CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A few hours after Shawn Peck and Shane Gibson finished robbing, binding, gagging and beating an elderly woman inside her Big Chimney home last year, they checked into a local motel room and used their cellphones to take pictures of themselves with their stolen loot.

One of the photos shows Peck, 18, reflected in a mirror. In one hand he holds his cellphone. In the other, he holds a pistol, pointed downward and sideways toward the camera. The weapon is the same one he pointed at his 79-year-old victim, as he demanded keys to her safe.

Another photo shows Gibson, 19, flashing gang signs. Yet another shows a collection of weapons and pills the pair stole from the woman's house. The teens tagged the series of shots "Got em," -- apparently unfazed by the fact that they were creating evidence of their own crime.

"What these guys were trying to do in this case was to get young females out to the motel to party," said Fred Giggenbach, the Kanawha County assistant prosecutor who used the cellphone pictures to help convict for Gibson and Peck. "They were bragging about the crime."

Both teens pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery charges and a slew of unrelated crimes. They are scheduled for sentencing later this week.

More and more, police and prosecutors are banking on the digital age to help criminal investigations. Dozens of cases in Kanawha County, in just the past few months, have included evidence that law enforcement officials gathered from suspects' pages on social networking websites or cellphone text messages and photos.

"Obviously, they didn't think about the consequences of their actions when they committed the crime," Kanawha County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Plants said. "And they haven't learned their lessons."

In May, Brent Lamar Davis, 26, pleaded guilty to DUI causing death charges after he collided with a motorcyclist at the Montrose Drive intersection in South Charleston last year.

The motorcyclist, St. Albans auto shop owner Mike Frame, 60, was launched about 30 feet into the air, according to the accident report. He died in a hospital a week after the collision.

After Davis' admitted to causing Frame's death, Kanawha Circuit Judge James Stucky agreed to allow him to remain free on bond until his sentencing.

That lasted one day, until Stucky signed an order to revoke Davis' bond -- after probation officers found that Davis had written several posts on his Facebook account in which he brags about getting drunk and doing drugs.

One of the posts read: "Drinkin the pain away, ok let's get it."

Just hours before he appeared in court for his plea, the officers found another post that Davis was "on some s---."

Another instance of social media boasting came last week, when South Charleston police arrested a half-dozen males, in their mid- to late teens, for allegedly destroying a hotel room and spa area at the Wingate Hotel.

The suspects took pictures of themselves with cellphone cameras during the havoc and posted those photos on the networking website Twitter. The photos provided convenient, public documentation of the crime, South Charleston Police Officer E.M. Peterson told the Gazette last week.

"These kids handed me this case," Peterson said.

Social networking websites have become so useful for gathering evidence during investigations that law enforcement search the often-public forums almost as soon as a case crosses their desks.

"There's just a bunch of different ways technology can help prove a case," Plants said.

The prosecutor is also considering using Facebook to help select juries.

For example, if 100 people were selected in a jury pool for a particular case, Plants would assign a person to search the candidates' Facebook pages for information that would disqualify them for duty. Obviously, he said, the potential juror would have to set his or her profile to be publicly viewed.

"I have a general list of information about them -- where they work, if they're married, will they pay taxes," Plants said. "Think about how much more information there is on Facebook."

Plants said such a system is in the works.