Extract from Exterro’s article “Murder, Metadata, and the Making of Modern Investigation”
When a murder trial becomes a hashtag, and podcasts dissect cell phone metadata like plot points, you know digital evidence has gone mainstream.
That’s exactly what happened in the Karen Read trial, where public fascination collided with professional forensics. Millions followed the story online—not just for the courtroom drama, but for the chance to play detective. Reddit threads pored over text messages. TikTok creators analyzed time stamps. Cable commentators debated data sources like they were crime scene experts.
But for professionals in digital forensics, e-discovery, and legal investigations, the real takeaway wasn’t about guilt or innocence. It was about how quickly the lines between data, narrative, and perception can blur—and what happens when the world starts watching the evidence in real time.
1. Digital Forensics Is Now Public Theater
We’ve reached an era where every high-profile case plays out in parallel: one inside the courtroom, and one online. The Karen Read trial was a masterclass in that split reality.
