In the year since Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in a terror attack in San Bernardino, authorities have conducted more than 600 interviews, gathered more than 500 pieces of evidence, and served dozens of search warrants. They launched an unprecedented battle with Apple in an effort to unlock Farook’s iPhone and send divers to scour a lake in search of electronic equipment the couple might have dumped there. Despite piecing together a detailed picture of the couple’s actions, federal officials acknowledge they still don’t have answers to some of the critical questions posed in the days after the Dec. 2, 2015, attack, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Most important, the FBI still is trying to determine whether anyone was aware of the couple’s plot or helped them in any way. The couple spent months gathering an arsenal of weapons and building bombs in the garage of their home. The FBI has made public appeals to help build a timeline of the terrorist couple’s movements between the attack and the beginning of a high-speed pursuit that would end with police fatally shooting them. Officials said they could not account for the couple’s movements during a key 18-minute period. Another frustration has been the couple’s electronics. The FBI was finally able to get a third party to unlock Farook’s work-issued iPhone. Officials said it didn’t yield any clues to the attack. The FBI believed the pair tried to destroy hard drives and other electronic devices, but the investigation has not yielded much on that front.