Full-time need for tech detective

For Kevin Conde, July kicked off with a fatal shooting in an East Marysville apartment complex and ended with an alleged murder-for-hire case.

The computer information specialist worked 224 hours that month as a reserve officer for the Marysville Police Department, and in that time, reviewed thousands of digital data files.

This month, the department made him a full-time computer forensics detective.

"It's hard to ignore the need," Conde said, rattling off just a few in the long list of cases he has investigated since becoming a reservist in 1991. "Every criminal we arrest nowadays seems to have technology on them."

Conde replaces Officer David Baker, who recently resigned and was moved to reserve status as requested.

The addition of a tech-crimes specialist to the Marysville force allows crucial digital evidence in local cases to be investigated locally, rather than sent to state investigators in Sacramento.

That outsourcing process, which most small- and medium-sized police departments rely on, can take several months and net less valuable evidence than would an investigation by someone close to the case, Conde said.

"I sometimes will look at several hundred thousand files for a single case," he said.

And that level of persistence and attention to detail pays off, said Yuba County District Attorney Pat McGrath.

Criminals store clues to their crimes — and sometimes the crimes themselves — on cell phones, Global Positioning System devices, and sometimes on protected, encrypted computer hard drives.

"They're trying to put it in a safe," McGrath said. "But Kevin is the safe cracker."

The crimes he has helped prosecute as a reserve officer have ranged from identity theft and drug gang activity to sex crimes, including one international child pornography case.

McGrath and the Marysville Police Department credit Conde with "cracking wide open" the case of Richard John Mattuck.

Conde was able to find thousands of incriminating photographs on the Browns Valley man's two computers.

By noticing a European-style electrical socket in one of the photos and zooming in on a luggage tag in another, Conde was able to learn that many of the shots had been taken in and distributed from Rome.

Mattuck pleaded guilty last year in U.S. District Court in Sacramento to four counts of possession and manufacture of child pornography. He also pleaded no contest in Yuba County Superior Court to continual sexual abuse of a child, and is currently serving a 49-year sentence in a federal penitentiary.

Familiarity with Conde's work, according to McGrath, has also affected the ways in which evidence is collected by local law enforcement agencies during search and seizure.

Police have developed the habit of collecting any and all electronic devices that might help prosecute a criminal, McGrath said.

Then they await the computer guy's services.

Conde, a former Air Force cop and information systems wizard for the Sutter County Superintendent of Schools Office, works in a basement office notably absent of paper.

Shelves are stacked with dismembered computers.

The detective shows off a crate of detritus from previous investigations — computer hard drives awaiting destruction before getting carted off as e-waste. Then he demonstrates the process of puncturing a computer drive with a hydraulic bottle jack.

He is especially passionate about nabbing exploiters of children; he has given his drive crusher a name that reflects this fact, but asks that it not be repeated in print.

"In Marysville, we may be poorer than church mice," he said, "but we've been very successful in getting convictions."

Conde takes on a Dirty Harry-like grimace.

"If they (pedophiles) live in this area," he said, "sooner or later, I'll get to know them."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com