The 2017 killing of Egypt Covington in Van Buren Township, Michigan, remained a frustratingly cold case for years. Despite identifying a person of interest, local police were unable to make an arrest. It wasn't until 2020, after persistent advocacy from Covington's brother and his wife, that Michigan State Police took over the investigation and began to uncover the truth behind the horrific crime: Covington had been bound with Christmas lights and fatally shot in her own home.
The key to solving the case, according to James Plummer, one of the state investigators who spoke with “Dateline,” was an overlooked clue: cellphone location data obtained through a geofence warrant.
Reversing the Tide on Geofence and Keyword Warrants
This investigative technique allows law enforcement agencies to gather anonymous location data from anyone whose location history is enabled within a designated area during a specific timeframe, according to Google. This data can then be used to track potential suspects in and around the crime scene.
Example of a Geofence area.
The Role of Geofence Warrants in the Covington Case
In Covington’s case, the geofence data ultimately led investigators to three men who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and were sentenced to prison in October. “That was the first piece of evidence that really broke the case wide open,” Plummer told “Dateline.”
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A detective with the Van Buren Police Department obtained data from a geofence warrant in 2020. However, the agency discounted it because it came from a phone that didn’t belong to their initial person of interest. “They had it and they just never looked into it because they were so focused” on the wrong person, Plummer said.
Van Buren Police Chief Jason Wright said state police have told him nothing about their investigation, so he didn’t want to comment on their findings. “They went and did their own thing,” Wright said. “They did a good job. I can’t comment on things they didn’t share with me.”
The tragic sequence of events leading to Covington's death began with a robbery gone wrong. Evans knew that the residents who lived on the other side of the duplex had a business growing medical marijuana - and were heading out of town for a music festival. Egypt had been concerned about the clientele that the business attracted before her death and told her mother she planned to move. But she’d never get the chance to.
Evans would later confess to authorities that he agreed to drive by the house and “point” to the home so that Moore and Groom - who were following behind in the truck - could rob Egypt's neighbors' home while they were away, hoping to make off with a large stockpile of drugs.
But, confused, Moore and Groom went into the left side of the duplex where Egypt lived, rather than the right side. There, they found Egypt inside, tied her up and shot her. “They could have easily gone to the right door, took the stuff out of there and nobody would have been harmed,” Egypt's brother Turner said. “It didn’t have to happen.”
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All three men - Moore, Groom and Evans - were arrested and later agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder.
The Controversy Surrounding Geofence Warrants
While geofence warrants have proven to be a valuable tool for law enforcement, they have also faced criticism from civil liberties advocates. These advocates argue that the warrants are unconstitutional dragnets that unfairly target everyone within a designated area, regardless of their involvement in the crime.
Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, stated, “Essentially what this does, it’s a tool that just based on someone’s location, which is recorded by their phone or another device, it turns everyone in an area into a criminal suspect, just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Several court cases have challenged the use of geofence warrants, with some courts finding that the technique violates the Fourth Amendment. In a 2023 decision, the California appeals court wrote that a warrant obtained in a case lacked the “particularity” required by the Constitution and was “impermissibly overbroad.”
The Future of Location Data and Law Enforcement
Google's recent announcement that it will be overhauling its location history policy has cast doubt on the future of geofence warrants. The company plans to move users’ data from its Sensorvault to their phones and encrypt backed-up data, making it inaccessible to Google and law enforcement.
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While this change has been praised by privacy advocates, it has raised concerns among law enforcement agencies, who are now searching for alternative sources of data.
Andrew Crocker, surveillance litigation director of the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned that what may follow could resemble the Wild West.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is concerned about Geofence Warrants.
Ferguson noted that many smartphone apps that aren’t owned by Google also collect user location data. And some agencies have already turned to this model. One company bought location information from data brokers and sold it via a subscription to law enforcement agencies, which it had contracts with, a 2022 investigation by The Associated Press and Electronic Frontier Foundation found.
Experts warned that there are no rules for this model, despite efforts in Congress to regulate data brokers. “In an investigation where law enforcement wants to see location data of lots of users in a specific place, they may go to one of those data brokers and say, ‘Search your database for all the records you’ve bought from these various third parties and tell us who was there and they may do that, without a warrant at all,” Crocker said, referring to the anonymized data. “It seems to make a mockery of the Fourth Amendment.”
Who Was Egypt Covington?
Egypt Covington, an aspiring singer in Michigan, was planning to start a new chapter with her boyfriend when she was found dead on the floor of her Belleville home. Egypt, who was 27, had been shot in the back of the head. Her hands were bound behind her back with Christmas lights.
Those who knew Egypt couldn’t imagine who would have wanted the social bartender dead. "She had this amazing canny talent of seeing you, right into... your heart,” Meadows remembered of his girlfriend. “When you met Egypt, you walked away better, feeling better about your day, yourself.”
At the bar they worked at, Egypt and her brother Turner were a popular duo, even performing “little routines” with flaming bottles of alcohol to entertain customers.
Egypt had also recently landed a job with a craft beer distributor as a beer sales rep and was still pursuing her dream of becoming a singer. She’d even won Eastern Michigan’s regional "Country Idol" competition in 2014 and had once auditioned for NBC’s The Voice. “It was all coming together,” Turner said of Egypt's life at the time.
Egypt had also found love, and after five years of an “on and off” relationship with Meadows, the couple were more committed than ever and planning to move in together.
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