More Myspace Investigation Examples

I was reading this article about the father of one of the Marines, who led the squad that is now being investigated for the killing of unarmed civilians in Haditha (Iraq) and it got me thinking about using it as another example of the possibilities of using Myspace as an investigation tool.

Now before you read on, I just want everyone to know that I'm not casting judgement on anyone involved in the above story, I'm just using the information from the story (The Haditha story made the cover of Newsweek last week). I'm using it ONLY as an example.

Again, for those of you who are reading this and are more knowledgable in the ways of Myspace I just want to remind you that this is for those investigators/attorney's that are NOT familiar with it. So take it easy and I'll work in some more advanced techniques later.

Okay, now remembering that not everyone has a Myspace account, you just can't assume that they don't. I admit that the Myspace researching techniques I have used for the last few months have yielded great results for me in mostly cases involving younger victims/witnesses/clients, and you may not be as successful using it in cases with older targets.

After reading the story, we obviously know that the squad leader is named Frank D. Wuterich and he is from Meriden, CT. We also know he is in the Marines, soooo...if we decided that we wanted to know more about Wuterich, we would start with the most basic search possible. Now, we want to be as general as possible in our search terms but not too general...check this out.

Using the search terms (in Google): Frank+Meriden+Marine+Myspace, we get a good number of results.

Take a look at the third listing down (see graphic above). Seems like a good possibility, The result matches the description (age, name, hometown, and Oceanside is where Camp Pendleton is located). You'll notice that when you click on it...you get this page telling you, Invalid Friend ID.This user has either cancelled their membership, or their account has been deleted.

Crud. Obviously this is not what we are looking for so, then we click on the magical Cached section of the results, we get this page:

Well, well, well, looks like we may have found our target. My guess is that Wuterich's page was recently deleted and at the time of this writing, his wife's page has had all their pictures taken off her own personal page (although you can still see their small wedding photo on Frank's cached page):

His wife has an interesting quote in her bio:

"I am a mom of two beautiful girls ... and although it may sound corny I married the man of my dreams. Frank is an amazing husband and an awesome and wonderful father. He is also our hero as he returned home, this April from an HONORABLE tour of duty in Iraq..."

I'm guessing the capitalized HONORABLE is a not so subtle message to those that stumble upon her page that Wuterich is innocent of any wrong doing. After reading the many news stories myself, I'm hoping for their families sake that she's right.

Note: I'm hoping everyone understands that I'm not walking them through an entire background investigation. This just opens more doors for you to examine. Myspace pages can be as simple as a name with no photographs to complete photo albums of families, work, and school history, and even their close friends.

It's obviously not the ultimate tool for an investigator but it should greatly supplement existing resources for defense investigators that will ultimately benefit the people that matter the most...our clients!