GPS expert tracks Ford's truck
NORWICH – An expert witness plotted the path accused murderer George Ford Jr.’s truck took on the night of his babysitter’s death in exacting detail in Chenango County Court Monday.
In a two-hour demonstration, District Attorney Joseph A. McBride had Steven Moehling, vice president of Land Air Sea Systems, the company which made the GPS in Ford’s truck, describe in detail the speed, altitude, location and stops recorded by the tracking device. The court watched the recordings made from 10:49 p.m. on July 7, 2007 to 10:27 a.m. on July 8, 2007, the night 12-year-old Shyanne Somers died.
On a projector screen displaying a clock, speedometer and maps, Broome County Court Judge Joseph Cawley watched the GPS tick by at one-second intervals in the four hours leading up to the incident and then the following 90-minute trip to Chenango Memorial Hospital.
It is during this span of time the prosecution claims 43-year-old Ford murdered his neighbor’s daughter, who was supposed to be baby-sitting for him.
Ford claims the incident was a tragic accident, but police investigators disagreed after discovering a key piece of evidence that contradicted his whole story – a GPS tracking unit placed in the truck by Ford’s suspicious wife. The device allegedly traced Ford’s exact route on the night in question and was in the back seat of his truck.
Moehling said that after lingering in the victim’s driveway for seven minutes, the ‘tracking key’ shows Ford’s first stop after picking up Somers was not at his residence, but over a mile in the opposite direction. The truck then came to a rest at an empty parcel of open field along Pleasant Valley Road. The truck stayed at the property owned by Ford for 3 minutes, 42 seconds at 11:20 p.m. The truck then returned to Ford’s residence by 11:40 p.m., where it sat for 11 minutes, 47 seconds.
This is when Ford’s wife, Cindy, testified that she decided against returning to the graduation party the couple was attending and instead went to bed. According to Cindy, George Ford then left to take Shyanne home. She also noted that it was not uncommon for her husband to remain out all night and that the couple’s relationship had become “estranged.”
According the to the GPS evidence, the vehicle then left Ford’s residence and made its way from Rt. 26, down Stage Road, ending up at an abandoned house along Will Warner Road in the Town of Otselic by 11:50 p.m.
Moehling said the GPS device shows Ford’s truck remained in the area until 2:58 a.m. During that time, Moehling noted that the GPS turned off and on repeatedly, but never left the area. He explained that the tracking key deactivates if it remains stationary for over two minutes, but would “wake up” if it detected movement again and begin recording. “When its sleep mode is disturbed, it starts recording again,” he said.
At 2:58 a.m., Ford’s truck left the abandoned residence and headed east on Will Warner Road, the direction he came from. The animated GPS icon showed the truck traveling to the end of the road, at the intersection of Stage and Will Warner Road, then circling back towards the vacant home. It then passed the home at 2:59 a.m. doing 16 miles per hour, which McBride said indicated that the defendant was looking for something.
As the truck passed the abandoned home, it continued to travel west along the heavily wooded area of Will Warner Road, moving between 10 to 20 miles per hour. Moehling said device then shows a gradual slow down of the vehicle in the last quarter mile before it stopped, which he demonstrated to the court on the projector.
When asked by McBride if he thought Ford was in control of the vehicle at this time, Moehling responded, “Yes, based on this I believe he was in control of the vehicle at this time because of the gradual reduction in speed in the last quarter mile before the stop,” he said.
At 3:03 a.m., traveling at a final recorded speed of 2.49 miles per hour, Ford’s vehicle came to a stop at the location believed to be the site of Somers’ death.
Defense Attorney Randel Scharf said this was an unlikely speed for an intentional collision and on cross-examination asked Moehling what the average walking speed was. Moehling said it was about 3.1 miles per hour.
Ford’s vehicle remained stopped at the incident scene for roughly 22 minutes and performed various maneuvers that were unreadable in any detail on the GPS, before making its final departure at 3:29 a.m.
From there, Moehling showed the court the device’s path to the hospital, which included Ford doubling back over his own route. The path eventually leads to the City of Norwich, turning into the Super 8 Motel parking lot at 4:26 a.m. and later passing the hospital at 4:28 a.m. After that, the GPS displays Ford’s vehicle meandering around the streets of Norwich, coming to a stop on Prospect Street at 4:32 a.m. for 5 minutes, 7 seconds. Later, Ford enters the hospital’s driveway, stopping his vehicle in the lower parking lot for 4 minutes, 51 seconds before finally getting the attention of medical personnel at 4:41 a.m.
Scharf disputed the readings on cross-examination, bringing Moehling’s attention to a number of anomalies in the data, including lines of travel that were more than 80 feet off the roadway and gaps in the path of travel where the device seemed to jump from one point to the next.
Moehling explained that the GPS technology his company employs utilizes 32 different satellites in lower earth orbit and at any one time, a credible reading needed to have at least three separate satellites in direct line of sight. He said that at all times there were four to six satellites in range of the tracking key and the readings would have “drift” because the technology was based on transmission sent at the speed of light.
The transmissions are timed and then calculated so the system can accurately predict how far the signal traveled; objects such as trees, buildings or even a steep angle of orbit can slow the signal’s speed down by a thousandth of a second, causing the reading to be slightly off.
Moehling said under ideal circumstances the device “was accurate to within six feet of its actual position” but even under less than ideal circumstances the path still “followed very closely to the contours of the road” even if it was not exactly laid over top of it.
“I know that 50 feet might seem like a large distance, but we’re only talking about milliseconds,” he said.
Chenango County Sheriff’s Lt. James E. Lloyd testified that he took Ford to the scene of Shyanne’s death July 8, 2007, and that the defendant refused to exit the patrol car because he was so upset.
Lloyd said they discovered “a 12-inch circle of blood near the edge of the road and a pool of blood near the middle.”
Lloyd was also one of the first to question Ford about the GPS unit and the abandoned house on Will Warner Road.
“He said he didn’t know anything about a seasonal residence, “ said Lloyd. Ford’s wife testified Feb. 2 that the couple had visited the property and considered buying it.
Scharf was critical of the Sheriff’s Office’s apparent inability to make audio recordings at the facility. The office has not had working recording equipment since the completion of the jail in 2007.
Testimony continues in Chenango County Court this morning. Ford is charged with second-degree murder and if convicted he faces a maximum sentence of 25-years-to-life in state prison.
In a two-hour demonstration, District Attorney Joseph A. McBride had Steven Moehling, vice president of Land Air Sea Systems, the company which made the GPS in Ford’s truck, describe in detail the speed, altitude, location and stops recorded by the tracking device. The court watched the recordings made from 10:49 p.m. on July 7, 2007 to 10:27 a.m. on July 8, 2007, the night 12-year-old Shyanne Somers died.
On a projector screen displaying a clock, speedometer and maps, Broome County Court Judge Joseph Cawley watched the GPS tick by at one-second intervals in the four hours leading up to the incident and then the following 90-minute trip to Chenango Memorial Hospital.
It is during this span of time the prosecution claims 43-year-old Ford murdered his neighbor’s daughter, who was supposed to be baby-sitting for him.
Ford claims the incident was a tragic accident, but police investigators disagreed after discovering a key piece of evidence that contradicted his whole story – a GPS tracking unit placed in the truck by Ford’s suspicious wife. The device allegedly traced Ford’s exact route on the night in question and was in the back seat of his truck.
Moehling said that after lingering in the victim’s driveway for seven minutes, the ‘tracking key’ shows Ford’s first stop after picking up Somers was not at his residence, but over a mile in the opposite direction. The truck then came to a rest at an empty parcel of open field along Pleasant Valley Road. The truck stayed at the property owned by Ford for 3 minutes, 42 seconds at 11:20 p.m. The truck then returned to Ford’s residence by 11:40 p.m., where it sat for 11 minutes, 47 seconds.
This is when Ford’s wife, Cindy, testified that she decided against returning to the graduation party the couple was attending and instead went to bed. According to Cindy, George Ford then left to take Shyanne home. She also noted that it was not uncommon for her husband to remain out all night and that the couple’s relationship had become “estranged.”
According the to the GPS evidence, the vehicle then left Ford’s residence and made its way from Rt. 26, down Stage Road, ending up at an abandoned house along Will Warner Road in the Town of Otselic by 11:50 p.m.
Moehling said the GPS device shows Ford’s truck remained in the area until 2:58 a.m. During that time, Moehling noted that the GPS turned off and on repeatedly, but never left the area. He explained that the tracking key deactivates if it remains stationary for over two minutes, but would “wake up” if it detected movement again and begin recording. “When its sleep mode is disturbed, it starts recording again,” he said.
At 2:58 a.m., Ford’s truck left the abandoned residence and headed east on Will Warner Road, the direction he came from. The animated GPS icon showed the truck traveling to the end of the road, at the intersection of Stage and Will Warner Road, then circling back towards the vacant home. It then passed the home at 2:59 a.m. doing 16 miles per hour, which McBride said indicated that the defendant was looking for something.
As the truck passed the abandoned home, it continued to travel west along the heavily wooded area of Will Warner Road, moving between 10 to 20 miles per hour. Moehling said device then shows a gradual slow down of the vehicle in the last quarter mile before it stopped, which he demonstrated to the court on the projector.
When asked by McBride if he thought Ford was in control of the vehicle at this time, Moehling responded, “Yes, based on this I believe he was in control of the vehicle at this time because of the gradual reduction in speed in the last quarter mile before the stop,” he said.
At 3:03 a.m., traveling at a final recorded speed of 2.49 miles per hour, Ford’s vehicle came to a stop at the location believed to be the site of Somers’ death.
Defense Attorney Randel Scharf said this was an unlikely speed for an intentional collision and on cross-examination asked Moehling what the average walking speed was. Moehling said it was about 3.1 miles per hour.
Ford’s vehicle remained stopped at the incident scene for roughly 22 minutes and performed various maneuvers that were unreadable in any detail on the GPS, before making its final departure at 3:29 a.m.
From there, Moehling showed the court the device’s path to the hospital, which included Ford doubling back over his own route. The path eventually leads to the City of Norwich, turning into the Super 8 Motel parking lot at 4:26 a.m. and later passing the hospital at 4:28 a.m. After that, the GPS displays Ford’s vehicle meandering around the streets of Norwich, coming to a stop on Prospect Street at 4:32 a.m. for 5 minutes, 7 seconds. Later, Ford enters the hospital’s driveway, stopping his vehicle in the lower parking lot for 4 minutes, 51 seconds before finally getting the attention of medical personnel at 4:41 a.m.
Scharf disputed the readings on cross-examination, bringing Moehling’s attention to a number of anomalies in the data, including lines of travel that were more than 80 feet off the roadway and gaps in the path of travel where the device seemed to jump from one point to the next.
Moehling explained that the GPS technology his company employs utilizes 32 different satellites in lower earth orbit and at any one time, a credible reading needed to have at least three separate satellites in direct line of sight. He said that at all times there were four to six satellites in range of the tracking key and the readings would have “drift” because the technology was based on transmission sent at the speed of light.
The transmissions are timed and then calculated so the system can accurately predict how far the signal traveled; objects such as trees, buildings or even a steep angle of orbit can slow the signal’s speed down by a thousandth of a second, causing the reading to be slightly off.
Moehling said under ideal circumstances the device “was accurate to within six feet of its actual position” but even under less than ideal circumstances the path still “followed very closely to the contours of the road” even if it was not exactly laid over top of it.
“I know that 50 feet might seem like a large distance, but we’re only talking about milliseconds,” he said.
Chenango County Sheriff’s Lt. James E. Lloyd testified that he took Ford to the scene of Shyanne’s death July 8, 2007, and that the defendant refused to exit the patrol car because he was so upset.
Lloyd said they discovered “a 12-inch circle of blood near the edge of the road and a pool of blood near the middle.”
Lloyd was also one of the first to question Ford about the GPS unit and the abandoned house on Will Warner Road.
“He said he didn’t know anything about a seasonal residence, “ said Lloyd. Ford’s wife testified Feb. 2 that the couple had visited the property and considered buying it.
Scharf was critical of the Sheriff’s Office’s apparent inability to make audio recordings at the facility. The office has not had working recording equipment since the completion of the jail in 2007.
Testimony continues in Chenango County Court this morning. Ford is charged with second-degree murder and if convicted he faces a maximum sentence of 25-years-to-life in state prison.
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