Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [52]
The presence of chloroform in the trunk sample was a surprise to all of us. Chloroform had been known to be used as an anesthetizer to knock victims out, and it wasn’t something you could get at the local drugstore. Since it wasn’t a commonly abused product, Detective Melich thought it might be worth a shot to check the Anthonys’ computers to see if anyone had tried to buy it online.
Detective Sandra Cawn, an experienced computer forensics investigator with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, had already been mining the Anthonys’ computers for any leads that might help us learn the whereabouts of Zanny. Melich asked if she could also check for searches involving the word “chloroform.” Detective Cawn first searched the hard drive of the laptop that Casey had been using at Tony’s and found nothing. She then turned her attention to the desktop computer used at the Anthony home.
Her initial inspection of the active files came up empty. She then looked at the unallocated space of the hard drive. As it was explained to us, when you permanently delete something from your computer, that digital information gets transferred to another space on the hard drive, where it can then be overwritten with new information. This computer version of limbo is called “unallocated space.” Even though we think the file is erased from our computer, in fact it may still be there. Over time, all or portions of the information will be truly erased, as new information takes its place. Until that happens, though, a computer forensics investigator armed with the right software can mine that data.
When Detective Cawn examined this part of the Anthony family’s home computer, she found repeated references to the word “chloroform,” but that was as far as her software and her experience could take her. She turned to her boss, mentor, and teacher, Sergeant Kevin Stenger, and using more sophisticated software—even some that was still in development—Stenger was able to determine that on two afternoons in March someone had performed searches for information about chloroform. In one of the searches, someone had actually typed in the query “how to make chloroform.”
Given the dates listed on the chloroform searches, Detective Melich wanted to be sure who had access to the computer those afternoons. He thought Cindy and George had probably been out of the house, and subpoenaed their work records to see if they were at their places of employment at the time the searches on chloroform were being done. Cindy’s work records showed she was working both those days at those times. George’s work records showed he was not actively employed that month, but worked a ten-hour day on one of the afternoons the searches had been done.
Finding chloroform in the trunk and in the search history of the computer added a new layer of suspicion to the case. These, along with the results from Dr. Vass’s odor tests, point toward foul play of some kind.
Useful as all this was, it wouldn’t do us much good if we couldn’t convince the court to accept the science behind it. In other words, the time would come when we would have to establish the admissibility of Dr. Vass’s work and the opinions derived from it. When the time came for the Frye hearing, it would be my job to convince the court that this new science of Dr. Vass’s had a firm foundation in established science. After all, that was why I’d been brought on the case in the