Look what you've done! Your mother will never forgive you and you will go to jail for child neglect for the rest of your fricking life. So, the jury was told, George Anthony disposed of the body and both he and Casey re-launched their lives in a secretly shared compact of denial and deceit.
This is the life of Casey Anthony. No, prosecutors countered, this was about the murder of Caylee Anthony — one accomplished, they claimed, with poison, suffocation and plastic bags.
Had Casey Anthony testified, as Burdick said she expected she would, prosecutors wanted to use the browser information to impeach her. But Casey Anthony never took the stand and the state did not elicit from any other witness even the skeletal browser evidence it did have. Melich's spreadsheet does show activity from Casey Anthony's password-protected account beginning at a. But none of the 1, overlooked Firefox browser actions that day -- including the potentially incriminating search that afternoon -- appear in the easily extractable Explorer browser files that Melich relied upon for his timeline.
Investigators knew Casey Anthony preferred the family computer's Mozilla Firefox browser, but they previously had trouble decoding it, sheriff's officials said. In , in a deleted section of Firefox browser records, they found searches from March for "how to make chloroform," "neck breaking," "death" and other terms after they requested that Osborn search the hard drive for the word "chloroform.
But when Melich assembled his line spreadsheet in , he transferred data from the Internet Explorer browser that Casey Anthony rarely, if ever, used after March 6, Melich and Osborne declined comment, and the then-head of the computer crimes section, Sgt. Kevin Stenger, has retired and could not be reached for comment. But in a Sept. I was never asked to conduct a search for 'suffocation' and the word does not appear in the Internet artifacts we prepared for trial, unfortunately.
But both agree on this point: No one can say for certain whether the jury would have reached a different verdict if the evidence had not been overlooked. Bringing the evidence to light.
Repeated requests by Local 6 beginning in for a copy of the hard drive that contained the Internet histories were denied by the state attorney's office, which claimed -- correctly, it turned out -- it did not have the data in its possession.
Sheriff's computer investigators copied the entire hard drive from the Anthony's HP desktop computer after seizing it in July and gave prosecutors vague analysis of its activity and fragments of a minuscule amount of the vast information on them. The sheriff turned over the original hard drive to the Baez team in after it had been copied, Baez said. After Baez revealed the "foolproof suffocation" search in his book, Phoenix attorney Isabel Humphrey requested and received a copy of the browsers' histories from the Sheriff's Office.
Baez's theory that George Anthony did the search while contemplating suicide "was as crazy as the nanny story," Humphrey told Local 6, referring to Casey Anthony's original claim that a babysitter had kidnapped Caylee. She obtained the data in August and turned it over to John Goetz, a retired engineer and computer expert in Connecticut.
The pair had become acquainted online while following and discussing the case through the amateur sleuthing web community, Webslueths. Using free software available on the Internet since , Goetz said it took him less than two hours to extract more than 35, records detailing the computer's online activities from until it was seized in July Goetz and Humphrey homed in on June 16, , and quickly discovered the misspelled search for "fool-proof suffication.
What they found astounded them and left at least one crucial question unanswered: How could prosecutors have not used this at trial? Searching for that answer, they turned the browser history files over to Local 6. After authenticating the records and interviewing defense, prosecution and Sheriff's Office sources, it became clear: two citizen-investigators accomplished in less than three hours what an army of Orange County investigators and prosecutors failed to do in three years: uncover in detail what Casey Anthony was doing online the day Caylee died.
Of course, unbeknownst to investigators and prosecutors, it was also uncovered many months earlier by someone else: Jose Baez. The defense: George did it. The defense's still-cocked counterpunch: George Anthony did it. After Baez's computer expert found the June 16 search for "foolproof suffocation" Baez said he cannot reveal exactly when that was , Baez said he suspected the state knew about it, too, and was going to surprise the defense with it at trial.
In his revealing book, "Presumed Guilty," Baez accused investigators of "pulling a fast one" by concealing the vast majority of the June 16 computer history from the defense. Mostly vague references to that day's activity and some images were included in the documents turned over to the defense by the state in the discovery process. What our reporting confirmed happened never occurred to Baez: that, in this small but crucial area, the investigation was so lacking it failed to discover the search.
Asked by Local 6 if the foolproof suffocation search and visit to the site discussing ways to kill showed consciousness of guilt, Baez said, "To me, it tells me someone's feeling very guilty of something and is considering suicide. To be considering suicide the day Caylee died was huge for us. Asked if that meant he believed whoever did that search was responsible for Caylee's death, Baez said, "I think 'responsible' is too strong a word.
His book explores various scenarios, all pointing to George Anthony. But, in doing so, Baez relies on several assumptions that are refuted by evidence developed and confirmed by Humphrey, Goetz and Local 6. The defense's flawed timeline. As part of the book's "concrete proof" it was George Anthony and not Casey Anthony doing the foolproof suffocation search that afternoon, Baez notes correctly it was immediately preceded by a login to an AOL Instant Messenger account.
Kronk later "found" the body, Baez claims, because he hoped to collect a reward. The lawyer did not explain in his opening statement how Kronk allegedly came into possession of Caylee's body. Casey Anthony began crying almost from the first moments of her murder trial today as the prosecutor laid out a string of elaborate lies that she allegedly used to avoid her parents for a month and pretend that her 2-year-old daughter Caylee was still alive.
Prosecutor Linda Drane-Burdick opened the case by going through each of the 31 days that Caylee was missing, although police and Anthony's parents were unaware of the girl's disappearance. Using cell phone records and the testimony of Anthony's friends, lovers and family, Drane-Burdick tracked Anthony's moves in those 31 days as she went to several nightclubs and twice visited a tattoo parlor.
One of her new tattoos read, "Bella Vita" which means "beautiful life. During that time, the prosecution claimed that Anthony told a variety of lies about Caylee's whereabouts. She told her family and friends that Caylee was with a series of babysitters, was at Universal Studios, or was with a nanny, the prosecution claimed. Caylee's death allowed Casey Anthony to live the good life at least for those 31 days," said Drane-Burdick.
It is about what happened between the photograph taken on Father's Day, June 15, and the photograph taken on December 11, ," said Drane-Burdick, referring to the date when Caylee's badly decomposed body was discovered in a swampy field near her house. When Casey Anthony was finally tracked down by her mother and confronted with her lies, Cindy Anthony demanded to see her granddaughter. At that point, "Casey Anthony comes up with a new and a better lie.
Caylee was kidnapped by the babysitter, the babysitter that nobody has ever seen, that nobody has ever heard of," the prosecutor stated. Anthony wore a white shirt with her long brown hair in a ponytail. At times she cried and shook her head as the prosecution depicted her as a party animal who lied to her parents repeatedly about the location of Caylee. When the prosecution described how Caylee Anthony's decomposing body was found in December , Anthony remained stone faced. When the prosecutor described the duct tape found on Caylee's body, with little hearts in a pattern, Casey Anthony shook her head.
The duct tape was stuck in the hair indicating that Caylee's killer never intended that it be removed. The most crucial piece of evidence for the prosecution is Anthony's Pontiac Sunfire. Forensic experts said the car's trunk tested positive for chloroform and decomposition. Anthony listened as the prosecution described when her father picked up the Pontiac Sunfire after it had been towed.
George Anthony will tell you that he said a silent prayer that it was neither his daughter nor his granddaughter," said Drane-Burdick. When Cindy Anthony had her first contact with the car, her words to George Anthony were, 'Jesus, what died. Caylee Anthony was missing for a month when her grandmother finally called in the summer of to report her granddaughter's disappearance.
In the call, she was alarmed about her daughter's car. There's something wrong. I found my daughter's car today and it smelled like there's been a dead body in the damn car," said Cindy Anthony in the July call to police. I said this can't be," he said. I sat down with Mason exclusively to talk with him about his new book, "Justice in America. After that meeting, with Anthony's approval, Mason decided to join the team pro bono.
He said the unpaid time he spent on the case "was well over a million dollars" and cost him tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket.
Mason said in the years before trial, he normally met with Anthony in a lunch room at the jail. The jail would clear everyone out before Anthony came in. A stationary video camera in the room was positioned on their conversations, so he and Anthony would cover their mouths and speak in low tones to each other, Mason said. Shortly before jury selection was to begin, Mason got word that Anthony's handwritten letters describing sexual abuse at the hands of her father were going to be made public under Florida's open records law.
A look back at the Casey Anthony story Caylee Anthony was last seen alive in June He believed it was only right that Anthony's parents, George and Cindy, were warned. He called them to his office late on a Friday afternoon. I felt man to man I would tell you in advance. Mason said George Anthony's reaction was "basically none. I turned sideways a little bit, he clapped his hands down on his thighs -- let out a big sigh but didn't say anything," Mason said. Next it was Cindy Anthony's turn.
Once a jury was selected it was time for the evidentiary portion of the trial. Baez gave the opening statements. In the midst of telling the jury what the evidence would show, he delivered a bombshell that turned the case on its head by telling the jury that his client was a victim of sexual abuse by her father. The country was stunned and so was Mason, who was sitting next to Anthony in the courtroom. We had talked about all aspects of it, and I did not know. I don't know if anybody knew that he was going to say that other than himself," Mason recalled.
I asked Mason if he was concerned the defense would not be able to establish this with evidence as promised during the opening statement.
Mason said he was. The prosecution responded by making George Anthony its first witness. The first question Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton asked him was whether he had sexually abused his daughter.
George Anthony responded with a definitive no. The trial went on for weeks. Witness after witness took the stand for the prosecution in the largely circumstantial case. They finally rested their case on June 15, Then it was the defense's turn. Anthony's defense attorneys maintained that Caylee was not murdered at all. They said the child drowned in the Anthony's above-ground pool, and that Casey Anthony and her father panicked upon finding her there and covered up the death.
George Anthony denied that in his testimony. Casey Anthony: 'I didn't kill my daughter'. In the midst of the defense case, Mason described how out-of-court conversations with the prosecution suddenly turned to possible plea discussions.
Anthony was approached with the possibility. She got very angry to hear talk about it. She didn't want to hear it. She didn't kill her daughter. Mason said he believes it took a lot of courage and strength for Anthony to end any talk of a plea agreement. She knew what was at stake in this death penalty trial. So, plea discussions were stopped in their tracks, Mason said, and the trial went on. Then, on July 5, , after deliberating for 10 hours, jurors announced they had reached a verdict.
Anthony was acquitted by the person jury on the most serious charges, including first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter of a child. But the jury convicted her on four misdemeanors of providing false information to law enforcement officers.
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