did the shooting. and what tower near the murder scene had the phone pinged off? >> we had tons of, and i'm not exaggerating, thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of phone calls that hit all these various towers. >> reporter: in that electronic haystack, a sharp-eyed cop noticed a call around the time they believed brandy was killed. it was made from a number with a 310 area code. now normally that's southern california. the county lawmen traced that 310 number back to an anonymous disposable phone, a burner purchased in zanesville a week before brandy died. >> i get the call records for the 310 area phone, and start combing through those. he only called two people -- a second burner phone and josh daniels. those were the only two. >> reporter: was this their breakthrough? that burner phone, at the right time, right place, had called josh's phone in alaska. then the phone techs did another extraction of josh's phone, and they retrieved something josh thought he'd deleted.