Smartphones and smart wearables, led by the Apple Watch, know a lot about us, our health and our lifestyle and are recording this throughout the day with custom apps that are configured and programmed to do so. We talked in a previous article a few days ago that the Apple Watch is able to detect atrial fibrillation and save a patient from a confirmed stroke. Link . Here is the Apple Watch again being used in murder cases to discover the perpetrator of the crime, so how?
In a strange case in Australia, last September at ten in the evening, Mrs. Mirna Nelson, 57, was found dead in her home in Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia. A neighbor saw her son’s wife, Caroline Dela Rose Nelson, 26, leaving the house at the time the body was found gagged and frightened. He immediately called the police.
Caroline told the police that a group of men came to the house and argued with the dead woman for 20 minutes, then tied her and broke into the house and committed their crime. Caroline added that she was in the locked kitchen when the attackers entered her and tied and gagged her, and she did not see anything after that.
But only weeks later, "the victim's daughter-in-law" was arrested and the police charged her that she had carried out the murder, after examining the health data of the victim's Apple Watch. And from it it turned out that what I weave from the story is based on imagination.
According to the report, the prosecutor, Carmen Matteo, told the court judges that the victim's smartwatch activity is essential evidence to prove the falsehood of what the accused tells the police. Carmen added: “A smart watch of this type contains sensors that are able to track the movement of the person who wears it, and it also stores daily activity data, and looking at the measurement of the heart rate on the watch, it indicates an attack on the victim as she walks to her home. "Exactly at 6.38 pm, and based on measurements of body activity and heart rate, the wearer of the watch was attacked and almost certain died by 6.45 pm." As stated by the ABC News report of the American Broadcasting Corporation.
Given the suspect's words to the police that she left the house immediately after the attack at ten in the evening to seek help, and the Apple Watch data confirming the murder of the victim at six and forty-five minutes, the difference is more than three hours after the crime. During these three hours, the accused organized the scene and put in the dramatic plot that made her in the role of the victim in preparation for her escape from the crime, but how is that for her? She was exposed by something she had never thought of. The case is still under investigation, and the next session will be held next June.
The truth is that this was not the first time that a smart device was used as a thread to solve a murder mystery, as Fitbit data was used in 2017 to convict a man who killed his wife, after the watch data showed its inconsistency with the killer's account.
In another German case earlier in 2016, fitness and health data on the iPhone 6s were used as indictment against a young man who raped and killed a medical student and threw her into the river. Facing the killer with those data, he confessed his crime.
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