A forensic audit of the hard drive in the Bristol Harbormaster's office revealed that the computer was indeed "wiped," and done by former assistant harbormaster Matt Calouro.

In a summary report submitted to Bristol Town Council members Wednesday night, Data-Medics' Jared Palmer wrote, "Information recovered from the drive, including actual files and, in some cases, only file name references, indicate that Matt Calouro used this computer for more than just the Online Moorings application, that he saved files to the hard drive, and that he subsequently took actions, specifically on May 23, 2013, to permanently delete files from the drive."

The summary highlighted about 7GB of the 29GB Mr. Palmer recovered from the hard drive, most of which was written to the very end of the drive. This suggests "some type of wipe software was used…to permanently delete files and file references from the drive."

Mr. Palmer was able to discern that the "wiping" took place between 7:24 a.m. and 9:39 a.m. on May 23.

Items that were deleted included payment vouchers, references to harbor management commission memos, references to harbormaster equipment, and video clips of inappropriate content. Town Administrator Tony Teixeira confirmed that the video clips were pornographic in nature.

"If he were an employee of the town now, he would be in my office and that's it, done," said Mr. Teixeira. "But since he's no longer employed with us, I'm not sure if there's much we can do."

At the request of Mr. Teixeira, town council members approved conducting a forensic audit of the harbormaster's computer during an Aug. 28 meeting.

Mr. Teixeira cited that the computer had no information on it when the town’s information technology specialist tried to set it up for the current harbormaster’s use. When Greg Marsili reported to work June 26 as the new harbormaster, the computer appeared to be “wiped of all documents,” Mr. Marsili told council members in a July 11 department report.

The reason for a lack of information on the computer, Mr. Calouro had previously explained, was due to Onlinemooring.com – the online database used by the department manage the harbor. All information relative to the database was provided to town officials, Mr. Calouro said.

"Matt kept saying that everything was in Online Mooring, but I had a gut feeling that more was missing," Mr. Teixeira said. "When it came to the day-to-day documentation, things that we have hard copies of, they were missing.

"I became skeptical after the (public information requests) he was making, and then did due diligence to find out what was going on."

Mr. Calouro was one of three top candidates for the Bristol Harbormaster's position. However, when the town council hired Mr. Marsili, Mr. Calouro filed several Freedom of Information Act requests for public documents relative to the hiring process. A legal representative of Mr. Calouro sent the town council a letter of intent to file suit about a month ago as a result.

"There have been no other requests or follow through on that," Mr. Teixeira said.

Mr. Calouro could not be reached for comment.

The town council is expected to discuss the audit summary during an Oct. 30 meeting.