Latest / Parsing the Truth: One Byte at a Time / The Thing About Pam: A shooting

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The Thing About Pam: A shooting · Parsing the Truth: One Byte at a Time

0:01
Join former FBI Senior Forensic Examiners Becky Passmore and
0:05
Stacey Eldridge as they dig into the world of digital forensics
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one bite at a time. Now leading their own consulting
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firms and educating the next generation of cyber sleuths,
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these badass babes of digital forensics bring sharp insight,
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real world case experience, and a dose of humor to the bits and
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bites that filled today's investigations.
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From deep dives into business e-mail compromise and ransomware
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attacks, Becky Specialty to cracking the complexities of
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iPhone forensics Stacy's obsession, this podcast delivers
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insider knowledge for professionals, students, and
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true crime techies alike. If you've ever wondered what
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really happens when the digital trail is all that's left, TuneIn
0:42
and start parsing the truth. Hello, everybody, and welcome
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back to Parsing the Truth One Bite at a Time, where we cut
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through digital noise to reveal how investigations really
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unfold. I'm your host, Stacey Eldridge,
1:03
and as always, I'm joined by my Co host Becky Passmore.
1:07
In today's episode, we're still talking about Pam, but now we're
1:11
speaking about the Louis Gumpenberger murder
1:15
specifically. Hello everyone.
1:18
It's nice to be back. Pam Hop lured Louis Gunburger
1:22
into her home and shot him to death in August 2016.
1:26
Saint Charles County prosecutors say Hub wanted to escape the
1:30
heat, so she plotted the murder of a random person she planned
1:33
to frame, Russ Fiera. Now remember, in our last two
1:37
episodes we've spoken about Russ Faria.
1:41
Now as it continues on, in June 2019, Pam entered an Alford plea
1:46
for the murder of Dunpenberg and the Alfred Pilly is basically
1:51
stating that the state of Missouri had enough evidence to
1:55
convict her of murder since this case did not go to trial.
1:59
We have a special guest that worked with the digital evidence
2:02
in this case and Becky and I would like to welcome Larry
2:05
McClain to the show. Thanks guys.
2:07
It's nice to you as always. No, thank you, Larry.
2:10
Thanks for coming on the podcast today.
2:12
So we just want to start out with the why don't you tell us
2:15
all about you and your digital forensics background?
2:18
Gosh, well, I was born on a hot Alabama.
2:21
Like, how far back is this guy going to go now?
2:24
So, you know, spent 23 years in law enforcement before I moved
2:28
to the private sector. But how did that experience was
2:31
as a field training officer? Any field training officers out
2:34
there? Best experience I've ever had,
2:37
but fully the last 10 years of my career were as a digital
2:39
forensic examiner investigator and we had a regional computer
2:43
crime education enforcement group in the Saint Louis area.
2:46
And I was detached to that from the O'Fallon Missouri Police
2:49
Department and was cross sworn as an FBI task force officer.
2:53
So we did anything that came through the door, most a lot of
2:57
people do, but we were also headquarters for Missouri
3:00
Internet crimes against children.
3:02
So I started on the FBI Saint Louis field office, had a
3:04
violent crime task force, but later we changed the name and
3:07
migrated it to a Child Exploitation task force.
3:10
But anything that came through the door.
3:12
Gotcha. And I know when we read the
3:15
book, or at least I read the book they mentioned a lot of.
3:17
Different there's 21's kind of a home published one Oh no, no one
3:22
the. One from the defense lawyer.
3:24
Well, then Renee Zellweger and then.
3:26
So the point of this is when the phone rings and you're like,
3:28
yeah, what's going on, boss? What do you need?
3:31
Bring your A game because the next thing you know, Renee
3:34
Zellweger is your suspect on the movie, right?
3:39
Well, and you never know, she might have to come and observe
3:42
you work. You never know what celebrity
3:43
might want to see you in action so they can.
3:45
Apparently the Dateline did their first ever podcast series
3:50
on this this case. Because there's a time to
3:52
Dateline, as you guys know. Yep, and apparently Renee
3:56
Zellberger would drive to and from whatever she was doing for
3:59
work and whatever she was acting in and just was and this would
4:03
have been told. Enthralled by the case and
4:06
decided I have to make this movie which his movies go.
4:11
You know, yeah, yeah, we, I agree with you.
4:13
There it was it was all right. The the Dateline podcast
4:17
episodes are are so much better and so much detailed than than
4:20
the show, but they give it, they give it a shot.
4:22
So there we are now in the the book they talk about like
4:26
there's all these different groups, law enforcement groups
4:29
that were part of the investigation and they did drop
4:32
a couple names such as the major case squads, technical
4:36
operations group and the Saint Charles County Cybercrime Task
4:41
force. So does that kind of all roll up
4:43
into where you were at or your so kind of separate from?
4:46
That, well, the book gets a lot of it wrong where where it's
4:49
kind of one of things where they don't know.
4:51
They fill in the gap that they they think they know.
4:53
It was a Ghost Rider for the attorney. 20 For Faria, the
4:58
original homicide and the original homicide of Betsy was a
5:02
major case. So like a lot of areas, we have
5:05
a major case group. I was part of that group back in
5:08
the day where, you know, we need resources and we can't handle
5:12
this as an agency. Great, they come out, which is
5:14
what happened in the original homicide of Betsy.
5:18
The homicide of Louis Gumpenberger that occurred in
5:20
O'Fallon was handled just by the O'Fallon PD.
5:23
We had the resources, we have the manpower, and we just
5:26
handled that ourselves. Now, I was detached as a
5:29
detective from O'Fallon at the Saint Charles County Cybercrime
5:32
Task Force. And so that's why that name
5:34
comes up. And the Saint Charles County
5:37
Police Department has much more robust crime scene people.
5:43
So they came interesting to that though, is the because it was a
5:47
team effort. Absolutely.
5:48
We'll talk about the digital footprint and my my piece, but
5:51
massive team effort, hard work by everybody.
5:54
But some of the crime scene investigators there at the
5:57
Gunper Burger homicide were also the ones that originally were to
6:00
Betsy Furia. So kind of interesting time.
6:02
Yeah. So before you started doing
6:04
digital forensics, what was your law enforcement experience?
6:08
You know, this is going to sound braggadocious, but I've done it
6:10
all except I've never had a canine and I've never been an
6:15
undercover drug. I think I spent too much time on
6:18
my youth in the Marine Corps, you know, like, hey, can you buy
6:20
some drugs? I'm like, no officer, go away.
6:22
I just don't think it would have been a great fit.
6:24
But, but most of my career prior to cyber was as a detective,
6:29
everything from, you know, burglaries to major case
6:32
homicides to whatever. This was the early days, if you
6:36
will. I started full time in cyber in
6:39
2008 and I migrated it there. Not for the love of all things
6:43
tech. I'm a geek.
6:44
I like tech, don't get me wrong. But my real passion was all
6:48
things solving crime, including interview and interrogation.
6:51
That was really my passion. But I kind of started figuring
6:54
out if you want to make a case case, if you really want to make
6:58
a case, you really want to get in their head and get mindset.
7:02
The digital way is the way. So I mean, I, they thought I was
7:05
some kind of evil genius to be honest with you, because I'd go
7:08
in there Myspace page. Tom is still a friend if you
7:11
don't get that reference. And I would just go look for my
7:14
stolen car suspect and find the picture of him with the stolen
7:17
car. And I would screen capture that
7:19
and case was made. It wasn't that I was the most
7:22
technical guy. I mean, I could copy paste to a
7:24
thumb drive. I could network the chief's
7:25
printer or whatever, but but they really took that and and
7:29
what they wanted was a good investigator.
7:31
They they thought it was easier to take a real competent
7:34
investigator and teach him computers.
7:37
I don't know that that was right or true.
7:39
It was painful truth me, I always tell him this is a
7:43
terrible story. I went to I Asus in 2009 and I'm
7:47
sitting at the table and the hammy this big manual, it's
7:49
right over here. And one it was the globe and
7:52
then the globe. It had like these little tick
7:54
Marks and zeros throughout the globe.
7:56
And the guy at the end of my table goes, I get it, I got the
7:59
message and the row coach comes over and goes, leans down.
8:03
He whispers, he's like very good.
8:05
You've decoded the message. He's looking at the hex, right?
8:07
He's look at the binary and he converted to hex and then he
8:10
gets the ASCII. I just saw a tick mark in zero.
8:13
We have no idea what. That's where I started.
8:16
So this is very long, obviously. For those tick marks ones.
8:19
Yeah, they were, yeah, they were ones and zeros.
8:23
So it's been a very long journey, but I get to see all
8:25
kinds of investigators. I'm in everybody's labs.
8:28
We have that big shift towards non sworn analysts, right?
8:32
They don't have to go to through driving and the range and all
8:34
that. And that's making a big
8:36
difference in leveraging and resources.
8:38
But again, I didn't come to it because I was love of all things
8:42
tech. I came to it for love of all
8:44
things investigative related. And honestly, this case is a
8:47
great example of how, you know, technology, you know, crime
8:53
scene techniques. Looking at that, I lock arts
8:55
principle of exchange, right? That exchange principle.
8:58
And bringing that to bear is a must in every investigation.
9:01
So I get the call, I'm sitting at my desk, the phone rings and
9:05
my boss calls again. My lab was separate.
9:07
It was a joint lab. It was in the city where I
9:10
worked, but I never went to the PD, but maybe once every two
9:13
months if I had to, right? Because I had to go to you and
9:16
you were supposed to be clean shaven.
9:17
So I was hiding. So I'm in my cube doing my thing
9:21
and my boss calls and he says, hey, Larry, you know, we we have
9:24
a home invasion and the victim has shot the suspect.
9:26
And I'm like, that don't happen every day.
9:29
It's kind of a bedroom community, right?
9:30
That has crime, but bedroom community.
9:32
I'm like, I'm on my way. You know, I'm about to jump up
9:35
the fire bells going off. He says, hang on.
9:37
And he was very calm about it, which was great.
9:39
And and I said, yeah. And he goes, there's a catch.
9:42
What do you mean there's a catch?
9:43
The victims, Pam huh? We all knew that name.
9:47
We all knew all the headlines. It was a very big story in our
9:50
area. But the point to that was that's
9:53
how it starts. But then with any investigations
9:56
and there are others, while they're looking at fingerprints
9:58
and gunshot residue and blood borne pathogens or whatever, my
10:02
job is to stand there and go. What are the possible digital
10:05
footprints? So anytime you're hearing the
10:08
story and I hear something that can hold a 1 and 0, the tick
10:11
marks, you almost have to hear the ballot go Ding, Ding, Ding.
10:18
And then my job is to evaluate and see how we're going to
10:21
attack that digital evidence. And that's that's there was a
10:24
lot of it in this case. Yeah.
10:26
And I think, you know, we're mentioning a lot of different
10:28
cities, and we are in the Saint Louis metropolitan area, the
10:33
community in the area, but some of the different cities
10:36
involved, It goes back to where Betsy and Russ Freya were in
10:41
Troy, MO, which is about like 30 minutes.
10:44
It's northwest of O'Fallon. Missouri, but but is the FBI
10:47
task force and part of the task force?
10:50
We covered the Eastern District of Missouri, so I really
10:53
couldn't go anywhere and we spent a lot of time doing a lot
10:57
of work. O'Fallon, Missouri is important
10:59
because that's where Pam is from.
11:02
And then Saint Charles is the third city that's involved,
11:06
because I believe that is where Lewis Gumpenberg was from,
11:09
correct? Yeah, we got it.
11:11
You were dead on both O'Fallon and Saint Charles, where Mr.
11:15
Gumpenberg lived during the same county.
11:17
So Saint Charles County, Lincoln County.
11:19
OK, awesome. So which case did you work on
11:22
that had a strange entanglement with Pam?
11:25
Well, this, I don't think this is in any of the books and I
11:28
don't even know if it came out and some of the Dateline stuff,
11:31
but I was actually involved in the first homicide.
11:34
I did not know that. And we had talked about the
11:36
thing about the thing about Pam previously.
11:39
And I did not know that you were involved with Betsy's murder
11:42
well in. That investigation.
11:44
Not involved with her murder. The investigation of her.
11:47
Murder. It's like sometimes and there
11:51
might be some non law enforcement people listening.
11:53
Certainly we expect that. But you know, you'll be at a
11:55
restaurant and you'll turn to another detective.
11:57
What do you do? It's like, well, I do sex
11:59
friends, you know, some poor people at the table next to you.
12:01
You're like, let's all think about what we're saying.
12:03
Yeah, so, so when the major case squad got called out for Betsy
12:08
Faria's case, that was often run, I never left the lab
12:10
because what happened was they set 2 investigators, 2 friends
12:14
actually down from the major case, and they what?
12:18
Russ Faria was a contractor with a very large company.
12:22
You recognize the name? That's a rental car agent
12:25
company, right? And he was an IT guy, an IT
12:28
contractor. So he had like 10 machines at
12:30
his house. I wish they would have mentioned
12:35
any of that anywhere of any of the things that I researched.
12:38
I don't think anybody really knows this, but you know.
12:42
The inside details Larry well. Always seem to get them.
12:46
It's not exciting, but you'll know why it's important.
12:48
For the geeks, it is exciting. Come on.
12:50
Yeah. It is, it really is.
12:52
Bring 10 machines here. They come into the lab with ten
12:54
of these machines and they have the proper search warrant
12:58
authority and all that. Great.
13:00
And what they said was we want and it was very limited.
13:04
We have this homicide. The husband did it basically and
13:07
we were he's and I we want you to go through all of these
13:10
computers and find any instances or evidence of insurance fraud.
13:17
OK, so I am a Jamal takes forever processed them all.
13:22
I run them through the forensic tool that I was using at that
13:25
time and I'm keywording for insurance.
13:28
That's no hits. I'm like, so you know, I don't
13:31
know if you guys are this way, but me as an investigator or
13:34
examiner, I'm assuming the problem's me, right?
13:37
I don't go well, the software's not it's terrible.
13:40
It's me. It's an ID 10 error, ID 10T
13:44
error every time. Or picnic the problems in chair,
13:47
not in computer, right? So so I do it all again.
13:51
I can't find anything. And I'm like, I'm screwing this
13:53
up because they're telling me this is the husband and his
13:56
insurance fraud. But I find anything.
13:59
You follow the digital trail. So I call him and I say nothing.
14:02
There's no evidence of that on any of these machines.
14:05
Are you sure? Yeah, I'm sure.
14:07
Do it all again. Try again.
14:08
There's got to be, got to be, got to be nothing.
14:10
So I do it all again. Nothing.
14:12
Well, now we know why. Right.
14:13
Yep, now we know. Why?
14:15
But the whole time I'm like, I got to be doing something wrong.
14:18
I got to be doing something. But you know, you follow your
14:20
procedures, you follow the evidence regard the digital
14:23
trail and there is no evidence. Now what they didn't do on the
14:27
original 1 is Betsy's laptop phone.
14:31
They kept up there and they had to celebrate and they they just
14:37
did a quick logical, I'm not going to be careful.
14:41
I'm just going to say it. Sometimes officers will get a
14:45
little bit of training and get a couple tools.
14:47
God bless them. That's how we all start.
14:48
But then they're trying to make a thing out of it, right?
14:51
Whether that's a retirement thing or I'm the guy or
14:53
whatever. But sometimes a little bit of
14:55
knowledge can't be dangerous. And that's why we want somebody
14:58
to check and validate this. We had this whole lab full of
15:01
blinky lights, right? And people, I think there's five
15:04
of us that were sitting there. And for whatever reason, we
15:07
don't run their investigation. They request our services.
15:10
So they asked me to do these 10 computers, but they never sent
15:13
down that laptop and they never sent down the phone.
15:16
Is I? Is it my memory?
15:17
Is is what that was? Well, yeah, totally because I
15:19
was going to ask you about the laptop with the letter.
15:23
This isn't part of the Lewis investigation and not his
15:26
murder, but you know in the Betsy for.
15:29
Your. Trial, you know, in all the
15:31
interviews about her murder, Pam Hub kept saying have you found
15:35
the letter? Have you found the letter?
15:37
And you know, eventually gave all these really specific
15:40
details that were encompassed in the letter.
15:43
Nothing about the letter comes up in the first trial, but then
15:45
in Russ's retrial, they have a gentleman that examined the
15:49
laptop and he tries to make a really big deal about how
15:53
difficult it was to find this Word document.
15:57
And, and you know, the prosecution is alluding that it
16:00
took nearly four years to find this evidence, while I think
16:04
it's because they didn't look until four years later.
16:07
And to hear the defense tell it, it was just a Microsoft Word
16:10
document. So any forensic tool would have
16:12
found it. But but he tries to make it
16:14
sound like it was a big deal. And don't let me think there's
16:18
something nefarious, because I'm not.
16:19
I don't know that there is, but I to this day, and I've lived
16:23
this case for a lot of years, I to this day still don't know
16:27
whatever happened to the laptop initially and why it wasn't sent
16:30
down. Like was this some it's out on
16:32
the shelf and I didn't get to it, They didn't think they
16:35
needed to? I have no idea.
16:38
I do know that when the retrial came and the laptop came an
16:41
issue, they finally sent it, but rightly so.
16:45
The big boss assigned that to a different examiner who was never
16:48
involved at all in the first part.
16:50
So I didn't have anything to do with that.
16:52
And I think that's a good call, right, to have that separation.
16:55
Yeah. So, partner, I was involved with
16:58
that, that laptop. But that laptop and phone never
17:01
came down for the initial homicide, just these 10 machines
17:04
that I had to image. And I kept thinking I'm missing
17:07
something. I'm missing something.
17:08
But, you know, I pick up the phone like I got nothing.
17:11
And you know, you're thinking they're all looking at me like
17:13
I'm an idiot, missing it, but, but there was nothing.
17:15
So you were clearly familiar with the Russ Faria case, that,
17:19
you know, Betsy's murder and the name Pam Hut before you started
17:22
to work on the Lewis Gunpenberger case.
17:24
So yeah. Because there's been by an NBCTV
17:27
shows and that was a big deal and saying this and not only
17:30
that, I'd really only seen this in this case before here in this
17:34
area, but there was a community groundswell like you've got the
17:39
wrong person, you've got the wrong person.
17:41
And part of that was is part of the investigation.
17:43
They figure out that and we're talking about the first case.
17:45
It's not my case, but that Pam befriended her in three days
17:52
prior to the homicide. She convinced Betsy to sign over
17:55
her entire life insurance to her in the business.
17:58
I think you guys know this from the FBIFBII think calls that a
18:01
clue. Yeah, that's a pretty big.
18:04
Deal. Yes, even even as non sworn
18:07
prior law enforcement, we we too would also call that a clue.
18:10
Yeah. We pick up on those clues, too.
18:13
So that's only important because it ties to the Gumpenberger.
18:17
And here's why. The daughters of Betsy sued for
18:21
that insurance money. They're like.
18:22
Right. Pam, you got my mom's money and
18:25
we want it back. And the judge was like, this is
18:28
wrong, and I wish I could give it to you.
18:29
But the contracts, The contract. And so the kids never got the
18:33
money. And in the original homicide,
18:34
she even says when they question her about this, like, oh, well,
18:38
Betsy didn't trust her daughters and thought they would waste all
18:41
the money. So I'm holding it to him, and
18:42
then I'll give it to him. Yeah.
18:44
History says she did not give them any of that money.
18:48
So is that in the government border?
18:50
Because there's a note in his back pocket when we find the
18:53
body with instructions. And one of the things he's
18:56
saying to Pam Hop and I know I'm kind of ahead of the story is,
19:00
you know, you're going to take me to go get Russ's money.
19:03
And that's so that's an immediate to anybody who knows
19:07
the story. And wow, that the community did
19:09
is like, oh, that's the insurance money.
19:13
Which is why they were, it was insurance, yeah.
19:15
So your involvement with Betsy, the Betsy case and the trial of
19:21
Russ, was there any of that prior to this?
19:24
Never went to trial and the original or second Russ wouldn't
19:27
involve. The only thing was, you know,
19:29
the major case requested me to look at 10 computers evidence of
19:32
insurance fraud. I gave a fine fine tooth comb
19:36
and said nothing here and road report supplement but that was
19:40
it on the first one. Now for our listeners, we've
19:42
spent the last two podcast episodes speaking about the Russ
19:46
free of trials and the murder of Betsy Faria.
19:49
And I think it might be interesting to get your insight
19:52
as far as some of the causes, not that we know everything, but
19:56
just some thoughts about the wrongful conviction of Russ
19:59
Faria. Because when I'm teaching, and
20:01
actually all three of us here teach at the university, love.
20:05
But I know in my classes I spent a lot of time talking about the
20:08
importance of being a dispassionate scientist and
20:11
being aware of your bias. So your bias doesn't cloud your
20:15
judgment now for what you know about the case, do you think it
20:19
was possible that any sort of bias was in play here that
20:24
impacted the original investigation?
20:26
You know, I can't say that I wasn't inside the mindset.
20:29
I'll tell you two things that come to mind when it comes
20:31
there. They focused on the husband
20:33
almost immediately. But to be a little fair, I think
20:36
the last Office of Justice statistics I saw is I think 73%
20:41
of female homicides are domestic relationship or someone they
20:44
know. So that's good police work.
20:47
Let's exclude the husband, whoever the male associated to
20:51
the female. But I But let me ask you.
20:54
This sorry, sorry to interrupt kind of from your investigative
20:57
mindset. The statistics are 73% or
21:00
whatever. A majority of the time the woman
21:03
is killed by a partner, something something of that
21:06
nature. So it should your approach be to
21:10
confirm him as the suspect or to rule him.
21:13
Out. Yes, certainly.
21:15
What? Is that approach.
21:16
Your first goal, your first goal is to rule him out.
21:19
A couple things that I will say about this.
21:21
Not only usually is the guy and that's why we look at the guy,
21:24
but it wasn't in this case. The other thing was I don't
21:27
remember the number, maybe you guys have this, but she was
21:30
stabbed. It was like a day.
21:32
It was a day's work in seeing her doing it still to the study
21:36
except for what she does at the end of the gunman burger case.
21:40
And that may come in as we talk, but still that's a lot of work.
21:44
And usually that amount of stabbing because you know,
21:47
worked homicide, that is overkill is what we call it.
21:50
That is the range. So often that is that domestic
21:54
partner who could exhibit that kind of rage as opposed to
21:58
someone trying to work maybe an insurance camp.
22:01
So I could see how that they were looking at that.
22:04
But you still got to follow the other thing.
22:05
Again, not my case. A lot is made by a lot of people
22:09
and especially initially a lot was made over how Mr. Faria was
22:13
behaving in the interview room. That's a big mistake a lot of
22:16
people make. A lot of armchair folks will
22:19
say, well, so they didn't exhibit enough grief or they
22:22
act, everybody's different. I've been in a million horrible
22:25
situations with a million distraught people exaggerating a
22:28
million there. But everybody reacts
22:30
differently. Sometimes people laugh.
22:32
That's the the nervous system. So you can't lock into that.
22:36
And that was interesting in the Gupenberger case, because when
22:40
the original case happens, she pulls into her driveway.
22:44
Suddenly a guy jumps out of another car.
22:47
Mr. Gunpenberger jumps into the passenger seat, holds a knife to
22:50
her, is threatening her. You're going to take me to get
22:53
Russell's money. She bats the knife out of the
22:57
hand. That'll come back up in the
22:59
digital. Remind me?
23:00
That's the knife out of hand, runs in the house.
23:02
He runs in after she gets the back bedroom, gets a gun and
23:06
shoots him. I think it was five times.
23:08
And as she's doing so, she's on her Samsung cell phone and she
23:14
is calls 911. OK, if you're a fellow examiner
23:17
out there, listen to this podcast.
23:19
You should have just went Ding, right, cell phone.
23:22
And when I'm called in on the case, sorry, What's going on?
23:24
Yeah, he jumps in the car, knocks the knife away.
23:27
She runs in the house and she's on the phone and calls 911.
23:31
But the phone call it, it says it picks up and it says hello
23:35
911 and you hear her. Pam, help, help.
23:38
This, this, this, this guy's in the house.
23:40
The next thing we're going to share with you?
23:42
Is Pam. Hupp's 911.
23:44
Call that she made the. Day that Louis Gumpenberger was
23:49
shot to death. 911 Where's your emergency?
23:54
Hey hello, there's someone breaking in my house.
23:57
Help. What's the address you're at?
23:58
Hello. No, I'm not getting in the car,
24:04
but no what address? Get out.
24:06
Get out. Get out.
24:11
Tell him. What's the address you're at?
24:17
No, no. Hello help help.
24:27
Ma'am, can you hear me help? What's the?
24:31
Address we're at. Hello.
24:50
Are you there? Yes, I am.
24:51
Where are you at? My house.
24:54
Where are you at? Who broke into your home?
25:01
I. Don't know.
25:04
Where is he at right now? I'm going outside.
25:07
Come on, Hoover the fire. Alarms are going off too.
25:15
Is he inside? Yes.
25:19
Is he a white male? A black male.
25:26
He tried to get me in my car. He tried to take you into his
25:29
car in. My car.
25:39
We're have officers on the way. Ma'am.
25:41
Where are you at right now? In the home I'm in.
25:43
The garage you're in the. Garage my car he's.
25:46
Still in the house. OK, Can you run to a neighbor's
25:50
house? I don't think there's anybody
25:53
home there. I'm staying here.
25:54
I hit my dog. I hit my puppy.
25:56
You have your puppy with you, yes.
26:00
You have no idea who this subject is?
26:02
No. Are there any weapons in the
26:04
home? Yes, there's a gun on my bed.
26:07
I shot him. Well, people don't realize the
26:11
91 starts recording before the pickup, so they give a little
26:15
lag time, Yeah, I think. They mentioned that.
26:18
Did they? Mention it on the Dateline
26:20
podcast or it's possibly even on a commercial for that new TV
26:24
show about the 911 calls. Did the caller do it or whatever
26:27
it's called? Somebody talked about that.
26:30
And I'm kind of like, why are you telling people this?
26:33
Because now they know they have to be acting hysterical before
26:36
they place their calls. You're giving away the secret
26:39
sauce. Right.
26:40
And that's why I only talk about that like kind of in our kind of
26:43
group because that that's important.
26:45
But. It's out there now, everybody
26:49
knows. You listen and there are
26:51
specialists, we called them on how to interpret.
26:55
There's whole courses on how to interpret 91 calls for
26:57
detectives. I won't go into my feelings
26:59
about some of that, but but when we initially heard the call,
27:02
it's stunk, it's stunk bad. It was very staged.
27:05
It was very theatrical. But I will tell you, we
27:09
absolutely, 100% treated her as a victim because she was a
27:14
victim in our eyes. This guy was trying to kidnap
27:17
her to go get the money and trying to kill her.
27:19
And she defended herself. She was the victim, Gunpenberger
27:22
as the suspect. And we absolutely worked that
27:25
case there until we were able to prove differently.
27:28
And then the first thing that made us realize, wait a minute,
27:31
she's not a victim is the cell phone digital evidence,
27:34
specifically Jill? What evidence did you analyze in
27:38
this case? So originally she gives a
27:41
statement, it's seen, and I was this poor guy there and they
27:45
bring her to the station to get a good interview and a timeline
27:48
and, you know, get her some water and sit her down.
27:51
She just killed a guy. And she signs consent for her
27:55
mobile device. So the first piece of digital
27:58
evidence in the Gobbenberger is the consent on the mobile
28:01
device. I immediately snatch it up and
28:03
go up to my lab where I do have a set of photographs.
28:06
We had a photograph system to photograph screens.
28:09
Sometimes the ERT that's it. The Vernacle ZRT yeah, yeah, I
28:14
love that. But we're.
28:15
Old too. Larry Oh, wow, I know I don't
28:17
know if it's still, but I used my vernacle and I took several
28:20
photos and the phone's live and active.
28:23
And you can certainly see if you look at Google Maps, I think a
28:27
lot of us are familiar with that.
28:28
You can see the blue lines, right, that go, she's where
28:32
she's traveling. And then of course, I, so I
28:34
photograph it and then I do the extraction of the device.
28:39
And then when you look at the blue lines at that time, maybe I
28:43
didn't know enough, but I knew enough to know it was tracking
28:46
location information. Looking on a device at that
28:49
time, it's not going to give you the, what's the source or the
28:53
distance from the source or any of that, right.
28:55
Cell tower GPS or Wi-Fi. So I knew I needed, but I could
29:00
see the blue lines and I could see she had traveled to Saint
29:03
Charles and she was traveling all around.
29:05
Great. But I can't use blue lines in
29:08
that manner off of a cell phone. So I immediately, you know, I'll
29:12
just cut to the chase. I wrote I think 8 search
29:15
warrants, maybe one you'd have to think.
29:17
And each search warrant had a non disclosure order assigned to
29:21
it because there was so much media.
29:23
There were reporters standing hallways waiting on me.
29:26
We did non disclosure orders and then we did the search warrants.
29:31
And I'll just quickly go through it with you guys.
29:33
Well, first of all, she has this Google phone.
29:36
We've extracted the Google phone, so I'm really interested
29:39
in location data or any data. So I wrote a search warrant for
29:44
that phone specifically to Google because it's an Android
29:47
almost always. And I could see the Gmail that
29:50
she had associated with it almost always.
29:52
You know, that's why I always tell people in my classes like,
29:55
hey, if you have an Android on the left side of the bench and
29:58
an Apple on the right side, Apple has how much thumb drive
30:01
in the sky, 5 gigs. Nobody's got 5 gigs.
30:03
Everybody pays for more. But that Android almost
30:06
assuredly doesn't have to. It's going to have a Gmail
30:08
associated, which is 15 gig thumb drive in the sky.
30:11
And this is kind of a mistake. I see these things that we have
30:14
people that are dumping phones. Maybe I dump it and analyze it.
30:18
Maybe I dump and hand it to somebody else, but they don't
30:20
know that we'll always remember and there's cloud data or people
30:23
think that's just the backups. It's not.
30:26
It's more and different and you have to account for that if you
30:29
can, if you have that legal Nexus anyway.
30:31
So search warrant for Google for that Gmail account associated
30:36
with the phone and think about it, what's my Nexus?
30:39
How big a search warrant can I get?
30:42
I can't play more than one day. Right, right.
30:45
So they give me one day and then I process that search warrant
30:49
when I get it back, and then I expand from there and can do a
30:53
bigger amount of time. But to start with just that day.
30:56
I mean, the main thing that we were looking for and really
30:59
there's a lot of good evidence, but the main thing that comes
31:01
back is that geolocation information.
31:03
Because when I get back from Google, they gave me a wonderful
31:05
spreadsheet and not only tells me the Latin long, but it tells
31:08
me the source was those Wi-Fi GPS or so.
31:11
And then I wish I had the tools we have today.
31:15
I didn't at that time. So literally I took every lat,
31:19
latitude, longitude and I Google Earthed it and I figured out
31:22
exactly where it was. And I made a laborious list of
31:26
every lat long that Google gave me and where that actually
31:31
resolved to for my investigators.
31:33
I mean, this is like 30 pages. And I hand it to him because
31:37
she, she had, she had this GMC Acadia, that was the SUV that
31:44
Gunpenberger jumps into with the knife.
31:46
But we're just want to make sure because she's driving around
31:49
this area. And so I began plotting all this
31:52
information. So I'll tell the Lua on order
31:55
when I hand that this was, I thought this worked out great
31:58
for us. On the back of her car, she had
32:01
this Oval bumper sticker like I love dogs or something.
32:04
I love dogs, but it stood out. So there were.
32:07
So I gave that list of my investigators and they went out
32:10
and teams the two and they went everywhere that Google gave me a
32:14
geolocation point and they went and they look for cameras.
32:19
You'd be amazed where cameras are.
32:21
Well, not you guys, but cameras are everywhere.
32:23
I mean, and she was driving around these trailer parks,
32:26
these mobile home communities, lower socioeconomic communities.
32:29
Later we know she was looking for a victim, we believe.
32:31
But if there was a camera, I might not get the plate when I
32:34
got a black GMC and I got the I love dog sticker, you know, so
32:38
that thing was vital to me. So so they went out and they
32:42
just combed the area and we just found cameras just everywhere
32:45
and locked that in. But but to begin with and told
32:48
that a little bit out of order because I did the search warrant
32:52
under exigent circumstances. I said Google, I need this under
32:55
exigent circumstances. And when I got it back initially
32:58
and I had that spreadsheet of information again, tools have
33:02
changed. I didn't have the tools we have
33:04
now. I'm entering all this stuff in
33:05
and I'm using Google Earth. And then I, you know, as I enter
33:09
it in and I hit that little thing, if you ever use Google
33:11
Earth, the earth pops up and it's like kind of cool.
33:14
And then, oh, I'm seeing all these data points and I'm
33:17
scrolling in. So think about this up and
33:20
Burger drops out of the sky. No connection ever to Russ
33:24
Faria, No connection to Betsy Faria.
33:26
No connection ever to Pam Hupp. No connection.
33:29
It was just an unknown subject who chased her into the house
33:33
she's on that one stop stops. You know, whatever shoots you.
33:36
Hear these banging noises later, it turns out there's five shots
33:39
and she kills him. Guy falls out of the sky, tries
33:41
to kill and kidnap our citizen. We didn't know who this guy was
33:45
for hours. But at the scene, the crime
33:48
scene investigators rolled the fingerprints.
33:50
They go run the fingerprints. We have to wait for the
33:52
fingerprints. And we're all sitting in what I
33:54
call the war room. We're all in the Bureau, all the
33:56
investigators. I mean, it was everybody's
33:58
involved. And that's all we have time for
34:01
this week, folks. Make sure to join us next week
34:03
where we continue our conversation with Larry McClain
34:06
and discover what happens and what they learn when the
34:09
fingerprints come back. And of course, learn more about
34:13
the thing about Pam. Until next time, stay safe, stay
34:16
sharp, and as always, keep parsing the truth one bite at a
34:18
time. If you enjoyed this episode,
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34:43
Thanks. OK, so what's going on?