NARRATOR: Let’s talk cell phones. For a lot of people who follow this case, the locations of cell phones– specifically the ones near The Monon High Bridge at the time of the murders– is a meaty topic of discussion. Whose phone is pinging where, and why? That was a major point of interest for investigators, too. And how that all works? There’s more to it than you might think.
ROBERT IVES: A frustrating thing… this is probably difficult to explain in the course of podcast… but the law on searches with relation to cell phones and cell phone locations was evolving right at the time this was going on, and I think some of the people discussing it didn’t always understand. Like, they would say “Well if you want to know a cell phone location, why don’t you get a search warrant?” And the problem with that is, let’s take this case, it’s a perfect example: There’s a tower near the crime scene and cell phones pinged off that tower around the time of the crime. We would like to know who they pinged off. Say, “well why don’t you get a search warrant?”. Because there is no probable cause to believe that any particular phone is going to tell us anything about the crime. There is no probable cause. People act like a search warrant is easy to get. No! Because we don’t think any particular phone is a criminal, but if we want to get a pool of 25 people who were in the area and therefore could possibly have committed the crime, you have to find out. And this is the difficulty of the modern electronic world. Of course, to look in your phone? I think clearly that’s a search warrant situation, that’s your private property. That’s like opening your house or going in your car in your person. But the location of your phone? I certainly understand people’s concerns about their privacy. ‘Why can the government figure out where I am?’ Then on the other hand, when your two little girls are dead and you want to find out who was nearby in the last 2 hours, it’s terrible not to be able to get that information. And the idea is, well, I’ll just get a search warrant. That’s not logically or legally practical. And so, this is something society has to think about more. Because cell phone location data for a case like this, which is a lot of what I was doing at that time, could potentially be really valuable. Because, you know, Carroll County: 380 square miles, 20,000 people. Very few people were out near that crime scene at the time. It’s not like…
BARBARA: –it’s a Monday afternoon.
ROBERT IVES: You aren’t going to ping on 500 phones at that period of time.
ANDREW: There are a lot of Feds looking at their cell phones, too.
ROBERT IVES: There were more FBI agents here than people can imagine! In my entire career, there was never in my entire career 1/10th as many FBI agents as who were here simultaneously!
