This is relatively old news (the trial has been going for a while) but yesterday the computer consultant who was charged with killing his wife (and using Google searches to figure out how) was convicted.
From a Nov 11 TechWeb story: Prosecutors claim a Mac specialist on trial in connection with the killing of his wife did a Google search for the words: “neck snap break” and “hold” before she was killed.
From today’s story: Petrick, who’s already in prison on fraud charges, pointed out that the searches weren’t linked to a user name and therefore couldn’t be pinned on him. He said his wife could have looked up some of the material because she had studied martial arts. He said someone who liked to fish or sail could have looked up the lake information. Investigators said they couldn’t find other fishing or sailing-related searches.
His defense didn’t work….
His excuse about the searches not being linked to a username will soon never apply, since (as you have pointed out a number of times) Google will eventually have us all logged in somehow at all times.
How dumb is this guy? Does anyone feel like 90% of murderers that get caught are just stupid? I’m just glad most of the people smart enough to get away with murder are smart enough not to commit murder in the first place.