A California juror received an apparent spam text. Could it upend a hostage

The text message lit up Juror No. 1’s phone after she had gone home on the night of closing arguments in a six-day trial in San Diego federal court. It came from a Colorado area code and a person identifying themselves as “Vanessa.”

After a brief exchange, the juror concluded it was spam and deleted the conversation.

But checking her trial notes during deliberations the next day, Juror No. 1 began to second-guess her conclusion that the messages were junk. A co-defendant and cooperating witness in the brutal hostage-taking murder case that she and her fellow jurors were deciding had been arrested in Colorado, and in trial testimony the jury had learned that another co-defendant and witness was associated with someone named “Vaness.”

Juror No. 1, whose identity the court has kept anonymo