LAPD successfully hacked into the locked iPhone 5s belonging to the slain wife of “Shield” actor Michael Jace
LAPD hacked into iPhone of slain wife of ‘Shield’ actor, documents show — Actor Michael Jace is flanked by his attorneys Peter L. Carr IV, left …
Context & Ripple Effects
A month after the FBI's San Bernardino breakthrough dominated headlines, this Los Angeles Times report shows the capability is no longer federal-only: LAPD detectives cracked the locked iPhone 5s of April Jace on their own, per court documents, in the Michael Jace murder case. It lands amid a cluster of 2016 developments — the FBI's offer to help an Arkansas prosecutor with a homicide victim's devices (FBI assistance in the Arkansas iPhone 6 and iPod case) and forensics analysis suggesting the bureau's workaround may rely on NAND mirroring to brute-force PINs (NAND mirroring as the likely FBI method) — all pointing to a growing toolkit that bypasses Apple entirely.
First-order effects
- Prosecutors in the Jace case gain direct access to the victim's handset contents, removing what had been a hard evidentiary wall in a high-profile trial.
- Apple's position that only it could unlock an iPhone takes a further hit: a city police department has now demonstrated the same class of capability the FBI used at San Bernardino.
Second-order effects
- Local agencies elsewhere get a template — the Arkansas arrangement shows prosecutors can request FBI help rather than build in-house skills, spreading unlock capacity through regional partnerships rather than one-off national events.
- Secrecy around the methods invites legal exposure: AP, Vice Media, and Gannett's suit against the FBI for records on how San Bernardino was cracked signals sustained pressure to disclose tools whose existence shapes every defendant's and victim's privacy expectations.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds toward routine practice — Forbes' later reporting describes US law enforcement regularly using dead victims' fingerprints without search warrants (warrantless fingerprint unlocks) — device security becomes a procedural question of who may exploit a corpse's biometrics rather than whether the phone can be opened.
- The structural endpoint is an arms race in which each disclosed or leaked method forces Apple to harden future hardware, while law enforcement stockpiles capabilities for older models like the 5s — encryption policy fought model-by-model rather than in a single courtroom showdown.
The trend: iPhone-cracking capability is diffusing from the FBI to local police departments, turning device encryption into an ongoing operational contest rather than a single legal standoff.