Computer forensic analysis of Andreas Lubitz online activity shows he was looking up “Suicide” and “Cockpit door security” prior to murdering 149 people on flight 9525. The Flight Data Recorder was also found buried in the mountain – investigators hopeful data can be recovered.

BERLIN (AP) – Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz spent time online researching suicide methods and cockpit door security in the week before crashing Flight 9525, prosecutors said Thursday – the first evidence that the fatal descent may have been a premeditated act.

As the browsing history on a tablet computer found at Lubitz’s apartment added a disturbing new piece to the puzzle of the March 24 crash, French investigators said they had recovered the Airbus A320’s flight data recorder – another step toward completing the picture.

Attention has focused on Lubitz since investigators evaluated the plane’s cockpit voice recorder last week. They believe the 27-year-old locked his captain out of the cockpit during the flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf and deliberately plunged the plane into a French mountainside.

Duesseldorf prosecutors said they had reviewed search terms from March 16-23 that were in the browser memory of the computer found in Lubitz’s home in the city.

The co-pilot researched “on one hand medical treatment methods, and on the other hand informed himself about types and ways of going about a suicide,” prosecutors’ spokesman Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a statement.  (read more)