Pathological: The Casey Anthony Story — The Science of the Swamp — Ep. 3 | MK Confidential

0:00Exterior Remodels Inner Monologues. Brought to you by Power. The house looks good. Like, really good. That siding? Stunning. The roof? Elevated. Windows? I mean, wow. The process? Smooth. The neighbors? Jealous. Choose Power Home Remodeling and remodel how you think about remodeling. Schedule your free quote on windows, siding, roofing, and doors at powerhomeremodeling.com. Power. Our work shows. Hey, Chicagoland, the Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget.

0:46Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home It is 8.30 p.m. on July 19th, 2008 A sweltering night in Orlando The sun has just gone down And the nearly full moon is about to rise Kaylee Anthony has been missing for 33 days And no one has the slightest idea where she is A woman named Kiyomari Torres Calls the detective leading the search for Kaylee Detective Yuri Melek and tells him, I'm a childhood friend of Casey's. We grew up together and I have something to show you.

1:31There is a place you need to see. An hour later, Kiyomari meets Melek behind Hidden Oaks Elementary School. The last of twilight is gone and dark is settling in. The moon is still down as they leave the school parking lot and walk down a hill into the woods. Once under the trees, it is very dark. Malek switches on his flashlight, but Kiyomari knows the way. She says she and Casey used to ride their bikes down here after school, carrying blankets, toys, and food. They would hang out for hours. After a while, Kiyomari stops. This is the place, she tells him, the woods where she and Casey used to disappear as girls, where they went when they wanted to be out of sight from their mothers.

2:17It was their favorite hiding spot. It is only a six-minute walk from Casey Anthony's house, about a quarter mile away. Kiyomari says this area floods when it rains and turns the ground into a swamp, but no danger of that tonight. No rain, just humid and mostly still, an occasional light breeze. Detective Melech and Kiyomari decide to search the spot and see what they can find. Perhaps a trace of Kaylee, but they don't find anything. Kiyomari is the first person to point police toward this swampy ground, toward the woods, but she is not the last. In August, a local meter reader named Roy Cronk calls the Orange County Sheriff's Office three times about that same stretch of swamp in the woods.

3:07That same month, a man from the neighborhood, Keith Williams, goes into those woods after talking to a psychic who tells him Kaylee will be found in the woods near the road. Keith finds a deflated balloon, stuffed animals, and several pieces of children's clothing. He takes them to the Anthony house and Cindy says they are not Kaylees. Keith calls the Orange County Sheriff's Office. None of those items will be officially tied to Kaylee, but they do bring police back to the woods again. Months pass. Then, on December 11, 2008, Roy Cronk is back in the neighborhood reading meters. He returns to the woods to relieve himself.

3:51This time, he sees something white in the woods. He walks closer and finds a child's skull. I looked down at my feet, and that's when I discovered the skulls, that basically at my feet. Kaylee Anthony had been there for months in her mother's favorite hiding spot. I'm Megan Kelly. This is MK Confidential.

4:21Everyone's talking about weight loss injections because the results can be so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. But what if you're looking to lose weight yet are not interested in painful weekly injections, especially when you hear about some of those intense side effects. That's why doctors created a weight loss supplement called Lean, and the results could be remarkable. Lean says the studied ingredients in their product have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curb your appetite and cravings so you are not as hungry.

4:54But listen, Lean is not for the casual dieter with only a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. You could get started with 20 % off and free rush shipping, adding lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit takelean.com. Enter Kelly for your discount. That's promo code Kelly at takelean.com. Check it out. For two and a half years, the state of Florida builds a murder case against Casey Anthony. Then comes May 2011 and prosecutors have to stand up in a court of law and prove it. The jury does not come from Orlando.

5:36Three years of non-stop TV and other coverage has made that impossible. So the court goes west to Clearwater on the Gulf Coast and selects 12 jurors and five alternates from Pinellas County. Then it buses them across the state to Orlando and sequesters them in a hotel where they will live together for the next six weeks. Their meals are private. Their television channels are stripped away one by one as coverage of the trial spreads. By the end, the only channel left is the Home Shopping Network. Even the movies they watch have to be approved by the prosecution and the defense. They will not go home until the case is over.

6:18Prosecutor Linda Drain Burdick stands up for the state a little after nine in the morning. She does not begin with the chloroform or the duct tape or the trunk of Casey Anthony's car. She begins with a baby. This isn't just a case about Casey Marie Anthony. It's a story about Kaylee Anthony as well. Kaylee Anthony was born on August 9th of 2005. It was a Tuesday. And Kaylee lived nearly every day of her life on a quiet residential street in Orlando called Hope Spring Drive. Casey Anthony, Kaylee's mother, appeared to all outward observers to be what her parents thought she was. a loving mother working hard to provide support for her daughter.

7:28But as the evidence in this case and the investigation into the background of Casey Anthony will show, that was an illusion. Then Linda starts moving forward, laying out the timeline of events from Kaylee's birth and her relationship with her grandparents to Father's Day and the last photograph anyone would ever take of Kaylee alive. And finally, the 31 days after Kaylee disappears. Linda has Casey's cell phone records, receipts, photographs, the people Casey saw and the places she went. Linda walks the jury through those days one at a time and she keeps coming back to the same question. Where is Kaylee Marie Anthony?

8:15At the defense table, Casey begins to cry when Linda reaches the last day her daughter was seen alive. The jury sees the last pictures of Kaylee. Then they see something else, a photo of her skull. Linda's opening statement lasts more than two hours. For much of it, she does not need a laboratory. She does not need science. She has a calendar. and she gives the jury a rule for understanding the woman sitting at the defense table. When her back is up against the wall and when the stakes increase, what does Casey Anthony do? Casey Anthony comes up with a new, a bigger, and a better lie. And Linda tells them one of the biggest lies.

9:13A babysitter Casey had been describing to her family for two years, whom none of them has ever met, did not exist. She was entirely made up. Then, near the end of her opening, Linda Burdick tells the jury what the state says will explain how Kaylee died. And you will learn that the only evidence indicating the cause of death of Kaylee Marie Anthony are the three pieces of duct tape covering her nose and mouth. The evidence in this case will establish that there is no other reason for the placement of multiple pieces of duct tape on this child's face, mouth, and nose other than a specific intent to end that child's life.

10:09as difficult as it may be for anyone to accept that a mother would intentionally kill her own child. From the evidence that you will hear in this case, there is no other conclusion that can be drawn. Linda finishes her opening statement sometime before lunch. The jurors file out, the lawyers gather their papers, and the courtroom empties for food. That afternoon, Jose Baez opens for the defense, and he begins by telling the jury what he says was missing from the prosecution's opening statement. We sat through almost two hours. There was day one, day two, day three, day four, and so on and so on.

10:58No one ever told you what happened. But today, you will be the first people to know exactly what happened to Kaylee Marie Anthony. I will also discuss with you Mr. Roy Cronk. That name was silent throughout the first two hours of this morning. And I think you're going to find after I conclude that it's going to be shocking why that name wasn't mentioned to you previously. And what, if any, role Mr. Cronk will have in your evaluation of the evidence. Then the witnesses start coming through the courtroom. Family members, friends, detectives, scientists. For four weeks, the state builds its case one person and one exhibit at a time.

11:51By the end, much of it comes down to a handful of things. Casey's Pontiac Sunfire, a strand of hair, searches on the family computer, and three pieces of duct tape. Some of that evidence looks different when the defense gets its turn. Start with the car. Go back to June 23rd, 2008. Kaylee has not been seen for a week. No one in Casey's circle knows she's missing. That night, Casey's boyfriend, Tony Lazaro, drives her to her parents' house so she can get gas. The shed is padlocked. Lazaro breaks the lock with a tire iron. Casey takes two gas cans out of the shed and puts them in the trunk of the white Pontiac, and Lazaro just stands there while she does it.

12:39Years later, in court, the prosecutor asks Tony about that moment. What did the trunk smell like? Nothing. The next afternoon, June 24, 2008, George Anthony comes home and finds his shed has been broken into. His padlock is gone, so are his gas cans. He calls Casey, and a little while later, she pulls into the family driveway. George takes the jury through what happens next. Casey just brushes past me very quickly, says, Dad, I'll get it. I'll get it out of the car. Says, Casey, I'm capable of going out and get it. So as she nearly runs to the back of her car, and I'm walking just thinking, okay, here we go.

13:27A little funny time here between her and I. Casey pops the trunk, pulls the gas cans out, and sets them on the driveway. She slams the trunk shut, swearing at George while she does it and backs out of the driveway. On the stand, George tells the jury the whole scene embarrassed him. Then prosecutor Jeff Ashton asks George to go back to the moment the trunk was open. What did you smell? Gasoline, he says. On cross, defense attorney Jose Baez asks the obvious follow-up. And you did not smell any smell of human decomposition on June 24th of 2008 in the trunk of your daughter's car? Did not. Four days later, on June 28th, 2008, the Pontiac runs out of gas while Casey is driving.

14:17She pulls into a parking lot by an Amscott check cashing store and leaves it parked by a dumpster. That's four days Casey had the car from the point of the trunk smelling like gasoline to the point she abandoned it in the check cashing parking lot. Two days after she did that, on June 30th, the check cashing business has the Pontiac towed. It's two weeks later, on July 15th, that George and Cindy Anthony show up at the tow yard with$488 to get the Pontiac back. Simon Birch runs that tow yard and lives on the property too. He's been in towing for almost 30 years. Simon walks George into the yard and opens the Pontiac's door.

15:02As the door was open, the smell came out very intently. It was almost like you were releasing it into the atmosphere. And in the back of my mind, I said to myself, that's the smell of decomposition that I've been exposed to in the past. Birch keeps that thought to himself. To George, he only says the car is a little ripe. Birch is a towing business veteran with a couple of years in waste management too. He has smelled everything you could imagine in a car. In court, the defense asks him why he believed it was human decomposition and not just garbage in the Anthony's Pontiac. So you are pretty much the perfect person to, you have the perfect experience to be able to tell the difference between garbage and human decomposition.

15:50I wouldn't say I was the perfect person, but I've been exposed to both things on numerous occasions. And I've towed hundreds of garbage trucks in my years, too. Before the family moved to Florida, George Anthony had spent years in law enforcement in Ohio. On the stand, prosecutor Jeff Ashton brings George back to the Pontiac and asks what he recognized. The odor that you were testifying a moment ago that this reminded you of from your past, was that the odor of a human corpse? Yes. George opens the driver's door for himself, and the smell gets stronger. He leans in and looks around. No blood. That gives him a little relief.

16:37Then he walks around to the back of the Pontiac, and at the trunk, he says something out loud, close to a whisper. Please, God, don't let this be Casey or Kaylee. Inside the trunk is a white bag with a pizza box in it and maggots. So now we have our timeline. The amount of time that has passed between George being next to that Pontiac in his driveway when he only smells gasoline on June 24th to July 15th when the smell coming out of that Pontiac's trunk is nauseating. About three weeks of Florida summer heat separates Casey's boyfriend Tony Lazaro standing at Cindy and George's house beside that open trunk to George Anthony opening the car door at the tow yard.

17:27Back now to July 15th, 2008 and the tow lot. George drives the Pontiac home. He pulls it into the garage. Cindy had left work in the middle of the day to come see the car at the tow lot. She later tells the jury that that is not something she would normally do. When Cindy gets home, she finds Kaylee's doll still sitting in the child's car seat. Cindy picks it up and carries the doll into the garage. She sets it on an ice chest and wipes down its face and hands with a Clorox wipe. that smell is still there. It smelled pretty bad, so I went and got some Febreze, and I sprayed the doll. Then I sprayed Febreze all through the car, thinking that that might help the odor.

18:19I sprayed the front and the back. I used pretty much a whole can of Febreze. Cindy starts taking things out of the car. Clothes from the back seat go into the laundry. Kaylee's backpack comes out of the trunk. Then she tries to air out the Pontiac. She opens every door, rolls down the windows. She opens the sunroof, raises the trunk and the hood. Finally, she closes the garage door, leaves the car sitting there, and goes back to work. When Cindy takes the stand, Prosecutor Linda Drain-Burdick asks her about her nursing background and whether she has smelled human decomposition before. She has.

18:59Did you make some comment at that point about the smell? Yeah, I said it smelled like something had died in the car. She says it first to George, standing there in the garage, then a few hours later, back at work, too. Did you tell your co-workers that it smelled like something died in the car? Yes, it was a figure of speech that I said that it smelled like something, that the car smelled really bad. All right. So you did tell your co-workers that it smelled like something died in the car? Yes, ma 'am, I did. Later that night, Cindy says it again, this time to a 911 dispatcher. She has just learned Kaylee has been missing for a month.

19:41And in the middle of an argument with Casey, she calls 911 and tells the dispatcher what the Pontiac smells like. Three times in one day in three different places, Cindy uses some version of the same phrase. Something died in that car. On the stand, she explains all three instances the same way. It was just a figure of speech. Two days after the 911 call, Deputy Jason Forgy is called in with his cadaver dog to search the Pontiac. Before the dog ever alerts, Forgy says he smells it himself. Then the dog works the Pontiac and alerts at the trunk. After that, investigators send Deputy Forgy and the dog to the Anthony house.

20:28I didn't see anything in the trunk. I smelt it clear as day. Then Forgy takes the dog into the Anthony backyard. The dog alerts again. Crime scene technicians come in and dig up the spot, but find nothing. Forgy brings him back the next day, after the ground has been turned over, and this time the dog gives him nothing. On cross-examination of Deputy 4G, Defense Attorney Jose Baez slows the whole thing down and takes 4G through it one step at a time. There are such things as false alerts, right? Yes. Okay. Dogs are not infallible. They are not perfect, no. Okay. Like humans. There is one more thing in that trunk the jury has already seen in photos, a dark stain on the liner.

21:19Investigators test it for blood, Then they test it again. Both tests come back negative. Lead defense attorney Jose Baez takes the state's own crime scene investigator, Gerardo Boise, through those results one by one. In fact, Blue Star is one of the leading forensic tools to help you identify blood. Correct. And this is important, obviously, in a case like this, because if you have blood in the trunk of a car, that would certainly be important. Correct. Now, when you sprayed the stain area with Blue Star, tell the jury what the results were. Negative results. And tell the jury what the presumptive test told you.

22:11When I performed a presumptive test on those specific areas that I observed what appears to be a blood negative results. Investigators find something else inside the trunk of the Pontiac. A single hair, about nine inches long, light to medium brown, untreated, with a dark ring just above the root. That band of color comes from a phenomenon known as post-mortem root banding. Stephen Shaw, the FBI examiner behind the root banding validation study, is anything but defensive when the defense gets its turn with him on the stand. Baez asks him about this area of forensic science while casting doubt on its accuracy.

22:55You don't know if post-mortem root banning is exclusively from people who are deceased, correct? That's correct. Okay. And you can never testify in a court of law to such a fact? That's correct. This is still a very ongoing area of forensic science, is it not? There's still research being done. I mean, I'm conducting research myself. It's a pretty well-established discipline, but it's mostly, for the most part, based on the experience, experience of hair examiners and observing hairs known to be from deceased individuals, hairs known to be from living individuals, and noticing these differences.

23:47The defense gets Shaw to admit that he submitted his root banding validation study for approval only after he'd already been deposed in this case and after he'd already given his opinion on the hair evidence. They elicit an admission that Shaw then asked to have the study expedited so it would be finished before trial. He looks agenda-driven, perhaps even self-aggrandizing. Then prosecutor Jeff Ashton gets up to rehabilitate Shaw. The studies that you base your opinions on aren't just these hairs from Tennessee, correct? That's correct. I mean, you use these as an example, but the literature contains studies of hairs from many different areas of the country under many different environmental conditions.

24:37Isn't that correct? There are publications with images of banding. But, you know, again, it's based also on experience and receiving cases all over the world, really. And to this point, the only environmental condition that has consistently been found to lead to postmortem banding is the attachment of the hair to a decomposing body. At this point, that's where the science is, correct? That's correct. No further questions. The hair also goes to an FBI examiner named Karen Korsberg Lowe, who puts it under a microscope. The hair from the trunk is untreated. It has never been bleached or dyed and is microscopically dissimilar to the sample from Casey.

25:31Lowe excludes Casey Anthony as the source of the hair from the trunk. The known sample she has for Kaylee is a hairbrush with a single hair in it. She tells the jury the two hairs have consistent characteristics. However, she cannot confirm an exact match. Lowe sends out a piece of the hair for mitochondrial DNA testing. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to child, generation to generation. It is identical, so cannot point to any one person within that line. Catherine Tyson, also of the FBI, handles the actual DNA analysis. She compares a cheek swab from Casey Anthony, the hair from the trunk, and a hair from the mass of hair that was found with the skull in the swamp.

26:19All three share the same mitochondrial DNA. The hair in the trunk belonged to someone in Kaylee Anthony's maternal line. Kaylee, Casey, Cindy, anyone else on that side of the family. Tyson explains how rare this finding is on the stand. Further, I would not expect to see that mitochondrial DNA type in more than 0.26 of the African-American population, nor in more than 1.85 percent of the Caucasian population, nor in more than 39 percent of the Hispanic population. The mitochondrial DNA matches. To narrow the match, the state looked to Lowe's analysis. Lowe never received a sample of hair from Cindy or Lee Anthony for comparison.

27:07Prosecutor Lee Ashton later writes that Cindy's hair was dyed, and both she and Lee kept their hair shorter than the sample. It seems an unlikely match. The decomposing hair in the trunk comes from a fraction of the population that includes Kaylee, Casey, and Cindy. and Casey Anthony has been ruled out. Investigators also cut a piece of stained carpet out of the Pontiac's trunk from the same area where the hair was found. They seal the carpet inside a clean metal evidence can, which looks just like a regular paint can, and send it to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee for analysis.

27:46Dr. Arpad Vass has spent two decades at the Oak Ridge lab studying the gases released as a human body decomposes. When the paint can reaches his lab, Dr. Vass opens it. The smell hits him hard enough that he steps back. He knows that smell. It's human decomposition. Then Dr. Vass samples the air sealed inside the paint can with the carpet. Vass tells the jury that the chemical profile is consistent with human decomposition, and one compound jumps out at him, chloroform. He describes the level as shockingly high. But Oak Ridge is not the only lab that examines the evidence. The FBI tests it too.

28:32The Bureau's chemist, Michael Rickenback, takes the stand and Jose Baez gives him Vass's own words. And it wasn't the most chloroform you'd ever seen in 20 years, was it? It was not the most chloroform I've seen in 20 years now. And it's not what you would call shockingly high levels of chloroform, would it? No, it's not. And Baez hammers another point. The testing shows chloroform was present, but no one ever determines exactly how much was there. The rest of the chloroform case moves out of the car's trunk and onto the Anthony family computer. The chloroform-related searches on that computer take the jury back to March of 2008, three months before Kaylee disappeared and long before anyone was searching the trunk of Casey's car, cutting out carpet, or talking about decomposition.

29:27The state calls John Bradley, the man who wrote the cashback forensic software. Sergeant Kevin Stinger had used that software to generate an Internet history report from the Anthony family computer. Prosecutor Linda Drain Burdick takes Bradley through the report page by page. Then just before she sits down, Linda asks him one more question. Entry number three, the www.scyspot.com chemistry slash chloroform. How many times was that site visited? According to the history, 84 times. Thank you. That's all I have, Your Honor. Court recesses for the evening on that answer. Founded by four PhD longevity scientists, one skin is different.

30:16They focus on the actual cause of aging and not just the surface signs of it. After years of research, they developed OS01, their proprietary peptide, which is the foundation of every product they make. The OS01 face moisturizer has become a favorite of so many people who say their skin feels firmer and looks healthier. The fact that it is backed by real peer-reviewed clinical science rather than just marketing trends is a huge selling point. These peptides are all the rage. Born from over 10 years of longevity research, One Skin is helping you unlock your healthiest skin now and as you age. For a limited time, try One Skin with 15 % off using code MEGAN at oneskin.co slash MEGAN.

31:03That's 15 % off, oneskin.co with code MEGAN. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Support our show and tell them that we sent you, and using our name, we'll also ensure you get your 15 % off. For a limited time, you can get a Big Mac meal for just$8. That's a burger, fries, and a drink. They don't call it an extra value meal for nothing. Get a Big Mac meal only at McDonald's. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. 84 visits to a website about chloroform. It becomes the most quoted number in the case, and it is wrong.