Mr. Schiff: Going deep into a computer's hard drive paid off. A 1988 Pennsylvania kidnap/murder case was solved. FBI Special Agent Al Johnson helped. He knows computers and police thought the killer put notes on one...

Mr. Johnson: "I surmised that the documents, or the files, had been erased, and the only way to determine whether those files that existed on the computer, was to look in, what I termed at that time, erased file space."

Mr. Schiff: Johnson looked for a specific character...

Mr. Johnson: "What erasing does, is it marks the file; it actually marks the file's name, the first character in the file's name."

Mr. Schiff: Johnson says if he can find the first character...

Mr. Johnson: "That would mean that there is data content still there for that file and that file has been marked for erasure and the data content would remain until some other file overrode it."

Mr. Schiff: Ransom notes and a murder plan were found on the drive. The subject was arrested, convicted and got the death penalty. I'm Neal Schiff and that's the FBI's Closed Case of the Week."

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