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Crimefighting on Campus: A Look Inside the Petzold Lab
Tucked in the lower level of Dooling Hall is a first-of-its-kind facility in Pennsylvania, the Officer David M. Petzold Digital Forensics Laboratory of Lehigh County.
Lehigh may be in the name, but as Jon Langton ’13, M’14, the lab’s first intern, can attest, cybercrimes don’t often stick to one jurisdiction.
Back when Garmin and TomTom navigation systems were in most of our cars, the Petzold Lab analyzed one that police had seized from a vehicle near a burglary. Langton helped extract data the device had retained from previous journeys, which was used to connect the vehicle to approximately 60 cases where copper pipes were stolen from vacant homes throughout eastern Pennsylvania.
While the technology has evolved, the Petzold Lab’s mission has remained the same since launching in 2011: provide the region’s law enforcement with computer and cellphone forensic services, while offering DeSales students unique opportunities in the field.
“If I had done an internship at a larger agency or a bigger lab, I don’t know that it would have had the same impact on me. The impact was tremendous and quite literally changed my career trajectory, and changed my life, really.”
The lab is named for Upper Saucon Detective David Petzold, whom Langton called a pioneer when it came to bringing digital forensics into law enforcement work. Petzold, Det. Scott McCulloch M’18, Det. Joseph Pochron, and State Trooper Paul Iannace had a close bond as they served on the state police’s Computer Crimes Task Force together in the early 2000s.
Petzold decided he wanted to join the FBI, but after a short time with the agency, he missed his community and returned to Upper Saucon. Seven months later, he was tragically struck and killed by a van on Route 309 while working an overnight shift. His family and friends started the Officer David M. Petzold Memorial Foundation in his honor. In partnership with DeSales and the Lehigh County District Attorney’s office, they devised a plan to build a local digital forensics lab that would ease the burden on state police.
The foundation covered the lab’s startup cost, DeSales provided the space and covered the utilities, and the DA’s office paid for the workforce. Jim Martin, who retired in December after more than two decades as Lehigh County’s district attorney, played a pivotal role in spearheading the project and building up a more permanent staff of sworn and civilian workers.
“Jim saw the need to have this place manned and have people here all the time,” says McCulloch, who is now the lab’s interim commander after Pochron and Iannace both served in the role.
Martin also helped the lab keep up with state-of-the-art developments in the field. Today, the lab contains five workstations, with hard drives as large as 10 terabytes, and equipment and software for cracking cellphones that often costs thousands of dollars.
The lab serviced Lehigh County’s 15 police departments when it opened, but it has since expanded to serve Northampton County’s 22 departments. In 2023 alone, the lab was also able to assist Berks, Bucks, Luzerne, Montgomery, and York counties on cases. It also analyzed 270 devices, received 198 cyber tips about child exploitation, and executed 23 search warrants. Members of Lehigh’s Computer Crimes Task Force have 24/7 access to the lab.
McCulloch says the lab’s top priority is to protect children online. In suspected cases of abuse, service providers like YouTube and Meta must file cyber tips with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. When tips are traced to Lehigh County, the lab works in tandem with Bethlehem police’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit to determine the IP addresses from which crimes originate.
McCulloch says the interns, with supervision, work on cases deemed appropriate for them to be viewing, like motor vehicle accidents. McCulloch or another investigator will then duplicate their efforts to validate the findings.
Career paths abound for DeSales students who come through the Petzold Lab, which attracts not just criminal justice students but also computer science, psychology, and homeland security majors.
Morghan Shoemaker ’20, now the lab’s full-time digital forensic analyst, was a psychology major when she did her initial internship in 2020. Since cellphones have become more prominent than computers in criminal cases in recent years, mobile forensics is Shoemaker’s specialty. She says the Petzold Lab is the best place to start for anyone intrigued by these topics.
“It’s not just people interested in digital forensics, but those interested in anything digital, cybercrimes, cybersecurity, anyone in the criminal justice field,” Shoemaker says. “It’s really important to understand how the world’s youth and kids are being raised on this technology.”
Delanie Zohler ’23 is on track to receive her Master’s in Criminal Justice with a digital forensics concentration in Fall 2024. She got to shadow officers on a search warrant during her undergraduate internship; now she is a paid graduate intern assisting Shoemaker.
“You learn a lot here; you do hands-on work,” Zohler says. “Many times Scott will pull you into the office and show you what different applications look like.”
Langton interned with the lab in the fall of 2011. A few months later, then-commander Pochron called him to gauge his interest in returning as a part-time, paid worker. Langton eventually became certified as a digital forensic analyst, and as his role evolved, the lab’s caseload soared.
He gave expert testimony at human trafficking and capital homicide trials before moving to the private sector. He’s currently the vice president of forensic technology and consulting for TransPerfect Legal Solutions. Langton says he cannot imagine where he’d be without the connections he made at DeSales and the lab.
“I try to do good by Officer Petzold’s memory to this day, and I think that’s something that was fostered in me through that internship experience,” Langton says. “Taking that experience and spreading that on a more global scale is something I’m super passionate about. It wouldn’t have been possible without my experience both at the University and the Petzold Lab.”