The University of Idaho Murders: A Conversation with Mark Pfoff on Sy Ray and the Phone Evidence

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[00:03:03] That's happymammoth.com and use the code MSHEAT for 15% off today. Content warning. This episode contains discussion of murder and violence. Cy Ray has been in the news a lot over the University of Idaho murders. He is an expert witness for Brian Koberger's defense team.

[00:03:22] A former law enforcement officer, he is the founder of ZX Corporation and has for many years testified, mostly on behalf of the state, in cases trying to help pinpoint the locations of things like mobile devices. But the accuracy of his process has come under scrutiny in a very public way, even as Ray has thrown out some pretty extraordinary allegations and claims in the Idaho case.

[00:03:44] Keep in mind, Ray is the man who the defense says could provide their client with at least a partial alibi for the night that Zanark Kurnodal, Ethan Shapin, Madison Mogan, and Kaylee Gonzalez were murdered. We wanted to get to the bottom of some of this criticism leveled against Ray. But there was a problem. Anya and I are frankly not technological experts. I majored in English and then went to law school and became an attorney.

[00:04:12] Anya majored in history and went on, as you know, to become a journalist. We are in no way science people or even technologically adept. It is a small miracle we can even work our mixer enough to make this show happen a few times a week. So we decided to seek out somebody who understands this technology. And the person we spoke to is also a prominent critic of Cy Ray. We reached out to Mark Poth.

[00:04:38] He started out as a computer engineer and then later became a detective with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office based out of Colorado Springs. Now, through his firm Rocky Mountain Computer Forensics, he consults with attorneys who need help with criminal cases. In court, he is qualified to speak on historical call detail records, cellular technology, digital forensics, computer forensics, and much more.

[00:05:03] We are going to hear from Mark about some of the really interesting cases he's worked on, why he switched from tech to law enforcement, and a lot more. In his recent conversation with Anya, he also offered his thoughts about Cy Ray's work and some of the mobile device related issues that have come up in the University of Idaho murders. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:05:30] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is The University of Idaho Murders, a conversation with Mark Poth on Cy Ray and the phone evidence.

[00:06:32] Awesome. Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. First of all, we really appreciate you taking the time. Glad to be here. So I guess to start off, can you tell our audience a bit about yourself and just take us through your whole career? Yeah. See, I'm actually kind of unique in my whole background of how I ended up in law enforcement and the consulting that I do now. So to go all the way back to when I was in college, I went to college for computer science.

[00:07:00] Then after college, I went to work for a large computer manufacturer. The only company bigger was IBM. I worked for them for many years as an engineer, software engineer, writing code, setting up main... Back then, it was all mainframes. We're all doing laptops and PCs now. But back then, they were big, huge computers that fit in large rooms. That was kind of my thing when I was young in my 20s is I hooked up those large mainframes.

[00:07:26] Then I did a lot of work for the government, setting up top secret systems and things like that. I worked, if you're familiar with Cheyenne Mountain, which is where NORAD was stationed, is our missile defense system was all in there. I worked on that for many years. So I worked predominantly for computer companies. I worked for some software development companies doing work for the government. Then I worked for a phone company, MCI, which is now part of Verizon Business.

[00:07:54] And then after about 20 years as a computer engineer, I wanted to get into law enforcement. So it was just really kind of a weird transition to go from a high-tech computer background to wanting to be a street cop. And I had actually been a reserve deputy sheriff in El Paso County, which is in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for about five years. So this is something that I was already starting to do for free.

[00:08:21] And I would go out on weekends and work patrol and things like that. And so they basically offered me and said, hey, if you ever want to go full-time, we know you're probably not willing to give up a nice computer job. But if you were, we'd love for you to come join us as a deputy. So I took them up on it. I was in a situation where I could financially afford that transition. So I became a deputy. I worked in the jail for eight months because everybody has to work in the jail for the county sheriffs first.

[00:08:50] And then I was transferred directly to investigations to work on computer crimes as a detective. And I told them, I said, look, I'm willing to do this. Not a fan of going back into computers because this is something I was actually trying to get away from. But I said, I'll do it if I'm a detective first. So during my 10 years as a detective with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, I worked on over 80 homicides during my career.

[00:09:15] Worked on numerous sex assault cases, kidnappings, robberies, all kinds of cases. But I was the computer guy. So whenever there was something that came up that required any technology or computers or anything like that, I'm the one who ran with that. They sent me to a bunch of training. It was different than when I was a computer engineer because this is a specialty of computer and cell phone forensics. So I got into that business.

[00:09:41] And then after about 10 years as a detective, I would say law enforcement is kind of a young man's sport. And I kind of got into it when I was a little bit older. So I decided to retire early and become a consultant. And then I really started focusing in on what's called call detail records, which is basically cell phone records.

[00:10:01] And I started working on that when I was a detective, but really started working on it a lot as a consultant, working predominantly for defense attorneys because they're the ones who would hire me. And we can talk about why prosecutors don't typically hire me. Very simply, I'm expensive. They can get people for free. The FBI works with them for free. Local agencies are free. So that's kind of my whole background.

[00:10:26] So I'm backwards from most of the people you will find in the FBI or in local law enforcement. Typically, they got their education in law enforcement. And then they transitioned into working with computers where I was a computer engineer for 20 years. And then I transitioned into law enforcement. So I have that foundation of technical expertise that a lot of the people in law enforcement don't have.

[00:10:53] And that's why my business for the last 10 years has been very successful. That's awesome. May I ask? And also, when you say big room-sized computers, I just think, I remember my parents had us watch that movie, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Yes. That's a computer, but I mean, it's developed so much. I'm just curious, what made you want to go from the computer science aspect of things to being a detective? Was that just always a dream of yours?

[00:11:21] You know, a lot of stuff, a lot of callings, and I call them callings, like individuals who want to become nurses, firemen, cops. It's something that has always interests them. I've always wanted to help people. I'm always like, when I see something, it's like, how could I help? And so that's something I always had in the back of my mind. But computer science, when I went through it, was like the top industry. It was very financially rewarding to be a computer engineer during the 80s and the 90s.

[00:11:51] That was the place to be. So I was there, but then I reached a situation where financially it didn't matter. So I was like, you know what? I want to take this opportunity. Like you said, it's always something that I wanted to do. I really just wanted to be a street cop, but they're the ones who kind of talked me into it. It's like, no, we need you in investigations. And then I have to tell you, it was a great move. That is probably one of the most rewarding things you can ever do is working on a homicide case. And now tell me a little bit about the shift to being a consultant.

[00:12:20] If you could tell me a little bit about Rocky Mountain computer forensics and what you guys do and sort of what sort of concepts you're working with. So I actually started the company about seven years before I retired. The sheriff's office allowed me to work on civil cases. There was a lot of civil cases that still required computer forensics. And that was the name of the game back then. That has since transitioned. Computer forensics is not the name of the game.

[00:12:45] It's cell phone forensics and cell phone records is really where it's at in GPS, Google Maps, and things like that. So I did all that for the sheriff's office. And then, like I said, it was kind of for me, I thought it was the right time to take early retirement and go work as a consultant. I always had that drive as well to run my own business. So I decided to do that. I had a buddy of mine, John St. Augustine, who is brilliant.

[00:13:16] I mean, he's worked on and he was hired by an commander of the nation. So, you know, we were just having lunch and talking and stuff. We'd been friends for years, even before I joined the sheriff's office full time. And we both said, you know what? I think I'd like to try transitioning to work more with the defense. Because one of the things that I've found is law enforcement has all these experts. You have the FBI that can help.

[00:13:42] In Colorado, there's a thing called CBI, which is Colorado Bureau of Investigations. Almost every state has either their state police or a bureau of investigations. And they help with experts in a lot of the computer stuff, DNA, you know, gunshot residue, all kinds of stuff. But the defense has nobody. They have very few experts. And they also don't have very many experts that are actually very highly credentialed.

[00:14:07] So, we thought that there might be a niche or a business to work predominantly for defense. But like I said, I've worked occasionally with prosecutors, more than happy to work with prosecutors. So, we started this company up just over 10 years ago. It took a little while because a lot of defense attorneys were hesitant to retain us because we're former cops.

[00:14:31] But then when they realized that our integrity was such that we were going to tell them exactly what they had. And they had nobody, really, especially with law enforcement background. And we were able to go through and read police reports and be able to say, wait a minute, something's wrong here. And so, very quickly, we build this niche. John and I, we've hired another individual, brought him on board in the consulting firm, who is just out of college. He just got a master's of criminal justice. Because he's our Celebrite guy.

[00:15:01] And I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit coming up. But he's the one who does all of our cell phone forensics. John and I are so busy testifying in cases. I just testified last week in Denver. The week before that, I flew up to Anchorage to testify in federal court. So, we're going around and working on all these cases. And we definitely have found there's a niche for prior law enforcement with computer. John's a double E. He's an electrical engineer by education.

[00:15:31] He got into law enforcement. So, we both have that technical background. But yet, we ended up in law enforcement. So, it's just been very rewarding. And at this point, I'm probably working on 30 different cases right now. And I've actually had to stop taking new cases. And I have attorneys call me up. One called me today and begged me to take a case. And I ended up taking it because it appears the cops didn't follow the Constitution.

[00:15:59] So, he wanted me to help with some of the technical aspects of searching this cell phone. That's huge. And as you said, I mean, there is such a power of the state to kind of throw everything at a defendant. And, you know, defense attorneys don't necessarily always have the resources or, you know, the ability to find people who can mount a defense, essentially, or an effective defense.

[00:16:21] And I'm just curious, before we go further, what sort of things are you able to do for these defendants and these defense attorneys? Like, what can you tell them with looking at the cell phone technology, looking at the technology in general? Like, how can you typically help them? So, there's two aspects to a cell phone. And really, right now in our industry or in our business, whatever, in judicial system, whatever you want to call it, cell phones are the name of the game.

[00:16:51] Now, Google is becoming the name of the game and they're trying to get out of it. So, remind me, and we'll talk about Google. They're implementing something to try to get out of the game. So, you have this physical cell phone and there's gigs of data on that cell phone, just like a computer. So, you actually have the physical data on the cell phone. Then you have what we refer to as call detail records, cell phone records.

[00:17:16] They've been around back when I worked for MCI that was mainly landlines. There's always been call detail records. That's how you paid your long distance bill. So, every phone company back in the 60s and 70s, they kept something that they called call detail records. How long, you know, you made a phone call. How long did you talk long distance? How much do you owe us for that long distance call? So, when cell phone companies came around, they did exactly the same thing.

[00:17:46] They're called call detail records. So, it tells you who you called and how long you talked to. Because in the old days, you could pay a buck a minute to use cellular network. Now, we know now all the infrastructure is up. All the towers are up. It's all basically, you know, you pay so much per month, you get all the minutes you want. But they still have that system in place that allows for billing to track every phone call you make, every text message you send or receive.

[00:18:12] And now, even with the data packages that you send because people are using data on their cell phones. So, incorporated in the call detail records is what tower did you hit? What sector or what antenna? Most towers have numerous, multiple antennas on the towers. They'll even tell you which antenna you used and which direction it's pointing. Now, they refer to it as azimuth, which is more of a space kind of term.

[00:18:41] But it's basically just which direction it's facing. Due north would be zero and then all the way back around to 360. So, 90 degrees would be dead east. 180 would be south. 270 would be west. So, when you see the azimuth or the direction, you can tell which direction the antenna was facing. So, as you can imagine, as crime is going on and people are wearing or having cell phones on their bodies, law enforcement learned pretty quick.

[00:19:10] Let me get my hands on these cell phone records and I'll go look on the records around the time of the murder and see if they were using a tower and an antenna facing towards the crime scene. And so, it helped assist a lot of these investigations. So, that's kind of where it's progressed. But also, with the cell phones physically themselves, you'll be amazed how many people will take pictures of the body after they kill it, you know, after they kill the person.

[00:19:40] They'll take a picture of it and then it's on their phone, which is a pretty good clue that they're probably the ones who committed the homicide. Text messages. I'm going to come over there and kill you. And then that person ends up dead 30 minutes later. So, you'd be amazed the wealth of information. So, what it is that I typically do is law enforcement will write a report. They call it a report. Some are good. Some are not so good.

[00:20:03] And they'll use this information that they have and they'll put it out there in this report, which when you first read maybe the PC affidavit for arrest for this individual, it'll look pretty damning. It'll be like, hey, we looked at the call detail records and at the time of the murder or the shooting, they were at the location based on their call or consistent with being at the location of the homicide.

[00:20:30] And then the defense attorneys will ask me, can you go look at that data and tell me what you think? And I hate to say it, but law enforcement typically overstates the preciseness of what you get with call detail records. A cell tower antenna can go for miles. In town, it could go two or three miles typically. Out of town, it can go up to 25, 30 miles. Some of the ones out in the middle of nowhere, big towers, big power, as I always say.

[00:21:00] So they tend to overstate. So normally I can go in there and say, look, all they can say that they were in the general area. So you better go find some other evidence to make your case. So I get to tell defense attorneys based on the technology, whether the government's accusations are as precise or as accurate as they say they are. I've had cases that I've looked into, wrote a report. I'm talking a homicide.

[00:21:27] And then after I write a report saying, wait a minute, the records don't back this up. They've actually dropped the charges on murder cases. So a lot of the cases that I do look into and review, the evidence is somewhat overwhelming to include the call detail records and maybe a data extraction from their cell phone. But some percentage, maybe 5%, 10%, it's like, wait a minute, there's some issues here. So I help defense attorneys make wise decisions because understand this.

[00:21:56] I still teach at the college for individuals that want to become cops. And I always tell them, first day of class, I said, what's the goal of a prosecutor, of a district attorney? What's their goal? And it's funny because a lot of students will say to get convictions, put people in jail. And I'm like, no, the only goal of a district attorney is to get to the truth. That's their goal. What is the truth? What really happened?

[00:22:27] So when you understand that, you understand how you deal with district attorneys. So what's the goal of a defense attorney? And they're like, get their client off. And I'm like, no, that's not their job or not their goal. And ultimately, they never get the second one. They might get the first one, but I've yet to get a student that's ever given me the right answer for what is the primary goal of a defense attorney? And it is to get the best outcome for their client. That's it.

[00:22:56] For some clients, it may be that they're not put to death. That may be the best outcome you can get is that you're in a state that still has a death penalty. And when it's all said and done, he gets life without parole. I kept my client alive. In other cases, it's a not guilty or they drop the charges or it's a good outcome. You know, maybe they were charged with three felonies and you get it cut down to one misdemeanor.

[00:23:22] So I get to help a defense attorney understand what they have. Is the case good case, bad case? Should you be looking for a deal? I help with that scenario, but it's their decision and obviously the client's decision on what they do. So I inform from a technology standpoint and from police procedures, because I was a detective for 10 years, on what kind of case they have.

[00:23:48] So to give kind of a silly example, if there's a heist at my local Costco and my phone, you can't necessarily say that I am in the Costco doing the heist based on my call detail records. But you can say that my call detail records are consistent with me being in that area.

[00:24:07] But I could, if I say, well, I was actually next door at Sam's Club, not doing a heist, you know, you can't really narrow it down too much, but you can basically have it be a piece of the puzzle. Correct. And unfortunately, law enforcement typically tries to overstate the preciseness. You know, they'll say, like you said, they use that word consistent, consistent with them being at the homicide or the crime scene. And it's like, well, did you do a driving test?

[00:24:36] And that's another aspect of something they can do. They can actually drive around with specialized equipment. The FBI has this and they can see where the call sectors are all laid out and everything. And so they could tell you kind of where you could have been in that location, depending on the cell sector size. But there's other ways to get it more accurate. There's more information. I've just given you the tip of the iceberg. Absolutely.

[00:25:00] Yeah, I feel like I've seen a movie or something where people have been driving around with like a, you know, something trying to get a call or something. So is that what that's like? Well, the FBI has specialized pieces of equipment where they'll put antennas on the roof of their car and they'll drive around and figure out at this particular location, which antenna would I use at this point? And they keep driving around and then they get all these data points.

[00:25:24] And so they can kind of plot out at that given date and time where that cell sector is. They also have another thing. You've probably heard the term stingray or trigger fish or something where they can actually track a cell phone to its location. So they actually have other specialized equipment. I've actually been shown this equipment by the Secret Service. And it's usually in a truck. Everyone thinks it's in a van. It's actually in a truck, the one I saw.

[00:25:51] And what they do is, depending on your service carrier provider, like T-Mobile, AT&T, or Verizon, they'll lock in. This is kind of interesting. They lock into the network. So they appear to be a tower, a moving tower inside like the Verizon network, but they won't accept calls. So then they drive around until they hit the phone that they're targeting.

[00:26:16] And then based on that, they have equipment that can tell them what direction the actual phone's in. So with this equipment, they can actually, the federal government can actually track you down. If you're sitting at your house or sitting at your neighbor's house, they could use this specialized equipment and pull right up to the house and they know you're in there or your cell phone is. So that's kind of cool too. And they've done that for us. We had a suspect in a homicide that was driving to Las Vegas. So we told the FBI, hey, they're heading to your town, to Vegas.

[00:26:46] And so they were ready for them. They knew exactly they were coming down I-15. As soon as they drove by, they knew which vehicle it was and pulled them over because they had this cool equipment. What typically is it possible to get that level of specificity or is it typically much broader? You can't. So that's a live ping. You'll hear this term talking about live pings. That's when they're pinging your phone to find out and they triangulate it.

[00:27:12] Understand that live pings are still not GPS because it's not in the protocol for them to get your GPS location unless you call 911. So they do triangulation. And all the service providers do it. They all triangulate your location. They do this thing called timing advance. That's a term that's pretty popular right now. It used to be per call measurement data was like the original. This is like jacuzzi versus hot tub kind of thing. So everybody has hot tubs, but one person calls it a jacuzzi.

[00:27:42] So what you had originally is Verizon called it RTT. AT&T called it Nilos. And T-Mobile called it Truecall. And so they all had their own names for basically what was kind of the same technology, which is triangulating or getting the distance of the cell phone from the towers. And they still do it. AT&T, I think, has really mastered the game, if you want to call it that. But all of them now have timing advance.

[00:28:11] AT&T even, they used to never publish timing advance, which is just the distance, the possible distance, estimated distance of the mobile device from the antenna. They've only recently released that information. Before that, you had to ask for Nilos, which was just a location. And I have to tell you, from my experience, Nilos' error rate is pretty high. But if you understand the business, Verizon T-Mobile and AT&T are all trying to design the best network they can.

[00:28:41] This software was written with that in mind. It's for capacity planning and network designing. It was not designed to track down a single cell phone. So the government is trying to use software not designed to track single phones to track single phones. So you can see where the government wants it to be very precise. AT&T doesn't care. They just want to know which sector you're in so they can do capacity planning. That makes a lot of sense.

[00:29:10] So it becomes a lot less specific and a lot more broad. And it's something that could be helpful. Is this a fair example just for the lay people? It's like if I say, oh, I saw the killer and it was a white person, a white man. And then maybe that narrows it down a little bit or maybe not so much depending on the area. And it could point to somebody being like, well, this person fits the witness description.

[00:29:38] But it's not specific enough to say it's this one guy. Is that kind of like it? That is true. Another aspect that I haven't even brought up is the government also does what's referred to as tower dumps. And I guarantee you in high-profile homicides and a lot of the homicides now, they'll go to all three vendors and say, here, I'm going to give you an address, a location. Maybe it's a GPS location.

[00:30:03] I want you to tell me every tower that could provide coverage for that house because it's usually more than one tower. It's usually two or three. And then I want you to tell me every cell phone that used that tower between 1 and 2 a.m. And normally you have to narrow it down more than that. They're like, wait a minute, that's just too much data. How about between 1 and 115 or something? And they'll do that for all three vendors. And then they'll get a list of a whole bunch of cell phones.

[00:30:32] And then they'll put that aside. Because let's talk about just briefly to bring up the Idaho murders, just to bring it up. They had a very high-profile quadruple homicide or whatever. And they knew this was obviously very serious. I guarantee you the government did tower dumps around that house. I guarantee it. It wasn't going to help them solve the case right away. But you put that information to the side.

[00:31:00] Then when you build a suspect, then you can see, did they use that tower? Can we put them in the tower that is consistent with, using the government's terms, with somebody in that general area of that house? So that's another avenue that they have. Google, a lot of people have their location services turned on and their cell phone. And they use Google Maps. If you do that, it's tracking you all the time. That data is being sent to their server.

[00:31:30] And they're keeping that for a long period of time. I was telling you that Google wants to get out of this business. In the spring or in the summer of this year, they're transitioning all that data to not be on their servers, but to be on your cell phone itself. So they're going to use your local data as opposed to their server data. And the reason they're doing this is because Google is actually getting almost as many subpoenas as all three cell phone service providers.

[00:31:57] The government is almost always in cases now saying, let's do a thing called a geofence, send it to Google, and they can tell you who was inside that fence. It's like a virtual fence. Great example. I mean, I hate to bring this up. January 6th, the big trespass. I say this because it's the safest thing to say. When a few people trespassed in the Capitol building, they used Google locations with a geofence around the Capitol.

[00:32:27] And they pretty quick could just start building a list of who was inside the Capitol at that date and time. They can do this on cases now, but Google wants to get out of this business. They don't want to get subpoenaed. It's costing them money. So they're going to put all the data back on the cell phones in the next year or so. Will that hinder the government's efforts to investigate crimes or will that just make them go for the person's phone? It'll hinder them.

[00:32:51] Because when Google has all this data in one central repository, they can put up like this geofence and then say, tell me all the cell phones that were inside that fence. I'm not sure they're going to be able to do that a year from now. Wow. It's pretty big news. Oh, it is to them. It's huge for them because they use geofences. The federal government uses geofencing all the time.

[00:33:19] Is the Google data typically more accurate per se? Like can it maybe more put me in a house versus just in a general area of town? Yes, because it's GPS. Okay. So that's pretty accurate. GPS, if you do the specs on GPS, it's within meters. So it can put you within feet. CDRs called detail records can put you maybe in a square mile or a half a mile. That's it.

[00:33:49] GPS could put you in a house. Okay. Wow. So that's where Google comes in. Is there anything else with Google that people should know when we're talking about what people are looking at with investigations? Well, understand that Google's keeping boatloads of your personal information. They all are. I mean, AT&T, I guarantee you know how you click very quickly on the terms and conditions or whatever. You just click on it and you get the new download of iOS or whatever or with T-Mobile and AT&T.

[00:34:18] I guarantee you there's stuff in there that if you actually read it, you'd be like, wait a minute. Here it says that they could actually get my location and store it or other things like that. So they're all getting your personal data. It's just how much. Google has pretty much mastered the situation, but now they've been kind of caught. So they want to kind of get out of it because it's costing them money to do, to service all these warrants. You know, the government's making such a big deal about TikTok, about, you know, they wanted to ban it.

[00:34:48] Then they realized everybody like cocaine is hooked on it. So we got to fix this. You are giving up so much personal information on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Just go down the line. The problem with TikTok is we're giving it to a foreign country. So that's why they're trying to resolve that issue. We are, by our own signatures or our own will, we are giving this information away. And like you were saying, other stuff in Google.

[00:35:17] I'm sure Google, I mean, just as simply as when we're talking about cookies. When you're surfing the internet on a laptop, they're tracking all this stuff of what you want. I mean, people have said things like, you know, I can be driving down a car and talk to this buddy that I'd like to buy a boat. And then the next time I get on my phone, I start getting ads for boats. And it's like, all I did was talk. Is Siri, is Siri actually listening to me?

[00:35:44] And so I would tell you there's a lot more going on with technology than people understand. Well, that has happened to me so many times where Kevin and I have been talking about something completely, completely random. And then suddenly Facebook ads all about it. And you're just like. You've got to wonder what's going on. Your privacy. When you step outside. I haven't even gone into other technologies like LPR, license plate readers.

[00:36:11] There's a thing called Flock, which actually is tracking pretty much every car driving through town. So when you commit a homicide in Denver, Colorado, there's a Flock system. And if they know approximately when and where and what kind of car you're driving, they just turn it on the Flock system. And it'll start telling you every intersection you hit with a Flock camera. And it'll get your license plate. You can just give it a description of the car. And so there's just so much technology. Shot spotter.

[00:36:40] It'll tell you when someone squeezes off a shot in town. Now, understand there's issues with all of these technologies that I'm typically brought in on. Shot spotter has a huge error rate. I mean, so to be able to bring that up in court is really probably not a good idea. And then, you know, but they have these cameras. You have no expectation of privacy once you walk out of your house. Gosh.

[00:37:05] And yeah, as you said, they may not be something that can seal your fate in court, but they can be something that points people in your direction. And then maybe at that point, there's enough evidence that they don't need it anymore. Correct. And innocent people do get caught up in this stuff. I'll give you an interesting example. 9-11. You know, the Twin Towers go down. A very bad event. There were some individuals that were not killed in the Twin Towers that should have been.

[00:37:32] The reason being is because they were actually at their girlfriend's house instead of at the office. So they were saved because they were having affairs. So there's people who might go to, let's say, a hotel and they get caught up in a geofence. Let's say there's a shooting at this hotel. They had nothing to do with anything. They were just doing something they don't really want people to know about. Don't want people to know I was at that hotel and who I was with. So all of a sudden, the government does a geofence and they get all these cell phone numbers.

[00:38:00] And all of a sudden, they show up at your house and say, oh, no, we've got you inside a geofence at this hotel. And all of a sudden, the wife's sitting right there. And she realized, yeah, he didn't commit a homicide, but I'm about to. So there's problems with technology where innocent people can be caught up into the government, you know, kind of trespassing a little bit on your privacy.

[00:38:24] One thing we talked about was just how law enforcement in some cases can really overstate the specificity of some of this evidence. Are there other typical issues that you see when you're looking at what law enforcement's work on on this technology is and how they're putting it forward and things like affidavits? Well, the one thing that pops to my mind, because it's current events, it's some cases that I'm working on right now, is overbroad search warrants for cell phones. Cell phones are not cell phones.

[00:38:52] In fact, the industry doesn't even call them cell phones. They call them mobile devices. They just happen to be able to make phone calls. That's one of the many things they can do. Here in Colorado, there was a case called Colorado v. Cook, actually a case I worked on. And when they determined that there was some potential illegal behavior by this individual, they asked for a search warrant for the cell phone and searched the entire cell phone for everything. Well, in a house, you couldn't do that.

[00:39:21] Let's say that I wanted to search a house and I'm looking for a stolen car. Well, I'm probably going to look in the garage. I don't need to look in the house. I'm going to look in the garage for the stolen car. Let's say that I'm looking for illicit drugs. Now, that does allow me to go through the house, but I very specifically stated that I'm looking for drugs because that's my crime that I'm investigating. So when they come to cell phones, though, law enforcement just wants to be able to look through the entire phone.

[00:39:47] Well, if you're looking for text messages, why do you get to need to look at the pictures? That might have some interesting pictures of the individual whose phone it is. There's a huge embarrassment factor. So in the state of Colorado now, since that case that was decided on by the state Supreme Court, you have to be very specific in your warrants as to what category of evidence do I want off that cell phone.

[00:40:12] And you have to articulate in what they refer to as the four corners of the warrant as to why that will help you further your investigation and is there probable cause to get this information. So here, you can't just get contact lists or the call logs or text messages or images or the calendar or what you have to specifically say. And we've had a lot of cases where the cops are ignoring this.

[00:40:38] I had an individual about six to eight months ago say on the stand, I just downloaded everything. But wait a minute. The judge authorized these categories. I don't care what the judge says. I download everything. And this is going on in a lot of law enforcement. I just got back from Alaska where we had this conversation in federal court where we're talking about just because you have a search warrant on a cell phone doesn't mean you can do anything to it and look at everything.

[00:41:05] So this is currently in the ring right now. If you want to talk about something that is being argued in court nationwide right now, a few years back, they were arguing, do you need a search warrant to look through a cell phone? And that was easily resolved by the federal, you know, the Supreme Court who said, yes, of course you need a search warrant to go through a cell phone. But now they're bringing it down to the level of just because you get to get into the house, the cell phone, do you get to look at everything?

[00:41:33] And the cops are being told by the judges, no, here's what I'm giving you authorization to do. And they're downloading everything. And they're basically saying, I don't care what the judge said. So we're having these discussions now in court as well. So that's kind of the big hot thing right now. With call detail records, it's a whole different if you want me to kind of transition into that, if that's appropriate. They bring their own kind of unique recipe to the table. So there's different things that you can get.

[00:42:03] You can ask for just call detail records, which is the purest of the pure. You can't really question. I've only seen probably, I've reviewed millions of call detail records. I've probably seen 10, maybe 20 just bad records. Understand that the database that makes up the location of the towers and the antennas at some point has to be entered in by a human. When they put a new tower up, somebody enters that data into the database.

[00:42:32] What if they mess it up? So there still is that human factor. So very rarely you might just find a record that's bad. And also you're logging this and there has to be, I used to be a computer programmer. There's always timeouts. You got to always have a timeout. If I've spent a second, which is a long time in computer land on something, it may timeout.

[00:42:54] So sometimes when you're writing a log, something may happen, a glitch, and you don't get a full record or you might get a bad record or stuff. So you got to understand what CDRs call detail records. Some, a very few can be wrong, but they are a physical connection. You on this cell phone with this cell phone number, you used this antenna on this date and time. You can't really argue that.

[00:43:22] Now you can argue and understand that cell towers are line of sight. So if you can see a tower that's farther away, you have a pretty good chance of using that tower, even though there's a closer tower because you have line of sight. You have a better radio frequency transmission to that tower. So sometimes, and the government forgets this, they know it, but they don't want to say anything. You could be using a tower that's actually farther away, three, four, five miles away.

[00:43:49] And all of a sudden, they're putting you in a report saying, oh, no, no, you got to be within a half a mile of this tower. And that's just not true. But it's still your best data for coming up. Like, was he in Chicago? Was he on the south side of Chicago? He was not in Detroit. So it's great evidence for exculpatory for showing that, look, you know, his cell phone was on his person and he's in Chicago. The murder was in Grand Rapids or whatever. So that's a great thing for cell phone records.

[00:44:19] But when cops or law enforcement try to say it's consistent with them being at the shooting, that's just fantasy land. That's overstating what you can get from that. Now, the cell phones, this is where it gets interesting. Cell phone companies, so their networks are better. There's a real advantage to know approximately how far away you are from the tower.

[00:44:42] One of the reasons why cell phone batteries last so much longer now than they used to is based on the distance that you are from the tower, you will actually send out less power. You'll waste. It's kind of like if I'm 10, 20 miles away from a tower, that's why when you're out in the middle of nowhere and it's like, man, my battery is draining big time out here. It's because you're really far away from towers.

[00:45:06] And so you've got to put a lot of juice out to reach those towers just to communicate, not even do a phone call. When you're in town on 5G towers and stuff, you may be 100, 200, 300 yards away from a tower, so it can put out a lot less power. So there's an advantage to know how far away you are from that antenna. So they track this and they triangulate and they do all kinds of cool stuff. That's where you get the timing advance. And there's a reason they call it timing.

[00:45:35] Radio waves, radio frequencies that we use for cell phones, they're basically nothing but walkie talkies. They're just real smart walkie talkies. It travels at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second. I mean, that's how fast it travels. So I can do the math. It's just really small math. It's going to be point and a lot of zeros and a very small number.

[00:45:59] But if I can calculate how long it takes me to send a message to your cell phone and back, divide by two, do my speed of light calculation, I know approximately how far away you are from the tower. That's timing advance. That's how it works. It's not precise. It's an estimate. The FBI, I've heard them say this in court, their cast members, that the phone has to be inside the arc because nothing travels faster than the speed of light.

[00:46:28] They are absolutely wrong. And I can prove, I'm not saying that anything's faster than the speed of light. I've worked on cases where I knew individuals were at a certain location, a bar. I know they were at this bar for an hour. I got video of them at the bar. I got eyewitnesses saying they're at the bar. They're at the bar. And I have arcs where it's shorter than the distance to the bar. So I know what the FBI cast members, cast stands for cellular analysis survey team.

[00:46:57] It's their experts in cell phone stuff. They're wrong. They're just straight up wrong and they can be proved wrong. And I have an actual test and I can show them that they're wrong in what they're saying in court. And I've heard them say it. So it's just an estimate. They're going to be, it's a ballpark figure, but it's a little more accurate than true just call detail records. Another interesting point is they show this arc and how far away they are. They could actually be behind the tower, behind the antenna, which is kind of interesting.

[00:47:27] And they don't always put that into play. So they show it out in front of the antenna when the person could have actually been behind the antenna. Because what can happen is antennas are typically pretty high up and then they're shooting at a down angle. Down tilt is what we call it. But if you're right underneath the antenna, it's shooting way out here in front of you. So an antenna behind you could actually be giving you your service.

[00:47:52] So even when they talk about, oh, you're a thousand yards away from the antenna, it's possible you're behind or beside the antenna. So again, the government tries to overplay all this stuff. And it takes someone like me to come in who's not biased. And to kind of bring this up, I don't know if you're interested or not. Government experts are biased. They can't help themselves. They're absolutely biased in their analysis.

[00:48:17] So if you have an FBI agent whose job is to support criminal investigations, they're looking for guilt. They're looking for evidence of guilt. I am an independent expert. I don't work for anybody. I'm paid by whoever hires me. So I will give you an unbiased analysis of what the data actually shows.

[00:48:39] I've actually seen in the FBI, local law enforcement, multiple federal agencies where they leave records out that don't meet their narrative. And that's just not right. Yeah, that seems inherently problematic. I mean, for everyone who's listening who thinks, well, maybe defense experts can be biased too.

[00:49:01] You know, if you basically find in your report basically, okay, this is all bad news for your client. Bad facts. Bad facts. That's what you're bringing to them, right? Yes. I won't sugarcoat it. I will tell them straight up, you have a bad case. And the call detail records or the cell phone extractions supports exactly what they're saying. The cops wrote great reports. They did a great investigation.

[00:49:30] They worked every lead that I see that came from this case. And I just don't see how the technology-based evidence can help your case. And you're definitely not going to put me on the stand. No, that would be a bad idea. That would be a bad move because guess what? I'm going to tell the truth. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. In your view, does CAS tender, FBI's CAS team, do they tend to be pretty good at their jobs?

[00:49:56] It sounds like certainly in your view, they're capable of making some pretty big errors. But what's your overall assessment of their performance? So when you're talking about government law enforcement agents who specialize in cell phone forensics or cell phone or call detail records, the CAS team is without a doubt the best. You know, I talk about the stuff that they leave out and stuff.

[00:50:20] I would much rather look at an FBI or CAS member because ATF and stuff has CAS members as well. I'd much rather look at their stuff than typically local law enforcement because they're going to be more square. But I've still learned over the years, having done this for 10 years now as a consultant, they still can't help themselves by sometimes leaving stuff out that is relevant. But when you talk about their expertise, knowledge, and skills, there's nobody better.

[00:50:50] But that's still like that one thing I was telling you about with timing advance. It still doesn't mean they can't be wrong. And I'm amazed that right now, the FBI who drives the CAS team, they and their training, and their training probably between 50 and 100 law enforcement agents a week, are telling them that when you see this timing advance arc, the mobile device has to be inside that arc. They're dead wrong.

[00:51:16] And I've been waiting, but I have to wait, almost like the Supreme Court, I have to wait for a case to come up to where I can bring in my evidence and show them, look, you know, I know they're at this bar, and I've been saving this material. It's from an old case. I know they're at the bar, and there's arcs that are short, way short, like 1,000 yards short. So I know that timing advance records, you can be outside the arc, and they're not precise.

[00:51:44] And the problem is, is that, see, law enforcement likes a little package with a nice bow on top. They like everything neatly wrapped up and saying he's guilty. Sometimes cases aren't going to be in a box wrapped up with a bow on top. They need to go in there and say, look, here's some information. Here's all the information. I'm not going to taint it or, you know, try to sway you or unduly influence the jury.

[00:52:14] You decide whether you think this is relevant, but here's some records that, you know, are a little problematic. And let me explain to you that they are, you know, they could be erroneous errors or whatever, but that's the data. So I do like the FBI cast team. They tend to have this God syndrome, and I hate to even bring this up. I've run across a lot of FBI agents, and they're bred like fighter pilots that they think they're the best of the best, you know, top gun kind of stuff.

[00:52:43] And so here's this huge arrogance that comes along with being a federal agent. What they don't understand is, is that local law enforcement, like a town of Denver, their local law enforcement will do more work in a month when it comes to investigating crime than an FBI agent will do in five years. So I've told people, hey, I really want to go into a federal agency because I want, you know, to fight crime. It's like, well, you're wasting your time. It's a bureaucracy in the FBI.

[00:53:11] Very few of them are actually out on the street, actually fighting crime. If you really want to hit where the rubber hits the road, you need to join a fairly large agency like Denver or I don't want to say Chicago. I'm not sure I would work in Chicago. But a larger agency that has numerous homicides and has a lot of stuff where you can learn pretty quick on how to become an expert. There's FBI agents that may be in Washington, D.C. for the majority of their career.

[00:53:40] So are they really great crime fighters or investigators? Maybe, maybe not. And just to be clear, though, to even that out, I've met some great people. One of my, a great friend of mine that I've known for years is a retired FBI agent who was on the cast team. Great guy. Great investigator. But, you know, it's like in any business, there's some that are great and some that are not so great.

[00:54:05] But when you tell people that they're the best of the best, you're actually kind of creating these little monsters. Yeah, it's interesting you say that. That's something we've heard from a lot of local law enforcement about the FBI. And that's funny because then when we talk to FBI agents, they're like, we don't come in and take over cases. They try. They try. One of the biggest homicides, everybody knows about the John Bonet homicide here in Colorado. But there was another really big homicide.

[00:54:33] I believe it was in 2013, which was Tom Clements. He was the head of the Department of Corrections. You could do a whole show on this and I could tell you stuff that would blow your mind on that case. So he was assassinated on his front doorstep about a mile and a half from my house. And I was one of the investigators that was called on the scene relatively quick to help investigate this. I mean, they assassinated. This guy was someone who just got out of prison.

[00:55:02] Tracked down the chairman or whatever, the chief or whatever of the Department of Corrections. He killed someone else to get his dominoes outfit. So he murdered somebody else. Rings the doorbell. Of course, when someone looks out and they see it's a dominoes guy holding a box, they're going to open the door. He opens the door and he shot twice with a nine millimeter. So he was killed by Evan Ebel. And that was a huge case.

[00:55:26] And I bring this up because El Paso County Sheriff's Office can do an awesome job working homicides. I mean, we worked on a lot of homicides. We had an excellent team, veterans that had worked on numerous cases. And we were very confident that we could solve this case. And within two days, Evan was dead. So he got in a gunfight down in Texas. And that's a big mistake. You don't get in a gunfight with Texas Rangers down in Texas. You will lose.

[00:55:53] So the FBI, CBI, everybody wanted to take that case from us. And we're like, no. And we found out later on that there was leaks because we briefed everybody. We had these big daily briefs and stuff. And we briefed, you know, the FBI was there. And my buddy that I was telling you about, the FBI agent, he was on the team. Great guy. We knew the FBI, the federal agents, and the governor's office was leaking information to the media. We knew they were.

[00:56:23] And so we started wanting to cut them out, you know, because we knew. And so I'm a big advocate of local sheriffs, local law enforcement. Federal agencies have their place to come in when you need the expertise and specialties and stuff. And federal cases, obviously. But I'm a huge advocate of, if you've got an agency that has experience working major cases, just let them work it because they're the best at doing it. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:56:51] One thing we've heard from a lot of people is FBI is wonderful, you know, the kind of counterintelligence, domestic terrorism. Right. But the murder, the crime solving, it's just not as much what they do anymore. Although I know, you know, there's some indications that that may shift under the current regime. But that's true. And I'm a big fan of ATF. I'll be honest with you. When I was working the street and when I was a detective, ATF was amazing on coming in.

[00:57:19] And surprisingly, probably the best agent, federal agent that I worked with was a postal inspector. So, Anthony, if you ever watch this or hear this dude, that was for you. He was a phenomenal federal agent that always helped us out. I love that. That is not what you would expect. That's amazing. It was amazing. Great cop. That's great. So here's a question kind of to narrow it in a little bit on something kind of what we kind of were curious to learn more about is,

[00:57:46] you know, Cy Ray is kind of been has been listed and sort of publicly announced in filings as a expert in, you know, the kind of technology side for the defense in the Idaho case, which, of course, is the case against Brian Kohlberger, who's suspected of murdering these four college students up in Moscow, Idaho. So that's kind of where things stand. And what we've seen just from the industry and sort of looking into things and some of the public comments you've made is that, you know, there is some concern about that.

[00:58:16] And I'm I'm wondering if we can maybe just start off by talking about like if, you know, if you know who is Cy Ray and like how did he first come up sort of in your career where you kind of saw what he was doing? Right, exactly. So, you know, like any career or any type of job that you have, there's better technology that always comes out. When it comes to doing call detail records, you've got to plot this on a map.

[00:58:43] Ultimately, where the rubber hits the road is you've got to show it to a jury. Got to put it on a map. You know, where was that tower? Where was that antenna? And which way was it facing? So over the years we've developed, they've been cases that have helped us refine how we show our work to juries. The biggest one was probably U.S. versus Evans. It said this thing about granularization, about trying to calculate and average and figure out call sectors.

[00:59:11] Because what was happening is the government, law enforcement, was wanting to be able to show juries, look, he had to be this close to the tower. And there's no way to do that. And here's one of the reasons why. They don't tell you how much power they're putting out. I mean, it's nowhere. You've got to get specialized information. And even if you knew, are they putting out 25 watts, 50 watts? And that's actually a pretty good amount. The maximum you can put out is around 300 watts, and that's out in the middle of nowhere.

[00:59:41] In town, it's usually low wattage, like 5, 10, 20 watts. You don't need to go far. You just got to do good service where you do. So, what we typically stayed away from, and I would say the credible analysts. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you I'm the best or I'm the only good one in the country. There's a whole bunch that adhere to what we refer to as best practices. And there's even a document out there that came out, and I support this document.

[01:00:08] And basically, it's a working group document about showing digital stuff to juries and court proceedings. It says to just use an open angle. Most antennas are approximately 120 degrees, and there's three antennas that make up the full 360. So, if you're imagining this, you want to have an omnidirectional, which is in all directions. Most cell tower antennas, 99% of them, are not omnidirectional. They're directional antennas.

[01:00:37] And they're usually 120 degrees, some a little less, some a little bigger. So, what I would refer to as in the industry for best practices is we just show 120 degree open angle, showing the direction that the antenna is facing. We do not try to represent at all how far that tower can go. There's a thing referred to as side lobes and back lobes. This is a part of science, and this is what the whole thing is. This is RF science, radio frequency science.

[01:01:07] There is such thing as back lobes and side lobes. But understand, when you have cell towers or cell sites all competing against each other, someone's going to win and someone's going to lose. When you're talking about these handoff areas, because we know there has to be handoff areas where you switch towers. One tower may be putting out more power than another. So, there might be a hill in the way or a big building or whatever.

[01:01:35] These cell phone service providers are very smart people. They know how to set up their network. Sometimes they'll have cell towers shooting right over the top of another tower because of a hill or a valley or whatever. They're very smart at designing these networks. So, because of that, there's no way for an analyst like me with my limited data that I get from the call detail records that I can adequately or even close estimate a cell sector size.

[01:02:05] You know, what is this coverage area of the cell sector? So, I stay out of the business. I don't try to suggest it. And if I'm asked in court, well, how far away could they have been? I'm not going to get into that game. It's in town. So, logic would tell us a couple miles, maybe three or four at best. Out of town, it could be up to 30 maybe. So, we just stay out of that business.

[01:02:29] Well, this one individual that you just brought up decided that he was going to use something called, it's an RF energy pattern. So, most lawyers and judges, judges or lawyers, don't do math. They don't do physics. They don't do double E. They're not. I only know of one judge that I ran across. Great judge. Love him to death. We actually used to work together at a computer company. He's a judge. So, he understood electronics.

[01:02:58] And one time when I was on his stand, he asked me some questions. I was like, your honor, how on earth can you ask those questions? He goes, because I used to work for digital just like you used to. So, we found out that we worked for the same company years ago. Most of them don't understand this technology. So, here's the deal. When you go to college for physics and you take physics 101, they start having you do calculations. And they say, we want you to do this calculation, but assume the surface is frictionless. So, you can do easy math. Friction is hard to calculate.

[01:03:29] Frictionless is not. So, you can do the math. So, in physics 101, they always tell you do the math without friction. So, there's a thing called an anaconic chamber, which is a chamber that has, like you're doing podcasting and stuff. We all put the material up to suck in the radio or our voice and stuff. So, we get a better sound when we're podcasting. They have the same thing in an anechoic chamber is they put up all this material to suck up the radio waves. And then they set up different types of antennas, directional antennas,

[01:03:59] so they can determine what's the best antenna for, let's say, cellular communication. It's in a, almost like a vacuum. Nothing is interfering with this radio frequency. So, he came up with this, I'll just use that RF energy pattern, and I'll create what we refer to as the blob, and I can, based on the location and how far away other towers are, I can do this calculation that I come up with on my own,

[01:04:28] with no scientific information, with no formulas, no science. I'm going to guesstimate how large I think these blobs or these, what he, originally when I first called him out on this or called out the whole process, I said, look, you're calling this coverage area. That's total BS. And so, they changed it to estimated coverage area. And then I said, it's still BS in another hearing. And so, now they call it handoff area. And I said, that's actually even worse.

[01:04:58] Because a handoff area is that part that you have between two cell sectors where the cell phone decides to hand off to the next cell. Those are very narrow areas at the end of the bounds of a cell sector. He shows the whole thing and calls it a handoff area. That's not scientific. It's not based in science. So, using an RF energy pattern to show, the blob is what we call it. It's not based in science.

[01:05:26] And I actually got a double E, a PhD double E, Vladin Jovanovic, back in Indiana. He wrote something up. And I said, this is great. We used it up here for Colorado versus Jones. We went in and showed a judge. And we really had to educate the judge. But we got the right judge. We got a judge who actually not only understood some of this stuff, but wanted to learn. And so, he really paid attention.

[01:05:54] I mean, I was there for every part of the hearing, even when Mr. Ray testified. And he saw right through it. I refer to it as the modern day snake oil. I'm not criticizing the person, but I'm saying that what he did in his software called ZX Tracks, it's not based in science. And I think I've proved it very well. The problem is, is that a lot of law enforcement agencies are using this. And so, they're kind of fighting, bucking the system.

[01:06:23] And judges tend to lead towards the prosecution saying, well, you know, I really, and I've actually, I think I've heard a judge say this. I really don't understand the science, but I think it's common that we accept this, so let's move on. And it's like, well, you really shouldn't be doing that. Because, and here's the critical point that I keep bringing up. The FBI cast team will not use the blob in court. I've never seen it. And I've talked to cast members, retired cast members.

[01:06:51] I've talked to them and they said the blob is voodoo. It's snake oil. It's not based in science. They understand it. So, the FBI, who I even agreed just a few minutes ago, is the premier experts in this field, even though sometimes they get it wrong. They won't use the blob. They won't. Now, they kind of, they'd like to bring it up to the fact, well, what about the fact that the FBI has purchase tracks? And it's like, well, sure, I don't care.

[01:07:18] If they want to use it for investigative purposes, that's fine. I've never seen the FBI or any federal agency ever put tracks blobs up in a presentation for a jury. I've never seen it because they know it's not based in science. And the problem is, is you're overly influencing the jury because when they look at that blob, they're like, well, they had to be inside that shaded in area. And that's absolutely wrong. So, they could be outside of it.

[01:07:48] They could, again, you got to understand how all these towers fight against each other to provide coverage area for your cell phones. He doesn't use that. He assumes, kind of like that frictionless surface in physics, he's assuming that there's no other towers, there's no terrain, you know, impacting this. And I'll give you the best example to kind of wrap this up is why I know that it's total BS. It's because here in Colorado Springs, I was doing an analysis and I was shown a tracks.

[01:08:18] They were using tracks. It showed a cell tower, a relatively small tower, downtown Colorado Springs at 6,500 feet, providing service to Cripple Creek, which is on the other side of a 14,000 foot mountain. Radio waves do not tend to bend. There is no way that a town 30 miles away over a 14,000 foot mountain is going to have coverage.

[01:08:47] But the tracks blob or ZX track software said that it was providing coverage over a 14,000 foot high mountain. You can't bend radio waves like that. It's just not going to happen. And pretty much there was some of admitting that, okay, maybe in that case, it's a little wrong. And I could bring up all kinds of case. And in this Colorado versus Jones, they said based solely on the blob that this guy was over violating a restraining order.

[01:09:17] And they said here, the blob shows that he was there. I said, did you know that he was driving a FedEx truck that had GPS? And you actually had GPS data, which is 100 times more reliable and accurate than CDRs. And it shows that he was on I-25 10 miles away. And as soon as I brought that to their attention in court, they dropped all those charges. So they knew that this was just a bunch of BS that they were trying to pull.

[01:09:44] And your question, what kind of started all of this is, are there people in prison? Because juries saw this blob and said, well, he had to be there. It's a shaded-in area. It's the government telling me that they had to be in that shaded-in area. So therefore, he had to have committed the crime. I don't know. I don't have a clue. But for me as a purist, and I am completely pro-law enforcement, this is not software that should be shown to a jury.

[01:10:14] And I believe there's science to back it up. And here's the bottom line. There's no reason to use it. Just show the industry standard best practices that 95% of the people use is here's the antenna. It's facing in this direction. I've got all this other evidence. Just take this as one piece of the pie as to they can't prove he wasn't there.

[01:10:40] And again, to me, that's the biggest thing is the call detail records can put you in the general area. But you need more evidence to put them at the crime scene. Really well said. And yeah, that is, I mean, as you said, people sometimes, I think, don't realize that there is a big difference between something that can be helpful or just used investigatively versus something that can be brought to the jury. That needs to be the best, right? Yeah.

[01:11:10] Polygraph is the best example of that. Polygraph is constantly and currently used by law enforcement to help in investigative efforts. You cannot bring the results of a polygraph into court because it's not attested in true science. That's what the blob is with ZX. Use it for investigative. That's fine. I don't care. But don't show it to a jury. It sounds like for a long time, Cy Ray was really more working with the government with this.

[01:11:39] Is that unusual? You mentioned oftentimes the government doesn't really want to pay for experts and do this sort of thing. So what was with that sort of connection? There was very few options. There's another product called SellHawk, which is the absolute best in the industry. I mean, there's no doubt I've used it for years. I mean, it's exactly what they should be using. Back then, he hit a niche when, and he didn't use the blob back then. When it first came out, they didn't have the blob.

[01:12:08] So he created something that law enforcement didn't have. Celebrite is another example, a device that's used to extract data from cell phones. If you hit that niche at the right time, the government's going to buy it up, which they did. And then once you get invested, well, I know how to use tracks. So therefore, we're going to keep renewing tracks. I would guess, and I'm just speculating, that the sales of tracks are going down from year to year. Now, another reason why it's probably going down,

[01:12:37] and I know it's being used less and less in court because I don't see it that often anymore because I think they know better. The FBI will give you a product called CasVis, V-I-S. It's free, and they'll give you free training. So they develop their own software. So why would you go out and buy tracks and spend thousands of dollars when you can get a free product that's better, and the training's free from the FBI? So you get to go into court and say, I was trained by the FBI using their software.

[01:13:07] So there's absolutely no reason for any, any law enforcement agency in this nation to be using tracks. They should all be converting to the FBI's CasVis and use it for free. Were you surprised to see any of this come up in such a high-profile case such as Idaho? No. The reason being is, is one of the things that I've learned in actually hearing Mr. Ray testify a few times

[01:13:35] is his arrogance really comes through. In Colorado, he said he basically knew more than engineers, and all he had was an associate's, a liberal arts associate's degree. And he basically said, it's in the hearing. It's in, the judge even wrote it up saying, you know, he implies it when you read his ruling, that Mr. Ray was pretty arrogant. And I saw the same thing. I thought he was pretty arrogant in his testimony. To even say that I'm not a double E at all,

[01:14:05] never tried to say that I was. I'm not an RF engineer. I have people that I've contacted in my business that I use to provide me that information. So if you don't have the expertise, you hire it. Which is what I've chosen to do. He is trying to say based on his experience, and it is pretty extensive. I mean, he does have a pretty good experience in working in this stuff. But even if you work, let's say that I'm a conductor of a train, doesn't mean I know how to build one.

[01:14:32] So even though, like for me as an analyst, computer engineer background, I'm not going to tell you that I understand how all these radio frequency antennas work, but I talk to Vlad. I talk to other individuals that I've run across that have built networks, and I ask them. So I think, I'm not surprised because he's kind of been isolated out of the business, is my opinion. Is he sold his product to LexisNexis.

[01:15:01] They signed a contract, which is pretty common. You know, it's like, hey, we're going to buy this software from you. So, but we want you to come on board for two or three years to help the transition and other things like that. So I heard his testimony during those periods when he said I was a director, you know, with LexisNexis. Sounds impressive. Well, then all of a sudden in this last time I heard him testify down in Tucson, all of a sudden he's unemployed. He started his own business doing podcasting and other stuff, and I'm just like, okay.

[01:15:29] So LexisNexis did not renew or something. Something happened. He's no longer working for LexisNexis. So that was really kind of his claim to fame. And the government doesn't need him anymore. Like I said, once the government doesn't need you because they have their own experts for free, they are done with you. I mean, I was kind of sought after a little bit before I retired. And then it was a rude awakening when I went private because it's like nobody wanted to hire me, especially even like defense attorneys.

[01:15:58] It's like, no, dude, you're a retired cop. Why would I hire you? But over the 10 years, I've proven myself to where I've got boatloads of cases. I'm flying to Anchorage to testify, things like that. And so they recognize what I've learned and what I can testify to. And I don't believe I come off arrogant. At least I don't try to. And so I think it was inevitable that he was going to have to transition to the defense.

[01:16:25] Now, the problem is, as former law enforcement, is you got to be able to kind of transition to get away from that bias of, I'm looking for things to show guilt. Based on his last testimony that I heard down in Tucson, which I couldn't believe, the testimony was so bad and so biased, I ordered the, I wanted to get, I got a copy of the transcripts and I have them because I was like, I could not have just heard what I heard him say.

[01:16:55] And I read through the transcripts and it's like, sure enough, he said that. It's absolutely not based in science. He absolutely swayed the jury on something that was incredible. And just to give you kind of a brief, just so you're not saying, wow, what did he say? We have a tower antenna facing west. We have two records 40 minutes apart. I'm just kind of making this up, but it's similar to what he testified to.

[01:17:22] They both are hitting that same tower antenna facing west. There's no other records to go by, just two records about 30, 40 minutes apart, both hitting this tower antenna facing west. He said that proved that this individual headed only west because had he gone any other direction, he would have, that record, that second record 30, 40 minutes later would have been at a different tower. So he had to have gone further west to which is where this body was dumped or whatever.

[01:17:52] And this proves that he went farther west and then came back and he only could have gone west. But wait a minute, there's only those two records. In theory, he could have pulled over and sat there for 40 minutes and read a book, never moved. And he still would have had the same records, two records, 30, 40 minutes apart, both using that same antenna. An analyst who's not biased would have said, I can't tell you what direction he was moving. All I can tell you is,

[01:18:21] is there's two records, 30 to 40 minutes apart. They're both using the same antenna or using this antenna and this antenna. And it does not show directionality to the west or what, I can't do that. So when I heard that testimony, it really bothered me because to me, it really showed how his testimony was biased. So at this point, having heard that testimony, I have to question, you know, any further testimony from him

[01:18:50] that he's willing to say whatever, whoever's paying for him, what they want him to say. Now, I don't know this, and this is my opinion as another expert, having heard his testimony live, I was in the courtroom, that I question the credibility based on that, on how he can make, an analyst should have just said, I don't know. Here's the records. I can't tell you what direction he went in. Maybe he turned his phone off. I don't know. There's no information there.

[01:19:20] But to suggest a certain movement or directionality or going to a certain location based on the absence of evidence, that's not credible. So I'm not surprised that he popped up in this case. I do question, again, his credibility. My opinion. Absolutely. And it's troubling, especially in some of these cases where people haven't heard about them, but, you know, maybe a jury was swayed. I mean,

[01:19:49] there's a history of junk science appearing in the courtroom and people have gone to prison for many, many years only for later to turn out, you know, okay, well, we can't really trust bite marks to the extent that we thought we could. And, you know, you don't want to see that. I think people tend to think of that as more in the CSI realm, but it can really be in the technological realm too. It can be more in the technology realm because like the scenario I just gave you,

[01:20:18] really analysts, people doing my job should not be interpreting much and they need to be very clear. I'm speculating or whatever. You need to lay out the facts, show it to the jury as best you can as to hear is the physical evidence what towers were hit, what direction they were facing in. I can't tell you more than that. When they start opining as to what they speculate based on their experience is just wrong.

[01:20:48] It's not what you should be doing. And that's, sometimes it's hard, especially for someone who used to be in law enforcement because they're paid for success. They're paid for conviction. I mean, that's what they're doing. They're trying, they're doing the right thing. And sometimes they get out ahead of themselves and the end justifies the means. And I try very hard on every case that I work on to not speculate and say, look, I can't say that. You know, I can't, you know, that's sheer speculation.

[01:21:17] All I can do is lay out what are the facts, what towers did you use and things like that. And I leave it, I try to leave it at that. Um, I know now it seems like from some of the recent filings, he's wrangling with the cast as experts up there and sort of implying that they have records that they say they don't have. So that just seems to be a lot of drama already. So, the drama is to the defense's advantage. Yeah. And you're talking to someone

[01:21:46] who's worked a lot for the defense and obviously a lot for law enforcement. I've done 10 years on, you know, as a detective and 10 years doing it as a consultant. And again, understanding the goal of the defense is to get the best outcome for their client. That's their goal. So at this point in the game, if you want to call it the game, is when you throw all these things out and you see if you can get anything to stick with the judge. I mean, they've, you've seen and I'm only looking at the stuff that's in the media

[01:22:16] that I read and I'm not like all into this case, but, but I do read the news and stuff. And so there's been a lot of things that they've argued. I thought that I read something where it's like the call detail records, the phone records definitely show that he was out and about. He was not at his home, not an apartment or wherever he lived. He was in the general area and he was driving around or whatever. And then they use the excuse that he was out stargazing or if I remember right. And then they're like,

[01:22:46] wait a minute, it was cloudy that night. You know, so, so there's constantly things where the defense is going to say, what about this? What about this? What about this? Now I did scan through those two PC affidavits and, and read through them. One is complaining about the fullness of the, the technical reports. And I get that, you know, working predominantly for the defense now, I definitely can relate to this is not a report.

[01:23:14] And the FBI cast team is notorious for this. They will give you a PowerPoint presentation that shows you so much data, so many call detail records, and there's no explanation. And in a lot of states, they require a report or a summary of testimony before this. So the FBI says, or the prosecutors will say, well, that's it. That's, that's our report. And it's like, there's no words, you know, there's not even a legend, you know, I'm not going to know what he's going to say

[01:23:44] until he gets up on that stand using that PowerPoint and going through the PowerPoint to tell me what it is he's going to say. So I, I agree from that standpoint that the feds are notorious for not telling you what it is they're going to say. So I agree with that. Then, but that still doesn't mean that there's any nefarious things going on by the FBI. He's, he's accusing them of keeping record or, you know, not giving us all the information. And I will tell you my number one issue in most of the cases I work on is discovery. Sometimes they do forget to give you discovery.

[01:24:13] I've actually had to call evidence techs for the feds and say, look, I need this. And I've had to work with the feds to get everything I need. You don't need to write a PC affidavit for that. You need to specifically say, here's what discovery I don't have. Now, I think from these PC affidavits, it's sounding like they did not provide him with timing advance records from AT&T. And he's accusing them that even though it's only been here recent, and I think I stated this earlier, that AT&T has actually released

[01:24:43] timing advance records. They give you something called Milos. I was kind of surprised here in the last six to eight months that I started seeing these timing advance records. And I'm like, hey, that's great. AT&T is starting to release timing advance. I believe if I read the PC affidavit correctly, he's suggesting that they have the records that just because AT&T didn't formally release them until like June of 24, you know, that they're copping out on this. Let me tell you something. Many cases I've worked on,

[01:25:13] the cops have forgotten to get the records, certain technical records. They forget. Time runs out. Timing advance, you got to ask within a few weeks. AT&T, they just announced theirs last June, so I don't know how long what their retention is for this data, but most of them it's two to four weeks. So it's very plausible that there are no timing advance records for AT&T. And I would tell him he needs to be more concerned about the NELOS records. Then he needs to be about the timing advance records. But what he's trying

[01:25:43] to imply, I think, my opinion, is that because there is no timing advance records, had there been those records, it would have all magically been exculpatory. This would have freed our client and showed, you know, that the DNA on the knife sheaf was not his. So there's all kinds of other evidence. This is kind of smoke and mirrors to say, look, they failed here. And I'm like, who cares? Law enforcement constantly, in every case,

[01:26:12] forgets to do something. As a defense, you want to bring it up. Sometimes it's very important. Sometimes it's not. I'm pretty confident that both of these things will not be major issues. That was sort of our read on it too. If it turned out that the phone records were going to be the thing that, you know, it all did. Read him? Yeah. But it's not. And the alibi he is positing is, you know, it's less than ideal for a defendant, I think,

[01:26:41] is fair to say. But this has been fascinating, Mark. I want to ask you, I mean, there's so much to talk about and you did such a, I feel like I understand this issue a lot better now, even though I told you at the beginning, I myself am history major, journalist, I'm not a technological person whatsoever. But is there anything that when it comes to the case we talked about, but also just in general, like that you think is important for people to understand just to know this topic better, like questions they should be asking themselves when they see other cases?

[01:27:12] Well, what I always say, and I've been a computer engineer for probably 30 years now, technology moves quick and there's always something new that comes up that I don't know about. My kid, both my boys are computer engineers now and sometimes I call my kid to ask him a question and say, hey, you know, I just heard about this and then he explains it to me. And so, if you don't understand technology, we didn't even talk about cars. Cars, when you plug your cell phones

[01:27:42] into them, they suck a whole bunch of data down and it's on the car so that the government can get that information off your car. So there's all kinds of things we could talk about, like you said. I would tell people, understand, as soon as you walk out of your house, your right to privacy is over. Data that you're storing on your wife, girlfriends, spouses, cell phones, the court will try to argue that you don't have right to privacy on your wife's cell phone. That's kind of a big issue that's coming up right now and stuff. So technology is an interesting

[01:28:12] subject. And I think in the future, when we talk about a lot of these major cases like the Idaho murders and stuff, you're going to see a lot of stuff based on technology, but ultimately it's all going to come down to a great investigative job by local law enforcement. His DNA is in that house. How is his DNA in that house? I don't really care about the cell phone records that much. You're a little overshadowed, I think. Right. Well, Mark, thank you so much.

[01:28:41] This has been delightful and we just want to say thank you for taking the time. Yeah, no worries. And if anything else comes up that you have questions about technology, just give me a call or text me. We'd love to have you back. Absolutely. Thank you so much to Mark for speaking with us. We really appreciated gaining his insights. Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail.com.

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[01:29:38] We very much appreciate any support. Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the web at kevintg.com. If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account,

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