A digital forensics expert has said the truth of what happened in the Cornell University rape case 'lies in the cloud'. A woman, referred to only by the pseudonym Jane Doe, claims she was assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at their campus residence in October 2024. She went to police around three weeks later, saying she was '100% confident I was raped', but no criminal charges were brought. Doe has now filed a civil lawsuit against the Ivy League university, accusing it of failing to protect her or adequately punish the men accused. The men deny any wrongdoing.
Cloud backups could hold crucial evidence
Heather Barnhart, Senior Digital Forensics Expert at Cellebrite, said digital evidence 'is a silent witness to your life' and will be central to the investigation. She helped track down Osama Bin Laden and has worked on major crime investigations including the Idaho Four murders by Bryan Kohberger and the killing of Gabby Petito. Speaking exclusively to Metro about the Cornell case, she said crucial material may still be available despite the passage of time and the opportunity for any potentially incriminating messages, photos or videos relating to that night to be deleted.
The possibility of recovering deleted material will vary depending on whether those involved used Android or an iPhone, and the specific settings on each device. Barnhart said: 'Something that law enforcement may not be thinking about is Cloud backups, whether it's iCloud or Google, will store historical messages that no longer exist on that device. So, accessing those messages could be huge and crucial to this investigation. Most people have backups because we keep getting new devices and they restore. So, the stuff that's out of sight out of mind will really help investigators here.'
Snapchat messages and health data
Snapchat has featured heavily in the case, with vulgar messages on the fraternity's group of more than 50 members advertising 'free p***y' on the night of the alleged attack. Barnhart warned: 'If people are saving a message or a video to their device, it's stored differently than how Snapchat wants to remove it. So even though it's supposed to be self-destructing or delete, it's the user behaviour that determines how long it stays. If you're one of the suspects, you have no idea if someone walked into a room, took a picture, and then saved it. That could live on their device forever, but it will also live in the Cloud.'
Digital evidence is a 'silent witness to your life' that 'knows everything – good or bad,' Barnhart said. 'Physical evidence leads to a suspect, often if they're unknown. Digital evidence paints a picture of the truth, and that's what will happen here.' She said that, were she investigating, she would be looking for 'text-based admissions' in Snapchat and other messages as well as any photos or videos that might still exist. 'There could even be health data that could be involved here if watches or devices were worn,' she continued.
Health data could show frequency of access
Barnhart said health data could last for years, depending on the phone operating system, and could even help 'show the frequency of access to that room' in the frat house. 'On Android, there are multiple files that track differently on your health data. And on iPhone, it wants to track everything. If I leave and run out to my kitchen, my phone knows how many steps I took and how long it took me. So, it can also show speed – are you walking slowly? Are you rushing to something? All of that comes into play.'
Barnhart said: 'There's no doubt in my mind that all the phones should have been collected from the potential suspects. All of that evidence matters, but that opportunity was lost.'
Lawsuit details and alleged messages
Doe's lawsuit alleges she was pressured into taking ketamine before multiple men took turns sexually assaulting her over the course of nearly seven hours. It contains an image of messages purported to be from the fraternity's Snapchat group, titled Chi Phi Actives, advertising 'free p***y' upstairs and asking 'shop still open?'. Additional images have reportedly emerged showing members boasting, 'like you can walk I and whip it out'.
Doe says three of the men apologised to her in the days after, while reports in the US claim text messages, phone calls and other records suggest some of the accused frat brothers tried to contain the allegations, fearing the impact on their reputations and campus futures. She recorded calls with some of the men, one of whom tells her: 'I'm so sorry about all, like, the backlash you're getting from this. I feel so bad for you, dude. Right afterwards they told me not to message you because they thought you were going through a lot, so I constructed this like letter to send to you.' Doe replies saying she was 'completely and totally intoxicated and then given multiple sedatives', adding: 'And then I was surrounded by upwards of eight to 10 men… this is classified as a gang rape.' The man's tone then changes, and he asks Doe the 'purpose' of her calling.
Lawyer claims Doe was 'misled'
Doe's lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, claimed yesterday that she was 'misled' about the status of the criminal investigation in the weeks after she went to police. Local prosecutor Matthew Van Houten decided not to go forward with a criminal case within days of the woman giving her first substantial interviews to police. He has said he asked Cornell's police department to inform Doe but never spoke personally to her or her lawyer. Giuffra claims the woman was told that the criminal investigation was ongoing.
'I think she was misled. She was told it was still — they weren't going to prosecute, but they were still investigating,' Giuffra told the Associated Press. 'I was involved with this case early on. I thought they were still investigating. It was news to me that they weren't doing anything.' Giuffra said that while they have both received death threats, he has been heartened by the outpouring of support for Doe. Rallies and protests have been held on the Cornell campus, and Giuffra said more than 1,000 women have emailed him to share anger, frustration, solidarity and stories of their own assaults.
