Crime Scene Investigators Developing Hypothesis on the Murder of a Young Man. Male Detective Suggesting Potential Mugging Gone Wrong. Policewoman Suggesting a Crime of Passion. They Check the Clues

Digital Forensics Success

Detectives from a small county in Virginia used SyncArena to help them solve a “whodunit” homicide in which they had no initial leads. SyncArena is an intuitive event visualization tool commonly used by law enforcement to analyze digital records quickly and reconstruct a visual story. Without a seasoned crime analyst at their office, the detectives used SyncArena to quickly visualize digital footprints, interpret evidence, help apprehend the suspect, and facilitate a successful prosecution.

When the detectives first got to the scene of the crime, they noticed that the victim did not have a phone. They decided to request exigent ping emails, timing advance records, and call detail records from victim cell phone carrier in case the device was stolen by the perpetrator. By the time the cell phone carrier returned the first ping email, the phone had been turned off and could no longer be tracked.

When the detectives first got to the scene of the crime, they noticed that the victim did not have a cell phone. They decided to request exigent ping emails, timing advance records, and call detail records from victim cell phone carrier in case the device was stolen by the perpetrator. By the time the cell phone carrier returned the first ping email, the cell phone had been turned off and could no longer be tracked.  

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I personally like that I can access my data myself and by doing so, I have been able to uncover other important information rather than if someone else was looking at it and did not know what to look for.

The timing advance records showed that the cell phone was communicating with cell towers for about 3 hours after the incident before being shut off.  Timing advance records are difficult to interpret engineering records which log the estimated distance from each tower that the device connects to.  The detectives drag and dropped the raw files into SyncArena and were immediately able to visualize each distance measurement on a timeline to visually triangulate where that device was located during the critical hours immediately after the homicide.

Within just a few minutes, the detectives could visualize exactly which roads were used to leave the scene of the crime and mark all the locations on the map where the device spent time.  The detectives knew exactly what time the suspect passed by businesses with security cameras and were able to identify the large white truck that the suspect was driving.   The detectives went to each business and determined that the suspect purchased gift cards at a gas station with the victim’s stolen credit cards and also accessed several ATM’s at other nearby locations.  The ATM security footage revealed a clean picture of the suspect’s face which was shown to the neighbors and the suspect was identified.

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The detective loaded the victims call detail records into SyncArena and analyzed the calls that were made after the suspect left the scene with the victim’s cell phone.

The analysis uncovered several persons of interest that ended up becoming cooperating witnesses and an antique store that was found to have surveillance video of the suspect attempting to sell the victim’s art and furniture that had not been known to be missing at the time.   

The detectives performed a controlled phone call to a mutual acquaintance with one of cooperating witnesses and the detectives identified the new phone that the suspect was using. Once the new phone number was developed, detectives requested exigent ping emails from the carrier and used SyncArena to visualize the suspect’s location history, track his real time position, and plan a tactical operation.  Within an hour after identifying his new phone number, they had the suspect in custody.

The detectives did a fantastic job of following the digital footprint left behind by the suspect.  SyncArena provided them an opportunity to quickly analyze complicated third-party data records to identify and apprehend the suspect without a dedicated crime analyst.  SyncArena was a critical tool at each stage of the investigation and even led to finding the murder weapon several weeks after a search of the county dump was unsuccessful.  Click here to find out how SyncArena can help you simplify your investigations and empower your detectives to solve crimes faster.

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