Digging Up Digital Evidence
A piece of bar code technology proved to be the undoing of a murderer in Florida. After a missing woman’s buried body was discovered in a wooded location in Jacksonville, Fla., authorities conducting a search of the area found the partial bar code pricing label.
An investigation of the bar code determined that it came from a variety of shovel sold only at Home Depot, and authorities speculated that the shovel was used to bury the murder victim.
Home Depot’s central investigations team was able to tie the bar code to a specific store transaction, including the time of sale.
Footage from a surveillance video was then examined, showing that the victim’s boyfriend had been in the store at the time of sale. Authorities questioned the boyfriend, who confessed to the murder.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the CSO Magazine (08/04); Levinson, Meridith .
