Murder Trial May Turn On Missing Router

bgood writes "The outcome of a murder trial taking place in Charlotte, NC, may turn on a missing router. State prosecutors believe that Brad Cooper may have used the router (never recovered by investigators) to make it appear his wife made a phone call from the house the day she disappeared. The trial is in its 8th week."

Comments

VOIP? Router?

[Hatta]

Cary police investigators have theorized that Brad Cooper, an engineer in Voice over Internet Protocol, had the expertise and ability to use the router to stage a remote call from his home phone to his cellphone so that it appeared that Nancy Cooper, 34, was alive on the morning that she disappeared

That's an awfully complex way of doing it. You could accomplish the same thing with a simple modem. I'm disinclined to believe the prosecutions simply because any phone engineer would not need a router.

Re:Lame

[stoolpigeon]

I sat on a jury years ago. It was a bank robbery case and so it was in federal court. The FBI were involved but they had really screwed the pooch by basically being lazy and doing a crappy job. But the primary thing I remember is that they brought up surveillance video from the bank at some point. I don't remember how it came up but at some point it did, and the prosecution couldn't find the tapes.

At that point the judge told us, the jury, that if the tape couldn't be found we would need to assume that it contained information that helped the defendant. He said it was due to some prior case and missing evidence. In this specific case they did end up finding the video but it didn't help determine anything either way. Due to the FBI's failure to follow through on some simple stuff it ended up a hung jury.

At the time though, I felt comforted knowing that prosecution couldn't destroy or hide evidence and then use it against someone - but rather that lost evidence had to be presumed to help the defendant. Apparently that's not the case here, but it's really messed up as you say, if this guy goes to prison based on something that they don't even have.

Re:VOIP? Router?

[Ephemeriis]

Cary police investigators have theorized that Brad Cooper, an engineer in Voice over Internet Protocol, had the expertise and ability to use the router to stage a remote call from his home phone to his cellphone so that it appeared that Nancy Cooper, 34, was alive on the morning that she disappeared

That's an awfully complex way of doing it. You could accomplish the same thing with a simple modem. I'm disinclined to believe the prosecutions simply because any phone engineer would not need a router.

The router in question is a Cisco 3825S, which he apparently borrowed from work.

If the guy worked at Cisco, in VoIP, I have absolutely no doubt that he could actually do what they claim. I could probably manage it myself if I had the right hardware and spent some time looking through documentation.

But it seems kind of silly to borrow a relatively expensive router from work to fake a call to try to prove your innocence...

Like you, I'm thinking he could probably accomplish this in a much simpler manner. Get some cheap little Linksys VoIP router, like the ones you get when you sign up with Vonage. Or just a regular dial-up modem, a Linux box, and a shell script.

It seems to me that if he was thinking ahead enough to borrow that router from work to cover his ass, you'd think he might realize that there'd be a paper trail involved in borrowing that router, and that his ass wouldn't be so nicely covered.

But maybe I'm just over-thinking it...

ALL kinds of "evidence" BUT...

[somethingwicked]

I could spit to the courthouse from here, and these are only a fraction of all the twisted facts:

All kinds of things SUGGESTING he did it, BUT-

This trial is ALL over the place from the prosecution...They have argued he both did it in a fit of rage, and that he premeditated it (such as acquiring the router)

The router is the Prosecution's response for his "alibi"- She was still alive that morning and called him from home while he was at the store before she went jogging.

Computer showed Google Map searches from his computer showing where the body was found before the authorities found the body
BUT- The Defense has offered that the time stamps are an invalid format. However, the Judge would not allow the jury to hear the testimony of the defense witness for this fact.

They said the victim was murdered after returning from a neighborhood party where she had been drinking quite a bit.
BUT-Defense says then her BAC would have still been elevated, which it was not.

He is missing a pair of shoes that he was video taped wearing after she disappeared.

A diamond necklace that witnesses testified she never took off was found in the house, suggesting he killed her then removed the valuable item. BUT-Store tape from two days before shows she was not wearing it then.

A set of supposedly really expensive decorative ducks were missing. The prosecution contended they were broken in a struggle in the house. BUT-Mother of the accused had them somewhere else.

Wife was divorcing the husband who was cheating on her and going to move back to Canada with the kids. BUT-She had had affairs as well and potential divorce proceedings could have outed someone else who wanted to keep things quiet.

The husband bought a tarp the day before- BUT the wife was expected the next morning to help paint a friend's house.

An exterminator says when he was in the garage, there was clutter everywhere, and no room to pull a vehicle into the garage. BUT-Police found a cleared space in the garage where a vehicle may have been pulled in to load a body.

What's crazy about all this the Prosection has gotten away with "It COULD be this, but it COULD be that"

I honestly feel this will hinge on the Judge not allowing the testimony for the defense that the Google Searches are suspect as well. I will contend that looks really bad if you are then not told something doesn't seem right about the dates.