According to New York’s News 10 Now, law enforcement officers in Syracuse are locating the common criminal by reviewing the commonly transmitted text message. 

Police discovered that individuals often send text messages, sometimes to the victim, stating specifics and facts pertinent to the crime.

"The suspect wants someone to know,” says Syracuse Police Lieutenant Joe Cecile. “He does it almost in a way of bragging. So he does hang himself.”

Recently a local woman broke into her former roommate’s apartment, stole some items, inflicted property damage, and subsequently text messaged her former roommate fessing up to the deed.

The woman erased the message and thought she was in the clear.

But Cecile says that the text message was a key component that eventually led to the arrest of the suspect two days after the event occurred.

“If texters think they can get away with it by erasing a message after it's sent, they need to think again,” says Cecile. “Whether they've been erased or not, they stay in that phone until the memory itself is taken out of it.”