Evidence
Four hundred pieces of evidence were presented. A strand of hair was recovered from the trunk of Casey's car which was microscopically similar to hair taken from Caylee Anthony's hairbrush. The strand showed "root-banding," in which hair roots form a dark band after death, which was consistent with hair from a dead body.
The discoverer of the remains repeated the same basic story that he had told police. On Friday, October 24, 2008, a forensic report by Dr. Arpad Vass of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory judged that results from an air sampling procedure (called LIBS) performed in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car showed chemical compounds "consistent with a decompositional event" based on the presence of five key chemical compounds out of over 400 possible chemical compounds that Dr. Vass' research group considers typical of decomposition. Investigators stated that the trunk smelled strongly of human decomposition, but human decomposition was not specified on the laboratory scale. The process has not been affirmed by a Daubert Test in the courts. Dr. Vass' group also stated there was chloroform in the car trunk.
In October 2009, officials released 700 pages of documents related to the Anthony investigation, including records of Google searches of the terms "neck breaking" and "how to make chloroform" on a computer accessible to Casey Anthony, presented by the prosecutors as evidence of a crime.
According to detectives, crime-scene evidence included residue of a heart-shaped sticker found on duct tape over the mouth of Caylee's skull. However, the laboratory was not able to capture a heart-shape photographically after some duct tape was subjected to dye testing. A blanket found at the crime scene matched Caylee's bedding at her grandparents' home.
Among photos entered into evidence was one from the computer of Ricardo Morales, an ex-boyfriend of Casey Anthony, depicting a poster with the caption "Win her over with Chloroform".
Witness John Dennis Bradley's software, developed for computer investigations, was used by the prosecution to indicate that Casey Anthony had conducted extensive computer searches on the word "chloroform" 84 times, suggesting that Anthony had planned to commit murder. He later discovered that a flaw in the software misread the forensic data and that the word "chloroform" had been searched for only one time and the website in question offered information on the use of chloroform in the 19th century (see below).
Read more about this topic: Death Of Caylee Anthony, Case, Trial
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