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SALT LAKE CITY -- It's no longer lipstick on the collar that reveals a cheater's true colors. Many times in today's world, it takes sleuthing and high-tech methods to "out" scandalous spouses.
Recent cases of infidelity involving Tiger Woods and Sandra Bullock's husband Jesse James are focusing the spotlight on the problems of infidelity and sexual addiction in marriage.
"There are some serial adulterers out there who are just in it for the sex and they are not really emotionally tied to the person that they're cheating with," private investigator and utahdetective.com owner David Lundberg said. "On the other hand, there are the ones that turn romantic and there is some emotion and love there."
Relationship experts and investigators alike say regardless of whether a cheating spouse is a sex addict or a lonely heart, the early warning signs are similar.
Identifying the cheater
There are many clues.
"Hiding a cell phone, deleting text messages quickly, having the cell phone bill sent to another address suddenly," Lundberg said. "Money being taken out of the ATM with no explanation. Did they bring things home claiming that they purchased them for themselves?"
A Salt Lake County man who wanted to be called "Jeff" told KSL Newsradio hiding something like he hid his sexual addiction made him into an expert liar. The addiction started with porn, which led to him stepping out on his wife -- even with prostitutes.
22 percent of men and 14 percent of women have cheated at least once during their married lives.
"You could tell lies about everything because you don't know what you told the truth about," he said. "If you're just lusting your brains out, you're not connected in the real world."
"Jeff" says he has identified with Tiger Woods.
"I can completely relate to it," he said. "And there's a million groupies all over the place [in Tiger's case] -- God help those people. Like myself, I don't know how I could do what he does in life and not just jack up what's good and wholesome."
Catching the cheater
Private investigators say most cheaters slip up at some point -- they are human. Catching them involves the right timing and technology. [CLICK HERE to see the Cheaters cheat sheet.]
Lundberg is frequently employed to tail suspected cheaters and find objective evidence for their spouses.
"Just seeing a couple together at a restaurant certainly may not look good, but it certainly doesn't prove adultery," Lundberg said. "We like to get what we call the ‘money shot' -- get a picture of them holding hands, a kiss in public, something as obvious as going to a hotel together. That seals the deal for us and our client."
Lundberg warns his clients not to inform their spouses they've hired private investigators and also not to ask the investigators to do anything illegal -- they won't do it.
Cheaters and technology
Often in today's world, investigations involve technology.
"Gone are the days with the lipstick on the collar," Lundberg said. "Now it's tracing things electronically."
Many spouses turn to computer experts for proof of cheating husbands and wives.
At H-11 Digital Forensics in downtown Salt Lake City, workers are often approached to find clues hidden away on computers and cell phones.
"People will send texts to people and then they delete it and they think it's gone," office manager McKay Hansen said. "Sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not."
70 percent of married women and 54 percent of married men did not know of their spouses' extramarital activity.
Hansen says H-11 uses the same technology the military uses in Afghanistan to decode insurgents cell phones.
Workers are also often able to uncover deleted computer files and e-mails, and they can identify social networking profiles that may be hidden.
"Most of us aren't that dedicated," Hansen said. "We're just out there blindly going along and we slowly cover our tracks, and someone who knows what they're doing -- which we do -- can uncover those tracks quickly and find all the evidence that's available."
Cost can be a consideration employing a service like H-11. Hansen says the going rate is $250 per hour. An average computer takes four to five hours to analyze and often, projects take much longer.
"One of the first things we say is, ‘make sure you really want to know,'" Hansen said.
Other technologies
There are devices online which track keystrokes on a computer keyboard. While they are somewhat affordable, Hansen reminds that state and federal laws prohibit tracking somebody's key strokes without notifying them first.
17 percent of divorces in the United States are caused by infidelity.
"And it's like reading through the dictionary to find one word," Hansen said.
Even if a computer has been scrubbed of any Internet histories, it is possible to go to an Internet service provider and ask for computer data logs, but that is problematic too.
"If you want to get a subpoena," Hansen observed. "You're going to need a judge to do that."
"Cloning" cell phones has been a concept popularized in recent movies. That means copying the contents and identity of a cell phone and being able to observe text messages and listen in real time. Hansen says most people don't have access to that kind of technology.
"Imaging" a computer is a similar process that can be effective, according to Hansen.
"We can take an exact image of the computer and leave no evidence that we've been there," Hansen said.
That requires bringing in a computer or cell phone and having technicians copy all the contents and analyze it later. In theory, a suspecting spouse could remove those items from the home when the husband or wife isn't missing them and return them within an hour or two.
Hansen says the suspecting person must have legal access to the computer or cell phone being analyzed.
Listen to part two of 'How to know if your spouse is cheating' Thursday, April 22 at 7:20 a.m. on KSL Newsradio 102.7FM/1160AM.
E-mail: aadams@ksl.com
