Tyler Clementi used his blue Sony VAIO laptop to view Dharun Ravi’s Twitter account starting Sept. 13, 2010, according to evidence gathered in a computer crime lab at the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Clementi checked Ravi’s Twitter account about 60 times between Sept. 13, 2010 and Sept. 22, 2010, the day he jumped off the George Washington Bridge.
Clementi took a screenshot of a particular tweet on Sept. 19, 2010 at 1:10 a.m. and saved it as “untitled.jpeg.”
Ravi’s tweet read, “Roommate asked for the room [until] midnight. I went into Molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”
Clementi took a screenshot of another tweet three days later, titled “secondtime.jpeg.”
“Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and [midnight]. Yes, it’s happening again,” the tweet read.
A version of the tweet Ravi modified read, “Roommate asked for room again. It’s happening again. People with iChat, don’t you dare video chat me from 9:30 to [midnight].”
Clementi checked Ravi’s Twitter page for a last time on Sept. 22, 2010 at 5:16 p.m. before leaving Davidson Hall C on Busch campus.
Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge at 8:30 p.m.
The Rutgers University Police Department confiscated Ravi’s computer days later and transported it to the MCPO’s computer crime lab.
Gary Charydczak, who works at the lab, received Ravi’s laptop, created a copy of the hard drive and conducted an investigation of Ravi’s files and search engine records.
By searching key words “Tyler Clementi” and “Tyler,” Charydczak said he found that Ravi had searched for Clementi on Google, YouTube, Facebook, Pipile.com and 123people.com.
Charydczak said Ravi also searched the terms “gay” and “homosexual” on Foursquare, but he could not extract the context of these searches.
Searching Ravi’s online chat history, Charydczak said he found 20 separate Instant Messenger conversations from Aug. 21, 2010 to Aug. 23, 2010 that used the phrases “college roommate” and “his sexual orientation.”
Twelve of the IMs were between Ravi and his West Windsor-Plainsboro North High School friend Jason Tam. The evidence was not used because Tam was not present in court to verify the validity of the messages.
Timothy Hayes, an analyst in the University’s Office of Information Technology, said he could not confirm if Ravi saved or uploaded any videos from his laptop.
Hayes said no video footage was uploaded to the Internet from Ravi’s laptop on Sept. 19 from 9 p.m. to midnight — the first webcam viewing incident.
This information contradicts witness testimonies from Ravi’s friend Molly Wei and others who said they viewed an encounter between Clementi and his guest.
“There could have been attempted connection that didn’t fully establish, but I couldn’t tell,” he said. “No actual video was transferred as an iChat or video at that time.”
Ravi can spend up to 10 years in prison if he is found guilty of invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, witness tampering and hindering arrest.
The trial is scheduled to continue today and is expected to last two to three more weeks.