Microsoft device helps police pluck evidence from cyberscene of crime

29 April 2008: An article from Benjamin J. Romano, Seattle Times technology reporter: Microsoft has developed a small plug-in device that investigators can use to quickly extract forensic data from computers that may have been used in crimes.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

Dozens of murders linked

"The level of evil we are dealing with here is rampant, it's deep and it's widespread." -- Jan Jenkins, mother of homicide victim Chris Jenkins.

28 April 2008: This promises to be a big story, and every parent with a son in college needs to be informed and kept abreast of developments. As reported by KSTP reporter Kristi Piehl, the relentless investigative efforts of two New York detectives are tying together a number of deaths of young college men across the country. An unsettling picture is beginning to emerge that suggests that upwards of 40 - or perhaps more - young college men are murder victims, and not the random victims of unrelated drowning accidents.

Within the last decade, two retired NYPD detectives, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte have doggedly pursued clues in the deaths of 40 young men in 25 cities in 11 states. This odyssey into the sinister began 11 years ago when Sgt. Gannon, working at that time for the NYPD, made a promise to the parents of Patrick McNeill, who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from a NY bar on February 16, 1997. His body was found on April 7, 1997 floating in the water near a Brooklyn pier. In that case, as well as in about 40 others, local authorities classified the deaths as accidental drownings or undetermined regarding the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

After 11 years of extensive investigation at their own expense, the combined efforts of Gannon and Duarte have uncovered disturbing connections between the death of Jenkins and about 40 other intelligent, athletic and popular college students suggestive of a "calculated, cross-country plot to kill young college men."

According to Anthony Duarte: "I think it is a serial killer, but not one individual. I would just say, a group of individuals, probably located in more than one state." Equally unsettling is the possibility that they may kill again.

Read the KSTP article HERE.

Interactive map of killings