Imperfect Justice

by Jeff Ashton

  But these thirty-one days were about more than just a series of lies. These days were about the adoption of a completely new lifestyle. A lifestyle that had no room for Cindy or George. A lifestyle that had no room for actual responsibilities. A lifestyle that had no room for Caylee.

  Kidnapping seemed increasingly implausible. On August 15, the sheriff said as much when he announced that they had yet to turn up any credible evidence in support of the kidnapping theory. While they had not ruled out kidnapping, there was less and less for them to go on, with all of Casey’s “leads” proving to be lies.

  With that said, none of this alone made it a murder. Yet it was looking more and more as if the case would have to be resolved with science. We had plenty of clues and evidence, but there were also many holes, holes that only forensics could help fill. It was now up to the scientific experts to help uncover the truth.

  PHOTOS

  This shot of Casey and Tony Lazzaro was taken three days before June 16, 2008, the day Caylee was last seen alive.

  This shot of Casey out partying was taken three days after June 16.

  Casey spent much of the thirty-one days that Caylee was missing with Tony. Whenever Tony would ask where Caylee was, Casey always had a story.

  One of the infamous “party pictures” taken during the nights when Casey was out at the club Fusian following Caylee’s disappearance. As a prosecutor, as a parent, as a person, it just didn’t make sense to me that any mother could act the way Casey did after the accidental death of her child.

  During the thirty-one days that Caylee was missing, Casey got a tattoo that read “Bella Vita,” or “beautiful life” in Italian, which the sheriff’s office documented upon court order. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  A photo of Casey taken by investigators after their interview, but before her arrest. They told her they were going to use it on a missing persons poster. Both before and after her arrest, there was little in her attitude that suggested she was grieving for her daughter. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  This overhead map of the Universal Studios office complex, which we introduced as evidence during the trial, shows the route that she took investigators on once she was through the security gate. It was a bizarre episode that left the police mystified, but perhaps the strangest thing was how much confidence she had in the lie—up until the very end. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The hallway at Universal Studios where Casey finally turned around and admitted she didn’t work there. This idea of her reaching the end of the hall became hugely symbolic for our prosecution team. Whenever we saw Casey run out of room on one lie and quickly latch on to a new one, we’d say, “She reached the end of the hall.” Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The room at Universal where Detective Melich, Detective Appie Wells, and Sergeant Allen questioned Casey. After catching her in the Universal Studios lie, they thought they’d be able to get her to admit to the other lies that she told them. Unfortunately for everyone, Casey would not fold so easily. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The Anthony home on Hopespring Drive. When everything began, their house was prettier than any other on the block, with meticulous landscaping and a front yard with nary a weed. It wasn’t long before their pristine front lawn was taken over by news trucks and angry protesters, many of whom grew increasingly irate as the truth about Casey’s deceptions came out. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The playhouse that George Anthony assembled for Caylee. Once the defense made it clear that they planned on implicating him, this playhouse became an important symbol for our team. He’d built this house for his granddaughter, right down to the little mailbox in front of it. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  A view of the Anthony patio with the bamboo on the right for which Casey claimed she needed a shovel. In the background is the Anthony’s pool with the ladder clipped over the side. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  Inside the Anthonys’ living room, looking toward Caylee’s bedroom. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The interior of Casey’s bedroom, taken not long after Caylee was reported missing. Later on, when Casey was released on bail and living at home, she would move her bed farther away from the window and from the protesters right outside. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  This shot of Caylee’s bedroom was taken by police. Seeing this photo always reminds me that, regardless of which side you’re on, a terrible thing was done to an innocent little girl. There’s no disputing that tragedy. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The Pontiac that Casey was driving when Caylee disappeared. The car belonged to Cindy and George Anthony, and Casey abandoned it in a parking lot during the thirty-one days Caylee was missing. After Cindy and George recovered the vehicle from the tow yard, they realized something was terribly wrong. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  From the moment George approached the car at the tow yard, the odor coming from it was putrid. As he would later say to police, “When I first went there to pick up that vehicle, I got within three feet of it, I could smell something.” Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The trunk, pictured here, was the principal source of the odor. Working with Dr. Arpad Vass, a forensic anthropologist, we tested the smell, finding many of the chemicals common to human decomposition, as well as an unusually high level of chloroform. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The defense tried to argue that the odor in the trunk had been produced by a bag of garbage that had been thrown into this Dumpster, pictured here, while the car was in the tow yard. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The police retrieved the bag and itemized all of its contents. There was nothing in the bag producing an odor like the one that existed in the back of the car. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The inside of George Anthony’s tool shed, which Casey broke into so she could take his gas cans. They are seated on top of the “ABC” box on the left. The “No Trespassing” signs in the middle were bought to keep members of the media and protesters off of the Anthonys’ property. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  An aerial shot of the wooded area where Caylee’s body was found by Roy Kronk, a meter reader who worked in the neighborhood by the Anthonys’ home. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  Another shot of the crime scene from the air. In this shot you can see just how close to houses the body was left. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  A view of the crime scene from the road. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  Looking toward the crime scene from the road. In a totally random yet unsettling coincidence, the yellow sign on the ground is advertising a day-care center. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  In this shot, looking from the spot where the body was found back to the road, you can see just how close to the road the site actually was. That was one of the things that struck me right away—the laziness of the placement. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The spot on the ground where Caylee’s remains were placed. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  This laundry bag (above) was taken from the Anthony home. It is the sister bag to the bag in which Caylee’s remains were found (below). Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  The matching tags from the bag from the Anthony home (above) and the bag from the remains (below). Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  A sample of the duct tape that had been used in the Anthony home on a gas can (above), and a sample of the duct tape found at the crime scene (below). The brand is identical. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office


  Above, a photo of Caylee and Casey in which Caylee is wearing a shirt that reads “Big Trouble Comes in Small Packages.” Below are the remains of that shirt that were found with the body. Shirt remains photograph courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  Caylee’s Winnie-the-Pooh bedding, as photographed in her room. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  A very faded Winnie-the-Pooh blanket, which was found with Caylee’s body. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  A shot of the overgrowth on the blanket by the time it was found. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  Once the crime scene unit moved onto the scene, they were remarkably careful with every aspect of the site. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  They painstakingly documented everything to make sure that no aspect of their work was subject to question. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  One of the crime scene workers laboring over the site. Courtesy of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office

  This was the white dry-erase board that we used to help us organize and get prepared for the trial. Everything from setting up our order of witnesses and structuring our argument was mapped here.

  This shot of me, Frank, and the defense team was taken during the jury selection at the Pinellas County Criminal Justice Center. From left to right: me, Frank, Jose Baez, and Cheney Mason. Used with permission of the Orlando Sentinel, © 2011

  In this photo from the trial, Linda, Frank, and I are sifting through the garbage that was in the back of the Pontiac so that I could counter a point made by a defense witness who had testified that there was an actual piece of meat in the garbage. As I quickly pointed out, what he was calling a piece of meat was just a piece of paper—nothing that could have produced the strong odor found in the car. Used with permission of the Orlando Sentinel, © 2011

  A shot of the team taken at my retirement party. Unfortunately, Frank wasn’t able to make it. I’d put off my retirement for six months to see this trial through until the end, and I couldn’t have found a finer group of people to do it with. As much as it didn’t end how I would have liked, I was ready to move on (from left to right: Yuri Melich, Linda, me, John Allen). Photograph by Rita Brockway Ashton

  At this point, I don’t think we’ll ever find out what really happened that night. As I’ve revisited the verdict in the months since, I think somewhere along the way everyone—from Cindy and George Anthony to the media to the people trying the case—lost sight of Caylee. That, along with her death, is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.

  PART II

  CHAPTER NINE

  DEALING IN FORENSICS

  After getting word from Linda that I was on the case, my first call was to Arpad Vass, a forensic anthropologist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where many of the country’s scientific breakthroughs occur. Vass, an expert in the odor of decomposition, was in the process of developing a standard for decomposition odor analysis, or DOA. This standard was being designed to help identify the more than four hundred chemical compounds that emanate from a decaying human body. I needed to know if he thought his new technology could be of help in determining whether the odor in the Pontiac was undeniably that of human decomposition.

  Prior to my conversation with Dr. Vass, I reviewed some of his published writing so that I wouldn’t sound like a complete moron when we spoke. His work is based on the principle that all odors are simply combinations of different chemical compounds released into the air through chemical and/or biological reactions. Some of those compounds are detectable by human beings, and we perceive them as smells. My mom’s spaghetti, the odor of which is instantly recognizable to me, is simply a group of chemical compounds in a certain concentration that my brain has learned to interpret, recall, and react to. Similarly (and I hope Mom forgives my use of her delicious spaghetti in this analogy), the odor given off by a human body during decomposition—which, if you have ever experienced it, is instantly recognizable—is also simply a combination of chemical compounds.

  The challenge of the work is that our brains can’t distinguish individual compounds in the odors themselves. The goal of Vass’s work is to determine which compounds are most common. Once those compounds can be determined, a device can be developed to detect them in the air, in much the same way machines at the airport examine our luggage for the presence of compounds found in explosives. It was the first part of his research, the isolation of the common compounds, that had potential application to this case.

  When I reached Dr. Vass at his office, he was happy to talk science, but he did not warm to the idea of testifying. It was out of his comfort zone. He had testified only once before, sixteen years earlier, in a case based on the chemical analysis of soil near a body, called postmortem interval testing. I recall him repeatedly telling me that the thought of testifying was not making him feel “warm and fuzzy.” I liked him from the beginning.

  Dr. Vass was an unapologetic science geek. He pursued scientific investigation for the pure fascination of it, loved solving scientific problems, and discussed them with an addictive passion. Speaking with a slight affect, a disarming quality that made him accessible, he seemed to me very atypical of a forensics expert. I have dealt with forensic experts for decades, good ones and bad ones, honest ones and dishonest ones. Regardless of their reliability, one thing that these experts usually have in common is that they’re applying the research of other experts to forensics problems. Rarely had I worked with a forensics expert like Dr. Vass, a man who had actually invented the process of which he spoke. True scientific innovation is rare in professional expert witnesses.

  In order to reassure him that I was up to the task of shepherding him through this process, I talked to him about my prosecution of the first DNA case, the Tommy Lee Andrews trial. In a sense, my use of DNA started with an NBC news story about a man named Colin Pitchfork in England. Two girls from two small towns in the county of Leicestershire had been raped and murdered in a similar fashion. Investigators employed a new technology developed by British geneticist Alec Jeffreys to track the killer down. They used DNA fingerprinting to screen the men in one of the small towns in particular. The idea was that someone’s blood held a unique DNA that, when matched to the blood at the crime scene, could determine the killer beyond a reasonable doubt. All the men in the village were asked to submit blood samples. Colin Pitchfork paid someone two hundred pounds to donate on his behalf. Eventually, his stand-in gave him up, and his DNA proved to be the match the authorities had been looking for.

  For obvious reasons, I thought the Pitchfork case could be very applicable to my work as a prosecutor. At that point in my career, I had been involved in cases where the traditional study of human fluids—blood typing and protein antigen typing—was occasionally being used, but the ability of science to characterize specific blood or semen stains from a crime was very, very limited. If you were able to get a number that limited the possibilities to 10 percent of the population, you were ecstatic. That was about as much information as blood was going to give you. After hearing about the case in England, I thought it was clear that there was a lot more we could learn from blood. But though this technology would obviously be of use in the United States, there was no lab in the United States that did it, so I just filed it away as an interesting bit of trivia.

  A year or so later, in 1987, I was flipping through a newspaper put out by the Florida Bar Association when I came across an advertisement that caught my attention. The ad featured a picture of a baby with a caption that read: “He is wearing his father’s genes.” The ad was for a lab in New York that was doing paternity testing. I remembered the Pitchfork story in England and wondered if this was the same science, even though used in this case to determine paternity. I contacted someone at the lab in New York to find out if it was the same kind of work Jeffreys was doing. I asked the lab’s director if t
hey did criminal cases, and he told me they were just starting to do forensics testing.

  At the time I didn’t have any rape cases, but I went to Tim Berry, one of the state’s sex crimes prosecutors, and asked if he had any cases with semen that could be tested. Indeed he did—Tommy Lee Andrews. Andrews had been charged in six cases of rape, but the witness IDs were not great in any of them. Andrews would break into the home of a young woman, put a pillow over her face, rape her, and rob her. At least one of the women had picked him out of a photo lineup from having seen him the moment before he grabbed her, but the light had not been very good. The other victims had not seen him.