Days after the Boston Marathon bombing, a tourist checking his phone realized he'd accidentally captured a crystal-clear image of the FBI's most wanted suspect casually walking away

Days after the Boston Marathon bombing, a tourist checking his phone realized he'd accidentally captured a crystal-clear image of the FBI's most wanted suspect casually walking away.

David Green, a businessman from Jacksonville, Florida, had traveled to Massachusetts to run the race. After the two bombs detonated near the finish line, Green used his smartphone to take a wide photo of the ensuing chaos. When the FBI released grainy CCTV footage of two suspects, Green checked his image. He had captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fleeing the scene—crucially, without the backpack that had contained the explosive. Green contacted the FBI, and his accidental snapshot became one of the most critical pieces of evidence linking the suspect to the scene without his device.

Similarly, in the fall of 2021, the entire country was searching for Gabby Petito and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, who had vanished during a cross-country road trip. Kyle and Jenn Bethune, a family traveling the US in a converted bus, were reviewing GoPro footage from their recent drive through Grand Teton National Park. They spotted a white Ford Transit van parked on the side of a dirt road that perfectly matched Petito's vehicle.

The Bethunes uploaded the footage and notified authorities. The FBI used the exact GPS coordinates and visual landmarks from the tourists' video to narrow their search area. This accidental footage directly led to the discovery of the crime scene shortly after, shifting the entire focus of the investigation into a full-scale manhunt for Laundrie.

Spectators and emergency personnel react in the chaotic aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon