Madeleine McCann General Discussion Thread #27

[haden]

I have heard about cases solved by tracing certain people through pings. I have not heard about a single case solved by checking randomly all the pings in the area. Do you know such a case?

In Joana Yeates case, which is one of the biggest in modern British history..

I don't understand what you mean checking all the pings..
You check the pings at the time of the Smiths sighting and at the place of Smiths sightings.
Also pings at OC between 8.30 and 10pm

You don't check these types of data manually, there are computer programmes for analysing data.. easy job! One man enough!

And another case is of a missing Antonia Bilic in Croatia.. also the biggest case in history for that country..the killer was found through the mobile phone checks. He was driving a truck with Antonia onboard and Antonias mobile was pinging different towers.. police noticed another number pinging the same towers at the same time and then gusto! This is how they caught him.
http://daily.tportal.hr/229204/Experts-say-remains-belong-to-missing-Antonia-Bilic.html

Also in this case in Croatia, which is also a tourist country police knew withing few hours where was the last ping of Antonias phone..

Why Amaral could not concentrate on something material like that, instead of concentrating on rubbish theories?

 

[SapphireSteel]

This is what I love about this site, you learn so much.

The bulk download of tower pings are referred to as "tower dumps" and here's an article which shows just how hard/nearly impossible it is to either access them or interpret them, unless of course you know what you're looking for.

Which IMO, they do, in this case.

As the regional robberies continued, the FBI was brought into the case. They found a witness to one of the robberies who had seen a suspicious man hanging out by the bank a couple of hours before the robbery, talking on a cell phone. But how does one find a single cell phone user without knowing the cell phone number or the subscriber's name? Indeed, without knowing anything but the time and location?

If you're the FBI, you ask a judge to approve a full "cell tower dump," in which wireless operators will turn over the records of every cell phone that registered with a particular tower at a particular time. (Phones "register" with the nearest cell towers so that the network knows how to route calls.) And then you look for any numbers that stand out.

Fishing for phone numbers

To find the High Country Bandits, the FBI asked a federal magistrate judge to approve four of these cell tower dumps. Investigators picked the "four most rural [robbery] locations in order to minimize the amount of extraneous telephone data that would likely be obtained through such a court order," including the bank in Pinetop, said the FBI. The judge approved the request.

Tower dumps aren't like going after targeted cell phone data on a known suspect; they are more like casting a limited dragnet, pulling in the phone numbers and (rough) location of everyone in the vicinity of the event. And tower dumps are usually obtained without a warrant, instead utilizing a "court order" with judicial oversight but a lower burden than "probable cause." This could potentially mean the government getting warrantless location information for hundreds of people who are not being investigated for any crime.

Did I say "hundreds" of people? The FBI actually received more than 150,000 registered cell phone numbers from this particular set of tower dumps, despite picking the most rural locations possible. What the case agents wanted to do was scan the logs from all four sites on the belief that no single person was likely to be at all four banks during the robbery—except for the robber.

So the FBI dumped all the numbers into a Microsoft Access database and ran a query. As expected, only a single number came back.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-the-high-country-bandits-and-why-it-matters/


The FBI can do it, if they try hard enough and get a judge who lets them.

They were allowed to get the information from American cell companies about American pings on American phones. The PJ were most likely dealing with a multinational telco, furthermore they weren't the FBI with all their lawyers and specialists and experience and expertise in surveillance.

Presumably they too would have received around 150,000 pings, or maybe only 50,000 or so.

I've already illustrated the time and effort wasted on Murat. Times this by 50,000 and you have perhaps some idea why the PJ did not pursue this angle at the time.

:banghead:

 

[Hexe]

In Joana Yeates case, which is one of the biggest in modern British history..

I don't understand what you mean checking all the pings..
You check the pings at the time of the Smiths sighting and at the place of Smiths sightings.
Also pings at OC between 8.30 and 10pm

You don't check these types of data manually, there are computer programmes for analysing data.. easy job! One man enough!

And another case is of a missing Antonia Bilic in Croatia.. also the biggest case in history for that country..the killer was found through the mobile phone checks. He was driving a truck with Antonia onboard and Antonias mobile was pinging different towers.

In these two cases the police did know which phone they were supposed to track. I'm asking you if you know any case which was solved by sifting through all the pings from certain area at a certain time. NOT by tracing one known phone.

 

[SapphireSteel]

In Joana Yeates case, which is one of the biggest in modern British history..

I don't understand what you mean checking all the pings..
You check the pings at the time of the Smiths sighting and at the place of Smiths sightings.
Also pings at OC between 8.30 and 10pm

You don't check these types of data manually, there are computer programmes for analysing data.. easy job! One man enough!

And another case is of a missing Antonia Bilic in Croatia.. also the biggest case in history for that country..the killer was found through the mobile phone checks. He was driving a truck with Antonia onboard and Antonias mobile was pinging different towers.. police noticed another number pinging the same towers at the same time and then gusto! This is how they caught him.
http://daily.tportal.hr/229204/Experts-say-remains-belong-to-missing-Antonia-Bilic.html

Also in this case in Croatia, which is also a tourist country police knew withing few hours where was the last ping of Antonias phone..

Why Amaral could not concentrate on something material like that, instead of concentrating on rubbish theories?

I'll answer you with your own words -

Why you say entire PJ, entire PJ does not mean Amaral.!

Amaral is the rogue cop when you want him to be, yet not acting alone in the very next sentence!

Either the entire PJ screwed up, or just Amaral.

[modsnip]


:seeya:

 

[SapphireSteel]

In these two cases the police did know which phone they were supposed to track. I'm asking you if you know any case which was solved by sifting through all the pings from certain area at a certain time. NOT by tracing one known phone.

Short answer seems to be, yes, but only if you're the FBI and only if the towers are in America, also only if you have the resources to wade through a hundred thousand unrelated pings.

:seeya:

 

[SapphireSteel]

There were inconsistencies too with regards to Murat and also Sergey Malinka. Do you think that other possible suspects should be ignored? Particularly, those who had sudden memory lapses concerning meetings and late night phone calls. I also would like to know if Murat really did travel further than what he claimed he did in the rental car he hired a few days after the event. Also, of interest, why he claimed he didn't know how to encrypt files when several were found on his computer and why did he initially claim that he was with Michaela on the evening of the disappearance then later had to say that he wasn't. I'm sure if I trawled through the files I'd find more oddities, with regards to Malinka as well.

So there were "inconsistencies" and the matter was investigated and ruled out.

There are "inconsistencies" in the Tapas crew also, but they haven't handed over their cell records.

Or been compelled to.

Why not?

 

[Donjeta]

In Joana Yeates case, which is one of the biggest in modern British history..

I don't understand what you mean checking all the pings..
You check the pings at the time of the Smiths sighting and at the place of Smiths sightings.
Also pings at OC between 8.30 and 10pm

You don't check these types of data manually, there are computer programmes for analysing data.. easy job! One man enough!

And another case is of a missing Antonia Bilic in Croatia.. also the biggest case in history for that country..the killer was found through the mobile phone checks. He was driving a truck with Antonia onboard and Antonias mobile was pinging different towers.. police noticed another number pinging the same towers at the same time and then gusto! This is how they caught him.
http://daily.tportal.hr/229204/Experts-say-remains-belong-to-missing-Antonia-Bilic.html

Also in this case in Croatia, which is also a tourist country police knew withing few hours where was the last ping of Antonias phone..

Why Amaral could not concentrate on something material like that, instead of concentrating on rubbish theories?

Is there a link to the information that he was found through combing through random cell phone pings? The article you linked says that he was found because she was last seen in his truck and the police started searching for him after they found the truck with her blood in it. Nothing about searching through tons of unrelated cell phone pings in there.


I imagine that it is a lot easier to do it anyway if the victim has a cell phone to match the perp's pings. Madeleine didn't, as far as I know. So, nothing there to compare.


Also, it is easier if the victim and the perp travel in a vehicle and go through a lot of different cell towers. If it's just a couple of towers and you don't really have a firm timeline beyond between 8.30 and 10 pm there probably are lots of cell phones that move between tower A and tower B and finding them means little in the absence of other firm evidence. A defense lawyer will just point out that you can find any number of cell phones moving from tower to tower at any time. But the longer the route and the more towers, turns and stops there are the less likely it becomes statistically that two random phones that aren't travelling together use the same route and simultaneously switch towers .

 

[redheadedgal]

Yes the do if they're not properly trained (handled). I don't believe that's the case here. Blaming garbage and dirty nappies for the positive hit on the vehicle just won't cut it for me.

thank you fellow canuk!

if cadaver dogs hit on things like garbage, dirty diapers, nail clippings, etc. they'd be running amok alerting everywhere :scared:

 

[Pisces Cloud]

So there were "inconsistencies" and the matter was investigated and ruled out.

There are "inconsistencies" in the Tapas crew also, but they haven't handed over their cell records.

Or been compelled to.

Why not?

I think it's good to point out once in a while that there are other possible POI with regards to this case and their actions are just as valid for discussion. The parents should not be the only aspect up for debate, IMO.

 

[SapphireSteel]

Is there a link to the information that he was found through combing through random cell phone pings? The article you linked says that he was found because she was last seen in his truck and the police started searching for him after they found the truck with her blood in it. Nothing about searching through tons of unrelated cell phone pings in there.


I imagine that it is a lot easier to do it anyway if the victim has a cell phone to match the perp's pings. Madeleine didn't, as far as I know. So, nothing there to compare.


Also, it is easier if the victim and the perp travel in a vehicle and go through a lot of different cell towers. If it's just a couple of towers and you don't really have a firm timeline beyond between 8.30 and 10 pm there probably are lots of cell phones that move between tower A and tower B and finding them means little in the absence of other firm evidence. A defense lawyer will just point out that you can find any number of cell phones moving from tower to tower at any time. But the longer the route and the more towers, turns and stops there are the less likely it becomes statistically that two random phones that aren't travelling together use the same route and simultaneously switch towers .

That's exactly how Jill Meagher's case was solved.

Her abductor's mobile and her own mirrored each other, out of the city, onto the highway, and right to her rural bush burial ground.

Compelling proof - but, LE already had his phone and Jills number so it was easy to pick out.

Those towers were in Victoria, Melbourne for some of it, highly populated. If they'd tried a tower dump to locate his tracks without Jills, they would possibly have had to comb through MILLIONS of pings, 99.99999% of them totally unrelated.

It would be like looking for a polar bear on an ice cap - completely invisible amongst the rest of the white.

 

[Hexe]

thank you fellow canuk!

if cadaver dogs hit on things like garbage, dirty diapers, nail clippings, etc. they'd be running amok alerting everywhere :scared:

Any kitchen, any bathroom, bedroom, they would be hitting whole houses. Yet they don't.

 

[redheadedgal]

WRONG , go back a few threads. Search dogs OFTEN get it wrong ie lie.

can you provide a link that demonstrates that dogs who are hired to work for the FBI "OFTEN get it wrong" ??

according to an FBI special agent, dogs --and not just FBI dogs-- get it right +90% of the time.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/baby-lisa-irwin-family-attorney-cadaver-dogs-misleading/story?id=14790822

 

[Fierljepper]

Although I am not a huge fan of scenarios incriminating the McCanns, my eye fell on this one.

We naturally assume the sniffer dogs on May 4th and 8th were following a trace of somebody carrying/kidnapping Maddie (e.g. the parents or an abductor). If it was an abductor, it is a long and very risky route to pick. But now suppose that we REVERSE the peculiar route the sniffer's dog followed in this picture:

Then the route still remains pretty strange, but now could support an interesting scenario where an accident has actually happened to Maddie near the parking lot (or near the exit of the pool) and she is then actually carried back into apartment 5A, however the one(s) carrying her, then wanted to remain as unseen as possible and hence they took the 'longer way home' using the more shielded/covered foot path. If it were the McCanns then one also knows that an accident must have happened when the patio door was locked from the inside other the patio stairs would have been used (i.e. probably when then spend a longer time aways from the apartment). Has this been considered as an option? Of course it also implies that when Maddie (who maybe already died) was removed from the apartment, it had to happen by car and/or wrapped in plastic not leaving additional traces for the sniffer dogs.

Thoughts?

 

[haden]

In these two cases the police did know which phone they were supposed to track. I'm asking you if you know any case which was solved by sifting through all the pings from certain area at a certain time. NOT by tracing one known phone.

No. Incorrect. In both cases I mentioned it was first finding the phone numbers.
Then the phone number led them to the criminal.

 

[Donjeta]

No. Incorrect. In both cases I mentioned it was first finding the phone numbers.
Then the phone number led them to the criminal.

Could you please provide a link? Your earlier article about the Croatian victim said something different and IIRC it was reported that the arrest in the Yeates case was a result of an anonymous tip after a Crimewatch show and he also roused suspicions by his behavior.

Jo Yeates murder suspect arrested 'after sobbing tip-off from anonymous caller distraught by parents' TV appeal'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...bbing-tip-anonymous-caller.html#ixzz2j9Yo3YI9
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...d-not-know-Vincent-Tabak-says-her-father.html

But his big mistake was to contact the police after they arrested his landlord, Christopher Jefferies, and try to help pin the blame on him. In doing so he asked too many questions about the police investigation and roused the suspicions of the detective sent to interview him.


http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/oct/28/vincent-tabak-🤬🤬🤬🤬-searches-jury

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...abak-shopping-Asda-Jos-body-lay-car-boot.html

It seems to me that Tabak got on the police radar because he and his gf contacted the police to implicate someone else.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-15334969

Det Con Karen Thomas visited the pair after their landlord Christopher Jefferies was arrested. Miss Morson had called Avon and Somerset Police to say they may have some useful information.

Tabak said on the night that Miss Yeates died, Mr Jefferies' Volvo had been facing one way in the driveway and the next day it was facing the opposite way.

Mr Jefferies was later released without charge and cleared of any wrongdoing.


When Det Con Thomas visited them in Holland she said Tabak seemed "overly interested" in the forensic examination of Jo Yeates's flat.

She said Tabak seemed very cooperative.

"He was overly interested than normal for a witness in the forensic examination of the flat that Joanna Yeates lived in," she said.

"He was paying particular interest into why police had seized Joanna's front door.

"I found it odd he had so many questions around that issue." She replied that seizing the door was "standard practice".

 

[Donjeta]

Okay, so here's an article saying that they had already matched Tabak's DNA to Joanna Yeates' body before they started examining his mobile phone records.

Police first suspected Tabak was involved within ten days of Miss Yeates' body being found. It was DNA which led them to that conclusion.

Officers were sent to Holland on New Year's Eve to interview Tabak, who – being her neighbour – was merely helping police with their inquiries at that stage.

It was on that day he volunteered to give police a DNA sample.

Mr Jones said: "A forensic examination of DNA found on Miss Yeates' body revealed a link to the sample Tabak had given in the Netherlands on New Year's Eve – but further painstaking work was required."

It was then that police began to check CCTV images scouring footage for Tabak's movements on that freezing cold evening. They also examined his mobile phone records.

Read more: http://legacy.thisisbath.co.uk/inqu...tory-13712679-detail/story.html#ixzz2j9dCqHP4

 

[jigzy]

Although I am not a huge fan of scenarios incriminating the McCanns, my eye fell on this one.

We naturally assume the sniffer dogs on May 4th and 8th were following a trace of somebody carrying/kidnapping Maddie (e.g. the parents or an abductor). If it was an abductor, it is a long and very risky route to pick. But now suppose that we REVERSE the peculiar route the sniffer's dog followed in this picture:

Then the route still remains pretty strange, but now could support an interesting scenario where an accident has actually happened to Maddie near the parking lot (or near the exit of the pool) and she is then actually carried back into apartment 5A, however the one(s) carrying her, then wanted to remain as unseen as possible and hence they took the 'longer way home' using the more shielded/covered foot path. If it were the McCanns then one also knows that an accident must have happened when the patio door was locked from the inside other the patio stairs would have been used (i.e. probably when then spend a longer time aways from the apartment). Has this been considered as an option? Of course it also implies that when Maddie (who maybe already died) was removed from the apartment, it had to happen by car and/or wrapped in plastic not leaving additional traces for the sniffer dogs.

Thoughts?

My thoughts are:

Someone mentioned earlier (or maybe I was on another forum -oops) that, because of handwriting anomalies, it looked like GM signed for another child at the crèche - like he was collecting them along with Madeleine. Well, if Madeleine had a friend in the similar-looking apartment block next door (where the faint P is in the image), then maybe her scent was picked up as she was walking back to the other child's apartment block from the crèche with GM before returning home. The arrows in the image you linked point towards the crèche; the reverse route would be from crèche to the other apartment block, then back to the McCann apartment. Just a thought - not sure where the Naylor family were staying though, I thought G4N but crèche records say B1 ??

Jmo

 

[haden]

In these two cases the police did know which phone they were supposed to track. I'm asking you if you know any case which was solved by sifting through all the pings from certain area at a certain time. NOT by tracing one known phone.

No. Incorrect. In both cases I mentioned it was first finding the phone numbers. Altough in Antonias case the police knew her number but they didn't have the clue who the guy is.
In both cases the phone number led them to the criminal.
In Joana Yeates case the police had only the destination, same as in Madeleines case, the bridge which had to be passed to drop the body.

I will take time and explain what I would do if I had this data given to me.

Since I never seen how the data given by the phone companies look like I will imagine it contains a list with the number of the mobile phone and the time it contacted the tower.
I also imagine the tower has some kind of zones. The zone A which is nearest to the tower, zone B, and zone C for example. The zones are the lengths from the tower. So I imagine the phone company would be giving a kind of a list of numbers, sorted by time and date with numbers and zones.

If there were 2 towers I would first take the data from the tower1, catching the Smiths sighting given for the day May3.
I assume this doesn't include the data from around the Mark Warner resort but only the data around the beach and sea.
Zones might be even closer, if they are then it would be more zones, imagined as circles around the tower.
I would firstly separate the list for the times 9pm to 10pm. Then out of this I would separate the around 10pm times.
This would give me a shorter list of around lets say max 500 numbers.
I would then find all Smiths numbers catching this tower at 9.50 - 10pm and will see which other numbers appear in this zone.

Lets say I get 100 numbers close to Smiths at the time 9.55.

Then I will take the list for the tower2 which I imagine covers the Mark Warner resort.
I will search for all of these 100 numbers in the tower2 list for the period of 6pm to 10pm.

If any of the numbers appear in the tower2 list I would assume this number was near Ocean Club during the evening and also near the Smiths sighting around 10pm.

I would like to know who is the owner of this number.

I think this is the principle how the tower data is analysed, when I say search I mean the computerised search using some programmes designed for that.. the easiest would be the plain Unix system.

 

[haden]

Okay, so here's an article saying that they had already matched Tabak's DNA to Joanna Yeates' body before they started examining his mobile phone records.




Read more: http://legacy.thisisbath.co.uk/inqu...tory-13712679-detail/story.html#ixzz2j9dCqHP4

I followed the Joannas case same as Madeleine, the news were all on a facebook page forum which was later removed but yes, the police was looking for a car that passed a bridge..
It was said at the time that luckily for the police passing the bridge would catch another mobile phone tower and they were looking for people whose mobile phone numbers would kind of 'change towers' at that time.. and this is how they got Tabak's number.

Re Croatian case, I was there on holiday in the first days of the investigation, it was only that on the TV, massive search, similar to Madeleine if not even bigger, they even drained a lake at that time to find Antonia.
It was announced on the TV news that the police has a suspect, actually have his mobile number as his number 'spoke to different towers' at the same time as Antonia's phone. Since I am interested in this subject, I remember it very well.
Antonia's body wasn't found that time, the massive searches lasted very long, like 40 days or something but the excessive searches never found her.. she was found much later next to a rubbish depot where the many searchers already searched..

 

[haden]

Although I am not a huge fan of scenarios incriminating the McCanns, my eye fell on this one.

We naturally assume the sniffer dogs on May 4th and 8th were following a trace of somebody carrying/kidnapping Maddie (e.g. the parents or an abductor). If it was an abductor, it is a long and very risky route to pick. But now suppose that we REVERSE the peculiar route the sniffer's dog followed in this picture:

Then the route still remains pretty strange, but now could support an interesting scenario where an accident has actually happened to Maddie near the parking lot (or near the exit of the pool) and she is then actually carried back into apartment 5A, however the one(s) carrying her, then wanted to remain as unseen as possible and hence they took the 'longer way home' using the more shielded/covered foot path. If it were the McCanns then one also knows that an accident must have happened when the patio door was locked from the inside other the patio stairs would have been used (i.e. probably when then spend a longer time aways from the apartment). Has this been considered as an option? Of course it also implies that when Maddie (who maybe already died) was removed from the apartment, it had to happen by car and/or wrapped in plastic not leaving additional traces for the sniffer dogs.

Thoughts?

Dogs were taking route of Madeleine herself, walking, since these types of dogs sniff the ground, corners, not someone carrying her and the route is from the apartment to the car park, not the opposite way!

For me personally this was the most interesting part of the files.
I am not sure if you read the reports from the Portuguese dog handlers, they are very very professional.

This was also the search nearest to the time of the disappearance, it was on the 4th, but this is the same night Madeleine disappeared.

Then they repeated it on the 8th May.

It was really strange, first day they used 2 dogs, one by one and both dogs took this route.

The second time, one the 8th they did the same, used different 2 dogs one by one and again both dogs went the same route.

Around the apartment and to a car park !

Nobody from the forums really paid much attention to this, the pros were dismissing it due to not matching JT route and antis were saying Madeleine passed there sometimes that day.

But she didn't! Even though if she did, this would be the freshest route she passed.

Again, interesting but not sure even if todays two teams of investigators both SY and PJ are taking this as important!