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Curious how and why they were tracking this guy initially. It seems like this would be the most difficult crime to prove. Not against throwing the book at him

• bpodgursky 5y ago
  > Maynard was identified after his car got stuck near a fire, court records say It's in the article.
• hindsightbias 5y ago
  The affidavit is pretty thorough, even before pulling his cell phone info. "A Forest Service fire investigator determined the Cascade Fire was likely the result of arson. He also noticed that on a dirt road 150 to 200 yards from the fire, a man was struggling to free his car, a black Kia Soul, after the vehicle's rear had failed to clear a partially buried boulder." If you're going to be a wildlands arsonist, best to find the proper vehicle.
  • csomar 5y ago
    So the whole proof is that he was there at the time? Shouldn't there be more proof especially that they are linking him to "all" the fires now?
    • trynumber9 5y ago
      No, just read it. That incident had nearby suspicious fire remants. Combined with his unusual behavior and similar car tracks being found at another fire was their basis for further tracking of the alleged arsonist.
    • cyral 5y ago
      The document is actually very interesting, it goes into great detail of exactly how they tracked him. There is so much evidence in it, really a good read. They ended up tracking him with a GPS tracker to prove he set the fire they charged him with.
    • nawgz 5y ago
      Reading the above comment, this was the necessary point to pull his cell phone info, not link him to "all" fires; after such a suspicious interaction, the warrant was granted to pull records, and the case strengthened further.
    • dyslexit 5y ago
      > Forest Service agents also measured and recorded data about the tire tread pattern left by Maynard's car — evidence that they say ties him to a string of arson wildfires. That's linking his car to the fire. That's from the article, I'm sure the affidavit itself has more.
    • spfzero 5y ago
      The article points out that the person who first spotted the smoke also saw the man walking back from the location of the starting of the fire, about 10 minutes after it started. Now that they have a warrant and can track his movements, he is coincident with several other fire origins.
• xyzzy21 5y ago
  Apparently in the last fire, just before he was caught, he got his car struck. His behavior attracted attention of a hiker. He was observed and filmed by this concerned citizen who contacted authorities. That filming including getting his picture plus the license plate on his car. That cinched enough to know his identity and suspicion. Once he became a suspect to the level, a court order to get phone records would be easy. The moment your phone is on, it is constantly keeping a full data handshake and connection to any base station nearby and to phone company switching computers. You are constantly "under surveillance" in a geographic sense if you have a cell phone turned on (with or without a valid SIM card - the phones serial number gets logged even if an account isn't validated). Having it this way is the only way an in-coming call could ever be routed to you! Remember phone switches are all Unix based and they have log files constantly filling just like any desktop system. Literally just "grep" the files. The most amusing experience related to this I ever had was being able to talk to my uncle who was blue-collar AT&T technician. But he knew his Unix.