Karen Reads Google timeline derailed again as 2nd expert disputes defense claims

A second expert on smartphone forensics testified Wednesday in the Karen Read trial that Jennifer McCabe’s Google search about hypothermia happened after John O’Keefe’s remains were found, not before, as the defense has argued.Jessica Hyde testified that she could say with scientific certainty that McCabe used her iPhone to search the phrase “hos (sic) long to die in cold” at 6:24 a.m.The defense claim that the search happened at 2:27 a.m.– hours before investigators say Read, McCabe and Kerry Roberts found O’Keefe dead in the snow at 34 Fairview Road – is incorrect, she testified.The earlier timestamp has no connection to the search but is actually assigned to the time McCabe opened the browser tab on her phone.That testimony supported earlier testimony from Ian Whiffin, a digital forensic expert from the firm Cellebrite, which makes some of the software and hardware that investigators use to look for information on phones and other devices.Hyde testified using specific terms – “hex editors,” “hash values” and database files, wading into technical details about how phone data is extracted, preserved and interpreted.Even inexperienced analysts can have trouble making sense of things, she testified. David Gelman, a Philadelphia-area defense attorney who has been following the case, questioned the prosecution’s decision to have an expert witness for such technical testimony take the stand before the court’s midday break.“For an expert, you want them to make it make sense to a 5-year-old,” he told Fox News Digital.

“They failed today.Add in that it was an incredibly boring subject, I would bet the jurors were just looking at the clock the whole time thinking what they will order for lunch.”After lunch, defense lawyer Robert Alessi handled the cross-examination, bringing up the same technical terms and grilling Hyde about her testimony at Read’s first trial, which he was not part of.The trial last year ended with a deadlocked j...