Betrayal

Introduction

This is my write-up for the Kase Scenario "Betrayal" located at https://courses.kasescenarios.com/courses/betrayal. I will try my best in this write-up to not include the solutions themselves, but lead you to the solutions. This challenge took me 7 hours 52 minutes to complete, which includes time I spent writing this write-up. This write-up is a bit informal, as I kind of go "with the flow" of the story.

Connie's Story

The case starts off by us listening in on a coroners case for what seems like an autopsy.

Here is the information I gathered from this:

• Name: Connie Lee Blackwood

• Time: 5/8/23

• Time 11:00 AM

• Woman was found at the bottom of the staircase at her home. Death was due to accidental fall down the stairs. Autopsy person thinks it is blunt force trauma. They think it is multiple blunt force hits due to a beating.

The 411

We find out the husband of the person who died was a big time lawyer. They currently have motive to say her husband did it.

Case Files

Facts we learn from the files:

87760032_Blackwood_Follow.pdf:

• She was 53 (11/21/1952)

• Son's name was Christopher Blackwood

• Her son found her at 1:30 AM unconscious

  • No one else was in the house at this time

• Her son was at the party with friends before he headed home and found his mom

• Her husband says the reason for he fall can be blamed on intoxication

• Her sister's name was Marsha Hunt

• Marsha says that she was on the phone at 1:00 PM the day before and she did not sound intoxicated

  • Marsha claims Connie and her husband were fighting over finances

  • She also claims that Connie called her to book a trip next weekend to the cabin

• Victor, her husband, confirms that he and Connie were fighting about finances

  • He says she drinks a lot, abuses drugs, and also became verbally abusive

  • He also states she falls down a lot due to drinking

• Victor pulled up home from the Lone Wolf Lounge

87760032_Blackwood_Death_Inv.pdf:

• House is located at 12 Eagle Pt Drive

• She was unemployed

• She was removed to Coroner 4225 Augusta Road Suite B

• Son's phone number is 931-532-0554

• Husbands number is 717-320-8621

GA_PD_CaseNotes.jpg:

• Victor has a brother Rhett

  • Rhett is weird and into cars

• Family appears religious, wealthy, and house is clean

• Victor works at Somerset and Blackwood

• Look into FaceBook ID: 100090541127618

Here is what my suspect map currently looks:

Detective Marsh Interview: Victor Blackwood

• 7:00 AM - May 8, 2023

• Victor says he was out at the Lone Wolf Lounge with a couple of friends

• He said he got home the second his son called him

• Victor says he got home at 2:00 AM

• We get a link for https://www.kaseportal.com/somersetblackwood

  • We learn about his work partner, Katherine Somerset

  • They handle family law cases, such as high net worth divorce

Working the House

• The ADAA wants to know if the Blackwoods have an alarm system, if any computers are at the home, and the height of the staircase

• House plans are located at: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=1STmN3PixNG

  • The diagonal height of the staircase was 16 feet 4 inches

  • The height should be 8 feet 10 inches

• Not sure if this is a camera or a light:

• I did not see any cameras or even a security console inside

• I was able to find one computer on the second floor:

• Found one on the first floor as well:

• I found a second computer on the first floor, making the total 3 now:

Scene Of The Crime

I guess there was an alarm system. I found a Honeywell thermostat. I then found the alarm system in the kitchen (image modified to not give solution):

I only saw 3, so I will try that as my answer. That was it.

We are then given a "riddle" to solve to crack the password of a flash drive:

I DuckDuckGo-ed this quote and ended up finding https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/434054-violence-does-in-truth-recoil-upon-the-violent-and-the which states that this is a quote from Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is the main character of the book. Could be Sherlock. Nope. Not Sherlock Holmes. Maybe Arthur Conan Doyle? Nope, not that either. I do see the book on the shelf in the room:

In the bottle, the light reflecting in the bottle seems to look like a "333". Maybe that is it. Nope. I full screened the image to see the drawing on the bottom:

There was a reference to a snake in one of the Sherlock books. I read up on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Speckled_Band. Now this is a password, so I tried variations of what I thought was a password: speckled_band, speckled-band, bandSpeckled, etc. I did the same with the word Swamp Adder as well. I ended up getting the password by playing around with the aforementioned words. I was close with the guesses previously.

We now use the numbers we got previously. I got one diagonally, and one vertically. Both of those were incorrect. I played around with the measurement tool, and am not sure what angle to use for the measurement. If I keep it a straight line in the middle, that is one number. Another thing that is a bit tricky is that are we expected to count the full bottom stair or not? From corner to corner, I see 16 feet 9 inches:

I then rounded to 17 feet.

First Witness Account

We learn about a witness Antonia Barrera.

Mrs. Barrera

Here are things I learned from the interview with Mrs. Barrera:

• She cleans houses

• She saw someone leaving the house at 11:15 PM, and it seemed they have an injury

• They got into a car and sped off

• The person seemed to be in a hurry, and had to go back to the door to close it

• They dropped their keys next to their car before speeding off

Image of the car:

The car seems to be a Chevy Camaro SS.

Late Night Escape Challenges

I needed to get a clear definition of make and model. I learned on https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a31875496/difference-between-make-and-model/ what the difference was. I know it is a Chevy Camaro, but I need to find out the specifics. I saw this image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/ff/85/07ff8522e171bca4c6a180a28b732b9e.jpg. This could mean it is between 1971-1973. I found an image that could be it:

The front looks the same. So 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS could be it. I played around with what I just learned and was able to find the answer to that question.

I believe I will have to reference the FaceBook ID mentioned previously: FaceBook ID: 100090541127618. I found this website for the search: https://one-plus.github.io/Facebook. I was then able to find the profile this led to:

Link to profile: https://www.facebook.com/people/Rhett-Blackwood/pfbid0Kd9NvwdrcL8z2q67FkeZwGjED9nKeu3cGHcwfYGQW27C7XBZLbjvpJrqXY7DVATel/. The profile has 2 images:

This is interesting. The first image seems to be the same car that was in the picture taken at night. Maybe the brother, Rhett, is the killer. Going back to the question, it was an obvious answer.

I was able to find the post ID by referring to the URL for the first image.

Maybe she left some EXIF data in the image? I ran exiftool on this image:

After I converted this time to 12-hour format I got the correct answer.

Content on The Drive

We are given the contents of the flash drive. We have to enter a password, which we got earlier. The password was the password we received earlier, but all lowercase. I then started to look through the files and learned the following:

• Maybe Rhett and Connie were having an affair

  • Images were taken of her and him, and also of both of them in front of a motel

• Victor updated the life insurance policy on his wife from $150,000 to $3,000,000

  • He also gets 100% of the insurance output

• Victor's DOB is 11/21/1952

• Victor's Social Security number is 122894456

• Connie's SSN: 121018198

• There are 2 signatures on the insurance: Victor's and Susan Bolton

  • First time I heard of Susan in this challenge

• Victor seems to get 3 checks totaling $9400

Content On The Drive Challenges

This was the password mentioned previously.

This was from the notes I took earlier.

This was also from the notes I took earlier.

Online Troll

It seems to me it was Rhett. That was correct.

For this, I will have to go digging around. Rhett has no friends on his FaceBook account. I can try to find a Connie Blackwood in Savannah, Georgia. I was unable to find anything on FaceBook. I then went back to the website, where they had a link to the form:

This took me to a Mega.nz folder. I then noticed you can to go the root folder:

I was able to find Connie's social media account by looking through the files in the root directory.

I start off by viewing her TikTok account.

I clicked on the most recent post, the left-most one, and found the ID in the URL.

Second Witness Account

Information from this section:

• Second Witness' name is Jared Foster

• He's 18

• Like car videos

• Got threatened by a guy online saying that he can commit murder and get away with it

• The guy sent him a link about Connie and about how it was a murder

• He gives a YouTube link: youtube.com/@MuscleMan69

There are no videos, but there is a link to a Facebook group. There is only one member in the group:

Lone Wolf

For this question, we have to provide a PDF of a short note answering if Victor was able to murder his wife in a certain time span. No solution for this one as this is straightforward. I am not sure how to provide a solution for this without giving the answer away.

Oh Brother - Interview of Rhett

Here is the information I learned from this interview:

• Victor is already in jail

• Rhett and Connie used to "hang out" and nothing more

• Rhett says that the image taken was "out of context"

  • Although he does say they had an affair a couple of times

• The detective claims that Victor knew about the affair and Victor was having financial troubles

• Victor owed a lot of people money, which was assumed it was for drugs

• It seems that Victor was deep into drugs and owed people money, so he roped in Rhett to murder his wife for the insurance money payout

Scenario Completed

The following are just notes I was taking during the scenario.

Timeline

Time	Description
1:00 PM (May 7, 2023)	Her sister, Martha Hunt states that Connie called her then and did sound intoxicated. Martha said the couple was arguing over finances, and also Connie called her to plan a trip to their cabin the following weekend
11:12 PM (May 7, 2023)	Mrs. Barrera took the image of the car, which seems to belong to Rhett Blackwood
11:15 PM (May 7, 2023)	Mrs. Barrera saw someone leave the house in an injured state, and they seemed to have an injury. They dropped a key next to their car. They also went back to close the door after they forgot
1:30 AM (May 8, 2023)	Her son, Cristopher Blackwood, found her unconscious
2:00 AM (May 8, 2023)	Victor gets to his house from the Lone Wolf bar after his son called him
7:00 AM (May 8, 2023)	Officer Marsh is doing his interrogation of Victor Blackwood

Suspect Map