreenshots of their phone of text messaging that

(48:51):
they said came in from a partythreatening. Well, we got analyzing the
picture wasn't snapped, it wasn't screencaptured on the phone. It was created
on a computer. Wow. Andyou know when you start asking the judge,
hey, we think we want thecomputer because we want to look and
see a photo shop or something elseis on there that may have manipulated this

(49:15):
picture. Pretty soon that's the computerno longer exists, right, they're going
to tell you, oh, well, I got rid of that years ago.
It's no longer here. Yeah,And Jim, I've had and this
is more often than not, whenI've had victims and family members and and
there's there's sleds or has seized thephone, and you know, they'll turn

(49:36):
it on out there and and thenit will send a message, you know,
to to a family member and they'relike, and this this person dead,
like the victim's dead, and likeI just got a message from their
phone. How did that happen?And I mean, that does happen,
doesn't it? When? Oh,yeah, your road officers are probably the
worst of that, right, becausethey pick it up and they look at
it and they start scrolling. Theymay look at it and go, well,

(49:59):
wait a minute, here's a MAmessage. And as soon as they
fat fingered it and they hit thesind it's gone right, it's sent right,
or because maybe the phone didn't havegood signal. We've all had that
before, right, is that you'retrying to send an attachment by text message
and it says it's cute, andit's sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting
it maybe thirty minutes later, andall of a sudden the picture gets sent.

(50:20):
Well, how different law enforcement findsthat phone on the floor, he
picks it up. He's now reorientedthe phone to where now that picture goes,
Oh, I have good signal andit sends it right. There is
a This is a common lay personquestion because you mentioned subpoenas and then layers
of subpoenas and stuff. So obviouslywe're all talking about situations where you know,

(50:44):
somebody's accused of a crime, they'reindicted, and so we can't issue
subpoenas you know for this stuff.But like you know, sometimes in the
context of restraining orders, for example, somebody comes to you and says,
I just think, I know,you know, my ex husband was calling
me at five in the morning,and I know it's him, and but

(51:07):
there's no basis to is there anyway to get that information short of getting
the device to see the outgoing call, for example, So you can't s
Yeah, and that's a good pointbecause you know, you're lay person,
the person at home it's getting harassedor whatever, doesn't have subpoena power and
they don't necessarily go down, youknow, and hire an attorney because they've

(51:29):
got just you know, an xspouse or whatever the situation is. So
what do you do in those situations? You know, what I've done before,
I've recommended is that you send aletter of preservation. You know,
sometimes that doesn't get you very far. But the more most important thing is
to protect your phone because if you'rewe can also look at those phone calls

(51:52):
and see if it was a spoof, if it was something else that came
through by another source. You know, because I've designed applications before that I
can show you how to spoof aphone number. I can put in your
phone number and send it to justa number of different people, and unless
you preserve your phone on the recipientend, we may not have anything because

(52:15):
that individual may hear that there's aninvestigation about the launch, and what do
they do and get rid of thephone? Did Jim, can you can
you tell if it's a spoof numberfrom your phone like some a nice part
like you. Yeah, sometimes Ican, because what they'll do is especially
I don't use the text message standardapps. I use the ones that actually

(52:36):
give me a little bit more meatbehind it. So when you send it,
I can look in there and Ican say this came from an iPhone,
and it'll have what we call likea guid number, which is a
alphanumeric serial number digital serial number toit, and I can take that information.
A lot of times, I candissect it a little bit, and
I can say, oh, thiscame from Outlook, or this came from
a browser, or that this camefrom you know, some other element and

(53:00):
not necessarily a cell phone. Isee, I see. And what's a
spoof? A spoof? How doyou define that? So a spoof number
would be that I pretend to beyou and send out text messages, phone
calls, and on their phone screenit looks like you're making the phone call.
I can't believe. I can't believeyou don't know what a spoof?

(53:22):
Oh No, that's that's Matt knows, I guarantee you, Matt. Yeah,
I'm getting from the Arabian princes whoneeds me to send him three million
dollars? You know, criminal mindscriminal? Hey, Matt misspelled an under
case. Like it's so easy.I mean, they're like free applications.

(53:45):
You can go online and you spoofa number and then use it on your
phone and I can call you usingany number I want to choose. I
mean it's so easy. Well,but but Jim p is saying that essentially
someone's cloning your number. Yeah.Yeah, here's the rub to that.
The spoofed services charge you a fractionof a penny to send that text message.

(54:09):
So maybe think you know the individualspending fifteen twenty bucks every time they
want to spoof your phone number.No, it's pins, Well, how
do this company still exist my number? Hold on, Matt, this is
crazy. This is crazy to me. Someone can take my number and essentially
clone it right on their computer orwhatever and then start harassing that. Yes,

(54:34):
and that's what. Yeah, andit looks like it looks like you're
the one sending it, except itwon't show up as an iPhone message,
right, It'll show up as likesome other different way. Well, it
depends on what services you're using,you know, you ask the question,
well, what's the legal basis forallowing this service to exist? Think of

(54:54):
the time you go to your dentistand all of a sudden you get this
automated text message that said, asin three days your appointment is up.
Hit you know, enter one whateverexactly. That's that same that's the legitimate
service behind that. And like allthings out there, turns negatives. I
got a great idea, Matt.You go to one of these spoofing services,

(55:16):
put Sarah's number in, and thentext her picture of you in your
best bathing suit. Now he'll setit to you, He to you.
Yeah, you know, I'll sendit to both of you. All right,
I'll share the lot, all right. No, it's so easy to
do, Sarah, So easy todo. I was at a seminar once
and I guy demonstrated that I was. It was astonishing. But anyway,

(55:39):
so we we we we sort ofgot off track. But but Jim,
you know, one of the thingsthat we've been talking about here is cell
phone data cast and how to locateyou know, your clients at the crime
scene not at the crime scene.And and there are other sources of location
data, aren't there, like ownstar on a vehicle and other things.

(56:00):
Can you sort of walk through thatFor us, as we call that the
black box, right, is thatour vehicles are more intelligent than most computers
today. They contain a wealth ofinformation about your speed, about they're even
now starting to put in your location. They're putting in you know, how

(56:22):
fast the engine is turning, andhow fast it took for you to hit
the brake, and how much youknow you're speeding up, are you in
reverse or you've got to turn signalon all of this and they classify a
lot of it as diagnostic information,you know, just in case something goes
wrong with your car, the mechaniccan hook up a connector to it get
all that information out and see what'sgoing on. But now investigators have seen

(56:46):
that this is a huge resource.Beyond the tag readers that they have.
They can do that big dump ofthat black box and get all that information,
and most of the time and it'sin plain language. It's going to
tell you break was stopped, youknow, or the brakes were pumped,
or that the steering wheel was abruptlyturned to the left, or the right

(57:09):
went into park, the engine wasan idol, and what the idol speed
was and I'll give you a locationGPS data. Well yeah, but hold
on though, hold on, youknow, that just means the car was
there. It doesn't mean the personwas in the car. You still need
more, right, that's the sameargument you have with a phone, just
because you have data that says we'rea phone, absolutely, you know,

(57:31):
but that's what when you know,obviously we always deal with circumstantial evidence.
So that's just one piece of thepuzzle. But then, uh, you
know, when you go into astore and you've been there before and your
phone automatically connects to their WiFi,that that that that issue actually came up
in the Gilgo Beach case, theRex Hureman case, the guy from Long

(57:53):
Island who you know, is chargedwith serial killing of sex workers. They
fund his burner phones were connecting theburner phones that were calling the family members
and taunting them after the murders ofthese women were connecting to the Wi Fi
at his office in Manhattan where he'san architect. So like that's how that's

(58:14):
one of the the you know,pieces of evidence that they're they're using in
that case. So besides the car, the location services on the phone and
what Jim is saying on the car, I'm sorry, the on Star,
the location services on the phone,and the Wi Fi connectivity to an IP

(58:34):
address. Is there any other locationsyou know we talked about, you know
these Snapchat and all these other charges. Yeah, there's really kind of three
buckets. Whenever I get involved withthe case, I start with. The
cellular data is really the last ofit because it's not as pinpoint accurate as
getting GPS data. Right, Sothe tower maybe three to seveniles in this

(59:00):
diameter in this area. That's abig area. If you're downtown like Atlanta
or you're in LA that's a bigarea to cover. But if I can
get GPS, I'm going to zerointo maybe fifty sixty feet. Now I
can start building what we call geofencing, and I can be within three
feet depending on just how good mydata is. Where do we get the

(59:21):
geo fencing? A lot of timeswe'll get it from Google or you know
one of those big houses that's justtaking all your data and your phone is
it's talking to a router or aswitch or a motem at a house.
And now I can pin down sometimesto the room you're in within the house
by getting that geo fencing data puttogether, can you specific Oh yeah,

(59:45):
I want you to think about Let'ssay you walk into Walmart and all of
a sudden you get a text messageabout a blue light special in Walmart.
They know you just walked in exactly. It's the same unbelievable in a world
without crime at this point, likewhat, You're such an idiot, Like
we got everything, buddy, You'redone, and you know, you think

(01:00:07):
about it. Coburger. One ofthe first things that people were saying is
that he's a criminology PhD, Likehow could he not commit the perfect crime?
Like how could he not know notto use his own phone? But
again, it takes you back tothe Rex Yerman guy who was using burner
phones and even that was you know, uh, he used them to call
and then you know, they tracedit to his IP. It's absolutely incredible

(01:00:30):
to me. You know. Oneof the things I recently found out is
Jim was talking about the apps.I found out that Twitter, i think
before it became X was also recordingyour location and I shut that down.
When I found out, I askedmy friend Rosalie works for Chris Cuomo because
she knows all this stuff. Isaid, shut this down. Like the

(01:00:52):
last place I want people to knowwhere I'm at is on Twitter. Like
it's just pretty intrusive. I meanit those no mercies, right, it
doesn't care that you're inside of achurch. It doesn't care if you're in
the bathroom. I mean it's pickingit up right, selling somebody, and
somebody is storing it, and somebodyis selling that exactly, Jim, I

(01:01:13):
have a tech tech question about GPSon the phone and and and simply,
this is the phone getting the GPSreadings directly from a satellite because when I
go offshore in my boat, youknow, I get outside of cell phone
range and my my GPS on myphone's not working. My satellite on my
boat's working. But so is theresome interplay between towers and the GPS data

(01:01:37):
or is it just getting it straightfrom the sky. It's usually getting it
straight from the sky. Now interestingsatellites are a million miles away, and
yet it's got that accuracy. Andyou know, every time we record a
podcast comes up with Jimmy g hasa list of things that he's wanted to
know for like months and months.I'm just wondering why I'm paying all this

(01:02:01):
money for this navigation on this boatwhen I just taking my phone out there
exactly right, Well, you learnsomething. So I want to close off
with a very interesting case that youwere an expert in, Jim p.
You're an expert in the two thousandand four Kirby Smith murder case involving I
believe two defendants that went to trial. I'm sorry, where was that case?

(01:02:22):
It was in Columbus, Georgia.Okay, Georgia. There are a
lot of holes in that case basedon you know what I've read, including
missing service call and maintenance records relatedto the cell towers. And you testified
in that case as an expert explainto us what the prosecution cell data evidence
consisted of, what it was,why it was unreliable, and what was

(01:02:46):
the defense to the cell data essentially, and I guess it led to the
defending getting a new trial, right. Well, they actually the judge said
enough is enough and just tossed itall together, and it was it all
came down to we had these records, but we couldn't say that he was
talking or that there was talk goingto a specific tower at a specific time

(01:03:09):
because that tower was at full operations. There was nobody could say that it
just took it because the individual wasat another location and should have been talking
to a different tower, but endedup at this tower. We couldn't find
out why, and that's because wedidn't have those maintenance and service records.

(01:03:29):
And that was. Is that justa piece of what led to essentially the
conviction being set aside or yeah,it was. Another part of that was
and this was the case went cold, and then the cold case got involved
and they started looking at the datafrom the computer and they said that mister
Kirby must have been killed at acertain time period because he was chatting with

(01:03:54):
an individual and the chatting time hadstopped, and they behind that because it
stopped, he must have been killedat that particular moment, and that wasn't
the fact. We looked outside ofthe chatting and I found web browser history
that supported that he wasn't chatting,but it was very active on websites,

(01:04:16):
so the time of death wasn't evenaccurate. Wow, unbelievable. You are
wonderful. I think that you're youknow, the way that you've broken this
down for us, it's so understandableand valuable to our listeners and our viewers,
and I'm going to be bold enoughto invite you back on with Jimmy

(01:04:41):
G to talk to us about issuesthat are going to come up in some
of these high profile cases that arewithin your expertise. So I hope that
you join us again. Jah.Absolutely love to all right, thanks for
must you all. Just before welog off, I want to just tell
everybody, if you've never listened toan episode of our show before, welcome,
please subscribe. We're on all thepodcast platforms, are also on YouTube
at the presumption all the social mediahandles as well, So we love all

(01:05:05):
of our fans and hope to gaina few new followers as well. And
until next time, Sarah and Jimwe us