Cell phone users can’t stop incriminating themselves

手机用户总是忍不住自证其罪

“What kind of doctor was dr. pepper,” Utah real estate agent Kouri Richins once asked a search engine. (Sadly, there was no actual Dr. Pepper.) But it was Richins’ less innocuous online searches that helped a jury find her guilty of murdering her husband Eric via fentanyl overdose—and of hoping to collect life insurance policies she had opened in his name but without his knowledge. Richins was yesterday sentenced to life in prison without parole; her Internet history played a key role in the trial.

“胡椒博士（Dr. Pepper）是什么样的医生？”犹他州房地产经纪人库里·里钦斯（Kouri Richins）曾这样问过搜索引擎。（遗憾的是，现实中并没有胡椒博士这个人。）但正是里钦斯那些并不无辜的在线搜索记录，帮助陪审团认定她犯有谋杀罪——她通过芬太尼过量杀害了丈夫埃里克（Eric），并企图领取她以丈夫名义私自购买的人寿保险。里钦斯昨日被判处终身监禁，不得假释；她的互联网浏览记录在审判中发挥了关键作用。

A few weeks after Utah police began their investigation into Eric’s March 2022 death, they seized Kouri’s iPhone. Comparisons with records from her cell phone provider suggested that numerous text messages around the time of Eric’s death had been deleted from the device. In addition, cell phone tower pings helped establish where Kouri had been in the days before Eric’s death, which were a key piece of evidence in the state’s case against her.

在犹他州警方开始调查埃里克 2022 年 3 月的死亡事件几周后，他们扣押了库里的 iPhone。通过与手机运营商记录的比对显示，埃里克去世前后的多条短信已从设备中删除。此外，手机基站的定位数据帮助确定了库里在埃里克去世前几天的行踪，这成为了检方指控她的关键证据。

But it was her second iPhone that really made headlines. In April 2022, Kouri bought a replacement for her seized device and soon began searching for things which, at the very least, looked suspicious. Here are the five searches prosecutors decided to present to the jury during opening statements (which you can still watch on CourtTV) at Kouri’s trial earlier this year: “can you delete everytginv off an old iphind without actually having ut” [sic throughout] “can deleted text messages be retrieved from an iphone” “how.to.compleltley.wipe.a.iphkne.clear remotely” “can cops force you to do a lie detector test” “women utah prison”

但真正登上头条的是她的第二部 iPhone。2022 年 4 月，库里购买了一部新手机来替换被扣押的设备，并很快开始搜索一些至少看起来非常可疑的内容。以下是检方在今年早些时候库里的庭审开场陈述中（你仍可在 CourtTV 上观看）向陪审团展示的五项搜索记录： “可以在没有旧 iPhone 的情况下删除上面的所有东西吗” [原文如此] “可以从 iPhone 中恢复已删除的短信吗” “如何远程彻底清除 iPhone” “警察能强迫你做测谎仪测试吗” “犹他州女子监狱”

Later in the trial, prosecutors called Chris Kotrodimos (watch his testimony on CourtTV) to the stand. Kotrodimos was a cop turned private investigator who specialized in digital forensics, and he created a PowerPoint presentation showing even more relevant searches taken from this second phone. These included: “can cops.uncover deleted.messages iphone” “how to.permanently delete information from an iphone remotely” “luxury prisons for the rich in America” “if someone is poisoned, what does it go down on the death certificate as”

在庭审后期，检方传唤了克里斯·科特罗迪莫斯（Chris Kotrodimos，可在 CourtTV 上观看其证词）出庭。科特罗迪莫斯曾是一名警察，后来转行为专门从事数字取证的私人调查员。他制作了一份演示文稿，展示了从这部手机中提取的更多相关搜索记录，其中包括： “警察能发现 iPhone 上删除的短信吗” “如何远程永久删除 iPhone 上的信息” “美国富人的豪华监狱” “如果有人被毒死，死亡证明上会怎么写”

But this wasn’t even the full story. The New York Times notes that a “forensic analysis of burner phones used by Ms. Richins showed searches for… ‘how long does life insurance companies takento.pay’ and ‘what is a lethal.does.of.fetanyl.’” Kotrodimos noted that Kouri had also visited webpages titled “what happens to deleted messages” and “how do police and forensic analysts recover deleted data from phones.” And a local news channel said that she had accessed articles called “Signs of Being Under Federal Investigation” and “Delay in Claim Payment for Death Certificate with Pending Cause of Death.”

但这还不是全部。据《纽约时报》报道，对里钦斯女士使用的“一次性手机”（burner phones）进行的取证分析显示，她还搜索了“人寿保险公司需要多久赔付”以及“芬太尼的致死剂量是多少”。科特罗迪莫斯指出，库里还访问过标题为“已删除的短信会发生什么”以及“警察和取证分析师如何从手机中恢复已删除数据”的网页。当地一家新闻频道称，她还查阅过名为“受到联邦调查的迹象”以及“死亡证明死因未决导致的赔付延迟”的文章。

Many of these searches and articles could be explained as attempts to understand the case evidence or to prepare for future outcomes. Still, the repeated emphasis on remote deletion of iPhone data looks more sinister, and the messages certainly helped the prosecution. A jury convicted Kouri Richins of murder and various forms of financial and insurance fraud.

这些搜索和文章中的许多内容或许可以解释为试图了解案件证据或为未来结果做准备。尽管如此，反复强调远程删除 iPhone 数据看起来更加险恶，这些信息无疑对检方起到了帮助。最终，陪审团裁定库里·里钦斯犯有谋杀罪以及多种形式的金融和保险欺诈罪。

Am I going to jail? / 我会坐牢吗？

In HBO’s The Wire, criminal mastermind Stringer Bell famously had the good sense to know that one should not be “taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy.” But in case after case (after case!) that I cover, this is a lesson that defendants simply seem not to learn. Many will blab specific and even lurid details of their alleged crimes into search engines, text messages, and now AI tools.

在 HBO 剧集《火线》（The Wire）中，犯罪策划者斯特林格·贝尔（Stringer Bell）有一句名言，他深知一个人不应该“把犯罪阴谋写下来”。但在我报道的一个又一个（又一个！）案件中，被告似乎总是学不会这个教训。许多人会在搜索引擎、短信，甚至是现在的 AI 工具中，喋喋不休地输入他们所犯罪行的具体细节，甚至是令人毛骨悚然的细节。

For instance, there was the strange 2024 case from Minnesota in which Samantha Petersen, high on meth, hit an Amish buggy with her car. She killed two children and a horse. When police arrived, Petersen’s twin sister tried to convince police that she (the twin) had been the driver. The evidence against Samantha included, as usual, phone information, which revealed Internet searches for “what happens if you get in an accident with an Amish buggy and kill two people” and “if you hit a buggy and kill two people are you going to prison?”

例如，2024 年明尼苏达州发生了一起离奇案件：萨曼莎·彼得森（Samantha Petersen）在吸食冰毒后驾车撞上了一辆阿米什人的马车，导致两名儿童和一匹马死亡。警察赶到时，彼得森的双胞胎姐妹试图让警察相信是她（双胞胎姐妹）开的车。针对萨曼莎的证据一如既往地包含了手机信息，其中显示她曾搜索过“如果你撞上阿米什马车并撞死两个人会发生什么”以及“如果你撞死两个人，你会坐牢吗？”

Thanks to other phone data, this wasn’t a particularly tough case to crack. According to the New York Times: An employee at [the grocery chain] Hy-Vee, where both sisters worked, told investigators they had received a hysterical call from Samantha Petersen on the morning of the crash in which she said she was high on methamphetamines and had killed two Amish children… She also sent a text message to another person admitting she had killed the children, according to the complaint. Petersen pleaded guilty in 2025 and was later sentenced to four years in prison. Her twin sister got 90 days.

多亏了其他手机数据，这并不是一个很难破解的案件。据《纽约时报》报道：两姐妹工作的 Hy-Vee 连锁超市的一名员工告诉调查人员，他们在车祸当天早上接到了萨曼莎·彼得森歇斯底里的电话，她在电话中说自己吸食了冰毒，并撞死了两名阿米什儿童……根据起诉书，她还给另一个人发短信承认自己杀死了这些孩子。彼得森在 2025 年认罪，随后被判处四年监禁。她的双胞胎姐妹被判 90 天监禁。

So many stories / 故事不胜枚举

Examples can be multiplied almost infinitely. Hanging out in “child free” subreddits and researching how hot a car must be to kill a child might not seem suspicious until your young child turns up dead in a hot car days later. This Internet evidence was used to help convict Justin Ross Harris of intentionally killing his son Cooper back in 2014.

类似的例子几乎数不胜数。在“无子女”（child free）的 Reddit 子版块中闲逛，并研究车内温度达到多少会致死，这看起来可能并不显眼，直到几天后你的幼子被发现死在闷热的车内。这一互联网证据曾被用于帮助判定贾斯汀·罗斯·哈里斯（Justin Ross Harris）在 2014 年蓄意杀害其子库珀（Cooper）的罪名成立。

In 2022, however, the Georgia Supreme Court tossed out the murder verdict (PDF), saying that prosecutors had introduced needlessly inflammatory and prejudicial material about Harris’ personal life at his trial. What kind of material? Well, it too came from Harris’ phone. Harris had been sexting multiple women throughout the day his son died in the car, so prosecutors used “nine color pictures of Appellant’s erect penis that the State extracted from messages and blew up to full-page size as separate exhibits,” the court said. Although this did have some relevance for establishing motive and state of mind, it was far too lurid and may have swayed the jury unreasonably, the court said. Harris was no longer seen as a murderer, and the state decided not to retry him.

然而，2022 年，佐治亚州最高法院推翻了这项谋杀罪判决（PDF），称检方在审判中引入了关于哈里斯个人生活的不必要的煽动性和偏见性材料。是什么样的材料？好吧，这也来自哈里斯的手机。在儿子死在车里的那天，哈里斯整天都在与多名女性互发色情短信，因此检方使用了“州政府从信息中提取的九张上诉人勃起阴茎的彩色照片，并将其放大为全页尺寸作为独立证据，”法院表示。法院称，虽然这对于确定动机和心理状态确实具有一定相关性，但内容过于露骨，可能对陪审团产生了不合理的引导。哈里斯不再被视为谋杀犯，州政府决定不再对他进行重审。