The undiscovered country of true crime is undoubtedly social media. Ordinary people leave digital breadcrumbs of themselves online, willy-nilly, randomly, arbitrarily but also authentically. These are off-the-cuff but more important, timestamped and related to a key inner circle of people. These hidden networks reveal plenty about the true social dynamics of the key role players.

Once a crime happens, typically attempts are made to scrub compromising online activity. Kessinger did an impressive job in destroying her virtual identity, but as is typically the case, she wasn’t able to scrub everything.

The True Crime in Colorado channel has done some good work recently in developing the Kessinger narrative in a meaningful way [as opposed to the ongoing conjecture that has been mostly baseless].

They’ve followed a few leads using Venmo notifications,* and trying to connect these to the discovery as well as timeline-related texts sent between Watts and Kessinger. Fleshing out the timeline is integral to cogent True Crime Rocket Science, which is why there seems to be some – not a lot, but some – new insight here.

The bottom-line with these possible connections to Trent Bolte, Danielle and others, is it provides the cursory apparatus to interrogate the beginnings of “dark things” Watts suggested in his letters to Cheryln Cadle. Were these dark things sexual?

*Note: Venmo is a mobile payment service app owned by PayPal.

Here’s everything you’ve ever wondered about the payment app Venmo – Daily Dot