Tracking the pings

PALMER— Erick Almandinger, one of four young men facing charges for kidnapping and murdering David Grunwald, is into his second week of court. On Tuesday, several Alaska State Troopers took to the witness stand to share what they found during their homicide investigation, focusing on data gathered by seized cell phones and tablets that linked the group together at the scenes of the crime.

Trooper Nate Bucknall testified to the jury how, early on, his team was able to tie the five suspects: Almandinger, Austin Barrett, Devin Peterson, Dominic Johnson and Bradley Perrigin-Renfro together the night of the murder, with the aid of a PowerPoint containing various images of maps containing colored dots across the Mat-Su Valley.

Bucknall looked at the data gathered by seized phones and tablets. He observed the various ping points throughout Nov. 13, the night Grunwald went missing, and after midnight on Nov. 14. The size of each circle determines how accurate the location would be to the cell phone tower, Bucknall said. He noticed patterns that struck him as indicative. He said that when multiple phones hit the same cell tower, that usually means that the phones were in the same area for a time.

“Grunwald, Johnson, Almandinger, and Barrett all pinged off the same, exact GPS location,” Bucknall said. “Why that is important is that it never happens.”

He followed the ping locations off various cell towers and directions the phones seemed to be moving toward and away from. He said that throughout the night, most if not all of the suspects, including Almandinger, appeared to be at the same locations on the same timeline that would match them to the alleged beating, kidnapping, murder, the burning of Grunwald’s Ford Bronco and the cab drive away from the scene.

Brittany Johnson, criminal justice technician at the Alaska Crime Lab, looked at the phone and tablet data in more detail after Bucknall. She explained, in length, about what she found on Johnson’s phone.

Every person’s phone has trackable data throughout the day, from text messages and phone calls to pictures, videos and web searches. Brittany Johnson bookmarked several pieces of data that stood out to her and seemed relevant to the case. She found a web search term on Dominic Johnson’s phone from November 24, 2016 that read: “dead bodies.”

This is article will be updated with further details about the aforementioned witnesses and other testimonies. This is an ongoing story with more to come as the trail unfolds.