Durham cops and prosecutors are quite aware of what an investigative tool a cellphone and its data is....
Raleigh, NC – News & Observer, December 16, 2001
Petersons' phone calls studied
Husband's attorney asks news media not to make assumptions
By AISLING SWIFT, Staff Writer
DURHAM - Police seized telephone and cellular phone records belonging to Kathleen and Mike Peterson to analyze incoming and outgoing calls during a two-week period before and after her death, according to search warrants made public Saturday. The search, conducted by Detective D.W. Addison and returned Saturday afternoon to Magistrate Jackie Henderson, was conducted Friday and involved calls from 12:01 a.m. Nov. 26 through 12:01 a.m. Wednesday -- three days after Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the bottom of a roughly 20-step back staircase in her Forest Hills estate.
Friends, family and Mike Peterson's attorneys, Kerry Sutton and Barry Winston, call Kathleen Peterson's death a tragic accident, while warrants filed Friday show police have now branded the investigation a murder probe. Addison's affidavit says investigators are looking for the duration of calls from the Petersons' home phone and three cellular phones as well as determining whether the calls were incoming or outgoing. The significance of Nov. 26 isn't detailed, and the calls aren't required to be detailed on an inventory list so what police learned isn't known.
Kerry-Sutton-in-the-news article here:
http://suttonlawoffice.com/_wsn/page10.html
Lets see:
1. Vn_survivor_67-68, I do not blame the Durham cops in this case. There behavior indicates they took her claim seriously, transported her to the appropriate medical care, but pretty quickly doubted her story. I would guess like with the photo array, Nifong directed what the police would do with the cell phone.
2. darbymcgill, Certainly she missed it pretty soon after dropping it but not immediately. I think that indicates her state and what we would expect her to be able to remember.
3. Ken H, the cell phone was the big argument of the first setting last week for one of the indicted. Nifong claimed he did not have it, then admitted the police did, but claimed they had not looked at it yet. The defense of course demanded access to it.