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Unwise — Search History of Murder Methods
nonprofiteer writes "Mark Jensen's home computer revealed Internet searches for botulism, poisoning, pipe bombs and mercury fulminate. A website was visited that explained how to reverse the polarity of a swimming pool — the Jensens had a pool — by switching the wires around, likening the result to the 4th of July. The State pointed out the absence of Internet searches on topics like separation, divorce, child custody or marital property. Julie Jensen died as a result of ethylene glycol in her system, an ingredient found in antifreeze. On the morning of her death, someone attempted to 'double-delete' (apparently unsuccessfully) the computer's browsing history, which included a search for 'ethylene glycol poisoning.'" What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
timothy, you're an asshole.
How awful is it that detectives were able to discover that her husband searched for information on the exact thing that killed her shortly before her death, along with other methods of killing someone. On top of that he attempted to delete traces of it. This is an invasion of piracy.
When I wanted to kill someone, I researched methods to do it. Then I realized that I couldn't do it, because the footprints were all over the internet. Time passed, I got over it. Asshole's still alive, but I'm doing better than him now.
I was just searching for drill presses last night. Really.
What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
If I'm not mistaken, you're condoning the murder of his wife?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
After Mark Jensen’s wife died mysteriously in 1998, he consented to police searching his home for causes.
In October 1998, the Jensens’ home computer revealed that searches for various means of death coincided with e-mails between Jensen and his then-paramour, Kelly, discussing how they planned to deal with their respective spouses and begin “cleaning up [their] lives” so they could be together and take a cruise the next year.
So it sounds like a dumb criminal got caught by police doing their job. Is Slashdot so far toward the anarchist fringe that this is being spun...
from the unless-everybody-joins-in dept.
What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
as some sort of The People vs. Big Brother thing?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
How the fuck does a swimming pool have a polarity?
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Believe it or not, I'm not new here, but this has to be the most garbled incoherent summary in memory.
"reverse the polarity of a swimming pool"
"likening the result to the 4th of July"
"someone attempted to 'double-delete' the computer's browsing history"
I guess if I knew who the hell "Mark Jensen" was it might make more sense. Better run out and read some tabloids.
Three Squirrels
Ask the Palin email guy how trying to destroy his data turned out. He would've had a slap on the wrist for the email hijacking, but it was obstruction of justice that got him the time he's doing now. It doesn't matter if you wreck your drive. Your internet history is recorded and retained for 2+ years at your ISP in accordance with the SAFETY Act of 2009.
Once you give permission to a search, you don't get to retroactively revoke permission once they find evidence against you. It would be a completely different matter if they just barged in without his permission or a warrant. That would be unconstitutional; this however, is just stupidity on his part.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Drill press? Do you know how easy it is to encrypt a drive?
Not that I would trust that alone but, if you do a reinstall of the OS over an encrypted drive, nobody is recovering what was there previously. Why bother with the theatrics, and expense. Not to mention, that the holes in the drives may not prove much, but they tell them you are hiding something.
Besides, its hard to get to work in the morning without breaking ANY law. How would you even know? You could be violating the law RIGHT NOW just by reading this. In fact, you probably are in some jurisdiction. Who is to say that jurisdictions law doesn't apply to you right now? Try explaining why it doesn't apply after they have picked you up while you are there on vacation.
Ridiculous? Absolutely, but the point is, the world is a big and complicated place full of lots of laws. Luckily, you can get away with ignoring the vast majority of them, most of the time. However, those few that they really have sticks up their ass about, like murder, honestly, its pretty wrong anyway so start with not doing it.
Anything that is not so wrong, but, still illegal, and they still have sticks up their ass about... well... chances are you have time to plan more and encrypted drives should just make sense. I mean shit, the Ubuntu installer had it as an option, last I looked. Also, he can delete all he wants, as long as they can find the right cookies they can probably recreate much of your search history. Really just best not to rely on clearing the cache.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
May God have mercy on any poor son of a bitch who has to review two years my web history.
You know that hasn't become law yet, right? It passed the house, but never passed the Senate. It's been idle since last June.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h780/show
Let the grumpy-pants anarchy-baiters grumble. The system can always use more disorder, whatever its present condition.
I mean shit, the Ubuntu installer had it as an option, last I looked.
I wonder what the overlap is between wife murderers and Ubuntu users?
I was curious about this...particularly what it means to "reverse the polarity of a swimming pool"... um, I didn't know they had poles :) (clearly something to do with the wiring...)
Anyway: http://volokh.com/2011/01/04/interesting-example-of-the-use-of-computer-search-evidence
Apparently its an interesting case. I haven't read much yet, about to dive in, but, it does quickly raise the question of... who did the searching? Looks like the defense claim is suicide. I know that if I planed to kill myself by a posion, I would want to know quite a bit about how it worked and what to expect.
Though, I am not sure thats the one I would choose.... nicotine maybe.... or nitrous oxide... glycol tastes sweet if I remember, its why dogs sometimes die from drinking antifreeze, so seems like a good choice to slip in food or drink... so... hard to say. Have to read...
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
If you looked back into my search history far enough, you could probably find places where I searched for all those different things in the past.
I wouldn't need to search for any website to tell me how to reverse polarity of a swimming pool motor, because it's basic electronics..
And yet, I have not murdered and will not murder anyone using those or any other methods.
Is it reasonable to suspect people of murder just because they have in the past searched for, found, or viewed material, that might relate to methods used by the murderer?
How is it even proven that the searches are born of some intent, and not merely idle curiosity, or FEAR for ones own safety?
Would police have made such a deal of simple searches, if they were done by looking up books on the subject at the library? Would a list of books checked out seriously be used to convict an alleged suspect?
Given that Google was founded in 1998, the same year that Julie Jensen died, it's highly unlikely that Mark Jensen used Google to make these searches.
Would police have made such a deal of simple searches, if they were done by looking up books on the subject at the library? Would a list of books checked out seriously be used to convict an alleged suspect?
Yes.
Your library records are hardly protected from the fuzz either.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
A search history on a personal computer is a personal document, for whomever did the search. If the defendant is the only person able to access the PC, he has to live with the document. A very similar situation would be a spiral notebook with detailed lists and notes and entries identified by day (a real OC piece of work) all about how to kill your wife, all in the defendant's handwriting. I see no difference in admitting both of these into evidence, given a proper foundation. Murder is a crime and should be punished. The problem is not that the record itself is bad. The problem is that most people do not know how to do searches without leaving behind a broad trail of bread crumbs for whomever might follow.
All is paradox. Retired lawyer, so this is just one more layman's opinion.
It's the perfect excuse: "I was doing research for the novel I'm writing". Just be sure you've got enough of a first draft of that novel on your drive to be convincing.
(I am a writer. I have all kinds of weird stuff in my browsing history. Which gives me an idea for a crime thriller series, about a hit-man (or perhaps serial killer?) who writes mysteries. Or perhaps its been done. Anyone remember this movie?)
-- Alastair
Is it reasonable to suspect people of murder just because they have in the past searched for, found, or viewed material, that might relate to methods used by the murderer?
When it is a method by which your wife was killed after you researched this, then yes, yes it is reasonable to suspect you of murder. Are you seriously saying that it's unreasonable? I mean I can't even fathom how your thought processes work here.
It would have automatically died yesterday along with everything else that didn't pass before the ending of the 111th Congress.
What on earth is "reverse the polarity of a swimming pool" supposed to mean? That can't be explained by sloppy editing or a less than tenuous grasp on physics anymore.
Someone testified that Mark confessed to him and tried to get him to kidnap a potential witness. His wife was suspicious and told other people such. The search evidence isn't the only thing around this guy's neck.
Not sayin this guy used Ubuntu, but still....
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
What I'm more curious about, is what is the statute of limitations, so to speak, of the police having consent. I was the victim of an (attempted) armed robbery a few years ago in the apartment I currently live in (he didn't think anybody was around, and ran out after threatening me.. it sucks waking up from a nap to an intruder with a gun standing over you), and I sure as hell didn't mind the police searching my apartment then.. but when is that consent removed? All they found was the guy's jacket, the case is still open.. could they still come back and search without a warrant, even if they were interested in a different case? Or do they have to re-establish consent after the first search?
Evidence does not have a reasonable doubt test, the entire case that the prosecution presents has a reasonable doubt test. Is browser history alone enough to convict someone of murder? No. But when you add in the husband having an affair, emails to his lover that he would get out of his marriage, the wife telling multiple people (including the police) that she was afraid her husband was trying to kill her, etc AND the fact that multiple ways of killing someone (including the way that ultimately caused her death) were in the browser history, AND that an attempt was made to clear the history, AND that he told so many lies it took 10 years to uncover them all, then things start to look pretty bad for the husband.
Typical Reiser filesystem behavior. Flush important material, pretend it was never there, try to clean it up so badly and making such a mess that it's obvious you were the culprit who destroyed the material in the first place. If only he'd used the Internet to learn about real file systems, he'd have understood better not to leave debris around when you delete something.
Weaponize the 'chornet' by including the stinger, & your project will be a shoe-in for some DARPA money.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
You realize of course this story is about a man who very likely murdered someone.
Are we so privacy-crazy that we now take a murderer's side?
Read books... nobody can monitor what you read, nor look up a history of what you may have read that some service provider has kept a record. Books can be gotten for free, borrowed, and bought for untraceable cash. Possession of the books may be incriminating but that is easy to deal with.
This kind of highlights why governments and corporates are increasingly running roughshod over our privacy online, trying to push through legislation that's something out of 1984, because it's incredibly tantalizing to be able to track parts of our lives that we're previously very private on such a massive scale.
The internet is wonderful for the deluge of information you can have on demand. Only problem is it flows both ways.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Household voltages are dangerous, but not nearly as much as people like to think, especially the 110 volt stuff.
:-)
It amazed me how casually an American friend was poking around inside some live kit. A polite reminder that EU mains voltage is 230v (rather than the 110v he was used to), and kills very easily, made him much more careful. And yes, circuit breakers are fitted by law, but you wouldn't want to trust your life to a machine not failing would you
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
A drill press seems extreme?
Actually, for some IT operations subjecting the individual platters of a hard drive after they're off the spindle to a blowtorch or welder's magnet isn't that far off base.
Lots of office supply companies sell paper shredders that are advertised to also shred CDs and DVDs. Even more list the feature right on the box.
I've seen companies that operate incinerators put their retired magnetic backup tapes into them to keep the data from being lifted. I've also seen the tapes pulled from the cartridges and spliced to run through a hand tool (think screwdriver) magnetizer/demagnetizer when the flying-head purpose-built tape demagnetizer (not tape head demagnetizer, and yes I know the difference) was in use by another team.
This isn't an issue of reckless browser use. Mr. J obviously thought there was something on his computer worth trying to delete, or he wouldn't have tried twice to delete it. If he was the least bit concerned (and he should have been), go to favorite Geek Store and get a new hard drive for $80, reinstall your OS, put a few programs on to look good, copy enough files from your thumb-drive to make it looked used, and do a few hours of fun browsing for puppy dogs and tickle me Elmos. Then take offending "Old Drive" and give it to and art metal sculpter to be welded and slagged into a work of art.
Instead, just like everything else in his life. He cut corners, got sloppy, and handled his life without either personal integrity or a clear comprehension of the relationship between actions and consequences. Get married, make babies, and hook up with some young hoochie, you have a limited set of next choices.
A) Honor your word, clean up the mess you made and rebuild you relationship with your wife and family, and spend the rest of life not being a senseless dick... I'd call this the optimal choice under most circumstances!
B) Get responsible, decide to make your new partner Mrs. Hoochie... divorce your wife, clean up the mess you make, give her half your stuff plus child support, and suck it up, you chose to follow the little head... but at least you're being a mench.
C) Or go total cheese-head, murder your wife, give all your money to the lawyer trying to keep the needle out of your arm, have your kids end up in foster homes, and get a letter from the hoochie telling you she's leaving you for a bagger at Wallmart who hasn't murdered anyone recently.
We need to start adding criminal enhancements for stupidity. For everyone's benefit.
Don't open the door for the police, even if you believe that they have a valid search warrant. Slowly approach a window with your empty hands in the air and say, "I'm not armed. If you have a warrant, you'll have to kick the door in. I'll just stand here in the window with my hands visible."
The point being, if the cops were in your home, the first thing your decent lawyer is going to ask you for is your broken doorjamb. If the cops kicked your door in, it's clear to all parties that consent was not given, and you didn't open your door for the cops to "smell something".
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock