If you read the article, he didn’t carry the device during the murder, he was carrying it a couple months before while he was doing surveillance for the future murder. And the only reason they found out about the GPS device was because they were already pretty sure he was the guy as witnesses saw him on his bike carrying a gun and wearing “commando gear”, which sort of , you know, stuck out like a sore thumb. They used the witnesses to track him down and arrest him, and only found the GPS data later.

Obviously he’s not that bright but the GPS was sort of a secondary issue.

All of that sounds extremely circumstantial tbh

It is, the GPS data was used to link him to the murder. The DNA evidence on the murder weapon was what actually convicted him.

The Runners World article is sensationalising the GPS device to make other runner feel they are part of this story.

His spotter confessing also didn't help his case.

I mean, it’s the UK. Presumably there is video. Plus witnesses. Plus GPS. Plus he left the country immediately after. Plus he is known hired muscle. Certainly enough to charge someone.

If there is video sure, but the rest is literally “I saw a guy who looked similar in a park” and “the GPS said this guy was in the park a few times before the event occurred”

It is the UK though, so idk, but even in the US people get convicted on less. Just seems open to reasonable doubt

When you start stacking up evidence that by itself is inconclusive, you find that the overall probability starts to get very tight.

For instance:

    suspect was in this neighborhood at this time
    suspect was wearing a blue jacket
    suspect had short blonde hair
    suspect was an acquaintance of the victim

Each of those by itself means next to nothing; you can't go around arresting anybody with blonde hair because there are millions of people with hair like that. But if you find somebody who fits all four, they are almost certainly your guy. The chance of there being two acquaintances of the victim with blonde hair and a blue jacket in the neighborhood at the time of the murder is much smaller than the chance of a false positive on any one of those individual conditions.

With enough circumstantial evidence, you can blow right past "reasonable doubt".

This line of thinking is rather dangerous when determining whether to lock someone up for life. Especially in the absence of direct evidence. The math is often tricky, given that we already know some highly unlikely things have in fact occurred (a murder, for one).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy

There is a huge difference between “here is GPS data, let’s see if somebody remembers seeing that guy” and “somebody reported seeing that guy, let’s see if his GPS data confirms that.”

In this case, it was the latter. An unusual sighting was corroborated after the fact by hard data.

Less circumstantial and less suggestive than “here’s some hard data, let’s ask people if they can remember something.”

Somebody better at stastitcs can probably prove this with some Bayesian formula.

There’s also this: “As seriously as Fellows seemed to take his preparation, he did not appear to consider witnesses would notice a cyclist wearing both commando gear and a hi-vis safety vest while toting a gun (they did, and they told the police).“

> IMO, even the dumbest of murderers don't carry their phones with them

Your opinion is simply factually wrong, which is why there are regular stories about murderers bring caught with cell phone location records as key pieces of evidence.

You should read Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The perfect crime might exist, but the perfect delinquent won’t ever.