And it was won by a phone.

Not his search history — that was strong and the defense fought it well.

It was one text message, recovered from Valerie Nkemdirim’s phone, sent by Christopher Voss at 1:52 in the morning on the fourteenth of March, twenty-one minutes before my son called me.

Four words.

going to be late

Which is nothing.

Which is a man telling his girlfriend he will not be over tonight.

Except that his own account, given in an interview and repeated on the stand, was that he had gone home at two in the morning because he had finished at the office unexpectedly early and had decided to sleep at the house.