Two jurors discuss their thoughts following George Burch's conviction of the murder of Nicole VanderHeyden. USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin


If George Burch had been playing tennis, Google Dashboard could probably have been able to tell whether he was rushing the net or waiting in the backcourt for a fast serve.

That’s how precisely Google placed his location at 3:58.54 a.m. on the morning of May 21, 2016, when Burch was dumping the body of Nicole VanderHeyden in a Bellevue farm field.

Burch, as you probably know by now, was convicted Thursday of murdering VanderHeyden, 31, outside of her and Douglass Detrie’s home in Ledgeview and disposing of her body in a field off Hoffman Road in Bellevue.

The murder was a massive tragedy, and the nine-day trial had to have been an unbelievable hardship on her family. Parts of it were tough for non-family.

But, holy smoke, the technology that played into the investigation was dazzling — and that’s not even counting the DNA evidence.

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We all, of course, are sophisticated enough to know that modern technology has redefined the word “privacy” in our culture. But one big take-away from the Burch trial?

Modern technology is like Big Brother, and Big Brother is like Santa Claus: He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…

RELATED: Guilty of VanderHeyden murder, Burch faces extradition to Virginia

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RELATED: What the jury heard Thursday in George Burch's trial for the murder of Nicole VanderHeyden

Detectives used Burch’s cellphone and Google Dashboard to track his locations, all key to figuring out where exactly he went on the morning of VanderHeyden’s murder and how he fit in. They used Fitbit to exonerate Detrie of any involvement. And they used Snapshot to dismiss any notion that VanderHeyden’s body could have been transported in her own car.

Forensic crime analyst Tyler Behling told jurors Google uses cellphone towers, wireless network signals and GPS information to track phone users' locations and times. You don't have to activate anything on your phone; it all happens in the background as different networks automatically offer their services to passing cellphones that might happen to want them. And it all gets recorded. 

The precision of that tracking varies, depending on where you are because different towers and different wifi signals have different strengths. Behling showed jurors a map of the Ledgeview, Bellevue and west Green Bay locations needed to tell Burch’s story. Circles on the map represented how precisely Google data could place him.

In Burch’s case, Google did the poorest at the murder scene, right across from the Detrie-VanderHeyden home on Berkley Road in Ledgeview. We know that was the murder scene because of the blood and the presence of the cord used to strangle VanderHeyden. At 3:04 a.m., the data placed Burch roughly right there but he could have been 357 feet in any direction, Behling said.

That means Burch actually could have been in the Detrie house, on the street out front or in the neighbor’s yard, but he was roughly right there, according to Behling’s presentation. Three minutes earlier, wireless network data from different wifi equipment placed Burch in that same area but with a 233-foot margin of error, not significantly different.

Things improved greatly when Burch got onto Hoffman Road with VanderHeyden’s body. There, signals were strong enough to place him with a 32.8-foot margin of error.

Impressive? Wait until you see what happened when he got into the farm field itself. The data at 3:58 a.m. placed him in a circle with a 9.84-foot radius. 

I went to high school with a kid who just missed being able to hop that far in one bound. That’s how precisely Google Dashboard pinpointed Burch's whereabouts at exactly 3:58.54 a.m.

Maybe Google Dashboard can do even better in more densely developed parts of the world, but it was good enough in Burch’s case.

So Burch needed a different approach to his defense. He pointed the finger at Doug Detrie and said Detrie had him at gunpoint the whole while. “Yes, I was in all those places, but Detrie made me go there.” That was Burch’s defense.

It turns out Detrie had been wearing a Fitbit Flex, a wristwatch-like device that uses fancy technology to help its users track their physical activity. Detrie’s Fitbit data told investigators that Detrie was asleep around the time Burch was committing murder and disposing of a body.

That’s pretty open-and-shut, but the sleep data was ruled inadmissible in court because it’s under scrutiny for accuracy in courts elsewhere in the country.

However, the Fitbit data measuring Detrie’s footsteps that night was admissible. If you talk a lot with your hands while wearing a Fitbit, it might register steps you aren’t taking, but you won’t really walk much without a Fitbit taking note.

And Detrie didn’t take enough steps to run out of his house and commit a murder. Nor, after being driven to the Hoffman Road field and getting knocked down by the escaping Burch, as Burch claims, did Detrie register enough steps to hike the two or three miles back home.

Not if he were wearing his Fitbit, anyway. And if he wasn’t, how the heck did it manage to register the 20 or 30 steps it must’ve taken him to get to the bathroom around 4 or 4:30 that morning?

By the way, Detrie could check his own Fitbit activity data in 15-minute increments. The actual Fitbit company’s data, as seized by Behling with a warrant, showed Detrie’s minute-by-minute activities.

The takeaway: If you have a Fitbit, Fitbit knows more about your activities than you do.

And what about VanderHeyden’s Snapshot device? Prosecutors used its data to try to prove her Buick Rendezvous was never moved on the day of her murder. That detail didn’t turn out to be all that important to the case, but the technology was still fascinating.

Progressive Insurance sent a guy, Daniel Frankel, to testify about it.

“We consider it a passive listening device,” Frankel told the jury.

On behalf of my poor brain, thanks for not making me explain how it works, but Frankel told the jury what the device does.

You plug it into a diagnostic port in your car and leave it there. From then on, it determines when your vehicle is started or shut off, it records speed data a second at a time, and it stores that data, and Progressive uses the information to determine whether you drive well or poorly and it gives you financial incentives accordingly.

The device can’t tell if you’re speeding, only how fast you’re going. You may be going only 25, but if you’re in a parking lot or a school zone, you’re speeding, and the device doesn’t know that.

But if you’re going 50 and suddenly you’re not, Snapshot can figure out you stopped pretty abruptly, and it strokes its virtual beard, tsks softly and puts a black mark by your name.

Once you decide to get a Snapshot and enjoy the financial benefits, you might just as well resign yourself to a habit of safe driving because you won’t beat the Snapshot. Unplugging it for a “Fast & Furious” night out won’t work because the device records that it’s been unplugged, too.

Combine all that stuff with what detectives can glean from omnipresent surveillance cameras, time clock punching, debit card transactions and electronic lock activations, and criminals don’t seem to have a chance.

Then, too, if you even just touch something, the cops can collect your DNA.

So all you have to do, if you want to commit a crime nowadays is, don’t be visible in any manner, don’t get measured going anywhere and don’t touch anything once you get there.

Crooks will eventually figure out a way, I suppose. Luckily, Burch didn’t.

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