The Pontiac Trunk

Indignity

Posted on March 24th, 2010 by JWG

The recent discovery contained a handful of images taken of the stain in Casey Anthony’s trunk. If you recall, FBI Intelligence Analyst Karen Cowan made the following remarks in an internal email dated September 30, 2008:

Of note, I also requested the photos that were taken in the processing of the trunk. A very interesting photo exists of the trunk liner, which you have, which highlights the very large stain. If you look closely at this photo, there appears to be the outline or silhouette of a child in the fetal position. You can make out what may be the back, bottom, and legs most clearly. The image is best viewed on a computer screen, rather than a printout, but several of us can see this image and agree there is good chance we are seeing something significant. What can we do with this? Can this be enhanced? Can this be used to further process that liner focusing on certain areas of this stain? Would it be beneficial to send the photo and the
liner to the Body Farm for further analysis? Help. I can send you the photo electronically if you would like to query some folks.

On October 2, Richard W. Vorder Bruegge – a Supervisory Photographic Technologist with the FBI – responded with the following:

If you submit the photo to us we can attempt to improve the visibility of detail in the image, including any signs of impressions or stains. I would also request (demand?) that you send us ALL of the photos of the trunk, as we are likely to be able to learn a lot more from multiple photographs of the same features, particularly if taken from different angles and different lighting conditions.

Furthermore, we want to have the original photos shot by OCSO – not prints or photocopies. If they were film negatives, we want the film negatives. If they took digital photos, we want the raw files that were saved on the camera, or EXACT, bit-for-bit duplicates of the images that they took. We DO NOT want images that have been emailed through multiple parties.

Read more:
http://www.thehinkymeter.com/2010/03/24/indignity/

I have a question about the gases that emitted from the trunk that suggested a body had been in there decomposing for 2.6 days.

I don't understand how gases could still be in the trunk for a month when the trunk had been opened during that time and certainly had been left open after it was taken into evidence and before the gas test was made?

I know there was a stain there that could have continued to emit gases, but why wouldn't the decomposed residue have further broken down while it sat for a month and given off gases past what would have been indicative of 2.6 days? I don't know how that works!

This has always been confusing to me, and I'm not saying it's 'junk science' like Cindy and Baez want to claim it is! I just don't get it how they came up with only 2.6 days. And they were being so specific they could determine decomposition by the half day?

I probably didn't explain my confusion very well! I'm a bit distracted by my internet connection failing every minute or so!

Lottie, I wondered the same thing, why 2.6 days? The trunk was left open, CA cleaned it with all types of cleaning supplies, and it was several days, I'm sure, before the car was actually tested. How DID they come up with a definite time frame?

But, I must admit, I don't know much about science.

Me either, mama!

I'd really love to see someone explain this scientifically in layman terms!

I tried to see the outline of a child in the fetal position, but I just don't see it myself. But, I do not doubt the FBI's technicians initial claim. This is their field of expertise. She felt strongly enough to request further investigation. The trunk liner is a key piece of evidence. Caylee is leaving clues everywhere, in my opinion.

No doubt Caylee's leaving clues! Those idiot Ants are smart enough to cover everything up.

LottieM wrote:No doubt Caylee's leaving clues! Those idiot Ants are smart enough to cover everything up.

BBM

Lottie.... the idiot A's are smart enough to TRY to cover up... doesn't mean they will be successful in all they are trying to cover. They just aren't THAT smart. There is plenty of proof of contradictions by the A's. Besides we have a pretty savvy team of prosecutors on this case.... lots of experience.

One can only hope the A's will get what they deserve once this case has gone to trial. We don't want them charged before KC's trial, because they would then be able to plead the 5th if there are charges pending against them. But I sure hope that once the trial is over and KC is convicted, the prosecutors throw the book at the A's!!! It's only fair..... and it's what they deserve.

JMO

Snaz, i have thought about the charges against the A's for quite a while now, and this is what I think:

The main conclusion is that KC is found guilty of murdering precious Caylee, and gets the DP, or atleast life with no parole. Therefore, why not bring charges against the Ants now, have their trail toward the end of this year or early next year (b/4 KC's trial). In order to save their own hides, they will accept a plea deal, and testify against KC. What they knew early on, will be the final nail in her coffin.

sitemama, you bring up a point I had not thought about.... charging them and having their trials before KC's.... I believe you are right in that they would do whatever was necessary to save their own hides. They would throw KC to the wolves without a second thought, IMO.

I don't know... is it possible they would be less credible (if that's possible) if they,themselves, are convicted of criminal activity?

I guess whatever the State does, I will just have to have faith that they know what they are doing.

There are really only two things I pray for in this case:

1. KC is convicted of the 1st degree murder of her daughter.

2. The A's are charged (at whatever point) for obstruction of justice, accessory after the fact, lying to LE, and whatever else they can charge them with.

Thanks for the food for thought.......

I do believe they are going to arrest George and Cindy sooner or later.

mama's point that they should be arrested first makes sense to me. They're not going to be good witnesses for the prosecution against Casey at her trial anyway with all the lying they'll do.

The prosecution would probably end up having to ask they be ruled hostile witnesses so they can interrogate them instead of playing nice with them.

I hope LE has enough to charge them. I'm sure they're working on it!

The SA wanted KC tried on her stealing from Amy before she went to court on the murder charges, so she would be a convicted felon. I still think charging GA, CA & Lee too, and convicting them would still help with their testimony in KC's trial. If they want to save their own butts, they will have to tell the truth about all they knew, and therefore, would not be able to lie @ KC's trial. They are trying to save KC to save face for their high-class selves. All their lies were not just to save KC, but to save face for themselves. No matter what, CA is going to save herself before anyone else.

You betcha, mama! The Ants better wise up and realize if Casey can in any way try to pin any part of the mess on her parents and brother to save herself in the least possible way, she'd do it in a heartbeat! Just because she hasn't yet, means nothing.

The Ants seem to be trying 'so hard' to help Casey, but I think they wouldn't be so eager if they weren't also wrapped up in the mess somehow more than we can speculate. Right now, they're all relying on 'honor among thieves' so to speak! But no way is Casey going down by herself! She'll involve them sooner or later, she just can't do it now without incriminating her own self.

oh no... lets not have a trial for the A's first... they can claim responsibility for an "accident" that happened to caylee.. then.. charges would have to be changed, and there is not enough evidence against GA and CA to be convicted of causing caylees death (because they didnt) BUT the claim of responsibility would create enough doubt IMO to possibly get KC off the charges she is facing.. then.. we would have someone claiming responsibility that we cannot convict, and someone who committed the crime that we cannot convict due to reasonable doubt..

i say.. let the ants live it up now.. no charges.. they will be SOOO damming to KCs case on the stand .. and yes.. they will HAVE to be treated as hostile, and impeached on the stand during KCs trial.. that will only help IMO... the jury will see right through them, and all their attempts to "help" KC will backfire.

when all is said and done.. they can have open season on the ants.. they will be able to charge them with so much more, after they impeach THEMSELVES on the stand.. then the jail can have a WHOLE wing devoted to that crazy ass family. .. and that is the best outcome we could hope for .. for little caylee.

Well as I told kh the other day............... Were I guilty of murdering a young toddler, having said young toddler's deceased body in my car trunk.......... I shorely SHORELY would not want the FBI inspecting my trunk. No. I would not!

Casey? The girl seems like she can be at times somewhat bright, but at other times, she seems like she is simply reactive to Cindy Anthony. I know I can not cook, but to me, this adds up to a recipe for murder.

You made me think eva, what would I have done if I'd killed my baby?

I wouldn't have put a dead child's body in my trunk and left it there for 2.6 days until it started to smell.

If I premeditated killing her I'd have done it somewhere I could then leave her body. In Casey's case, that would have been done in the woods. At the very least, if I'd used my trunk for transport, I'd have had a plan to dump the body in short order before it started to smell.

If I did leave a dead body in my trunk for 2.6 days it would probably be because I put her in there alive and couldn't remember where she was for 2.6 days and started to smell because I was on drugs when I put her in there.

I know there've been murderers who have put dead bodies in their trunk and kept them there for days until they finally dumped them. But these people aren't usually associated with their victim and they think no one is ever going to connect them to the victim once the body is found, so they don't feel a need to protect their trunk, so they use it freely. Did Casey think no one would ever connect her to Caylee's body? Surely not. Yet apparently she used it without worry and then didn't worry for 2.6 days.

Some people who are connected to their victim do use their trunk or the back of a pickup truck to transport, sometimes they even just throw the body in the backseat, but I've never heard of LE needing to do gas checks from a trunk to prove the body was in there. When they find the body they might find fibers etc that match the trunk, but why would they need a gas check?

I'm thinking the gas checks were to try to establish a working timeline for time of death maybe?

They already knew she was in there dead because of the hair. But ahhhh, was she? Or was just some cleanup stuff in there that dropped a hair?

Wild thought! LOL Could it be that Caylee was never in the trunk at all? Could the gases found be from just the cleanup residue indicating the clean up was done on a body that had been dead 2.6 days and Casey chucked the stuff in her trunk? You all remember the rags with adipocere found in the trunk? Someone did clearly clean up from touching a dead body that had been lying around long enough for adipocere to develop.

Not to mention the hair being dropped off a body that had only been dead for 2.6 days. That's quite a small amount of time for a hair to develop a death band AND fall off Caylee's head. And it would suggest she wasn't bagged up at that point too or else the hair would have been contained in the bag.

Hmmm, I think I'll move the rest of my wild thoughts to the Misc Theory thread! I've just had an idea about this whole trunk thing. Y'all come on over and play with me! :)

Here's a wild idea I'm going to throw at you all! And I'm just working on it now, so bear with me! :)

Regarding that adipocere was found on rags in the trunk of the Pontiac>

Adipocere is the body's way of preserving itself under certain conditions. It does not form on bodies where there is insect activity. And being as how insects can find the smallest opening to get to a dead body, it's likely they'd have worked their way in to the garbage bags had Caylee been dumped in the woods before adipocere had time to form there from being in water.
Usually, adipocere forms on bodies left in moist environments protected from insects -absent air usually, and it takes at the very least about 2 weeks to form. But in cases of extreme moistures (such as drowning - and maybe freezing?) it begins to form almost immediately.

Read more here> http://www.enotes.com/forensic-science/adipocere

Since adipocere was found on rags in Casey's trunk, then she had to have touched Caylee's body after adipocere had formed. At least she came into contact with it! Could have been a couple weeks of being in some insect-free cold/ moist environment or less like in the case of a drowning OR > Might Caylee have been in the freezer for a while before she was moved to the woods?

That airtight moist environment could well have been from Caylee being inside plastic bags, but with the gas tests saying 2.6 days, that is not long enough for adipocere to have formed! Inside the bags inside her trunk it would have taken about 2 weeks if it was going to form at all.

If she were put in the freezer right away, she would not have begun to decompose to the point of smelling until she was taken out and began to thaw. But since she also wouldn't have completely frozen for quite a while, adipocere would have begun to form on her skin as she began to freeze.

How long would it take a toddler's body to thaw in the trunk in Florida heat? A big ole Thanksgiving turkey takes pretty near a couple days at room temperature.

Let's say it would take a toddler longer than that, let's say 2.6 days for her torso, her extremities would be thawed and decomposing before that. And during those 2.6 days, after adipocere that had formed while she was in the freezer it would be inside the mess inside the bags as she thawed out.

Let's say if she was in the freezer she would have been plastered to the sides of the freezer somewhat as her warm moist body met with the freezer sides. (Casey says she found a dead animal 'plastered' to the frame of her car! Could that be a partial truth that Caylee was plastered to the frame of a freezer?) So let's say in releasing the plastered bag from the side of the freezer Casey had to scrape it off. (Casey said she scraped the animal off the frame of her car!) In doing so, did she do it with Brian Burner's shovel? And did she inadvertently make/rip a hole in the plastic bags which then allowed adipocere to drip out? She gets it on her hands and wipes it on paper towels which are then found in the trunk.

Timeline so far> Caylee is dead June 15-16, is put the freezer until June 19th when she borrows the shovel, pries her loose, puts her in the trunk where she thaws for 2.6 days. Giving my theory an extra day to account for at least one day of Caylee being too frozen to start the decomposition and smell, let's give it 3.6 days or so in the trunk. That takes me to June 23rd for Caylee to have been taken from the trunk and dumped into the woods.

Casey ran out of gas in the general vicinity of where the body was found on June 23rd and did not let Tony near her trunk.

Casey reports her car is stinking on June 23rd to someone, and on June 25th she reports the smell is gone.

So, if Caylee had been frozen first, this theory could work with the adipocere found on the rags inside the trunk. I mean, really, you can't leave the adipocere out of the equation! I'm thinking Casey waited so long because a frozen body is pretty darn heavy!

Now let's jump to the FBI lady saying she thought she saw an outline of a body in a fetal position on the trunk liner.

I recall when reading about that initially, the imprint she was referring to seemed to be outlined by a ring of some sort. Some forensics person - who had credentials to know what they're talking about- said the ring could be a moisture barrier. So, if that was Caylee's body thawing out inside the bags, the ring could very well be from where the Florida heat met the cold frozen body.

To note: It doesn't seem likely a moisture barrier would form from a hot dead body in a hot trunk due to a meeting of temperatures between the two.

Let's jump now to forensics saying there was evidence of decomposition having taken place absent oxygen. Here we go again with the airtight situation of a freezer.

A freezer would be airtight/absent oxygen, moist and cold and might well have formed adipocere. The reason, as I understand it, animals killed for food don't form adipocere is because they are skinned and it's the fatty tissues from the skin that allows for adipocere to form.

Finally, in support of this theory, we have George and Cindy hiding keys from Casey! I'd have to check to be sure, but I seem to recall them saying one of the keys they hid from her was the key to the freezer. I do remember they were asked by LE about the freezer in their garage. There was even a size given for it. G and C said Casey didn't have access to the freezer in their garage - which was a small one, but suitable to fit a small child inside- because they had taken the key and hidden it.

Could the freezer play a role in this case? Does it explain any missing pieces?

My alternative theory on the adipocere would be that Caylee drowned and wasn't found until such time adipocere would have already formed on her, say a couple days at the most? If she did drown and wasn't found right away, it could have been reason enough to not call 911 once she was found. Can you just imagine no one knowing where Caylee was for over 24 hours long enough for adipocere to form on her? And if that were the case, then Cindy might know all about adipocere and freak out and be part of the decision not to call it in. She'd be more interesting in no one in her family finding out they were all so lame to let that happen since it'd be too late for Caylee anyway. I wouldn't hide such a thing, but I think the Ants would.

Remember the jail house tape where Cindy said to Casey "people are saying Caylee drowned" and Casey says "imagine that".

Later Cindy answers Greta van S's question about a possible drowning by saying "people down all the time and are brought back". yeah, cindy! Unless they've been in the pool so long before anyone found her adipocere has formed! O.O

Now I'm thinking about Cindy making such an issue of saying how she checked the pool water when she got home on June 16th. Suggesting if Caylee had been in there drowned then she'd have seen her? Suggesting Caylee wasn't in there on June 16 because maybe she did drown that day and Cindy had to work her tale around it?

You know, they were fighting! So what if Casey didn't take Caylee with her when she left on June 16th? What if she didn't tell George she didn't take her and George goes on to work? What if Caylee had gone swimming alone sometime that day and drowned and no one knew it for days because they assumed Casey was keeping Caylee from them?

What if George had to remember exactly what Caylee was wearing 'when she left with her mother on June 16th' because he knew he never really did see Casey leave with Caylee and that needed to be the case so they could cover for the drowning that happened that day?

What if that's why George had on his mind how Caylee used to tap him on the forehead at 7AM and say "jojo swim. jojo swim"? And George also said he didn't like to get in the pool and usually only did it when he got in to cool off after doing yardwork! Did George find Caylee while he was doing that?

One more thing comes to mind about that. What if they all thought if they let Casey tell the story of the nanny kidnap she'd never end up in jail? What if that's why Casey didn't fight Cindy calling 911 on July 15th? And what if the 'accident that snowballed out of control' George told River about was that they covered the accident and it snowballed out of control when their plan got Casey arrested anyway?

Does that make any sense in why the Ants are trying so hard to free Casey? Like, because they all knew and they all agreed to let Casey tell the nanny story because she was the only one who could possibly be believed to have anyone else to leave Caylee with without involving G and C and the whole debacle of none of those 3 knowing where Caylee was for an entire day or more?

I'm sorry, but I can so see them all not answering each other's calls for days (like they did around that time) because of fighting, and none of them really knowing who had Caylee, just assuming someone else did.

Lottie! Very interesting! kh

A Million Times

Posted on April 30th, 2010 by JWG

I’ve noticed discussion around the trunk’s chloroform signature pop up here and there, most recently on the post speculating Casey deleted the Google searches minutes before taking Yuri on her initial wild-goose chase in search of Caylee and the mythical Zenaida. Opinions vary greatly. Some believe the chloroform was due to normal decomposition, perhaps amplified some by pool water being present in the lungs (if one assumes a drowning death). Others believe the signal may have been amplified when Cindy sprayed Febreeze in the trunk in an effort to dampen the stench. And yet another line of thinking has us believe Casey really did use chloroform on Caylee. While I admit it is hard imagining Casey in the kitchen mixing up a batch, I will note she did like to cook.

Picking and then supporting a favorite theory really requires one to first decide what the definition of “large” means to them, as in “large concentration of chloroform”. If one considers the phrase in the context of comparing with negative control samples, then it is reasonable to conclude the chloroform concentration was due to normal decomposition. If one assumes that the concentration were greater than expected, perhaps two or ten times greater, then a conclusion that the signal was amplified by chlorinated pool water or a cleaning agent is reasonable. And then there is the Nancy Grace conclusion that “pure” chloroform was found in the trunk. The spectrum is indeed broad.

Let’s see if we can’t try to figure out what “large” means in the context of the chloroform concentration. There is no better place to start than the email exchanges between Oak Ridge and OCSO, way back in 2008.

Read the rest:
http://www.thehinkymeter.com/2010/04/30/a-million-times/

snaz..thanks for that article dear.. that was informative..

i have often wondered about the actual concentration in the trunk.. i think this clears it up substancially.. the concentration of chloroform in that trunk was VERY significant...

i am convinced, based on many things i have read.. that KC did actually make chloroform.. i know that sounds far fetched for a gal like KC, but i can see her in the kitchen, cooking it up...

still waiting and praying for justice for little caylee.. i am convinced, more and more everyday, that it is nearing. and little caylee will rest in peace.

Although the amount of Chloroform was substantial I think the defense is balking at the air sample testing...They are gonna try to have it eliminated due to the newness and methodology of this type of testing...They don't think it is accurate enough for there to be a protocol assigned to it...JMO...I hope that Oakridge proves to be the tiger that the defense has by the tail...Can't wait to hear this quabble in open court...