Boise police investigators say Melissa Jenkins and Daniel Ehrlick exchanged 42 text messages during the late afternoon and evening of July 24, 2009 — the day Robert Manwill disappeared — but by the time detectives examined their cellphones, only a handful remained.
Ehrlick and Jenkins also spoke on the phone for 63 minutes that same night, while Jenkins was at work, Boise police Sgt. Brian Lee testified Tuesday.
The testimony about the cellphone use and a detective’s mistaken erasure of cellphone data came on the 11th day of testimony in Ehrlick’s first-degree murder trial.
What Ehrlick and Jenkins talked about on July 24 is a mystery. But police say text messages that appear to have been left selectively on Jenkins’ phone mention her young son Robert just twice, Detective Bill Smith told the jury Wednesday.
Police got Ehrlick’s phone on July 25 and downloaded the contents to a police computer, but Smith said he mistakenly erased that content from the computer when he downloaded content from Jenkins’ phone to the same computer on July 30.
Before they were erased, Smith testified, he saw “less than a dozen” text messages left on Ehrlick’s phone. He found six text messages on Jenkins’ phone.
Cellphone records show the couple exchanged 25 messages in the four days prior to July 24, police said, but some of those messages appear to have been deleted as well, Smith said.
On the particular phone models they used, the oldest messages are deleted first when the phone memory runs out of space, Smith testified. That’s why he concluded that the messages had been manually and selectively deleted.
In response to questioning from defense attorney Gus Cahill, Smith did say that no one can tell who may have called or actually deleted a message, only who owns the phones.
Ehrlick told neighbors and Boise police the night 8-year-old Robert went missing that he suspected the boy might have gone to a birthday party in the apartment complex.
Prosecutors say that was a cover story. They told the jury at the beginning of the trial that Ehrlick fatally injured Robert and dumped his body in the New York Canal before he told police or neighbors that Robert was missing.
Chris Phillips, who provided security for the Oak Park Village Apartment, also testified Wednesday that there is no evidence of a birthday party at the apartment complex the night of July 24.
Phillips testified Wednesday he saw Ehrlick walking around the complex calling out Robert’s name shortly before 10 p.m. July 24, as Phillips was closing the apartment swimming pool. He also heard Ehrlick ask kids at the pool if they knew if there was a birthday party in the complex that night.
Phillips said he began searching for Robert, and told Ehrlick — who was joined by Jenkins shortly after 10 p.m. — that they needed to call Boise police. Ehrlick called 911 at 10:08.
Phillips said he searched the grounds and buildings of the massive apartment complex for the boy until 4 a.m. July 25, and found no evidence of the boy or a birthday party.
Jurors saw time-clock information and heard testimony from co-workers at Blackhawk Industries in Boise that Jenkins worked July 24 until about 9:50 p.m.
One employee, Gary Armes Sr., testified that during a break between 7:30 and 8 p.m., Jenkins spoke on the phone and then told Armes that Robert was missing. Armes said he told Jenkins that if it was his son, he would be home looking for him. But it wasn’t until a break at 9:45 p.m. that Jenkins told her bosses that she needed to leave.
Testimony resumes Thursday afternoon with Phillips on the witness stand.
Patrick Orr: 373-6619
