My sister died and I need to retrieve her deleted email

[mich...@officeformac.com]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: pop

To Whom it May Concern,

My sister committed suicide a few months ago under suspicious circumstances. I won't go into too much detail in this email what occurred, but it appears that she did it after finding out that the man she was seeing was cheating on her. There was also some peculiarities around a falsified and disproved will and testament. This has made me even more suspicious and made me so I want to look into this further.

I am trying to retrieve what appear to be deleted emails dating from approx. two weeks until the time of her death. When I checked, I determined that they were erased from her computer, a mac using entourage with a pop accounts into gmail and earthlink accounts. I have checked on both her desktop machine as well as her laptop and neither contain the missing emails, both outgoing as well as incoming.

I was her computer guru and have all her passwords and I am the executor of the estate and have confirmed with my attorney that I have the right to look into her email.

I was able to sign on and look at her earthlink account via web mail but all of her email was deleted from that account from the start of her service there (about 8 years) to two days AFTER her death. I can understand to the day of her death, but two days after makes it seem as if she came back to life and deleted the emails. I believe the ex might have had access to her passwords and accounts and was the one who removed all the emails.

What I am looking for is either a way to retrieve the email on her home machine which I have or a person and/or department that I can speak
to at gmail and earthlink that can help me retrieve these “deleted” emails. From what I understand, very little is truly “deleted” and one can retrieve most anything that was emailed. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Thanks so much for any help you might provide.

[Diane Ross]

On 4/5/09 6:25 PM, "mich...@officeformac.com" <mich...@officeformac.com>
wrote:

> What I am looking for is either a way to retrieve the email on her home
> machine which I have or a person and/or department that I can speak

> to at gmail and earthlink that can help me retrieve these łdeleted˛ emails.

There is no way to get those deleted emails easily. I'm fairly certain that
Gmail and Earthlink would not have backups from months ago. POP mail by
nature is to remove from server once downloaded unless you have selected to
"leave on server." However once mail is download it is deleted from the
server.

Once Entourage deletes mail, it's impossible for a normal user to retrieve
it. When Entourage deletes a message, it actually keeps the message in the
database and it's overwritten as new mail comes in.

There are data recovery services that can retrieve data that has been
deleted but files in a database are the hardest to retrieve.

There is software to rescue data, but you need a service that takes your
drive and recovers the files. This could be very expensive. Since they are
only looking for .eml messages in the Entourage database file, it might not
be as expensive as a entire drive recovery.

The more the computer is used the more likely the data will be overwritten.
Do not use the computer until you have talked to one of the services that do
drive recovery.

I'm sorry for your loss.

--
Diane

[Adam Bailey]

In article <59b71...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw>,
mich...@officeformac.com wrote:

> I am trying to retrieve what appear to be deleted emails dating from approx.
> two weeks until the time of her death. When I checked, I determined that they
> were erased from her computer, a mac using entourage with a pop accounts into
> gmail and earthlink accounts. I have checked on both her desktop machine as
> well as her laptop and neither contain the missing emails, both outgoing as
> well as incoming.

Your first step should be to talk to her providers, they may have
archives of that mail. Do this ASAP, as such archives are not kept
indefinitely.

You may also want to bring the computer to one of the professional data
recovery services.

If the mail is no longer in the Deleted Items folder in Entourage and
there are no backups, then what you are looking for is probably beyond
the means of a normal user.

[Jeff Chapman]

> I was able to sign on and look at her earthlink account via web mail but all
> of her email was deleted from that account from the start of her service there
> (about 8 years) to two days AFTER her death.

Have you tried looking in the Deleted Items folder or the trash can in the
Earthlink web screen (not the Entourage Deleted Items folder) ?

I haven't used Earthlink e-mail for many years now, but with many other web
mail services such as Hotmail and Gmail, a deleted message will first go to
the deleted message folder, and then be deleted automatically (or not) on
the server side at specified intervals. Many people don't even realize how
long those deleted message are sitting in that Deleted Items or Trash Can
folder for on the server there. You'll need to actually log onto the account
on the Earthlink web mail site to do this. The Entourage Deleted Items
folder is not the same as the Deleted Items folder on the webmail services
that were being used.

Of course you've probably already tried this; but it's a thought.