Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [143]
Dr. Vass also described his discovery of “shockingly high” levels of chloroform in the sample he tested. He told jurors the levels were 10,000 times higher than levels from a piece of carpet in the trunk of a control car, a vehicle he picked randomly from a junkyard for the purposes of testing. In his twenty years, he had never seen levels this high. In my opinion, the greater significance of Dr. Vass’s testimony was in regard to the chloroform. We had the smoking gun in the duct tape, and now we had the agent that would have subdued little Caylee Marie enough for someone to use it.
RETRACING THE FOOTSTEPS OF OUR investigation into the fall of 2008, our prosecution case moved to the evidence found on the Anthonys’ home computer. We called Kevin Stinger, the supervisor of the computer forensics lab for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and John Dennis Bradley, a computer expert and software developer. Stinger confirmed that the word “chloroform” had been searched for and found in unallocated deleted space on the Anthonys’ home computer. Bradley had developed software called Cache Back for his employer, the Canadian software company Site Quest. He had been provided the deleted file from the Anthonys’ computer by Stinger.
It was a team effort. The sheriff’s people had found references to chloroform on the computer, but they couldn’t decode the exact sites or dates they were visited. Bradley had the new software, so investigators gave him the file to decode. He was then able to decode specific sites, dates, and search terms. He found that two searches that had been conducted in March 2008, one for “chloroform” and another for “how to make chloroform.” Unfortunately, Bradley’s software made a mistake in determining the number of searches to a particular site about “chloroform,” claiming it had appeared eighty-four times on the Anthonys’ home computer. The defense caught the error before we did and presented it in their case. The error overshadowed the real importance of the matter, which was that a search for chloroform had been conducted at all. This error certainly hurt our credibility, but our presentation of this evidence in trial was in good faith.
We moved from computer forensics and chloroform back to Casey, recalling Lee Anthony to the stand. Computers could give us mountains of techno-clues, but for those who didn’t have a good handle on “unallocated deleted space,” humans held important evidence to our case as well. Frank led Lee through the conversation the brother and sister had about Caylee being kidnapped in Blanchard Park, what the prosecution called Casey 3.0. We hoped that the jury would be able to see Casey’s ability to spin lies from lies. Whenever investigators had uncovered some new fact that refuted a story of hers, she had responded by creating a new drama about what had happened to Caylee Marie. The supposed kidnapping at Jay Blanchard Park was a great example. Lee’s testimony showed how Casey’s story of the night of July 16 had shifted. His words also provided a good transition into the next phase of our evidence: the discovery of Caylee’s remains and all the accompanying forensics.
Dr. Jan Garavaglia, our chief medical examiner, took the stand on June 10. She testified to the findings of her autopsy of little Caylee Marie. She had determined that the toddler was a victim of a homicide, but the manner she died was “of undetermined means.” I walked her through the steps she had followed to reach that conclusion. I didn’t take a lot of time going over her findings, because I wanted to leave those questions for the defense. I knew that Cheney Mason would be the one to cross-examine her, and that he would be his usual outspoken self. I also knew that Dr. G was ready for him. Cheney was a good attorney, but he was very predictable.
Sure enough, Cheney Mason decided to argue with Dr. Garavaglia, and after