Police Nabbed A Killer By Looking At GPS Data From His Smartwatch, As Evidence Of His Crime

Smartwatches usually just help to keep your fitness routine on track, and keep you connected to your smartphone when you're away from it.

But recently, a fitness tracker was also the unusual witness in a court case in the UK, that helped jail a dangerous killer.

Mark Fellows was arrested last year as the main suspect in a series of murders in the area, purportedly for the mob. He was picked up after the murder of a rival mobster in 2018, where surveillance footage caught Fellows riding a cycle in the vicinity, seeming to scout the area. At the time, local police wondered if there was also a chance he was tied to the 2015 murder of the rival mob boss Paul Massey.

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When cops investigated in 2018, they found that Fellows had a GPS jammer in his car. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't yet installed it in 2015, so the cops were able to pull location data off his Garmin Forerunner from that year, putting him at the scene of the crime. Paired with his presence on CCTV camera at the other 2018 murder scene, and they had a solid case.

Garmin

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The judge sentenced Fellows to life in prison, what he rightfully deserved. More important than justice being served though, it does illustrate once more just how intrusive technology can be in our lives. In this case it was the police pulling data off someone's wearable, legally.

But if a malicious attacker or a stalker were to do it, they could glean a lot of sensitive information from a simple wristband.