Devils in the binary

When ruthless killers could not be connected to a crime scene, it was left to an award-winning analyst to prove they were responsible, with the entire case relying on digital evidence and a meticulous focus on the detail. In October 2014, Kieran McGrath was leaving the Sheldon Arms pub in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, when two men approached on a motorbike and shot him in the chest. Although the 26-year-old managed to drive a mile to a nearby police station, he collapsed and died outside. Four men – Anthony Henry, Troy Beckford, Jace Smith and Remi Adams – were eventually sentenced for the murder, with all, including ringleader Henry, receiving life sentences. However, reaching this outcome marked the end of a long and complicated investigation that would force Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to try techniques it had never used before. ‘Operation Coda’, as the case was known, was the first ‘big’ murder that Major Incident Analyst Ruth O’Malley had been assigned to. It was also highly unusual. Minimal physical evidence was retrieved; GMP could not locate a murder weapon, and a vital witness – Mr McGrath’s friend – refused to give a statement. Based on his violent history with the victim, officers immediately brought Henry in for questioning, but released him on bail because the lack of anything concrete meant he could not even be placed at the scene of the crime. As a result, the force had to rely almost entirely on digital evidence. Dependence on data Almost from the outset, GMP suspected the killers had located Mr McGrath by following a tracking device, as he had never visited the Sheldon Arms before. A search of his car confirmed this, and the device was retrieved. Using data supplied by the tracker’s operating company, Ms O’Malley conducted geographical analysis to find addresses where the device had been kept prior to installation on the vehicle. This led to the seizure of 30 mobile phones. However, none of these could be tied directly to the murder, and none linked back to Henry. In fact, GMP had no number for him at all, and there was no record of any of the seized mobiles being used at the scene. Ms O’Malley began combing through billing data from his girlfriend and known associates’ phones, cross-comparing call logs and text messages to track down numbers that Henry had used. The evidence pointed to two handsets he had used recently – one of which was switched off for the two-week planning period. With these found, Ms O’Malley went back over the data to see which numbers Henry had contacted, expanding the number of suspects in the case. In total, she identified 22 numbers that were used by six suspects in the six weeks leading up to the murder. “I was trying to piece together where these phones were,” she said. “The suspects were drug dealers, they were swapping phones every two weeks, so I was literally going through their billing, and when one phone they were contacting was dropped, I looked at the new numbers that appeared to identify which phones they had been using. “We only obtained telephone billing for a six-week period, and the main offender had used four phones in that time. His right-hand man had used six. “And once I’d pieced together that jigsaw puzzle, I was then able to look at where those phones were in relation to key events.” Using this data, GMP was able to prove that both Henry and Beckford had purchased new phones on the day the tracker was planted on the car and that Beckford had been outside the phone shop at that time, indicating he had likely purchased them. In fact, every time a new phone was purchased for use in the murder, Beckford was consistently in the vicinity of the shop. However, due to the lack of physical evidence, the force was still struggling to place any of the suspects at the scene. The phone data already gathered was of little help either – Henry’s second phone had been switched off for the four and a half hours surrounding the killing, and the other devices were active in other locations at the time.