Police detectives from the Kansas Police Department probing the gruesome murder of two young researchers in Midtown, Kansas, are looking for evidence from an Amazon Alexa device found at the murder scene.
Detectives found the Amazon Alexa device on a bookshelf in the apartment on Saturday, after they found the bodies of 24-year-old Camilla Behrensen and 25-year-old Pablo Guzman Palma in the burned remains of their apartment in Midtown.
A Jackson County judge granted the detectives a search warrant to retrieve information stored on the Alexa virtual assistant that they believed had information that may assist them in their homicide investigation.
According to the search warrant application, one of the detectives wrote that because the Amazon device is voice-activated and responds to voice commands within the house, and based on their assessment and physical evidence at the crime scene, they believed that the killer had spent some time in the victim’s apartment. The digital device might prove useful in their efforts to identify the killer.
Detectives believe that the victims and the suspect may have been talking during the time of the murders and that their conversations might have been recorded by Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa.
The Kansas Police Department has not identified any suspects yet, and as of Sunday, they were waiting for Amazon to send them the data from the device. The department urged neighbors to share any surveillance footage their home CCTV cameras may have taken of the suspect on the night of the murders.
Police discovered the bodies of the two students after neighbors called the Kansas City Fire Department early Saturday morning, at 5 a.m., to investigate smoke from a building on Oak Street. After checking on what they thought was a house fire, police say they found the two young adults dead, but not from the fire.
Camilla Behrensen was from Buenos Aires, and Pablo Guzman was from Santiago, Chile. Both were pre-doctoral medical research students studying at the Stowers Medical Research Institute. A statement released by the Institute said they were vibrant community members, and both were part of the 2020 class. The statement also included a condolence message to their loved ones.
Remains of the fire and a broken window are reminders of the Saturday night incident. One neighbor said loud stomping noises woke him up at around 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning, but he did not think much of them. He went back to sleep and woke up later to find a heavy police presence in the building.
From January 2022, the Kansas Police Department records show that there have been 128 murders, and Camilla and Guzman were the 125th and 126th murders. That number is bound to increase with three months remaining before the year ends. 2021 and 2020 were the deadliest years in Kansas, with the city recording 157 and 179 homicides, respectively.
Amazon Alexa is like a fly on the wall and can be useful in many applications, including criminal investigations.
