Good job to the investigators catching her. It worth remembering cases like this when you see people claiming that it would be easy to drop off the grid or perform various actions anonymously. "Just use a tor proxy/burner phone/prepaid credit card/monero" etc.
This is an extreme example, but she left the country, and even had plastic surgery but eventually was still caught because people need to interact with the normal economy to earn money and live. She took the bait of a yoga instructor job because she was presumably looking for "side-hustles" so as not to need to prove identity and raise suspicion but maintaining operational security over a long period of time is very difficult. If an investigator is determined enough eventually the target will inevitably slip up and be found out. To paraphrase the infamous IRA statement after the Brighton bombing, the investigator only has to be lucky once vs the target has to be lucky always[1].
> If an investigator is determined enough eventually the target will inevitably slip up and be found out.
According to [1] she was only a fugitive for 43 days until they caught her in Costa Rice which is hardly an extreme example. They knew which country she was in within weeks of her escape so she wasn't a criminal mastermind. This is just PR fluff for the US Marshals.
I meant her being a murderer was extreme, not her ability at opsec. Definitely not a criminal mastermind, but this opsec is difficult and oftentimes people are either a)caught on the hop trying (without planning/preparation) to cover up/escape the consequences of their actions or b)are caught because they gave the game away while planning because they didn't want to do (a).
If she took to washing dishes, they'd have never picked her up, and they'd have packed up and gone home.
If she also took the time to cross the border from the country she flew into, it would have taken them way longer to sniff her out.
> If an investigator is determined enough eventually the target will inevitably slip up and be found out.
Eventually, she'd likely reach out to friends and family and try to get in contact, and that's what'd put them back on her again. I imagine it's really hard just giving up your whole life.
They got a tip narrowing her location down to a single city.
We don't know where that tip came from, but sounds like she already messed up by reaching out to friends and family, or maybe logging into an old internet account.
It was only a matter of time before they found her, it just so happens to be the yoga job ad that got her.
I think in this day and age, a lot of techies are rightfully skeptical of Tor being truly impenetrably anonymous. I have to wonder if a murder is the threshold for the feds bringing in the big guns, or if you have to be sufficiently nastier than that to make it worth it for them to try and track you through Tor.
It depends on the country. If a Nigerian commits a crime and flees to Nigeria and has family there, he will probably never be found (barring some sort of high dollar concerted effort).
It might not be that hard if you're not wanted for murder. David Wolfgang Hawke aka The Spam Nazi aka Jesse James managed to live in BC, Canada as a wanted man undetected by law enforcement for the remainder of his days, until he was found shot to death in 2017 (possibly related to his secret crypto fortune, but that's pure conjecture at this point)
This case reminds me of how Jeffrey Gundlach caught his art thief. Among the works stolen from him was a piece by his grandmother. They caught the thief by working with Google to find the lone query for his grandmother's name.
A lot of companies are very responsive to police inquires. Unfortunately, it is a pretty informal systems and people with minimal effort have found that just sending the right looking email will yield you results.
This is an extreme example, but she left the country, and even had plastic surgery but eventually was still caught because people need to interact with the normal economy to earn money and live. She took the bait of a yoga instructor job because she was presumably looking for "side-hustles" so as not to need to prove identity and raise suspicion but maintaining operational security over a long period of time is very difficult. If an investigator is determined enough eventually the target will inevitably slip up and be found out. To paraphrase the infamous IRA statement after the Brighton bombing, the investigator only has to be lucky once vs the target has to be lucky always[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing