Commonwealth v. Read — Trial ArchiveIan Whiffin
Ian Whiffin is a forensic analyst with Cellebrite, a leading provider of digital intelligence tools used by law enforcement. He was retained by the prosecution to analyze data extracted from Jennifer McCabe's iPhone and John O'Keefe's phone. His testimony centered on two disputed questions: when McCabe conducted the 'how long to die in cold' Google search, and what O'Keefe's phone data — including location, step counts, battery temperature, and pocket state — reveals about his movements and condition during the hours between his arrival at 34 Fairview Road and when his body was discovered.
Trial 1 vs Trial 2
In Trial 1, Whiffin's testimony was narrowly focused on the McCabe search timing question and the BrowserState mechanism. By Trial 2, his scope expanded significantly to encompass a comprehensive analysis of O'Keefe's phone data — location accuracy windows, step counts, pocket state, and battery temperature — presenting a timeline of O'Keefe's phone behavior from arrival at 34 Fairview through body discovery. The cross-examination also intensified: where Yannetti in Trial 1 focused primarily on the iOS version variable and the theoretical possibility of data manipulation, Alessi in Trial 2 used Whiffin's own written report against him, surfacing omitted findings and leveraging Cellebrite's post-trial removal of the 2:27 a.m. timestamp as a bias argument — extending the cross across two trial days.