Dear Concerned Citizen...

In a recent comment on another blog, a woman said Diane Fanning’s new book,Mommy’s Little Girl, was a waste of money. There was nothing new to read and learn, and the pictures were the same way. My point isn’t to pick on Fanning at all. It’s to point out one major thing. Whether you know it or like it or not, people are out to make a buck off this dead little girl, Caylee Marie Anthony. For some reason, that seems to be OK, but not for any of the Anthonys. Because I have taken a firm stand, I am perceived as an Anthony lover. I say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If Fanning is making money from images of Caylee, why give her your blessing by buying the book? What should Caylee’s family do? Give away the pictures so others can get rich?

TV stations blare out headlines of SHOCKING NEW IMAGES OF CAYLEE AND THE TOT MOM!!! to bolster ratings. Higher ratings translate into higher advertising revenues. Incidentally, the Anthonys must give these photos away for free so the TV shows, local and nationwide, can strike it rich off a dead toddler. All along, I have preached that if it is not right for the Anthonys to make money, it is not right for anyone else, including the media. Making money off a dead toddler is the same no matter who is doing it. Period.

While Andrea Lyon’s recently released book, Angel of Death Row, was in the works long before she joined Casey Anthony’s defense team, she is perceived as making money off dead little Caylee. Methinks some of you have your priorities screwed up. While no mention of Caylee is made in her book, Fanning’s is ALL about her and her mother.

I can understand a person’s devotion to a cause, and Lyon’s cause is to eliminate the death penalty in every case. Since I am not an advocate of the death penalty, I agree with her. She began her fight long before Casey was a twinkle in George and Cindy’s eyes. By stating a fact, I guess this makes me an Anthony lover. So be it.

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Today, I am going to look at a letter recently sent to Judge Stan Strickland by a concerned “researcher and scientist.” I find it peculiar that anyone would address something of this nature to the judge and not the State Attorney’s Office or the defense team, because in the end, I don’t believe the judge cares one way or the other. His job is to rationalize the facts presented before him by the state and the defense, not what someone else thinks. Yes, that includes me and every other blogger, although as a fair and judicious human being, he probably prefers to read fair and judicious opinions about the case, and that letter is anything but fair.

If you think I am going to give George and Cindy my blessings, guess again. All I try to do is look at things from all perspectives, not just one. Take it or leave it. Do I agree with George and Cindy? No. Do I agree with the fans that flame the fires of mob rule and anarchy? Hell no. If Casey is ever going to get a fair trial, the people of Florida must be fair in return or she will walk. Not one of us in the blogging world wants to see this happen. Casey’s own actions are what placed her in this predicament and in the end, the people of Florida will speak. Meanwhile, Judge Strickland is well aware of what’s going on here. He also understands that both sides, meaning lawyers, file motions for good reasons. Concerned citizens do not. That includes researchers and scientists.

Quotes from the letter to Judge Strickland are in color.

From the opening bell, the letter writer states that (s)he is “… writing in defense of Casey Anthony… based on… information…” the judge should consider. First of all, it IS NOT the judge’s job to consider anything of the sort from any letter writer. That’s why the letter was promptly forwarded to the state and defense as noted at the top. It is their job to consider it and act. Judge Strickland is not a TV crime solving judge, although I’m sure he could get his own show when the trial is over. No, he is way too humble and practical to even consider it. Whoever wrote this is no friend of the defense because, if the judge decides to recuse himself over matters like this, poor Casey will never get a judge as fair and qualified as him.

“One of the most compelling pieces of evidence in this case is invalid involving the single hair claimed to belong to a deceased Caylee Anthony. I can assure you there is NO WAY possible that there was a DEATH HAIR belonging to Caylee Anthony with a black post-mortem ring found in Casey Anthony’s vehicle. That is impossible because Caylee had only been missing 30 days when the vehicle was inspected, and it takes a minimum of 90 days of a hair remaining in the bacterial environment of the scalp of a cadaver for a black death ring to form.” 

This is a matter for the court to decide at trial. As is the case in any trial, scientists from both sides present their findings and this is no different. It argues that what the state admits as evidence is quackery; junk science. The jury is going to hear it no matter how much this letter writer doth protest. Again, it is not the letter writer’s job to sway the judge because it won’t. OBJECTION DENIED.

“… if someone deceased were in the car, more than one hair likely would be found, as well as significant DNA remains…” 

Not if those remains were stuffed inside plastic bags. Besides, his use of the word“likely” is not a word the court likes to hear. It either IS or it ISN’T, not likely orunlikely, because we don’t bet on odds in a capital murder case. OBJECTION DENIED.

Back to the lone hair. In her thesis vita, Jamie Hughes Collier noted that she was the co-president of the Geography and Anthropology Society and a student affiliate of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences at LSU. In herEstimating the Postmortem Interval in Forensic Cases Through the Analysis of Postmortem Deterioration of Human Head Hair¹ thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, she concluded:

The presence of a normal root or yellow-banding on the proximal end and no fungal growth on a head hair would suggest a PMI of < 90 days. In contrast, the presence of a hard keratin point, root-banding, or brush-like proximal end and fungal growth on a head hair would suggest a PMI of > 90 days.

This study found that head hair from the same individual deteriorates uniformly. Furthermore, fungal growth and changes in proximal end morphology were found to have asignificant association with PMI. Cuticle damage, on the other hand, was found to have a nonsignificant relationship with PMI. The relationships between cuticle damage and fungal growth, and cuticle damage and proximal end morphology were not significant. In contrast, there was a significant association between fungal growth and proximal end morphology. Further research is needed to give a more complete picture of the relationship between human head hair deterioration and PMI. Studies consisting of longer postmortem intervals, with a larger number of cases, would be useful. In addition, experiments that expose hair (still associated with the scalp) from the same decedent to different environments and climates could aid in the understanding of the universal deterioration rates of human head hair. The author suggests that during the forensic investigator’s examination of a decedent with an unknown PMI, a sample of 25 head hairs should be collected and saved for evaluation. The slow decomposition rate of hair, relative to other soft tissues, makes it a valuable source of information in older forensic cases. Utilized in conjunction with other dating methods, the observations of fungal growth and changes in proximal end morphology of human head hair may prove beneficial in estimating a PMI.

What the concerned citizen states in the letter is that the single hair “… is just one example of a recent thesis paper demonstrating that in all hair samples studied the post-mortem interval (PMI) where black death banding occurs is greater than 90 days.”

“There is also no ‘evidence of human decomposition’ as the prosecution claimed - there is only a finding in the forensic documentation that decomposition ‘could be human,’ but also states, as was conveniently omitted in the prosecution’s statements, that it could also be from animal, food, and other substances, and therefore the type of decomposition is inconclusive…” 

OK, I’ll give this one to the defense as a method of explaining junk science, whether it impacts the jury or not, and it very well might, but no way would I accept pizza as the source of decomposition and neither will a jury.OBJECTION DENIED. No doubt, the defense will fight the death hair tooth and nail, but the facts remain it was still a human hair and it contained mitochondrial DNA consistent with the family. This means it was not a rotting pizza hair.

Here is where it gets overtly stupid and nonsensical: “… it is a fact that maggots were recovered by the prosecution, food remnants were observed in the car by Dr. Henry Lee and others, and a statement from the tow truck driver testified that he removed a bag with a pizza box and maggots from the car. Considering the fact alone that the prosecution clearly blatantly [thus used - redundant] lied to the media about their possession of a ‘death hair’ and have been guilty of numerous other incidents distorting the facts, to me this makes any of their claims suspect.” 

Wait a second! Even in my not so encyclopedic, yet very mathematical brain, I suspect that by rationalizing a possible solution of A, B, or C, this does not necessarily make C a lie. C is just as practical as A or B and it will be up to the defense to prove it’s not C. Therefore, my conclusion is that this writer is playing with words. A child went missing. The child was found dead. The car reeked of decomposition, and it came from pizza? Get real. Cite me all other incidents where the state distorted the facts. This is going to come down to semantics and the letter writer is the one distorting the facts. OBJECTION DENIED.

“Casey Anthony’s mother had cleaned the car with cleaning products. Only small amounts of chloroform were found, but contrary to reports in the media chloroform DOES commonly form from degrading or mixing antibacterial cleaning products with water…”

Because of the possible contamination of evidence, and only because of that possibility, OBJECTION SUSTAINED. The defense should be able to convince the jury that any contamination of evidence taints the results. Did Cindy clean the car on purpose, to hide or destroy evidence? Cindy is not on trial, but it could be argued she did. Will it be? I doubt it because it is opinion. No one could prove it and that’s why I ignore blog and forum arguments over it. It is immaterial in court. What matters most are realistic explanations, not assumptions. If the state accuses Cindy of purposely trying to destroy evidence, it will have to acknowledge that she did, in fact, destroy some of the trunk evidence and, BINGO, part of the state’s argument goes flying out the window.

“With regard to the duct tape, it is the most common type produced, and there is no proof it matched the duct tape in the Anthony home based on tests done to date, nor did the laundry bag match. In fact, in my opinion a simple test could be done to likely confirm whether the tape came from the Anthony home or not, but law enforcement I believe intentionally has not requested this test be performed because it would clear the Anthonys - a test of the fibers adhered to the tape as compared to those on the roll at the Anthony home to determine if it came from the same source, and any fibers on that tape could also be very telling as to the environment this tape truly came from, including possibly the interior of someone else’s vehicle or home. And there are many other examples of inconclusive forensic and other selectively excerpted out-of-context information that the prosecution has attempted to assign meaning to which are only convenient assumptions and not based on truth or science.”

Quite clearly, this IS NOT the most common type of duct tape produced and the state will prove this in court. Law enforcement did a very thorough job of itemizing all the stores in central Florida that carried this brand of tape and their findings were factual and not based on anything but store inventories. I’ve seen the sheets and sheets of paper listing all the store and warehouse locations. Law enforcement contacted the manufacturer of this particular type of duct tape and the manufacturer stated that it sold the product to another company and hasn’t produced it in years. Get real, chump. Something written in this paragraph really irked me, too. The writer states that to qualify fibers found on the tape, the scientific method should entail the process of elimination. Eliminate me and my car, and everyone else in Florida. Therefore, it is safe to assume that this “scientist” wants to check every vehicle in Florida. That’s not very scientific, nor is there a sensibility to this method. It’s sort of like the odds of someone’s DNA being a 2o0,ooo,000 to 1 chance of belonging to someone else. In other words, eliminate everyone else, 199,999,999 people, to prove that a lone holdout murdered Caylee. OBJECTION DENIED. Besides, who knows whether Casey (allegedly) placed the tape in Tony Lazarro’s Jeep for a few days? Or Amy’s? Could that implicate either of them or any other friends, family or co-workers, real and imagined? It seems to me this letter writer is trying to implicate everyone but Casey. Hmm.

There are many other facets of this letter I plan on examining, including the people named in it, but so far, the writer hasn’t shown me one good reason whatsoever to release Casey on bond, let alone drop the charge of murder in the first degree. In my opinion, this could be a weak attempt by someone outside of the case to insert himself into it. Perhaps, he was shrugged off by the defense and now wants his two cent’s worth to be seen and heard. A high school student with too much time on his hands? Clearly, this is not just factual information coming from a “researcher and scientist,” this is mostly another person’s opinion and opinions are easy targets, like mine. Do I think Cindy wrote it? No, and my decision has nothing to do with loving her.

END PART 1

Part 1 of letter - Click to enlarge