Investigators in the Amanda Bach murder case have seized Dustin McCowan’s cell phone and iPod Touch and are searching them for evidence.

Sgt. Larry LaFlower of the Porter County Sheriff’s Police today confirmed that, sometime after McCowan was taken into custody, a search warrant was executed on his cell phone and iPod, both of which were in his possession when booked into the Porter County Jail.

Investigators are interested in any phone numbers which might be found in the devices, text messages, photographs, multimedia files, applications, or other data.

McCowan was formally charged on Sept. 19 with Bach’s murder, two days after her body was found south of the Canadian National railroad right-of-way approximately 300 yards from McCowan’s home on C.R. 625W in Union Township.

Bach was shot once in the throat, the bullet severing a vertebra.

Bach’s own cell phone remains missing and cell records indicate that, at 12:14 a.m. Friday, Sept. 16—around three hours before her 2006 Pontiac was found abandoned at Dean’s General Store on Ind. 130—she appears to have sent an unknown media message to an unknown recipient. At 1:21 a.m. Friday, Sept. 16, those records also indicate, she received a text from McCowan’s cell. But there were no further texts or received phone calls after that time and any incoming calls seem to have gone to voice mail.

Attempts by AT&T to locate Bach’s cell phone were unsuccessful, either because the phone was subsequently turned off or because its battery died.

Also seized, pursuant to a search warrant executed late on Saturday, Sept. 17, into Sunday, Sept. 18, was the squad car used by McCowan’s father, an officer with the Crown Point Police Department. A juvenile girl identified only as A.B.—who told investigators that she visited McCowan at his residence at 4 a.m. Friday, Sept. 16, and was still there when his father returned from work at 7 a.m.—watched the two of them get into the squad car and head north on C.R. 625W, in a direction which would lead both to the location where Bach’s body was later found and to Dean’s General Store.

Trial has been set for 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30. McCowan’s attorney, Bob Harper, has said that McCowan has consistently and continually declared his innocence and denied any involvement in Bach’s murder.

Posted 9/28/2011