Apple Health App Data Helps Send a Man to Prison for His Wife's Death

A man who claimed to be innocent following the death of his wife was found to be guilty after police used evidence sourced from the Apple Health app on his iPhone to convict him.

As outlined by The Birmingham News (via Cult of Mac), Kat West, Jeff West's wife, was found dead in January 2018 after suffering a blow to the head. Jeff West claimed that she was drunk and fell while he was asleep in bed, but the Health app on his iPhone said otherwise.

West told investigators that he fell asleep around 10:30 p.m. and was in bed until 5:15 a.m., but his Apple Health app showed that he took a total of 18 steps from 11:03 p.m. to 11:10 p.m., a fact that contradicted his claims. Data from Kat West's iPhone showed that she stopped moving after 10:54 p.m., corresponding to the time when Jeff West claimed to be in bed.

West's fingerprints were also found at the bottom of the bottle that was used to hit his wife in the head. Prosecutors believed that Jeff, a trained crime scene investigator, killed his wife after an argument about her line of work and then staged the scene to make himself look innocent.

Despite proclaiming that he was uninvolved with the murder, West has been in prison for the past three years as the murder trial has unfolded. He has now been convicted of reckless manslaughter and ordered to serve a total of 16 years.