Digital Ghosts: How Floppy Disks, Cell Phones & Surveillance Data Caught BTK and the Idaho 4 Killer

Macky Outlaw and Jus start the show with a quick, no-nonsense chat about the War Powers Resolution — why they don’t think Trump is violating the law, and what the 1973 rules actually mean in practice. It’s fast, fun, and straight talk before they dive into the real meat of the episode.

Then it’s all about the digital clues that are changing the game for catching killers in the 21st century. The guys break down two chilling cases where technology left no place for murderers to hide:

• Dennis Rader (BTK): How a single floppy disk he arrogantly sent to the police ended up dooming him. They unpack the metadata, the church computer trail, and the old-school digital mistake that finally ended his decades-long killing spree.
• Bryan Kohberger & the Idaho 4 Murders: The cell phone pings, vehicle data, surveillance footage, and other digital breadcrumbs that built an airtight case against the suspect. Macky and Jus explore how modern forensics turned seemingly small traces into a complete timeline of the crime.

From floppy disks in the 2000s to always-on smartphones and surveillance grids today, this episode shows how “digital ghosts” are making it nearly impossible for killers to stay invisible. Expect deep dives, clear explanations, and the kind of unfiltered conversation you only get from Macky & Jus.

If you love true crime meets tech, or just want to understand how the smallest online slip-up can take down even the most careful criminals, this one’s for you. 

Hit play — light start, heavy tech-crime deep dive. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, Juice, we got some sad news here just now. Yeah. March ninth March 19th? No? March twentieth. Says he live let's see here. Would he die last night? I guess. It says March 19th, but they just now notified everybody. So yesterday. Said that uh Chuck Norris is dead. That's crazy. I didn't think he could die. Neither did I. You know, he didn't do push-ups. He pushed the earth down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Did you know that?

SPEAKER_01 0:28

There's a bunch of Chuck Norris stuff. Oh, I loved all those things. Now they'll get going really bad.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

My God.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

That's funny. He's like a modern-day superhero, man. Yeah. I mean, he was always a good dude. Did good, well.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

K movies. He was never in any controversial things. No. Like some of them get into.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

One of my favorite was Walker Texas Ranger.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

The best movie, Lone Wolf McQuaid. I don't know if I've ever seen that one.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Oh my god, it's awesome. The Delta Force ones were awesome. Remember those? Yeah. Those are some of the worst movies. Now when you're like eight years old, they're cool. Yeah, they're real cool because he's kicking people's butts. Yeah. Now later on, it was uh I was like, that's stupid. But anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

So back in the day, my dad had a beard and mustache like him, and his hair was the same way. Two kids followed my dad around Kmart thinking he was Chuck Norris. Right. And they asked for an autograph. So he signs their little book, keep kicking Chuck. That's good. I bet you those poor kids grew up thinking they had the real Chuck Norris.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

So the only celebrity I've seen really in the Charlotte Airport. You've been to Charlotte Airport? Yeah. So you know you get the centralized, like most of them have a food court per yeah, they got them in a little hub. They got the big centralized one, right? And everybody's kind of sitting out there. You can see each other and stuff. And I saw Diamond Alice Page out there. Oh, DDP. And I said, DDP, real loud. And he goes, What's up, brother? I think he's pretty cool. Yeah. DDP. He does yoga now. Yeah. Well, he's like us, you know, you got back injuries, you got to change your exercise routine a little bit. So but there's one thing I want to talk about, Juice, before we get in there private investigation and detective stuff.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

We had a we had a podcast episode on the World Powers Resolution.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

The Constitution says that the president is responsible for defending the United States. And is in charge of the armed forces, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Yeah, it's all black and white.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

All right. Then you get the World Powers Resolution, which kind of narrows it down a little bit. Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

So the World Powers Resolution says that the president can uh oh, I lost my spot here. There's an authorate authorization for use of military force.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

There's a post-209-11 version. It states it authorizes the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided to September 11 attacks or anyone who harbored them. So, all right, there we go. There's one. Purpose to prevent any future acts of internal international terrorism against the United States by these specific entities. Expansion. Though it was originally aimed at Al Qaeda and the Taliban executive, the executive branches have interpreted broadly to include associated forces justifying military actions in at least 19 countries. Okay. So any terrorists, basically, right? Right. But the it's called the AUMF Authorized Use Authorized for Use of Military Force is a joint resolution passed by Congress that grants the president the legal authority to use the militar U.S. military for specific purposes. While the similar while similar in function to the declaration of war, AUMFs are often more flexible and are used as the modern standard for authorized authorizing conflict.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Here we go. War Powers Resolution.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

So it has in there a declaration of war, right? And it has specific statutory authorization when you get into author authorization to use some military force to AUMF. National emergency created by attack. This is the primary protection clause allowing the president to act that there's an armed attack upon the United States, his territories or possessions, or its armed forces. Right. Iran's been attacking our armed forces for quite some time. Oh yeah. In this in the strait and in the ocean over there, different things, right? And we didn't do anything about it. Trump just did something about it, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Well, we had some weak people in in charge.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

We don't right now. Right. Uh there's some triggers. It says the national emergency trigger. The president can respond and attack, but even then they must notify Congress within 48 hours. Check. Marco Rubio was standing there. What do you call it? The they call it the Big Seven or something like that. The people that are in charge of the defense, right? Those Congress people. Got to report the why. The president must report uh report must explicitly state the constitutional and legislative authority they're using to justify the action, claiming it was necessary to defend against imminent threat. Right? The 60-day clock, even if the action was defensive, if Congress does not formally authorize it within 60 days, the president's president must begin withdrawal. And they've already authorized this one, by the way. Right. All right, except for if you all right. And also, now the reason why I'm reading this off of Google because somebody in our comments said Google's free, you should use it. You're wrong.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

So apparently this person was illiterate.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah. Google is free. It is. For the most part. You gotta pay for your internet bill. Right. Ask Google what presidents have used the war powers resolution. Oh, let me think. Would Obama be in there? How about all of them since it was enacted? Yeah. Let's start backwards. Trump, he's using it now. Of course. Iran and Venezuela. Joe Biden. Houthi targets in Yemen. Iraq and Syria. Haiti. How about that? Gerald Ford used it. Ronald Reagan used it in Lebanon, Grenada, and Libya. I remember Libya. Remember they uh found all that woman shoes in Manel DeMarcos or whatever. Oh yeah. George H.W. Bus, of course, the big one, Operation Desert Shield, and the invasion of Panama. Bill Clinton, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. I was in on his Kosovo thing. Barack Obama notified Congress of the 2011 military intervention in Libya, though he famously argued the 60-day limit did not apply because the mission did not constitute hostilities. So how, if it does not constitute hostilities, why are we there? Because back when we went to those triggers, it had to be hostilities, was a key word in there. Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Well, Nancy Pelosi even agreed he didn't even need permission. Yeah. She even said it. So why do they pitch a fit now? Because it's Donald Trump. They can't control him, and they can't buy him, and they're afraid of him. That's why. Not that I think Donald Trump does everything 100% right. I don't think he he walks on water. But Congress shouldn't be pointing their finger at him because when they do, they got three pointing back at themselves.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

You know?

SPEAKER_01 7:17

You know, back when Biden was president, the all I heard was the president doesn't control gas prices. Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

They're all screaming about Trump controls it now.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Right. Yeah. I mean, I know we bombed, we got the straight up from news thing going, oh it's going to resolve itself in a week or so. Yeah, it will. We'll get the, you know, some of the allies will get on board and help us out. Right. Getting chips through there and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

But if he doesn't control gas prices, then why are they complaining now?

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Yeah, I don't know. It's still cheaper than it was under Biden. Because it's easier for them to lie and point fingers than admit the truth.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I'm not a Trump apologist by any means. I think there's I don't think he's conservative enough, but I like his policies now. They're helping. I think what they're doing for the United States is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

I I do. I I mean, I think he's doing the right thing. The first time he got in there, he wasn't so sure what he was doing. I think he had some bad advice.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Bad advisors. He's got an all-star team now. Now he's got now he's in there taking care of business.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Right. And uh that's kind of, you know, usually when you get a two-term present, their first term's a little slower than their second term. Yeah. His this this is not slow. It's going checking boxes, right? Yeah.

unknown 8:34

All right.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Well, that's all that my complaint. I'll post this first part so people can say that I know how to use Google. Well, you you do know how to use Google. I've seen you do it. We advertise on Google a lot. Yeah. It's expensive. So anyway, so where we're we're going to get into some interesting topics today. The digital deception era, how cheaters and murderers get caught in 2026. You think it's a correlation between cheaters and murderers? I do. If somebody's got the right mindset to cheat on their wife, what you think they would take the next step and murder somebody to cover it up? I do. Happens a lot, right? Yeah. It typically starts with something like that where they they're covering up an affair. An affair, something like that. There's some digital, so we dive into modern infidelity investigations in the age of apps, AI deep fakes, if we got a case that worked on that, burner accounts, social media trails, all those things. We do all that stuff, right? Right. Open source intelligence, reverse image searches, geolocation pings, or dating at site forensics to uncover affairs. We got a digital dating deception case. It's kind of recent. So we got Morrison versus Morrison in 2024. This is a high net worth divorce. A single deleted WhatsApp message thread came, became the smoking gun. Forensic experts recovered the message at a cost of just$12,500. Digital forensics ain't cheap, y'all. No, it's not. Revealing Bitcoin wallet addresses tied to$4.7 million in undisclosed cryptocurrency assets. How about that? The court awarded the discovering spouse$2.3 million, half of it, adjustment based on the hidden holdings, an astonishing$188 to one return on a forensic investment. So we get a lot of people say that to us. Hey, your$6K,$12K, you name whatever it is. It's too expensive. But they're not looking at the payoff down the road. You know what I mean? So or if there's children involved, they're not looking at that either. So it's not like you're just looking at a phone. No. We're going through the guts of that thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Phones, laptops, desktops, everything. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

So this case highlights how ephemeral, that's a big word, ephemeral. Right. I I like the word ancillary. Same thing, right? Yeah. Add-ons. That's something apps like WhatsApp often are often used for discrete communications. They are leave recoverable traces in cloud backups or device Slack space. So we got the one now everybody using that. Oh man, I forgot the name of it all of a sudden. That one app that he said, oh, it hides in my text messages. We got Snapchat, which doesn't. We've already proven that. You got the other text message, they say it's discrete. Now it is discrete between senders. Like it's hard to do a man-in-the-middle attack, but it does leave tracks on your phone. Sure, it does. And we found those tracks before. Similar patterns appear in other 2024-2025 cases involving deleted emails or texts leading to sanctions. Spoilation. That means evidence destruction, spolation, uh, with average penalties around$187,000. So we've had those before where our party subpoenas the opposing party's phone. Now they're under a spolation order, means you can't delete any evidence. Right. We get the phone and it's been factory reset. And they automatically get spolation sanctions. But we get it open and we can find stuff in Slack space and then cloud, if we can get a cloud account where there's tracks showing where they hid stuff, deleted messages. Uh boyfriend or girlfriend, those things. So yeah, spolation is a big deal, especially on the higher value case it is. Remember the KISSCam incident last year? Which one? Andy Byron, the CEO CEO of Astronomer, was called on the co-play concert KISS Cam.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Yes. Now she's coming out saying, he lied to me. Oh, God. You know that. You know what his deal was.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Oh, yeah. The moment went viral with concert footage and Chris Martin's on the stage quip. He said either they're having an affair or they're just very shy. That was from the states. That's funny. Well, it's not a full divorce filing yet. The incident sparked discussions on fault-based grounds like adultery and potential proceedings. So we had a lawyer on here a few weeks ago. Right. And Alabama, you it can be a fault divorce, right? You can say because of adultery, because of abuse. You can say a bunch of things. And people on Facebook say you can't. Oh yeah, you can. The lawyer said yeah. Imagine that. He's been practicing here for about 12 years. So maybe he should re-google. But, anyways, it's gonna be fault-based, and that can have a significant impact on division of assets and alimony and those kind of things. So yeah, now she's saying he lied to her saying he was divorced already and all this stuff. You want she went on Oprah. How do you get on Oprah to talk about your cheating stuff? I couldn't get on Oprah. I would like to go on Oprah. Not me. I'd go on Oprah. You get a lot of eyes on you there. No, I'd rather go on the View. The View, or I'd go on Joe Rogan. Yeah. The View. You'd go on the View? Oh, absolutely. That'd be that would be a hit right there. Yes, it would. Let's talk about how that would go.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

I I would lose my filter when I walked in that studio. I'd be in the front row going.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

They say, you know, they always have one they say that's conservative on there. Right. They're not. They're not. Not one of them is conservative. They all hate Trump. Oh, you got some that are loom way out there. Yeah. But there's this other one. I remember this show back a while back called Party of Five back in the 90s. Remember that? Yeah. You got Scott Wolfe, who was one of the main dudes on there, right? And he got a divorce in 2025. They shared text messages during their contentious split where Kelly allegedly admitted to planning false allegations, including psychological abuse and child endangerment, for court advantage, despite claiming she didn't believe him. Kelly later posted private text online, violating the gag order and leading her to her arrest on electronic harassment charges. These leaked exposed message that became central to custody and credibility arguments, illustrating the double-edged sword of digital communications and celebrity divorces. Easy to weaponize but risky if mishandled. So she was planting evidence on the digital side.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Saying he was a bad dude and all this stuff. It gets bad in those celebrities, because you're talking$50 million, they're getting big time money, properties.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

But the bad thing is they're trying to do things they're not really qualified to do. And it's so easy for somebody that knows to catch them.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

That's an easy one, man. Yeah. Because uh we've had people try to get us to plant illegal evidence on digital stuff. I'm like, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Ain't happening.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Because it's too easy to track down. Oh, yeah. Now we got this other topic here. It's called criminal masterminds are just lucky. Cases where seemingly clever or high planning criminals, often with elaborate schemes or high IQs, ultimately got tripped up by something surprisingly dumb or minor. Dennis Radar, the BTK killer. Yep. Or BTK. Bind, torture, kill. Yep. Killer. Right? Nasty dude. Killed a lot of people. He went on for 30 years. 10 brutal murders. His were I'm not going to say good or bad. Can you say he was good at his craft? Yes. He was smart. As evil as it is, he was very good at it. He spaced his out. Like some of them get because it's a sexual pleasure they get, right? So they want more than endorphin. They might kill one and then they'll space it out and kill another. And then they then they get closer together. Right. And that's how they get caught because there's no he got he spaced his out and would resist the he called it some guy talking to him. I forgot what he called it. But his urge. Urge.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

And it made it hard to catch him, you know, because they didn't correlate all these murders together until later on.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

No, but we've we've said it before. I I know I have. The best way to get away with something is keep your mouth shut. He didn't do that either. He couldn't keep his mouth shut. None of them can keep their mouth shut.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

They get a rise out of that taunting taunting too. He taunted police with letters, puzzles, thinking he was untouchable in 2005. He asked if a floppy disc could be traced if he used it at a church or public spot. Police said no. It's a lie. It's a lie. He sent one anyway. He's asked them that in the in his communication with him. Idiot. He sent one anyway, containing metadata from his church computer that traced straight back to him. And he got arrested days later. Overconfidence, couldn't keep his mouth shut. Exactly. So Ted Bundy, remember him? Oh yeah. He killed a lot of people too. Yeah. He escaped once and then got caught again. Yeah. Remember that? He escaped and went to Florida and killed again. Yeah. Tallahassee? Yeah. Nasty dude, man. He got the routine traffic stop in 1975. He was a charming law student, Republican, by the way. Uh-huh. Up in when he was up in Oregon and Washington or wherever. Who escaped custody twice and killed at least 30 women across states, planned meticulously, changing appearance, disposing evidence. But in Utah, he got pulled over for driving erratically with no headlights and a stolen BW Beatle. Cops found burglary tools, handcuffs, ski mask, and an ice pick, which was his MO, right. Leading to his first arrest and eventual link to the murders. Even serial killers with high this is what this says here. Even serial killers with high evasion skills, slip on everyday dumb luck mistakes. That's typically what gets them caught. Yeah. Dennis Rader, the first one, was just he could not stop haunting the police through messages. And they finally tracked it back to a floppy disk in his church. The old floppy disks were easy for forensics, man. They're very difficult to erase unless you destroyed them. And that's how he got caught. Got Murray Travis, the Expedia map IP trace. Expedia. In 2002. This is way back there. Yeah when we were still printing out. Remember, we'd look it up on the map, then print out the map. Take it with us. Remember those days? That was high tech, man. Yeah, it was. He was a St. Louis area killer, suspected up to 17 murders, sent police taunting letters with hand-drum maps to a victim's body. They get a rise out of it. They have to do it. Right. I guess secondary to the actual murder where they get that euphoria. Right. Taunting's the next thing where they get that euphoria, right? Right. He printed out from expedia.com. Police opinion the unique map download, traced the IP to his home computer. Inside, torture videos and evidence were in there. Hmm. Wyatt Fitz, he thought sending a map was clear, was clever taunting, overlooked digital footprints and a pre-smartphone error. Great for discussing. Yeah. So that was a laptop error, desktop error, which is you know, smartphones are just a small version of that. And uh then we got Ezrael Israel Keys. Did you ever read about this guy? He was a nasty dude too. He had the debit card trail. Yep. He killed himself after sentencing when he got caught. Yeah. He was very disciplined though. He had stash kits all over the United States. Oh yeah. Buried them. He kept his mouth shut pretty good. Except except to his girlfriend. Yeah. I was gonna say he was quiet except for she ratted him out eventually. He had random victims, no patterns, buried kill kits, using advance, traveled far to avoid links. He would do the killing out and then go back home. Yeah. He kidnapped Samantha Coning in Anchorage, used her debit card for ATMs across states. There's your signature right there. But the card trail and diepack cash led cops to his rental car. He got arrested in Texas. But he was good, except for that right there. Yeah. And then you got Brian Koberger, the recent one of the murders, the recent murders in Idaho. Here's the one about that one. It's crazy. He went in and controlled four or five adults. Yes. You know how hard it is to control one adult.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yes. How many did Charles Manson control though? All of them.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Everybody showed up at that desert camp.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

And old old Chuckles there was only what, five foot three? But I'm talking about murdering somebody.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Like you walk, they walked in. He walked in with one person. It's all mine though. And threatened them. He had to threaten them, yeah. But if you walk in here with me, he wouldn't have attacked us, though. No, no. In his recon, he'd have gone to the next house over.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Yeah, he he would have done better down the road.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

He might have killed me, but he was gonna remember it. Yeah. That's what I always tell people. You might beat me up, but you're gonna there's gonna be something lasting. You know. Absolutely. The worst six seconds of your life. That's about I'm tired. I'm old and tired now, man. Yeah. But he got his car got picked up on the campus cameras and picked him up in Pennsylvania of all places. Huh. Up at your house. Not at my house, but close. As other than outside of it, right? Yeah. But uh you got Robert Durst. That was famous. Remember that guy? Yeah. All right. The famous Hop Mike confession in 2015. Durst, a wealthy real estate heir suspected in three murders over decades, including his wife, invaded justice through money and connections. While filming a documentary, The Jinx, a Hop Mike caught him muttering in the bathroom, What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course. It aired after his arrest, but sealed his fate in trial. I remember that one. They can't stop. I remember watching that one, man. A few documentaries about it. He went down though. Is he dead yet? I don't know. He's in he's at least in prison. I ain't looked him up. Yeah, but I don't know if he's dead though. Yeah. But yeah, man, that's crazy how so it gets even harder nowadays because everything's stored in the cloud and those footprints are everywhere. You know, it ain't like it's local anymore. It's uh it's out there. That's how they catch all these pornographers now. Because they have agreements with Google Fiber, AT2, whoever. Hey, we're gonna monitor your traffic in between. Could get into it's an open warrant, that's what it is. Yeah. But they monitor traffic and they're searching or listening for keywords and files, and they find them, they trace them back to your IP and you're done. So people swapping child porn and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

One thing we're finding with the child porn, though, it's going back to more of a ma a analog system where they're doing it, they're doing drops with printouts and floppy dips and thumb drives and those kind of things.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Well, they they think the higher the technology, they won't pick up you know, lower grade technology.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Right. That's not true. Well, they can't help themselves either. They start transmitting around and trying to sell it.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

I'm glad they're caught. I think they should be castrated and thrown out in the wilderness.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Yeah, no, not me. I think they should be castrated, fed them, and then they should be executed.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

No, I want them to uh suffer for a while though.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Oh, they're gonna suffer for a while, but in the end, they should all be executed.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

I think we should get some crazy life for prisoners, inmates now, and they get to do what they did to the children for a little bit. Yeah, I'll agree with that. That'd be pretty cool. Got a special housing unit.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Just for you. That's that's just as despicable. Yeah, but they need to be killed, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

I've seen interviews with these guys of child addicted to child porn and child rape and all that stuff. They said, You can't fix me. Can't do it.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

They admit it, they say from that. There is no coming back from that, period.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Yeah. They'll say, uh, if you let me out, I'm gonna do it again. They'll say it. Yeah. So um not like they got mad and killed somebody. No. This is something in their brain that's messed up, man.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

So don't you agree? Yeah, absolutely. And I absolutely agree they should be dead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

All right, Juice, that's all we got for this one.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Thanks for thanks for coming again today. Absolutely. You're the man. I'm here all the time. You're the man. You look like you need a nap. I'm the homeless guy that sleeps on your porch, remember? Yeah. And found you.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Felt sorry for you.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Yeah. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

It's like it's stray. All right, we're getting out of here. That was a lot of stuff today, but it was fun. Yep. All right, man. Talk to you later.