In a shocking post-trial bombshell it has been revealed that prosecutors in the murder trial of Casey Anthony overlooked a Google search for the terms “fool-proof suffication” on her computer on the last day her daughter Caylee Anthony was seen alive. The internet history then shows the user clicked on a link to a site criticizing websites promoting suicide that included the quote “Poison yourself and then follow it up with suffocation” by placing “a plastic bag over the head.” As you may know, Caylee Anthony was allegedly poisoned and then suffocated. The search was reportedly missed because investigators for the prosecution only checked the computer’s Internet Explorer browser history and not the Firefox browser most often used by Casey Anthony.
The evidence was first revealed by Casey’s former defense attorney Jose Baez in his book Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story, although the author suggested the search was made by Caylee’s father George Anthony after her death because he was considering suicide.
It was WKMG Local 6 in Orlando that revealed a timeline that disputed Baez’s theory:
• At 2:49 p.m., after George Anthony said he had left for work and while Casey Anthony’s cellphone is pinging a tower nearest the home, the Anthony family’s desktop computer is activated by someone using a password-protected account Casey Anthony used;
• At 2:51 p.m., on a browser primarily Casey Anthony used, a Google search for the term “fool-proof suffocation,” misspelling the last word as “suffication”;
• Five seconds later, the user clicks on an article that criticizes pro-suicide websites that include advice on “foolproof” ways to die. “Poison yourself and then follow it up with suffocation” by placing “a plastic bag over the head,” the writer quotes others as advising;
• At 2:52 p.m., the browser records activity on MySpace, a website Casey Anthony used frequently and George Anthony did not.
WKMG spoke with Baez about their discovery and he revealed the defense team had been expecting the prosecutors to bring the search up during the trial. “We were waiting for the state to bring it up,” Baez said. “And when they didn’t, we were kind of shocked.” He added, “I really believed that (prosecutors) were going to sandbag us with it.”
The station also spoke with trial prosecutor Jeff Ashton, who told them, “It’s just a shame we didn’t have it. This certainly would have put the accidental death claim in serious question.”
Prosecutors Ashton and Linda Drane Burdick said they asked the Orange County Sheriff’s Office for the computer’s Internet history from June 16, 2008, but Ashton was not willing to assign blame. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to say this person messed up, that person messed up or we messed up,” he said.
“There was an oversight,” said sheriff’s Capt. Angelo Nieves. “This has been a learning experience for investigators as well.”
According to the WKMG report, a spreadsheet was sent to prosecutors that included “17 vague entries from the Internet Explorer browser history on June 16, 2008, and failed to list 1,247 entries recorded on the Mozilla Firefox browser that day — including the search for ‘foolproof suffocation.’” Casey Anthony reportedly began using Firefox almost exclusively in March, 2008 — a fact WKMG reports investigators were well aware of at the time.
Interestingly, WKMG were made aware of the search history by a pair of web sleuths including Phoenix attorney Isabel Humphrey and John Goetz, “a retired engineer and computer expert in Connecticut.” Goetz used 8-year-old free software to decode the Firefox browser history, which included “more than 35,000 records detailing the computer’s online activities from 2004 until it was seized in July 2008.” After discovering the misspelled search for “fool-proof suffication,” Humphrey and Goetz decided to turn the files over to WKMG. And now you know the rest of the story.
