Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [86]
Part of interpreting a crime scene is eliminating things that don’t make sense. You hope to convince jurors to use their common sense as well. So is there any reason someone would put duct tape over the nose and mouth of a dead child? Only if someone wants to make it look like a murder. But why would anyone want to do that?
People don’t make accidents look like murder unless they are covering something up. If Caylee had died accidentally and Casey didn’t want to take any responsibility, maybe Casey thought staging a murder that could be blamed on Zanny or a stranger could get her off the hook. That way, she’d be able to argue that someone else had abducted Caylee, suffocated her with duct tape, and dumped her in the swamp. But why do that, since the accident wasn’t a crime?
Still, I didn’t really buy her using the duct tape as a cover-up. In my mind, the only reason there was duct tape on Caylee’s nose and mouth was to keep her from breathing. Preventing someone from breathing means premeditation, plain and simple. When I thought it through, it was the only reason that made sense to me.
There was one rather odd item of evidence from the scene. About a foot from Caylee’s remains was a red Disney World bag. Neither the bag nor its contents was ever tied to anyone involved in the case, but they’re odd enough that they bear mentioning. Inside the bag was a Gatorade bottle with a murky translucent liquid inside. When the bottle was opened at the lab, also found inside the bottle were a syringe and its wrapper. The liquid contents of the bottle were tested and found to be consistent with a cleaning product that contained trace amounts of chloroform. Dr. Michael Rickenbach, who had separately confirmed Dr. Vass’s findings of chloroform in the trunk of Casey’s car, attributed the chloroform in the bottle to a component of the cleaner.
Even odder was that the liquid, in small amounts, and the syringe showed the presence of four testosterone compounds. When I received Dr. Rickenbach’s report, I did a little Internet research and discovered that the combination of compounds was found in a male hormone supplement that a young man might take to enhance muscle mass or an older one might be prescribed as a hormone supplement that is available legally only by prescription. I tried to trace the syringe through the manufacturer, but the items could not be tracked to the direct purchasers. We wondered if maybe it was tied to something George had been prescribed, but we found no evidence of it. Just a big ole red herring. Still don’t have any idea how it got there or if it was related, but I sure would like to know.
The final items were Caylee’s bones and hair. There was the formal matter of identification to be determined. One of the bones was transported to the FBI lab, where a portion of the marrow was removed and tested. The results were compared with a DNA test that had been performed on Caylee’s toothbrush a month before as well as with Casey’s genetic profile. A positive identification was made: the remains in the woods were Caylee Marie Anthony.
That would appear to be the end of the forensics on the crime scene, but sometimes peculiar things can be found in looking deeper into test results. For purposes of elimination, DNA samples were taken from Cindy, George, and Lee Anthony. Having done as many of these as I have, I am able to read and compare the profiles pretty well. The cops had always wondered if Lee or George was Caylee’s father. They like to think the worst of people sometimes, and their opinion of the Anthonys was not great anyway. One look at the DNA profiles and I assured them there was no way. I had in the past been involved in two cases where these types of elimination tests of relatives had exposed some unpleasant surprises to men who thought they were the father of someone they weren’t. One, tragically, was the father of a seventeen-year-old girl who had