[Research] Difficult request from a friend of Mary's

[awm at cs.cmu.edu]

Folks,

I'm pretty pessimistic about whether anything can be done to help, but a
friend of Mary's is asking if anyone can help in a kind of computer
forensics problem. Tom Byers is a science-fiction writer who used to
attend a writers group that Mary ran. His daughter (16 years old) ran away
from their home on Thursday and has since been communicating with Tom via
a MySpace account. Tom's concerned about her safety. He is wondering
whether its possible to figure out anything about where she is via these
messages. He's also pursuing via the police, who are investigating, trying
to get help from myspace, and hiring a PI and a lawyer.

I told him I'd pass on this message in case someone has any ideas or
thinks they might be able to figure anything out.

Andrew