Forensic Files email reply
Bill Graham
Dear William,
Thanks for your e-mail! The title of the episode you are inquiring about
is, "Shear Luck" and profiles the murder of Julie Snodgrass by her husband
Sgt. Joseph Snodgrass.
Best,
--Forensic Files Staff
On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:55 AM, William E Graham <we...@comcast.net> wrote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Form Data Submitted on: Friday 24th 2009 July 2009 12:55:58 AM
Subject: Questions/Suggestions
First Name: William E
Last Name: Graham
Title: Mr.
Email: we...@comcast.net
Organization: Just myself
Address 1: 237 Turnage St, NW
Address 2:
City: Salem
State: Oregon
Zip: 97304
Phone: 503-589-4347
Fax:
Message:
What was the episode where the perpetrator cut up the CD in the police
interrogation room with a pair of pinking shears, and they were able to
piece it back together with special thin scotch tape and read it? I know
people who do not believe it's possible to do this, and I want to prove it
to them.
****end of message*******
Bill Graham
"Bill Graham" <we...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:G_WdnffYWoNL2-_X...@giganews.com...
item was a floppy diskette, and not a modern CD, so it still might not be
possible to accomplish this with a CD:
Dial 'Modem' for Murder
In February 1991, Julie Snodgrass was stabbed to death outside Clark Air
Base in the Philippines. The prime suspect was the victim's husband, Joseph.
During questioning by OSI agents in his office, Snodgrass pulled a pair of
pinking shears from a box next to his desk, and began hacking apart two 5.25
floppy diskettes that were kept in his desk. The agents confiscated the
diskettes, but not before Snodgrass had mangled the floppies into two dozen
pieces.
Experts, including the National Security Agency, FBI and the diskette's
manufacturer, told the Air Force computer cops that the information was
irretrievably lost. Special Agent Ed Cutchins and Tech. Sgt. Dave Tindall,
however, managed to splice pieces of the two diskettes and recover more than
85 percent of the data. The agents soon discovered the killer's motive.
The floppies stored love letters to a mistress, a database for a
black-marketing operation and, most damaging of all, a letter asking his
girlfriend to hire killers to murder his wife. This information along with a
confession from the girlfriend was enough to convict Snodgrass of
first-degree murder and sentence him to life in prison. (For more, see
"Damaging Evidence" in May 1992's Airman.)
"Crime scenes are changing," Christy said. "About 75 to 85 percent of Air
Force people, military and civilians, have computers in their homes.
Whenever we execute a search warrant on a residence, we have a pretty good
chance of encountering an electronic filing cabinet. It's not like the
traditional filing cabinet, where I can say at the scene, 'You take this
drawer, and I'll take that drawer,' and cull through it right there. You
can't do that with electronic evidence.
"Once you have possession of the computer, the task of finding where the
evidence is on it can be intricate, manpower intensive and time consuming,"
Christy said. "It's easier to do that in a controlled environment like our
new computer forensic lab. Criminals will attempt to cover their tracks and
hide evidence when they can. Among other things there are deleted files,
compressed files and zip files. Sometimes software packages have built-in
encryption devices. But as the criminals become more sophisticated, so do
we."
And since everyone doesn't own the same brand of computer, the lab's digital
detectives are whizzes in a host of operating systems--MS-DOS, Windows,
Unix, OS2, Macintosh and Linux, to name a few. They keep in reserve an
arsenal of snooping software and a stockpile of computer hardware,
everything from the latest Sun Microsystems station and Pentium-chip PCs to
a Commodore 64, Apple IIE and a 15-year-old Radio Shack Model III.
"We have to match the bad guys, equipment for equipment," said Schmidt. "Our
gear has to be the latest and greatest, and we also need the best people to
keep up. Or else the bad guys will have the edge."
The lab's media analyzers also support the intrusion squad's mission by
shaking down hackers' machines, ferreting out logbooks, password files,
cracking tools and scripts, and other evidence.
Savageduck
>
> "Bill Graham" <we...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:G_WdnffYWoNL2-_X...@giganews.com...
>> This is what I got back from the Forensic Files people today:
>>
>> Dear William,
>>
>> Thanks for your e-mail! The title of the episode you are inquiring
>> about is, "Shear Luck" and profiles the murder of Julie Snodgrass by
>> her husband Sgt. Joseph Snodgrass.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> --Forensic Files Staff
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:55 AM, William E Graham <we...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> ------<Bill's personal info removed as I don't want to be blamed for
>> spreading it to the World>-----
>> What was the episode where the perpetrator cut up the CD in the police
>> interrogation room with a pair of pinking shears, and they were able to
>> piece it back together with special thin scotch tape and read it? I
>> know people who do not believe it's possible to do this, and I want to
>> prove it to them.
>> ****end of message*******
>>
>>
> From reading some Google entries on this subject, I find that the cut
> up item was a floppy diskette, and not a modern CD, so it still might
> not be possible to accomplish this with a CD:
OK! Can you relax now?
I only wish you had got the story straight before you started down the
"reconstructed CD" road provoking much nastiness.
> ----------<Le Snip>---------
--
Regards,
Savageduck
Bill Graham
"Savageduck" <savageduck@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> wrote in message
news:2009073019360643658-savageduck@REMOVESPAMmecom...
> I only wish you had got the story straight before you started down the
> "reconstructed CD" road provoking much nastiness.
The program simply said, "CD". This means, (to me) "Computer Disk". AFAIK, I
did "get the story straight". But, it would be difficult to cut up a modern
CD with pinking shears, so there was a hint that such a thing might not be
possible. The program, certainly, did not make this very clear. I thought
the discussion was very interesting, myself, but if you didn't think so,
then you were free to not read it.......No one twisted your arm........
The pixel Bandit
Which is a great pity... It might have added some sense to his
twisted outlook.
--
I'm coming back as a Pelican...
Watch out because I'm staying the worlds biggest ass-hole!
Savageduck
> Bill Graham wrote:
>>
>> "Savageduck" <savageduck@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> wrote in message
>> news:2009073019360643658-savageduck@REMOVESPAMmecom...
>>> I only wish you had got the story straight before you started down the
>>> "reconstructed CD" road provoking much nastiness.
>>
>> The program simply said, "CD". This means, (to me) "Computer Disk".
>> AFAIK, I did "get the story straight". But, it would be difficult to
>> cut up a modern CD with pinking shears, so there was a hint that such a
>> thing might not be possible. The program, certainly, did not make this
>> very clear. I thought the discussion was very interesting, myself, but
>> if you didn't think so, then you were free to not read it.......No one
>> twisted your arm........
>
> Which is a great pity... It might have added some sense to his twisted outlook.
In these groups I have to use a twisted outlook in order to view beyond
your mental road block.
--
Regards,
Savageduck
Bill Graham
time I watched it more carefully......They did specify that it was the old
style 5-1/4 inch floppy disks that Joseph Snodgrass cut up with his pinking
shears. It took place in the Philippians, and had letters to his housekeeper
on it, where he asked her to hire someone to kill his wife, Julie.....She
hired her two uncles. Why he kept a disk with the letters on it is beyond
me, but it was his undoing. They were able to piece it back together well
enough to recover about 85% of the information from it.....The FBI had told
them that it would cost over a million dollars to recover the data from it,
but they were able to do it for $131, and that included the cost of the
first drive which he wrecked. It was the first time such a thing had been
done. He got a life sentence, and his housekeeper and two uncles only got
one year.......
Robert Coe
:
: "Savageduck" <savageduck@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> wrote in message
: > I only wish you had got the story straight before you started down
: > the "reconstructed CD" road provoking much nastiness.
:
: The program simply said, "CD". This means, (to me) "Computer Disk".
It actually stands for "Compact Disk", a term which was never applied to
original 5.25-inch "floppies" or their 3.5-inch non-floppy successors.
: AFAIK, I did "get the story straight". But, it would be difficult to
: cut up a modern CD with pinking shears,
You can do it with any moderately beefy scissors.
: so there was a hint that such a thing might not be possible. The
: program, certainly, did not make this very clear. I thought the
: discussion was very interesting, myself, but if you didn't think
: so, then you were free to not read it.......No one twisted your
: arm........
If you want to irretrievably destroy the data on a CD, scrape the coating off
of the "back" side; that's where the information is. The reader looks through
a layer of clear plastic, which effectively protects the data from damage to
the front side. That's why scratches on the front side usually don't have much
of an effect. And why users should be more careful not to damage the back side
than they usually are.
Or so I've been told by those who know more about CDs than I do.
BTW, I'm not sure that DVDs work entirely the same way.
Bob
Bill Graham
"Robert Coe" <b...@1776.COM> wrote in message
news:2i2b75hv36vmnne23...@4ax.com...
I've heard that the DVD's have multiple layers, and can be written and read
at the different levels.....they certainly hold a lot more data. Like 4.5
gigs instead of .6 gigs.....
David Nebenzahl
> If you want to irretrievably destroy the data on a CD, scrape the
> coating off of the "back" side; that's where the information is. The
> reader looks through a layer of clear plastic, which effectively
> protects the data from damage to the front side. That's why scratches
> on the front side usually don't have much of an effect. And why users
> should be more careful not to damage the back side than they usually
> are.
>
> Or so I've been told by those who know more about CDs than I do.
Take it from someone who used to work with CDs; you've got it pretty
much correct.
Actually, you don't even need to scratch off much of the coating to make
a CD unreadable and the data unrecoverable; a few well-placed scratches,
especially concentric with the disc, will do the job. That's because
you're destroying most of the data in each track. (This is why users are
advised to clean CDs only by wiping radially--from the center of the
disc towards the edge--rather than circularly; any damage done this way
will be distributed over different tracks, which reduces the risk of
unrecoverable read errors.)
> BTW, I'm not sure that DVDs work entirely the same way.
Basically the same way, though as someone else pointed out, DVDs have
multiple layers. Still read from the "bottom" of the disc.
--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism
Joshua Snodgrass
Just so everyone knows, Julie Snodgrass was my mother. Joe Snodgrass
is my father. I am their son. If you guys want real answers about
this feel free to ask me. didj...@yahoo.com. My name is Joshua
Snodgrass.
Robert Coe
wrote:
No offense intended, but is that factoid germane to this discussion in some
way? This isn't a genealogy newsgroup.
Bob
tnt.808....@gmail.com
My name is Sonia Gomes. Maiden name is Escobar. I been wondering what happened to you since Pinatubo erupted. I was in your class in seventh grade....wish I remembered which teacher...I want to say Mr. Montano, but I'm unsure.
We were young, in seventh grade, I think when the situation regarding your parents happened. I never quite understood and at my age at the time, it was something that was a bit frightening, so I barely paid any mind to it, until Forensic Files.
I am not trying to take you back 20+ years ago and ask for detail or your perspective. I just wanted to stop by and say HI and I hope you are doing well.
With aloha,
Sonia Gomes
mattin...@gmail.com
I wanted to comment on the Forensic Files the case of Michael Ratley the man who rescued his wife which was a complete fabrication and he did so so there would be lauding from responders. He Had decided long b4 he committed said crime of Murder. This is just my 2 cents. Take it or leave it. They got it right here and I knew this as soon as they posed the question or description of him rescuing his wife. Any way be well.
