Submission + - Complex international missing person case solved with subpoena to Google
wattersa writes: I am a lawyer in Redwood City, California and a Slashdot reader since 1998 (not sure when I registered, lol). I recently concluded a three-year missing person investigation that unfortunately turned into an overseas homicide in Taiwan. I was authorized by my client to publish the case study on my website, which is based on our recent court filings and is linked here:
https://www.andrewwatters.com/...
There is an apparently rarely used statute in California that allows conservatorship of a missing person's estate (Probate Code sec. 1849). After a couple weeks of pre-lawsuit investigation, I filed that case in late 2019 and then used the subpoena power to try to solve the disappearance, which seemed appropriate. We solved the case in late 2020 due to a fake "proof of life" email that the suspect sent from the victim's email account, which he sent from a hotel where he testified he was staying alone on the night of the disappearance-- after (according to him) dropping off the victim at the local train station. The victim could not have sent the email from the other side of Taiwan, which is where the email indicated it was from. This is similar to the case of U.S.A. v. Brimager, a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1119 in which the defendant sent fake emails from the victim's account and later pled to overseas murder in Panama. The suspect in my case is a Tony Stark-level supergenius with a Ph.D. and dozens of patents, who works at a prominent engineering company in California. He is currently wanted in Taiwan.
The case was solved with a subpoena to Google for the login/logout history of the victim's Gmail account and the originating IP address of the proof of life email. Although Google does not include the originating IP address in the email headers, it turns out that they retain the IP address for some unknown length of time and we were able to get it.
When it became clear that this case was a homicide, co-counsel and I dismissed the conservatorship case and filed a wrongful death case against the suspect in 2021. We continue to gather information through subpoenas, depositions, and interviews, all of which show that the victim died in a 10-hour window on November 29, 2019. The wrongful death case goes to trial in late 2023 in Santa Clara County. This is a rare case in which the family can afford an expensive, lengthy, attorney-led private investigation.
This obscure statute in the Probate Code was instrumental in solving the case because we didn't have to wait for law enforcement to take action, and we were able to aggressively pursue our own leads. This gave the family a sense of agency and closure, as well as the obvious benefit of solving the disappearance. Also, Taiwan law enforcement could not do subpoenas from Taiwan, so we ended up contributing to their investigation to some extent as well.
This model of using the missing person conservatorship statute to solve cases appears innovative, in my opinion. I would like to draw people's attention to it in the service of missing person cases generally, as well as the use of electronic evidence from civil subpoenas to develop cases independently of any criminal justice stakeholders who typically hold all the cards.
https://www.andrewwatters.com/...
There is an apparently rarely used statute in California that allows conservatorship of a missing person's estate (Probate Code sec. 1849). After a couple weeks of pre-lawsuit investigation, I filed that case in late 2019 and then used the subpoena power to try to solve the disappearance, which seemed appropriate. We solved the case in late 2020 due to a fake "proof of life" email that the suspect sent from the victim's email account, which he sent from a hotel where he testified he was staying alone on the night of the disappearance-- after (according to him) dropping off the victim at the local train station. The victim could not have sent the email from the other side of Taiwan, which is where the email indicated it was from. This is similar to the case of U.S.A. v. Brimager, a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1119 in which the defendant sent fake emails from the victim's account and later pled to overseas murder in Panama. The suspect in my case is a Tony Stark-level supergenius with a Ph.D. and dozens of patents, who works at a prominent engineering company in California. He is currently wanted in Taiwan.
The case was solved with a subpoena to Google for the login/logout history of the victim's Gmail account and the originating IP address of the proof of life email. Although Google does not include the originating IP address in the email headers, it turns out that they retain the IP address for some unknown length of time and we were able to get it.
When it became clear that this case was a homicide, co-counsel and I dismissed the conservatorship case and filed a wrongful death case against the suspect in 2021. We continue to gather information through subpoenas, depositions, and interviews, all of which show that the victim died in a 10-hour window on November 29, 2019. The wrongful death case goes to trial in late 2023 in Santa Clara County. This is a rare case in which the family can afford an expensive, lengthy, attorney-led private investigation.
This obscure statute in the Probate Code was instrumental in solving the case because we didn't have to wait for law enforcement to take action, and we were able to aggressively pursue our own leads. This gave the family a sense of agency and closure, as well as the obvious benefit of solving the disappearance. Also, Taiwan law enforcement could not do subpoenas from Taiwan, so we ended up contributing to their investigation to some extent as well.
This model of using the missing person conservatorship statute to solve cases appears innovative, in my opinion. I would like to draw people's attention to it in the service of missing person cases generally, as well as the use of electronic evidence from civil subpoenas to develop cases independently of any criminal justice stakeholders who typically hold all the cards.
