Weeks before video of a suspected serial killer’s capture fueled relief in Tampa, images of a man walking with a cell phone the night of one of the murders kept the city on high alert.
Surveillance video captured the man moments before murder #4. He was seen casually walking in the Seminole Heights neighborhood looking down at a cell phone.
It’s a cell phone, Tampa police now say helped them connect 24-year-old Howell Emanuel Donaldson III to randomly killing four people in 5 weeks.
“To hear that a cell phone played a key part in this guy’s arrest, oh no not surprising, not surprising at all,” said digital forensic analyst Vincent Risalvato. His job with Global Digital Forensics, often depends on the secrets he can dig up in a cell phone.
“It’s a recording of everything that you’re doing,” he said.
Including location. According to Tampa police, it was “significant” location data from a cell phone that helped link Donaldson to the crimes. Key to that, a cell phone tower that pinned him to the same Seminole Heights neighborhood around the same times 3 of the 4 murders took place.
Risaltavo says even when location data is turned in the “off” position, cell phones are still recording location data often unbeknownst to users.
For law enforcement agencies, it’s a digital jackpot increasingly being used to catch criminals and ultimately convict them.
“Location data is key to most crimes,” said Risalvato. “Where’s the criminal and what were they doing,” he said.
Howell Donaldson III remains behind bars. Now it will be up to prosecutors and police to prove he’s the man behind the murders, the man we saw casually walking the streets with his cell phone.
