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Old July 31st 09, 03:09 AM posted to rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Bill Graham
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"Bill Graham" wrote in message
...
This is what I got back from the Forensic Files people today:

Dear William,

Thanks for your e-mail! The title of the episode you are inquiring about
is, "Shear Luck" and profiles the murder of Julie Snodgrass by her husband
Sgt. Joseph Snodgrass.

Best,

--Forensic Files Staff


On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:55 AM, William E Graham
wrote:


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Form Data Submitted on: Friday 24th 2009 July 2009 12:55:58 AM

Subject: Questions/Suggestions

First Name: William E
Last Name: Graham
Title: Mr.
Email:
Organization: Just myself
Address 1: 237 Turnage St, NW
Address 2:
City: Salem
State: Oregon
Zip: 97304
Phone: 503-589-4347
Fax:
Message:
What was the episode where the perpetrator cut up the CD in the police
interrogation room with a pair of pinking shears, and they were able to
piece it back together with special thin scotch tape and read it? I know
people who do not believe it's possible to do this, and I want to prove it
to them.
****end of message*******


From reading some Google entries on this subject, I find that the cut up
item was a floppy diskette, and not a modern CD, so it still might not be
possible to accomplish this with a CD:

Dial 'Modem' for Murder
In February 1991, Julie Snodgrass was stabbed to death outside Clark Air
Base in the Philippines. The prime suspect was the victim's husband, Joseph.
During questioning by OSI agents in his office, Snodgrass pulled a pair of
pinking shears from a box next to his desk, and began hacking apart two 5.25
floppy diskettes that were kept in his desk. The agents confiscated the
diskettes, but not before Snodgrass had mangled the floppies into two dozen
pieces.

Experts, including the National Security Agency, FBI and the diskette's
manufacturer, told the Air Force computer cops that the information was
irretrievably lost. Special Agent Ed Cutchins and Tech. Sgt. Dave Tindall,
however, managed to splice pieces of the two diskettes and recover more than
85 percent of the data. The agents soon discovered the killer's motive.

The floppies stored love letters to a mistress, a database for a
black-marketing operation and, most damaging of all, a letter asking his
girlfriend to hire killers to murder his wife. This information along with a
confession from the girlfriend was enough to convict Snodgrass of
first-degree murder and sentence him to life in prison. (For more, see
"Damaging Evidence" in May 1992's Airman.)

"Crime scenes are changing," Christy said. "About 75 to 85 percent of Air
Force people, military and civilians, have computers in their homes.
Whenever we execute a search warrant on a residence, we have a pretty good
chance of encountering an electronic filing cabinet. It's not like the
traditional filing cabinet, where I can say at the scene, 'You take this
drawer, and I'll take that drawer,' and cull through it right there. You
can't do that with electronic evidence.

"Once you have possession of the computer, the task of finding where the
evidence is on it can be intricate, manpower intensive and time consuming,"
Christy said. "It's easier to do that in a controlled environment like our
new computer forensic lab. Criminals will attempt to cover their tracks and
hide evidence when they can. Among other things there are deleted files,
compressed files and zip files. Sometimes software packages have built-in
encryption devices. But as the criminals become more sophisticated, so do
we."

And since everyone doesn't own the same brand of computer, the lab's digital
detectives are whizzes in a host of operating systems--MS-DOS, Windows,
Unix, OS2, Macintosh and Linux, to name a few. They keep in reserve an
arsenal of snooping software and a stockpile of computer hardware,
everything from the latest Sun Microsystems station and Pentium-chip PCs to
a Commodore 64, Apple IIE and a 15-year-old Radio Shack Model III.

"We have to match the bad guys, equipment for equipment," said Schmidt. "Our
gear has to be the latest and greatest, and we also need the best people to
keep up. Or else the bad guys will have the edge."

The lab's media analyzers also support the intrusion squad's mission by
shaking down hackers' machines, ferreting out logbooks, password files,
cracking tools and scripts, and other evidence.