Digital Forensics In Real Life

This episode Aaron Sparling, a veteran of the Portland Police Bureau, discusses his work on the 2018 murder case of Daniel Brophy. Daniel was killed by his wife, Nancy Crampton-Brophy, at the Oregon Culinary Institute where he worked as an instructor. Nancy – who published an online essay called “How to Murder Your Husband” – left a trail of digital evidence in her browser history that Sparling was able to use to help prove her guilt and secure her conviction for homicide in May of 2022. This case involved a lot of digital evidence, from CCTV video footage to online searches for ghost guns, so with that let's hear from Aaron about this complex case.

Today's guest is Jim Cole, a retired Supervisory Special Agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). He shared the case of Daniel Harris—a disgraced former top gun Navy F-18 pilot who sextorted at least 70 child victims around the globe—live on stage at the Magnet User Summit in Nashville. This episode gets deep into the weeds of digital forensics in an extremely complex case. Jim speaks about best practices for working with digital cameras, some very creative forensic techniques that proved the defendant was perpetrating the crimes despite confusing claims of third party hacking, how he defended his case on the witness stand, and much more. 

The eBay Swindler is a fraud case, with tens of thousands of victims and millions of dollars in damages from a criminal using automated tools to rip people off at scale. This case involves man hunts in the real and digital worlds, a ton of digital evidence, and a pretty hilarious arrest. Our guest today is Keith Swanson, a digital forensic investigator with 22 years of experience in law enforcement and a long career in the private sector as both an adjunct professor teaching digital forensics and an incident response manager in the corporate world.

Larry McClain is back by popular demand. You may remember Larry from our first ever episode of DFIRL “Murder in St. Louis - The Remarkable Case of Pam Hupp”. Today, he's here to discuss his work on another tragic case, the murder of Dorothy Hall by her ex-boyfriend, Terry Culberson. What is interesting about this story is how well it demonstrates one of the biggest strengths that digital evidence has over other kinds of evidence; the ability to show what's in a criminal's mind. Whether a crime was intentional or accidental has a big impact on sentencing in our justice system, and Larry's investigation shows how well digital devices can help us understand a perpetrator's guilty mind.  

This is the case of baby Eloise, a story about a man found guilty of murder after violently abusing his girlfriend's 17-month old girl. Please be advised that there are horrific details provided about this case and listener discretion is advised.   This case shows the importance of interplay between digital gathering and old-school detective work. The lead detective establishes a timeline using classic interview techniques and the examiner finds digital evidence along with medical evidence that proves the suspect is lying. Some of our other cases involves more smoking gun digital evidence but this one is illustrating the increasing need for digital evidence to work along side other case details. This episode was recorded live at Magnet User Summit in Nashville Tennessee in April 2022.  In this case we get a different perspective as the prosecutor is joining us, Assistant District Attorney from Nashville Davidson County Jan Norman, alongside Chad Gish detective and forensic examiner form Nashville police Department. 

Part two of our two-part episode, the murder of Mary Yoder. Yoder was a chiropractor in Buffalo N.Y. who was poisoned by Colchicine, and our guest -- Tony Martino -- was the digital forensic investigator who worked through the case.   As a 20-year veteran of the Utica, N.Y., Police Department, Tony Martino is an expert in cybersecurity, computer crime investigation and digital forensics. He's a recipient of the Wallie Howard Jr. Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office. In this episode, we pick up where Part One left off: the first prosecution of the case ended in a hung jury, and the second trial was about to begin. But between cases Tony and his team found crucial digital evidence: a backup of the prime suspect's phone made before she had wiped key evidence from the device.

Part one of a two-part episode, with a case that involved so many truckloads of evidence we couldn't pack it all into one podcast. It involved two trials, three main suspects, and hours of forensic analysis by our guest and his team. This case is about the murder of Mary Yoder, a chiropractor in Buffalo N.Y. who was poisoned by Colchicine, a deadly substance that has agricultural and medical uses. Our guest today is Tony Martino, the forensic investigator who worked through the case.   As a 20-year veteran of the Utica, N.Y., Police Department, Anthony Martino is an expert in cybersecurity, computer crime investigation and digital forensics. A nine-year member of the United States Secret Service electronic crime task force, and co- founder of the Central New York Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, Martino received the Wallie Howard Jr. Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Bill Odom, Co-Founder of Orbital Data Consulting, tells the story of how his team used computer forensics to track down a missing 15 year-old who ran away from his family on a trip to Texas from Mexico. Learn how powerful tools and clever forensic techniques uncovered the truth about the missing boy.

Mitch Kajzer, Director of the Cyber Crimes Unit for the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney in St. Joseph County, Indiana, tells us about the case of Ann, a nine-year-old girl who was sexually abused by her teacher, Timothy James Wyllie. Mitch is an absolute force of nature; when everyone around him was doubting his ability to work on this case, his conviction – and his belief in Ann and her story – carried him through. Listen now to find out how the story unfolds.   The following podcast episode involves a case of child exploitation, the content and details of this case may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. 

Detective Doug Estes discusses the senseless murder of Laramie Cline, a 23-year-old woman who was killed by her then-boyfriend David Houston-Harvey between August 10th and 11th, 2017 in Colorado. This case shows how digital evidence can help investigators understand not just who committed a crime, but in what jurisdiction that crime happened.

Introducing Digital Forensics in Real Life, a brand new true crime podcast from Magnet Forensics about cases solved with the help of digital evidence.

Detective Chad Gish, a 22-year veteran of the Metro Nashville Police Department, tells the story of his crucial role in solving the tragic case of Tiffany Ferguson, a 22-year-old ICU nurse who was brutally murdered in her Nashville apartment on February 28th, 2017. The truth of this case is that a man with no home, job or cellphone service still produced a vast digital footprint for forensic examiners to explore. 

Detective Larry McClain tells the story of Pam Hupp, a complicated case out of St. Louis, Missouri, that involves at least two murders, three court trials, and as many twists and turns as a Hollywood movie. The real star of this case is digital evidence, as the data that Detective McClain was able to pull from Pam's cellphone was essential in uncovering the truth and bringing the killer to justice.