SAN ANTONIO – A the new affidavit reveals specific details about the disappearance of Olmos Park mother Suzanne Simpson and how her husband Brad spent the hours after she disappeared.

There is a lot of new evidence presented in that document.

Investigators are building a picture of Brad’s movements, how they were able to confirm where he was and what he had with him, and pointing out discrepancies in what he told officers.

We know security cameras and license plate readers helped law enforcement recreate Brad Simpson’s path, but digital evidence helped fill in the blanks.

“Digital evidence can be available, not just on cell phones or laptops, but also on vehicles…” said Matthew Domanic, owner and Chief Technology Officer at Forensic Innovations Group. He performs digital forensics and data recovery efforts on a variety of devices.

Domanic specializes in digital forensics, extracting data and information from devices under the most difficult circumstances.

In the recently released affidavit, investigators say a deputy approached Brad Simpson while he was standing near a fire pit.

Three phones and a laptop were eventually found after that fire.

“How hard is it to get information from a device that has been burned?” asked the I-Team’s Jordan Elder.

“I’ve been part of a lot of research that revolves around recovering digital forensic evidence from damaged devices and especially burned devices. It’s definitely possible,” Domanic said. “It definitely adds a layer of difficulty.”

But it is not impossible.

As with most digital evidence, experts say burned devices will have a lot of variables. How hot was the fire? How long did they stay in it? To what extent were they damaged or melted?

“You’re going to have to actually start taking the device apart and try to get to the core where the memory is stored,” Domanic said. “If there’s extensive damage to the printed circuit board or the motherboard that’s on the device, then it actually creates much more advanced techniques that are needed to then recover the data.”

And Brad Simpson didn’t seem to be making things any easier for investigators.

They write in the affidavit that he also shut down his phone “in a rare way” called lock mode.

Officials say Simpson turned his phone on and off multiple times as he drove around Oct. 7.

Authorities believe he did it to avoid being tracked down.

“It makes it difficult for anyone to access the phone,” explained Dr. Thomas Hyslip, assistant professor of instruction at the University of South Florida. He spent 23 years in federal law enforcement with the Secret Service and the Department of Defense. Hyslip specializes in cyber crime investigation and digital forensics.

Despite the phone being placed in lock mode, Hyslip says it may not be impossible to get into.

“Law enforcement has several tools that, while not secure, can often bypass lock-down mode,” he explained.

Dominac explained that the concept of lock mode is relatively new.

“It’s not enabled by default, so someone would have to know about that feature and be able to use it,” he explained.

I also asked Dr. Hyslip about Simpson’s truck.

The affidavit cites “vehicle location data” that places it around Kendall County.

Hyslip says that could come from a phone communicating with a car or GPS, or the truck itself.

“And software manufacturers are now making packages that are able to extract the data from the car, bring it into a forensics software, and do an analysis of the data from the car themselves,” Hyslip said.

Our phones also communicate with our cars more than we realize.

“A lot of data is shared between the phone and the car. So they may not have your phone, but they may have your text messages, call history, location history, everything was downloaded from that phone in the car, and so that’s another great source for law enforcement in an investigation Hyslip said.

Even in rental cars, if you plug in your phone, that vehicle has some of your data until someone decides to delete it.

So between your phone, location services, your car. and phone towers, can anyone really walk without being followed?

Hyslip says, it would be very difficult.

“There’s a lot of other potential data that law enforcement can get that has nothing to do with you,” he said.

For example, surveillance cameras, like the ones officials cite so many times in their affidavits.

And if the devices have been burned, locked or hidden, Hyslip says the actual device may not be the only keys to getting the information stored on them.

“Most phones are set for automatic backup, and if it was an iPhone, for example, it would be stored in the cloud, iCloud. If it’s an Android, it will be stored in Google Drive. Well, they can get a search warrant for those backups, and if they’re not encrypted, they’ve got all the data,” he said.