Social Media

Social Media: A Multi-Purpose Investigation and Profit-Making Tool

posted by PInow.com Staff | February 15th, 2011

“Tweeting’s for the birds,” a private investigator recently griped. “No way you’re gonna catch me on Twitter.”

If I told him Twitter, and other social networking sites, could attract new clients, aid finding people and evidence, as well as professionally brand his business, think he’d re-think his stance?

Attracting New Clients

There’s a new term, social commerce, that refers to online consumers learning and trying different business services based on trusted online referrals and recommendations. In a February 2011 article on TechCrunch, “Social Commerce And The New Rules For Local Businesses,” author Craig Donato says social commerce is “re-humanizing online commerce” due to its word-of-mouth marketing, which works best with businesses that are bound to relationships – in other words, service industries. His advice? Attract customers by being conversational and developing relationships.

Social commerce sounds a lot like what my dad did running a hardware store — chatting with customers, developing friendships, selling hardware. But does social commerce in 2011 work for a private investigator? According to Skipp Porteous, co-author of Into the Blast: The True Story of D.B. Cooper, and president of New York-based Sherlock Investigations, Inc., the answer is yes. “I’m a big believer in social media to help small business,” says Porteous. “Last year I got three cases through Twitter alone. American private investigators are still mostly in the dark about social media, but they’ll catch up.”

Finding People and Evidence

Social media is a ripe area for researching and locating people. A few years ago, an attorney asked my investigations firm to find a woman who was on the run. She’d ditched her cell phone, wasn’t contacting friends or family, wasn’t driving her regular vehicle nor using any credit cards or other trackable items. We found her through a search of social media. She’d taken great care to cover her tracks, but she couldn’t stop posting on her MySpace account.

Another private investigator used Facebook to find a subject. “Facebook assisted in locating a missing individual in a probate search,” says Dave Smith, D P Investigations in West Sussex, UK. “He was from the UK, but had moved to live in Toronto, Canada. Messages through Facebook confirmed he was the person I was looking for.”

Lawyers are mining social media for evidence, too. The January 2011 ABA Journal article titled “Tort Defense Lawyer Contends MySpace Smiley Faces Are Damning Evidence” reports that an increasing number of defense lawyers are seeking access to plaintiffs’ social media pages, searching for evidence of fakery and other activities. In a recent case, Facebook filed a motion arguing that defense lawyers should obtain account information directly from the member rather than subpoena Facebook. New York attorney James Gallagher is instead requesting a court order requiring the plaintiff to sign a consent form granting access to her Facebook account, which will be attached to a subpoena. “This is a wave that is going to explode all over plaintiffs’ law,” Gallagher says.

Searching Dozens of Social Media Sites at Once

You can easily search popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster through their search facilities, using names, ZIP codes, email addresses, keywords and other indicators. Using these sites typically requires registration.

There’s also a growing number of social media search engines that let you conduct free searches on dozens of social networking sites by a person’s name, nickname, phone number, email address and more. Below are a few free multi-social-media search engines.

Kgbpeople.com: Results show in social networks, search engines, photo/video/audio sites, and personal references.

Kurrently.com: This real-time search engine instantly combines results from Twitter and Facebook in an easy-to-read format organized by date stamp.

SocialMention: Another free, real-time search engine that searches in over a hundred media properties, from blogs to comments to images. It also provides a social media analysis that shows associated information, such as top keywords, usernames and hashtags (inline tags prefaced with a hash mark, such as #PInow).

For more tips on using social media to find people, read the PInow.com article “Private Investigators Powering Searches with Social Media.”

Networking with Peers

By connecting with their peers through social media, private investigators learn about professional events, share tips and professional accomplishments, and advertise their services. Tamara Thompson, owner of Tamara Thompson Investigations in Oakland, California, says, “I’ve used social media to inform my readers about my investigative specialty – Internet and database research – while providing tools and resources they can apply in their businesses. I never sell myself, because that’s boring. I write about what interests me and always stick to work-related topics. Most of the benefits are indirect: connecting to a variety of professionals, enhancing my reputation, getting access to data or knowledge sources and keeping my name in circulation. It’s tricky because you have to make a commitment to participate and do it regularly but then you don’t want it to become a time-sucker.”

Summary

Successful PIs are good listeners. Cases have been solved just from listening to what people say about each other and themselves. When you funnel those words into digital gathering places, add indicators to locations and other information, and provide opportunities to promote and build clientele, the result is a multi-purpose investigation and profit-making social media tool for private investigators.

Maybe that investigator who thought tweeting was for the birds should try a test flight before grounding the idea altogether.

Guest contributor Colleen Collins is a professional private investigator who co-owns Highlands Investigations and Legal Services, Inc. (http://www.highlandsinvestigations.com/) based in Denver, Colorado.

To learn how joining PInow.com’s trusted network of private investigators can turbo-charge your business, contact us online or call us at (888) 997-4669.

To learn how joining PInow.com’s trusted network of private investigators can turbo-charge your business, contact us online or call us at (888) 997-4669.


If you would like to redistribute this article or any other content for your website, newsletter or other publication, e-mail sdavis@pinow.com to find out how. And if you’re interested in writing articles about the private investigation industry, PInow.com is always looking for guest writers to share their industry knowledge.

Robert Blevins Radio Interview Available

Into the Blast coauthor Robert Blevins was interviewed on KYNT on January 19 about the book. You can listen the half-hour interview here on the Adventure Books of Seattle website:

http://www.adventurebooksofseattle.com/abinterviewsandvideos.htm

Robert Blevins Profiled in the Auburn Reporter

Into the Blast coauthor Robert Blevins was profiled in an article on the Auburn Reporter's website.

“I had a lot of fun doing the investigation,” he said. “It was a lot of fun traveling around and talking to these people. A lot of them I had to cold call. They were really difficult to find, they didn’t have phone numbers or addresses listed.”

For full story, see "Auburn author adds to legend of D.B. Cooper" at http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/south_king/aub/community/94334624.html.

AB of Seattle Releases Biggest Title Ever on Skyjacker D.B. Cooper

We're all very tired. However, there is some satisfaction in a job well done. Do you know the true identity of D.B. Cooper? Do you know how he actually pulled it off? Do you know who helped him on the ground and how he spent the money afterward? Most importantly, do you know what motivated him to hijack Flight 305 on November 24, 1971 and extort $200,000 bucks from Northwest Airlines?

Don't feel bad if you don't know the answers. The F.B.I. had nearly forty years to pursue the case and they couldn't figure it out, either.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an efficient organization, but even they make mistakes. And one of the biggest ones they ever made was in the D.B. Cooper case. They never looked to see it if could be an inside job. They never looked at employees as potential suspects. This made it possible for the hijacker to slip from their grasp just long enough to fade back into the community. He had good friends, faithful friends, who not only shared in the proceeds, but kept their mouths shut for decades.

Well, until now anyway.

When you are doing an investigation, some people will be forthright and honest. Others will be evasive, and perhaps engage in lying. If you come prepared, then it is easier to separate the wheat from the chaff and determine what is truth and what is a lie.

Since I grew up in the same town as the hijacker and have lived around here since the time of dinosaurs, it was not as difficult as I thought to dig deep enough to find the truth. I had to do a lot of driving, though. As far as I am concerned, the mystery of who Cooper really was is solved.

I'll admit a bit of letdown about the whole thing. The chase, the investigation, the interviews, the sifting of the testimony. That was the fun part. When I finally realized the chase was over, it was like finding Amelia Earhart by accident. Amelia is only interesting because no one has found out what happened. If they had found her the year after she disappeared, there would be no books, no movies, and no speculation. This is the way I feel about the D.B. Cooper case. It's sort of like hunting down Bigfoot, I guess. Except even Bigfoot hasn't thumbed his nose at every law enforcement agency in America and lived to spend a bunch of loot.

However, I'm still glad I was a part of it. The book comes out in paperback and for the Kindle in a couple of days. And I wouldn't trade the experience of being a part of that for the world.

Robert Blevins is the co-author of Into the Blast: The True Story of D.B. Cooper and a managing editor at Adventure Books of Seattle.

Newsvine interview with Robert Blevins (Part 1)

This is the first part of a two-part interview with Robert Blevins by Scott Butki. Part two will be in about a month and will focus on the reaction by the media and others to the book's release and contents.

I offered to do an interview with Robert to help promote this book he co-authored for two reasons: I have always found this to be an interesting case and I like to help out others newsvine with their published works.

Why did you decide to write a book about this case?

In June of 2009, Skipp Porteous, the head of Sherlock Investigations in New York City, contacted me saying he was planning to write a book on the D.B. Cooper case. When I asked him why he picked AB of Seattle, he said it was because he had read somewhere I was from Sumner, Washington - the same little town where Kenny Christiansen lived at the time of the hijacking. At first, I wasn't all that interested because I knew nothing about his suspect. However, he mailed me a big package of files and photographs and asked me take a look. After I did, I realized he might be on to something. He had more circumstantial evidence pointing to Christiansen as the skyjacker than anyone else previously. At that point, I was only planning to publish the book. Later, as I started investigating the local leads he provided, I found out so much new evidence that we decided to go as co-authors on the book.

Why do you think this case has taken on such a mythos?

Here in the Northwest, D.B. Cooper has not been forgotten. They still have a D.B. Cooper look-alike contest every year in Arial, Washington, the town closest to where he probably jumped from the 727. He's the guy who single-handedly outwitted both the F.B.I. and Northwest Airlines. Stewardess Tina Mucklow said he was very polite the whole time, and even offered her three bundles of the ransom money, which she refused of course. No one got hurt in the hijacking, either...which I think adds to his popularity. The idea that someone would just leap out the back of a jet and walk away with $200,000, never to be seen again, has a certain popular appeal. Plus, some of the things he said while they were circling Seattle led people to believe he was a local.

Do you think it will ever be solved?

If I were a betting man, I would bet that Kenny Christiansen was the guy. But I can't say 100% for certain it was him. I would say 90-95%. The evidence against him is almost overwhelming. Not 100%, but he would have much trouble explaining a few things to a jury if he were put on trial. After interviewing all the witnesses, and seeing all the evidence - some of which I discovered on my own - I have to believe it was Christiansen. There are too many coincidences, too many people who lied to me to protect themselves from involvement, and too many people who volunteered information freely, especially the witness known in the book as 'Dawn J' from Fox Island. There were many others. Some of them are not in the book, but we have their testimony both on voice recorder and in notes.

What new information is in your book that those familiar with the case may not know about?

It's a big list, but here are the main points: We know Christiansen was making less than $600 a month at the time of the hijacking, and living in a sleazy apartment in Sumner, Washington. Nevertheless, within eight months after the crime, he paid $16,500 in cash for a house and an adjoining lot in nearby Bonney Lake. He lent his best friend's sister another $5,000 in cash at the same time. After he moved to Bonney Lake, his neighbors testified he hardly ever worked again, and yet he always seemed to have plenty of money. He had nothing in the bank and nothing in savings, and he had no rich relatives. He started picking up the tab in restaurants and buying expensive gifts. He got a Post Office box back down in Sumner and started buying gold coins and proof sheet stamps, having them delivered to the box. After he died in 1994, his family found them. The value of the collections was several hundred thousand dollars, although Social Security was Kenny's highest-paying 'job' ever.

Beyond the unexplained spending, there were other pieces of evidence. We know he saw comic books when he worked on Shemya Island that depicted a character named 'Dan Cooper' who jumped out of jets with a parachute. His best friend 'Mike Watson' bought an Airsteam trailer and a big station wagon a month before the hijacking, but didn't bring it home. He parked it on some empty property down in Oakville, WA, which is very close to where Cooper jumped. Neither he or Kenny worked the week before, or the week after Thanksgiving 1971, and both of them disappeared a few days before the crime and returned a few days after.

After Kenny died, Mike drove 400 miles up his ex-wife's house in Twisp, WA and broke in. Besides some personal papers, the only other thing he took was his tugboat log for 1971. All the other logs were intact. Even today, she has padlocks and hasps on the interior doors of the house. We think he got rid of the log because it could prove he was not at work at the time of the hijacking. It is almost certain that Mike was the one who assisted Kenny on the ground after he jumped, and after the hijacking both Mike and his wife benefited greatly from the ransom money. There were many purchases beyond their means, such as additional property, quarterhorses, draft horses, and the property in Twisp. He disposed of the Airstream trailer and the station wagon after the hijacking and refused to tell his wife why. There is much more than I can list here, which is why we had to write the book.

Can you elaborate on this dedication:"To these brave ladies a special wish from the authors:
We hope you are doing well…wherever you are."

This refers to the stewardesses on NWA Flight 305 who had the most interaction with Cooper, Florence Schaffner and Tina Mucklow. Even today, Schaffner's hands shake when she speaks about the hijacking. Tina Mucklow quit the airline after the F.B.I. finished interviewing her about the hiajacking and then she disappeared. A lot of people say she became a nun, but the truth is she lives back east and has a family. She agreed to let us send her a copy of the book, but she won't discuss the case with media. It is still upsetting to her. All of the crew thought Cooper would set the bomb to go off after he jumped, to rid himself of the witnesses. Fortunately, he did not. I have this vision of little Tina hauling those four heavy parachutes and the big bag of money to the back of the plane for Cooper. She did what he she had to do and no one was hurt. I think she was very brave.

Lastly, for now, what security precautions have you taken with this book? I'm assuming you're guarding its contents more carefully than with most of your books.

The truth is, I was worried that the F.B.I. in Seattle (the case is still active in Seattle) might get a subpoena and come to my office for all the files and research. Although we did not give the true names of the witnesses in the book, their pictures are real. They allowed that much. But we had to forward their real names to the F.B.I. after the book was finalized. I don't think they can get into trouble now. The statute of limitations ran out a long time ago, although agents will probably want to speak to them. Security was pretty simple. Only Porteous, myself, editor Geoff Nelder, Greg Page from Microsoft, and Gayla Prociv, our bookkeeper, knew what was going on. All other AB staff were kept out of the loop, to help prevent leaks. The manuscript was on two computers only, and I had the only password.

Read more from Scott Butki at his Newsvine page at http://sbutki.newsvine.com/.

Robert Blevins on How Secrecy Regarding New Book on Skyjacker D.B. Cooper Drove Us Crazy

'Who is it in the parking lot?' I asked Gayla Prociv. She was standing closest to the office window.

'Just Fed-Ex,' she said. 'Quit worrying.'

Quit worrying? Since last June, half the staff of my little publishing company, Adventure Books of Seattle, was forced to keep secrets from the OTHER half. It was driving everyone crazy, as well as my unexplained weekend absences while I drove all over the Northwest getting interviews and taking pictures.

Here's the deal: I usually work on weekends at the AB office, and for months I wasn't showing up. I also wasn't writing too many articles for Newsvine. So some of the staff began to ask if I were sick or something. And some of them got time off because I would call the office and tell Gayla to send everyone home because I was coming in that night with the results of another interview. Only Gayla, Greg our tech advisor, and I knew what was going on. All everyone else knew was that I was never at the office.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's how it all started:

Last June we were approached by Skipp Porteous, the president of Sherlock Investigations, New York City. He said he wanted to do a new book about skyjacker 'D.B. Cooper'. Well, I've heard all the stories before about Cooper, and frankly, no one had any real proof as to his identity. I wasn't that impressed. However, I went ahead and signed a confidentiality agreement with his company in exchange for the opportunity to view a large number of files and pictures he had gathered over the last four years on a possible suspect. After seeing the files and pictures, I was mildly impressed. He had quite a bit of circumstantial evidence on the guy, although no witness testimony or a smoking gun. It was obvious he needed more evidence before writing a book.

He claimed the hijacker was a World War II paratrooper and former employee of the airline named Kenneth Christiansen. Who was Christiansen? I asked. Porteous said maybe I already knew him, since Christiansen was living in my hometown of Sumner, Washington at the time of the hijacking in 1971.

He had my attention. I was a junior in high school in 1971, and I know a lot of people in Sumner, as well as the nearby city of Bonney Lake. Although I had not heard of Christiansen, investigating a local guy for the Cooper case sounded exciting, and as it turned out, it certainly was.

My job was to follow some initial leads provided to me by Skipp Porteous and try to get interviews with possible witnesses, take pictures, and gather any additional evidence if possible. I didn't think I would find out anything new about the case. It's been covered reasonably well over the years, although no one's solved it yet - until now.

That's right. As I did the interviews, many of the people referred me to others who had even more information about Christiansen - all of it pointing to him as the famous hijacker. It was like chasing a snowball down a hill. Soon, I was driving from one end of Washington State to the other and building a solid case against the guy. Most of the time these were cold-call interviews, since many of these folks either had no phone, or an unlisted number, or they lived in remote areas.

In the end, I was able to put a number on it. I was 90-95% certain that Kenneth Peter Christiansen and D.B. Cooper were one and the same person. I had a meeting with Greg and Gayla and told them we had to take some security measures until the book was released. I was mostly worried that the boys up at the F.B.I. office in Seattle would drop by with a subpoena and take our computers, files, and pictures. The Cooper case is still active and they continue to investigate leads, headed up by Special Agent Larry Carr. If they took everything from us, all of our work would be for nothing.

Besides, they already had forty years to solve the case. Now it was our turn.

To keep the possibility of leaks to a minimum, I restricted the number of staff who would be in the loop. Everyone knew we were doing the book, but only a few of us knew that we were actually interviewing witnesses and gathering information. The rest of them thought we were just publishing Skipp Porteous as a sole author.

When it was all finished, I told the rest of the staff the truth. I thought they would get mad at me, but they didn't. They just wanted to see the manuscript and help design the cover. It's now been finalized and sent to our printer/distributor at Ingram/LSI. It's been pointed out to me that our cover images use a sport parachute, while Cooper used a round one. But I didn't care. Once the manuscript was finished, I said the heck with it, we're not changing it now. It's the story that counts. I created a title page with a parachutist using a round chute and that would have to do. Upload the thing, I said.

I'm taking a vacation. My nerves are shot and I am seriously tired.

Robert Blevins is the co-author of Into the Blast: The True Story of D.B. Cooper and a managing editor at Adventure Books of Seattle.