Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [83]
In February 2009, Linda, Frank, and I took a road trip to Gainesville to meet with a number of the experts we had working on the case. The University of Florida, my alma mater, has always been a valuable resource for prosecutors in the state of Florida. Over the course of this case, we would consult experts associated with the university in botany, toxicology, anthropology, hydrology, and law. We met Dr. Hall at his home in what appeared to be an older residential area not too far off one of the main roads past the university. His home sat on a multi-acre plot that could only be described as a botanical garden. Let’s just say it made my meager attempts at landscaping look like a dying potted plant. He gave us a tour of the grounds, which included his own private swamp on part of the property. All of the plants were beautiful native vegetation. You could tell that botany was not only this man’s profession, it was also his life.
Dr. Hall may have been retired and looked every bit the grandfatherly figure he had sounded over the phone, but his life was anything but that of a typical retiree. Between lectures, teaching, writing, and consulting, he had a full plate, and we appreciated the time he took with us. Taking us into a wood-paneled room that served as his library and office, he pushed aside the project he was working on—a treatise on some botanical issue I couldn’t possibly understand—and sat us near his desk.
He explained to us that when a human body is in the process of decomposition, the fluids released are actually toxic to plants. If you were to find a body in the middle stages of decomposition, you would find the grass underneath it dead. The importance of that in this case was that the root growth wouldn’t begin until the body was completely skeletonized, meaning that his four- to six-month time frame would have to be tacked on to Dr. Schultz’s two to four weeks for decomposition. That was putting us right about the time Caylee was last seen.
He candidly admitted that there were no published studies on root growth rates that could apply to this issue; his opinions were based upon five decades of studying and working with plants, not on specific documentation. But looking at the man who sat before me and at the lush grounds of his home, I was confident that his opinion would be enough.
With the plant issue settled, we moved on to the insects. When forensic etymologist Dr. Neal Haskell completed his evaluation of the insect evidence at the crime scene, it also dovetailed with Caylee’s body being deposited in the swamp during that midsummer period. Dr. Haskell discovered something else interesting as well, but to explain it I have to talk a little about bugs.
When a human body goes through the process of decomposition, it passes through a number of stages that involve different chemical processes. These five stages are referred to as fresh, bloat, active decay, advanced decay, and dry remains. I will spare you the disgusting details of each stage, but suffice it to say that different insects are attracted to remains at different stages of this process. At each stage the insect will deposit eggs in the remains, which will then hatch and consume the remains to support its maturation. Once mature, the insect will repeat the cycle. Each stage of that evolution leaves behind some remnant that etymologists can interpret. The first insects to be attracted to fresh remains are referred to as early colonizers.
What interested Dr. Haskell at the scene was what he didn’t find. Had the body been placed in the swamp shortly after death, he would have expected to find evidence of large colonies of early colonizers. Instead he found evidence of very few, and though there had been both flies and maggots in the trunk, these fell