A man currently on trial accused of murdering his wife is having search queries made on his computers scrutinized.

Forensic recovery from hard drives revealed some disturbing, coincidental searches related to his alleged crime:

Investigators are also focusing e-mails to women they said Petrick was having affairs with and a download of a document entitled “22 ways to kill a man with your bare hands.” Authorities claim that Petrick looked up the depth and topography of a lake where the body of his wife Janine Sutphin was found — before he reported her missing.

It is unknown whether Google participated in the investigation in any active capacity or not. A subpoena would have been all that was necessary to get them to assist, I’m guessing.

Mike from Techdirt jokes: “Either way, for the potential criminals among our readers, perhaps you shouldn’t Google up stuff related to your crime before committing it.”

For those of us logged in, Google does maintain a (permanent?) record of search history. I was curious what my recent search history would say about me? You can choose to “Pause” recording of the search history or “Remove” it at any time (pictured above).

Quickly realized when I came across queries like “mold mildew out of laundry” that I never searched for that (aha! suddently knew what my wife was up to). Also, there were some searches made by others at Mind Camp this last weekend that I didn’t make, but had offered up my Tablet for use. Nothing sinister of course. No Perry Mason moments in my search engine history.

Stories like this one will certainly help sell that erase your tracks type software but that won’t do anything about third party hosted and saved historical information. And since passwords can be stolen and people can lend their computers to others (and not pause or stop search logging), I’m not sure how empirical this evidence can or should be used in court. If I was on a jury I’d be looking at digital evidence like search queries with a squinted eye. You?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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