After death… Nothing. Only nothing.

The facts:
A woman was found hanged.
Her husband had been away than evening.
Based on the first evidence the investigators suggested that she had committed suicide.
The husband refuses to believe the conclusions and insists that his wife’s murder must have been concealed as a suicide. He submits as evidence the absence of letter from the victim though she used to spend much time on the computer.
Could it be that the computer would contain useful information that could steer the investigation in one direction or another?
The judge orders a forensic analysis of the computer.

Output from the forensic analysis:
In this type of assignment, what are we looking for? Documents? E-mails? Images?
I went through the entire content of the hard drive.
I read all e-mails, sent or received, archived or deleted.
I visited the whole browsing history.
I studied every picture, stored and deleted.
I read all documents whatever the format.
I queried for every possible relevant keyword.
I spent more than a hundred hours in her intimacy, until I knew her like a friend.
And yet….

Nothing. Only nothing.
Not a single reference to suicide.
Not a single reference to any enmity.
The computer was switched off ordinarily two hours before the death. And I cannot say by whom.

When I think of it I can still sense her presence, mocking my inability to reveal the truth. I feel the husband who asks me questions that I cannot answer. I can sense the judge who wishes he could read something else than “I did not find anything” from my inquiries report.

That’s much contact from people I’ve never met.

The conclusion:
I charged the court ten hours of work.
I never learned what became of this case (Court experts are never told, [Translator’s note: they are kicked out of the process as soon as they have delivered their report])
I often think of it: Suicide or murder?
What help am I if the computer only contains casual stuff?
Yet…

PS: Ages, genders and links between the characters have been changed. Only the story and my dissatisfaction remain. This woman’s life still haunts me. Her death as well.


This article echoes this second article that I have written in a different manner.

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Translation by No One, checked by PrometheeFeu.
Photo credit unspeakable.org

The original note is here: http://zythom.blogspot.fr/2007/10/aprs-la-mort-le-nant.html