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Title: Denver Detectives Crack Deadly Arson Case Using Teens' Google Search
Histories

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/22/0226...

Three teenagers nearly escaped prosecution for a 2020 house fire that killed
five people until Denver police discovered a novel investigative technique:
requesting Google search histories for specific terms. Kevin Bui, Gavin
Seymour, and Dillon Siebert had burned down a house in Green Valley Ranch,
mistakenly targeting innocent Senegalese immigrants after Bui used Apple's
Find My feature to track his stolen phone to the wrong address. The August
2020 arson killed a family of five, including a toddler and infant. For
months, detectives Neil Baker and Ernest Sandoval had no viable leads despite
security footage showing three masked figures. Traditional methods -- cell
tower data, geofence warrants, and hundreds of tips -- yielded nothing
concrete. The breakthrough came when another detective suggested Google might
have records of anyone searching the address beforehand. Police obtained a
reverse keyword search warrant requesting all users who had searched
variations of "5312 Truckee Street" in the 15 days before the fire. Google
provided 61 matching devices. Cross-referencing with earlier cell tower data
revealed the three suspects, who had collectively searched the address dozens
of times, including floor plans on Zillow.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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