Murder Suspect Didn't Really Ask Siri Where to Hide Roommate's Body
Because of a photo on his phone, it appeared a Florida man standing trial for a 2012 killing had asked Apple's Siri, the creepy lady who lives in your iPhone and Googles things for you, where he should hide the body. At trial, though, it came out there was no way he could have done so.
Pedro Bravo allegedly drove 18-year-old college freshman Christian Aguilar to Best Buy to get the new Kanye West CD, then kidnapped, drugged, and strangled him. During the investigation, police found on Aguilar's phone showed Siri's response to the query "I need to hide my roommate."
Back then, Siri was a much more willing accomplice to murder, programmed to help today's busy body-hiders find nearby swamps, reservoirs, metal foundries, and dumps. That hidden joke has since been removed, Animal reports. Now Siri will just tell you she used to know something about the subject.
But the prosecution is having a tough time linking the joke to the murder—although the photo they showed at trial Tuesday was found on his phone, police never proved that Bravo himself conducted the search.
CBS Miami reported this crucial courtroom exchange:
Bravo's attorney pointed out the screen grab was among hundreds of pictures that were on Bravo's phone and that the search may not have been initiated by his client.
"This is not evidence that he ever did an inquiry, looking for some information online for needing to hide his roommate," Bravo's attorney asked Gainesville police department Det. Matthew Goeckel, who had taken the stand.
"Correct," replied Goeckel.
Further, local news sources are reporting there's no way Bravo could have asked Siri for help himself, because he owned an iPhone 4 at the time. Siri wasn't introduced until the iPhone 4S. In a trial transcript obtained by WUFT, detective Goeckel testified that the photo came from Bravo's Facebook cache.
However, Goeckel did find GPS data that allegedly contradicts Bravo's stated whereabouts at the time of Aguilar's death, WPXI reports. He also turned his cellular connection off for an hour in the middle of that night, and his flashlight app had been used for 48 minutes that day.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly implied that prosecutors were pursuing a theory that Bravo had made the Siri query himself. Although they showed the photo at trial, Goeckel's testimony ruled that possibility out.