The plan…

WHEN Hamed flew to Dubai on June 1, 2009, he had with him a black Champion-brand suitcase and his Toshiba laptop computer. Shafia had both an apartment in Dubai and an office that he shared with a business partner. The laptop was seized by Kingston Police in a raid on the Shafia home the night before Mohammad, Tooba, and Hamed were arrested and charged with the first-degree murders of their family members.

Constable Derek Frawley, a certified forensic computer analyst with the Kingston force, sifted through 278,000 entries on the laptop and found some unusual Google searches. On June 3, for example, someone had entered, in English: "can a prisoner have control over their real estate."

On June 13, Hamed and Mohammad returned home from Dubai. A number of other searches followed, such as "facts and documentaries on murders," and then, on June 20, "where to commit a murder." There was a Google map search centred on Middle Road and Highway 401 in Kingston, an area described by Frawley as being "right by the locks" — the locks at Kingston Mills.

The forensic work performed on the laptop by Kingston Police was one example of the complex high-tech case police were piecing together. Early in their investigation, police had gotten the cellphone numbers of all the family members, allowing Detective Steve Koopman to compile an exhaustive record of the calls and texts that went to and from the phones. On June 20, the day of the Google search for "where to commit a murder," Hamed's cellphone was activated in the Mont-Laurier, Quebec, region, the place where the Shafias would stay three days later.

Police were able to track the movements of the family on their Niagara Falls trip by the signals from the phones as they bounced off towers along their route. On June 24, Sahar's phone was pinging off the Station Road cell tower, just south of the lockstation, from 8:36 pm to 9:16 pm. By 9:23 pm, it was activated at the Centennial Drive cell tower several kilometres away in Kingston's west end. The family drove all the way to Niagara Falls that night, which would have put them there at around 1 am or later on June 25.

The Shafias stayed in Niagara Falls for four days. They didn't appear to do much other than check out the tourist sites, eat fast food, and go to a mall. There was, however, that one aberration. In the middle of the stay, on June 27, Hamed's phone is recorded at the Westbrook cellphone tower several kilometres west of Kingston.

At the trial, Shafia testified that he had decided to leave his family in Niagara Falls and head back to Montreal to complete some business. Police found it odd that Hamed's cellphone, which he claimed he always had with him, would have been with Shafia in the Lexus. Shafia said he, too, was surprised when it rang near Kingston. It was a call from his children saying they missed him, that they were becoming bored in Niagara, and that they wanted him to return — which he did, without ever getting to Montreal.

The police theory was much different. They suspected that Hamed and Shafia were both in the Lexus that day. The reason for their hasty trip: to scout out Kingston Mills, where they had stopped just three days before to use the washrooms, as a suitable place to commit a quadruple murder.