Category Archives: Life & Death

THE TRUE STORY ABOUT WHO REALLY STOLE JFK’S BRAIN

United States President John F. Kennedy’s assassination is the mother of all conspiracy theories. There’s been more BS, crap and craziness written about JFK’s murder than all the stuff ever spewed out of Donald Trump’s yap. However, there’s one bizarre angle to the JFK murder story that’s true. Someone actually stole JFK’s preserved brain from the National Archives, and the real mystery is who.

The facts surrounding the JFK Assassination are fairly straightforward. On November 22nd, 1963 the 35th President of the United States was fatally shot while riding in an open limousine through Dealy Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. Three rounds were fired. The first missed. The second struck Kennedy in the upper back, exited through his throat and seriously wounded Governor John Connally who sat in front of the Commander-in-Chief. The third bullet hit President Kennedy in the back of his head and killed him.

Despite what conspiracy theorists want to believe, Lee Harvey Oswald—acting alone—triggered all three shots. Oswald was a seriously-troubled young man employed at the Texas School Depository building where he fired from the sixth floor—now known as the “sniper’s nest”. Lee Oswald used an inexpensive, military-surplus rifle he obtained through mail order and left it behind when he fled the scene.

It’s simply a case of a lone nut with a cheap rifle from a tall building or a crazy who brought his gun to work and shot the President. Oswald then killed a Dallas police officer who street-checked him and was later captured hiding in a movie theater. Then, Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered—fatally shot by another nut-job named Jack Ruby. This occurred in the basement of the Dallas PD headquarters in what was the biggest breach of security in the history of policing.

JFK’s missing brain story began at his autopsy at the U.S. Navy hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Before getting to that strange-but-true tale, it’s important to know why the autopsy was done near Washington, D.C. and not in Dallas, Texas where the murder took place.

The bullets struck John Fitzgerald Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. He was in the emergency ward at Parkland Hospital within ten minutes where doctors hopelessly tried to save his life. They declared Kennedy dead at 1:00 p.m. and his body remained in the ER while authorities frantically tried to figure out what to do.

In 1963, there was no federal law regarding murdering the President of the United States. This was state jurisdiction under the Texas Penal Code, and the body possession / medical examination responsibility fell to the Dallas County coroner, Dr. Earl Rose. Rose worked at Parkland hospital and was nearby when Kennedy expired. Upon the declaration of death, Dr. Rose prepared to do a forensic autopsy which he was imminently qualified to do.

“No *#@$*#& way, Dr. Rose,” said the Kennedy team. “We’re getting the *bleep* out of Dallas right *#@$*#& now and Jack Kennedy’s coming with us.” A heated argument and physical scuffle arose as Dr. Rose blocked the door—backed-up by a Dallas police officer and a Justice of the Peace. On the Kennedy side were the Secret Service, led by Agent Roy Kellerman, and the president’s chief aid, enforcer and boyhood friend, Kenny O’Donnell.

Complicating matters was that about-to-be-sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson was terrified of a plot to kill them all. He, too, desperately wanted to get back to Washington’s safety. Air Force One sat ready at Love field which could have quickly swept Johnson away.

Except for one problem. Jackie Kennedy refused to leave her now-deceased husband in Dallas. She would not get on that plane without Jack, and there was no way Johnson wanted to be seen “abandoning a beautiful widow”. LBJ “et al” quickly worked a deal.

Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade got involved. He knew the law and knew it was an offense under the Coroner Act to remove a body from the State of Texas without the presiding coroner’s permission. That was not happening. Dr. Rose wasn’t about to give up the murder-victim-of-the-century, and D.A. Wade wanted to get out of the mess. Wade looked up the penalty for illegally removing (stealing) a body from Texas jurisdiction.

The fine was $100.00. Kenny O’Donnell had it in his wallet and forked over the hundred bucks to the J.P. With that, the president’s body was out the Parkland door, onto the plane and headed for home. That left the question of where to do the autopsy on the deceased U.S. President.

The new Johnson Administration thought it would be a nice touch to let the grieving widow decide. Jackie Kennedy, in a shocked and sickened state, thought that because “Jack was a Naval man” the autopsy should be done at the Navy facility in Bethesda. It seemed like a fitting touch.

President Kennedy’s body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital at around 8:00 p.m. EST. To say the scene was a circus or a gong show was apt. Two Naval doctors with pathology—not forensic—experience led the medical team. Once they realized gunshot wounds were out of their wheelhouse, they brought in a third doctor who’d seen and treated a lot of battlefield wounds.

Between them, they bungled and fumbled through JFK’s autopsy. Complicating matters and adding stress to a stressful situation, they performed before a total audience of thirty-two (32) individuals who came and went throughout the four-hour procedure. Some were assistants who had a reasonable role. Others were mere spectators who had absolutely no business being there.

Critics look at JFK’s postmortem exam as being the worst forensic autopsy ever conducted. That’s not entirely fair, as they mostly got it right. They concluded that JFK was shot twice. One in the back—the other in the head. Both bullets originated from behind and above the presidential limousine and (from later lab testing) both bullets came from Oswald’s 6.5 mm Italian Carcano rifle.

What they didn’t get right was the correct anatomical placement of the bullet entrance points on JFK’s body. They used flexible and non-precise reference points to place the wounds. This led to enormous speculation about shooter numbers and sniper locations. It’ll probably never end.

What the autopsy team did get precise was information about injuries to the president’s brain. The JFK autopsy report has been publicly available for decades. There’s no secret there. You can download it from the internet, and you can find the actual autopsy photos if you know where to look. Here’s what the pathologists had to say about JFK’s brain:

Supplementary Report of Autopsy Number A63-272 President John F. Kennedy

Gross Description of Brain

Following formalin fixation, the brain weighs 1500 grams. The right cerebral hemisphere is found to be markedly disrupted. There is a longitudinal laceration of the right hemisphere which is para-sagittal in position approximately 2.5 cm to the right of the midline which extends from the tip of the occipital lobe posteriorly to the tip of the frontal lobe anteriorly. The base of the laceration is situated approximately 4.5 cm below the vertex in the white matter. There is considerable loss of cortical substance above the base of the laceration, particularly in the parietal lobe. The margins of this laceration are at all points jagged and irregular, with additional lacerations extending in varied directions and for varying distances from the main laceration. In addition, there is a laceration of the corpus callosum extending from the genu to the tail. Exposed in this latter laceration are the interiors of the right lateral and third ventricles.

When viewed from the vertex, the left cerebral hemisphere is intact. There is marked engorgement of meningeal blood vessels of the left temporal and frontal regions with considerable associated subarachnoid hemorrhage. The gyri and sulci over the left hemisphere are of essentially normal size and distribution. Those on the right are too fragmented and distorted for a satisfactory description.

When viewed from the basilar aspect, the disruption of the right cortex is again obvious. There is a longitudinal laceration of the mid-brain through the floor of the third ventricle just behind the optic chiasm and mammillary bodies. This laceration particularly communicates with an oblique 1.5 cm tear through the left cerebral peduncle. There are irregular superficial lacerations over the basilar aspects of the left temporal and frontal lobes.

The supplementary autopsy report goes on to describe cross-section slides taken for microscopic inspection. It notes that no brain irregularities were identified outside of the catastrophic gunshot damage. The report also states that autopsy materials including photos were “delivered by hand to Rear Admiral George W. Buckley. MC, USN, White House Physician” who was President Kennedy’s personal doctor.

In layman’s terms, the JFK autopsy report describes massive trauma to the right side of the president’s brain. Nearly half of it was gone—blown away by the rifle bullet which can be graphically seen in Frame 313 of the infamous Zapruder film that captured the assassination. The other half was seriously damaged by the impact’s shock.

Conspiracy theorists like to destroy the JFK autopsy proceedings by pointing out what they see as inconsistencies like the report stating the brain weighed 1,500 grams. “Hang on,” the CTs say. “There’s lots of information on the net that says a typical adult human male’s brain weighs around 1,400 to 1,500 grams. So, JFK’s brain must have still been mostly intact… or, better yet, replaced at the autopsy to cover up something super-sinister like the shooter from the Grassy Knoll.”

Breathe easy, Conspiracy Theorists. The report clearly stipulates “following fixation in formalin” which is standard autopsy protocol. It’s not easy to cross-section a fresh brain and make thin slices for histology slides. Once a brain soaks in formalin (a formaldehyde-based solution) it becomes rubbery and workable. The process typically takes two to three weeks.

Formalin fixing amplifies tissue weight. It makes perfect sense that part of JFK’s brain fixed in formalin would weigh the same as a complete and non-fixed mass. Nothing to see here, CTs. Maybe keep on something like how Castro and the Mob cooperated to place multiple assassins around Dealy and let them pack up their guns then escape without evidence.

No, the real mystery in the JFK case is what actually happened to the president’s formalin-fixed brain after the autopsy, and how it disappeared from a locked vault at the United States National Archives in Washington, D.C.

John Kennedy’s body was released from the Bethesda morgue in the early morning hours of November 23, 1963. A funeral home team did the best they could to prepare the body for viewing. Privately, the Kennedy family saw the post-autopsy corpse, but the casket was never opened to the public.

President Kennedy’s burial took place on November 25th. Millions around the world watched the procession on TV, and many thousands lined the route from the U.S. Capitol to Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia. Here, the fallen president was laid to rest—temporarily.

Back to the missing brain. There’s no transfer date on their report, but it’s likely the autopsy doctors gave the brain and related histology evidence to Dr. Buckley around the middle of December 1963. The brain and related tissue couldn’t be interred with Kennedy’s body along with the burial. So, that presented the issue of what to do with them, including the grotesque autopsy photos. The Kennedy family abhorred the thought of this gruesome material getting into public hands and being put on display like a side-show.

National Archive records confirmed they received the John Fitzgerald Kennedy autopsy materials in February of 1965. They were released to the Archives by Robert F. Kennedy’s signature, and that included the brain which was contained in a stainless steel receptacle. The effects were logged into the archives and stayed in safekeeping. That was until October 31st, 1966 when someone noticed President Kennedy’s brain and other tissues had vanished. Yes, it was Halloween, and someone had stolen them.

Meanwhile—unknown to the public—the Kennedy family prepared for President Kennedy’s permanent resting place. Somewhere in 1965, the family had Jack Kennedy exhumed and stored in a secure and secret location while they re-designed and built the Arlington grave site. They moved the grave slightly away from the original location and built a solid base that could withstand the millions of visitors who visited the shrine. That included a modern, natural gas eternal flame to replace the old and hastily-built propane torch along with granite flagstones brought in from New England.

In the middle of the night on March 14th, 1967 the Kennedy family re-interred JFK’s body in the new facility. Present were Jackie Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Edward (Ted) Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson. Also re-interred were the two Kennedy children who died at birth and were moved from their Massachusetts burial spots to be placed with their father.

Nothing was said about the missing brain for years—publicly. The vast majority of citizens never knew it was gone, let alone being stolen. That cat came out of the bag during The JFK Assassination Records Review Board proceedings that took place between 1992 and 1998 which were only recently released under the 2016 Freedom of Information Act.

There, in the files of the 1977 Rockefeller Commission, was the answer as to who stole President Kennedy’s brain. This commission was the first official inquiry after the Warren Commission, and it formed to quell conspiracy rumors. Unfortunately, it probably did more harm than good just as what happened during the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations that concluded President Kennedy’s assassination was “probably the result of a conspiracy”. They based this erroneous conclusion solely on the bogus interpretation of a Dallas PD dispatch recording that allegedly caught four shots rather than three.

The Rockefeller Commission took evidence from United States Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall and questioned him about the brain’s whereabouts. This is what Marshall told the commissioners:

“Robert Kennedy obtained and disposed of these materials himself, without permission or informing anyone else. He was concerned that these materials would be placed on public display and wished to dispose of them to eliminate such a possibility.”

No one will ever truly know where JFK’s brain is today. The most likely scenario is it was buried along with the president’s re-interred body in Arlington Cemetery. But, one thing’s for sure. It was Bobby Kennedy who stole it.

WHY IT TAKES SO LONG TO MAKE A CORONAVIRUS VACCINE

We wish it would just go away—this stupid Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic. You’d think with today’s medical knowledge and advanced technology all it would take is leading scientists around the world to come together, snap their fingers, and immediately slop-out an effective vaccine. Then, we could get back to the “Old Normal”.

Not so fast. There’s nothing quick or easy about making an effective Covid-19/Coronavirus inoculation.

When this thing started, I wrote a post titled Just How Deadly is Novel Coronavirus and Covid-19? Like a lot of pieces, I looked for an intriguing subject, researched it to understand the basics, then wrote it to share with others. Creating a Coronavirus/Covid-19 vaccine is an evolving issue, and I wanted to know more about how long it will be before a preventive treatment is widely available.

An article on my HuffPost feed satisfied my curiosity, and it’ll inform you, too, about when we can expect an effective coronavirus vaccine. Unfortunately, the answer is no time soon. There are good reasons why it takes so long to make a vaccine. Rather than writing new content about this complicated issue, I’m sharing what I received from the Huff.

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As of the end of April, 2020, the World Health Organization was tracking 71 coronavirus vaccines in preclinical trials, with five additional candidates already in clinical trials. Given how recently the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading, it might seem promising that there’s already a lot of activity on the immunization front.

With so many potential vaccines in testing, you also may wonder why medical experts say it will take at least 12 to 18 months before one is ready to go. If a coronavirus vaccine did make it to market on such a timetable, it would actually be the fastest turnaround in history. Currently, that record belongs to the mumps vaccine, which was approved for use in just four years back in the 1960s. For Ebola, a vaccine took five years to develop.

More commonly, the development of a vaccine takes eight to 10 years. Can a COVID-19 vaccine be created any faster? There’s certainly hope, but no certainty.

“I’d say the 12 to 18 months that’s been bandied about by some experts is realistic, but it’s [also] optimistic,” said James Cutrell, director of the infectious disease fellowship program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “It is based on the assumption that each phase of trials goes according to plan, with an optimistic time frame at each of those stages.”

Here’s what goes into each phase of developing a vaccine.

We often think of vaccines as treatments for illness, but they’re not exactly that, said Kelvin Lee, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Delaware and director of the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals. Vaccines are given to people who are well to keep them from getting sick.

“It’s very different from developing medicine where someone is ill and you are trying to make them better. In a healthy population, you don’t want the vaccine to have negative consequences,” he said.

First, Lee said, researchers will study the virus and attempt to determine which type of vaccine may work best.

Microscopic view of Coronavirus, a pathogen that attacks the respiratory tract.

There are several kinds of vaccines. Some have a tiny, weakened bit of live virus, which triggers a protective immune response in your body but does not cause the actual illness. Some contain inactive virus that creates a similar response in the body. And some utilize genetically engineered RNA or DNA, which carries “directions” to make the type of protein that can prevent the virus from binding to our cells and making us ill.

Once researchers decide which vaccine route they think will work best, they get to testing.

“This is where time really comes into play,” Lee said. “Even after you do lab tests to make sure it works in the proverbial petri dish, in many cases vaccines will undergo tests in animals to ensure that it’s going to be safe for humans and has the desired response. And then, where it really starts to take time is in the human clinical trials.”

To roll out a vaccine requires a lot of safety testing. During Phase 1, researchers take a small number of healthy volunteers and test the vaccine for serious side effects, Cutrell explained.

Phase 2 involves smaller studies looking at efficacy, he said. This includes figuring out the best dosage of the vaccine, the scheduling of dosages if you need multiple ones, and more. Scientists will consider whether the vaccine still appears safe enough and whether the immune response or antibody buildup is great enough to warrant moving on to additional clinical studies.

In Phase 3, you will see larger field studies.

“You would take a susceptible population, vaccinate some while having a control group, and monitor the effect over time and see if there’s any difficulty,” Cutrell said.

Here, researchers may look for common, short-term side effects and at what dosages those side effects pop up.

“All that has to be done first, and then if Phase 3 shows the vaccine is safe and effective, that’s when you’d look at licensing,” Cutrell said.

Even after you have a working vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it still takes time to mass-produce and distribute it across the country.

The goal is to vaccinate huge numbers of people, “so you then develop immunity in the community that would protect against larger outbreaks,” Cutrell said.

Testing and monitoring ― essentially Phase 4 ― continue even after the vaccine is generally available because it takes time to ensure safety, Lee said. “You don’t know if something bad is going to happen a month later, two months later, a year later.”

Common side effects of vaccines include redness and pain at the site of injection and maybe a low-grade fever; side effects like seizures or allergic reactions are extremely rare. But the bottom line is that scientists and doctors aim to develop a vaccine where the protective benefits far outweigh the risks.

While it’s hard to say when researchers will have a viable vaccine, there are a few factors that could speed up the timeline for this coronavirus vaccine. Traditional approaches to creating vaccines ― like the use of chicken eggs ― are proven but not necessarily speedy.

“You have some newer technologies that some companies are trying to leverage, where they were already prepared to respond to a pandemic,” said Lee. “You can shorten some of that discovery and early development timeline.”

Newer biotechnology-based methods, sometimes called “cell culture methods,” could make for more rapid development, he said. Additionally, with a pandemic circling the world, American researchers are hardly alone.

“You’ve got private companies and scientists trying to work together on the vaccine. That collaboration can certainly help accelerate the timeline,” Lee said. “Scientists will still want to minimize risks and ensure the safest possible rollout of a vaccine. “But given the outbreak globally and the impact it’s having, I can imagine there are ways to design trials to accelerate testing,”

There could also be an unconventional study design for the coronavirus vaccine, according to a new report published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. In place of traditional Phase 3 trials, volunteers at low risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19 ― healthy people without chronic conditions in their 20s, for instance ― might opt in for a “human challenge study.” They could be exposed to the coronavirus, monitored closely and given the best care.

This type of study would involve fewer participants and could be done in less time than a traditional Phase 3. Of course, the idea would need to be rigorously discussed beforehand as ethics rules generally forbid deliberately infecting human beings with a serious disease.

Besides vaccine trials, researchers are testing potential treatments for COVID-19. Instead of preventing the disease, these aim to make sick people well again.

“One of the treatments that has gotten a lot of attention is remdesivir, but the data available so far is fairly limited,” Cutrell said. No trials comparing use of the antiviral drug against a control group have been published so far. That said, studies are coming, including a National Institutes of Health clinical trial comparing remdesivir against a placebo.

There are also drugs that could potentially address the immune system’s response to the virus.

“A lot of times patients with this virus get sicker in the second week of their illness ― and it’s not the virus, but the immune system that makes them get quite sick,” Cutrell said. “They experience an exaggerated state of inflammation or ‘cytokine storm.’”

Some drugs that might dampen the immune system’s effects are currently in clinical trials. Then there’s the now-controversial drug hydroxychloroquine, which has long been used for malaria or inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Although the drug received a lot of early attention, the studies showing potential benefits for COVID-19 patients have been mostly anecdotal with no control groups to compare against.

“There are also concerns about safety, including cardiac issues and arrhythmias that give doctors pause,” Cutrell said, noting that the FDA recently advised Americans not to use hydroxychloroquine outside of a hospital setting.

Finally, COVID-19 might be treatable with convalescent plasma.

“This is where people who have had the disease and recovered donate plasma, and that plasma is given to someone with an active stage of disease,” Cutrell explained.

The antibodies and proteins in that plasma could potentially help someone with COVID-19 recover. (You may be able to donate plasma if you have recovered from the coronavirus.)

Until we have a vaccine or meaningful treatment, we need to proceed with caution, ramp up testing and isolate the sick quickly if we hope to get back to some “semblance of normalcy,” Cutrell said.

“In my opinion, before we have effective treatment or vaccine, we will have to behave similarly to South Korea, Singapore or Hong Kong, with widespread access to testing, contact tracing and isolation, quarantining people in cases of potential contact,” he said. “In doing this, they’ve been able to stave off having large scale epidemics in their country and are allowed to be a little more open than other places where those things are not in place.”

“Of course, those countries have not yet seen second waves of the virus.”

“That approach requires constant vigilance,” Cutrell acknowledged. But even as scientists and doctors work to develop effective treatments and a vaccine, he said “thoughtful and incremental” strategies can help us move forward to “a period of more normal activities.”

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Note from the HuffPost: Experts are still learning about the novel coronavirus. The information in this story is what was known or available as of the end of April, 2020, but it’s possible guidance around COVID-19 could change as scientists discover more about the virus. Please check the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most updated recommendations.

Here’s the link to my first DyingWords post titled Just How Deadly is Novel Coronavirus and Covid-19?

WHY CASEY ANTHONY GOT AWAY WITH MURDERING HER DAUGHTER

In October of 2008, Casey Marie Anthony of Orlando, Florida was charged with intentionally killing her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. Casey Anthony, then twenty-two, was indicted on first-degree murder and other homicide-related counts. She faced the death penalty. After a forty-three-day, media-sensation trial, the jury let Casey Anthony off on all matters relating to Caylee’s death with one-exception. That was lying to police during her toddler’s missing person investigation.

During the jury trial, Casey Anthony’s case became a social media sensation on par with the TV spectacle back in the O.J. Simpson days. At one point, Time Magazine labeled her as “the most hated woman in America”. The public who followed the proceedings overwhelmingly viewed Casey Anthony as an immoral, immature and incredible piece of “white trash”. Even Anthony’s high-profile lead lawyer, Jose Baez, referred to her as a “lying slut” during his closing remarks to the jury.

However, Jose Baez used those remarks to Anthony’s advantage. He portrayed how his client was misjudged by the mainstream and how the prosecution failed to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the evidence was sufficient to support a conclusion that Casey Anthony deliberately planned and premeditated Caylee’s death. Here’s a look at why Casey Anthony was wrongfully acquitted and got away with murdering her daughter.

The Background

Casey Anthony was born on March 19, 1986 to George and Cindy Anthony of Orlando. George Anthony was a police officer and his wife, Cindy, was a homemaker. They had a son, Lee, who was older than Casey. By all later accounts, this family was anything but functional.

Casey was an outgoing and highly social kid. She was also notorious for bending the truth and pushing boundaries. Casey became pregnant with Caylee at age nineteen and, to this day, there is no official record of who the biological father was.

Casey Anthony was also unemployable. She bounced between jobs including one she got fired from at Universal Studios. She remained living with her parents who financially supported Casey and Caylee. By the summer of 2008, Casey Anthony was partying hard and neglecting Caylee for extended periods during which the grandparents cared for the little girl.

Caylee Anthony was last seen alive on June 16, 2008. She was with her mother, Casey, and they left George and Cindy Anthony’s home to spend time with Casey’s new boyfriend. After not hearing from Casey and Caylee for days, the senior Anthony’s began to get worried and suspicious. Casey made numerous conflicting statements to her parents about Caylee including one story that a new nanny was sitting for her.

After one month of absence, George Anthony learned that Casey’s car was at a tow yard. He went to recover it and notices a strong smell coming from the trunk. He feared the worst and expected to find his dead and decomposing granddaughter when he opened it. Instead, the trunk only contained a bag of rotting garbage.

The Investigation

Still, the Anthony’s were concerned enough about Caylee’s condition that they called the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to file a missing person report. This was on July 15, 2008. The police interviewed Casey Anthony the next day who told them that a nanny by the name of Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez had been hired to look after Caylee but refused to return her. Effectively, this was now a kidnapping situation.

As the police dug deeper, they found Casey Anthony’s statements to be false and misleading on four points. She was arrested and charged with the felony offenses of misleading the police and obstructing a criminal investigation. Casey spent a month in jail before she was able to raise a bail bond.

Meanwhile, the police moved their investigation focus from a missing child to a murder case. They processed Casey Anthony’s car and used a novel forensic technique to analyze the trunk air. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIDS) examination identified airborne particulates consistent with a decomposing body. Two cadaver dogs also gave positive indications when smelling the car.

One human hair was removed from the trunk. It was matched as similar and consistent with Caylee’s known samples from her hairbrush. However, no DNA testing was done to make a positive identification and would become an evidentiary enigma at trial.

The police also searched computer drives on devices that Casey had access. Data retrieval experts found searches for key words and phrases like “chloroform”, “how to make chloroform” and “neck+breaking”. One examiner stated he had retrieved 84 incidents where Casey Anthony allegedly searched the word “chloroform”.

This information or evidence was brought to a grand jury. They returned a Capital murder indictment on October 18, 2008. Casey Anthony was re-arrested and, this time, she was denied bail.

Caylee Anthony’s body was found by a utility worker on December 11, 2008. It was in a wooded area near the Anthony family home about a ten minute walk from the property. Little Caylee was in an advanced decomposition state and had been stuffed inside a plastic garbage bag and wrapped in a blanket identified to her bedroom.

A forensic pathology examination did not determine the exact cause of Caylee’s death. She was too decomposed for that. There was, however, a highly-incriminating piece of evidence indicating foul play. A piece of duct tape—the duct tape murder weapon—was stuck across what would have been her nose and mouth. Caylee Anthony’s death classification was ruled a homicide.

The Jury Trial

From the moment Casey Anthony was arrested on her obstruction of justice charges, her case took on a life of its own. This was the dawning of social media outlets and the height of cable news networks. This sad and serious situation seconded the attention of people across the nation and around the world.

It had the stuff of crime novels and horror movies. Here was a lying and cheating promiscuous young mother who not only abandoned her female child but murdered her. Then, the blood-relative offender callously tossed the remains of a toddler in the bush. Mainstream America wanted Casey Anthony’s head and the prosecution team promised to deliver it. They elevated their game and filed for the death penalty.

Orlando was aflame with rumor and speculation. So much so that it was unlikely to find an impartial juror. The state extended its jury poll range 100 west to Clearwater in Pinellas County. Selection started on May 9, 2011 and by May 24, the panel was selected, transported to Orlando and sequestered for the next forty-three days until they delivered a verdict.

Lorraine Drane Burdick headed the state prosecution. Jeff Ashton and Frank George aided her. Jose Baez led Casey Anthony’s defense and Cheney Mason, Dorothy Clay Simms and Ann Finnell backed him. Mark Lippman represented the parents/grandparents, George and Cindy Anthony.

The prosecution opened their remarks to the jury by painting Casey Anthony as a thing of evil who deserved to die. They claimed Casey murdered her child so she could be free from parental responsibility and carry on a life of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. An example was her excessive partying while Caylee was missing. To top it off, Casey got a new “Bella Vita” tattoo (meaning “Beautiful Life”) while Caylee was rotting in the rough. It was what the social media frenzy wanted to hear, and the state representatives assumed the jurors liked it too.

The defense took a different approach. They emphasized to jurors the state had absolutely no forensic evidence to prove their case and everything the jurors would hear was circumstantial or hearsay. Jose Baez took a calculated move. He told the jurist panel the state would offer no motive, no cause of death and no proof Caylee Anthony was intentionally killed. In fact, Baez said, there was every reason to believe Caylee accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool and it was George Anthony who covered-up and hid the body.

The hook was set and the jurors sat through 106 prosecution and defense witnesses. Some were forensic specialists. Some were civilians. And, some were members of the Anthony family.

The Case Falls Apart

Bit by bit, the defense team cross-examined expert and lay witnesses alike. Their constant focus was that no hard forensic evidence or “smoking gun” existed and therefore there was no conclusive proof of how Caylee Anthony died… or who killed her. All the while, the defense led by Baez suggested an accidental drowning and a panicked attempt at an in-family cover-up that Casey was not part of.

A big blow to the state was when the computer analyst evidence of “chloroform” searching fell apart. It turns out one expert witness used a flawed algorithm and the truth seemed to be that “chloroform” might have only been searched once. On the stand, Cindy Anthony (Casey’s mother) claimed it was she who searched  “chloroform” but couldn’t explain why. The prosecution asserted Cindy was covering up for Casey. The defense used the issue as a wide and unsettling smokescreen.

George Anthony became a lightning rod for the defense. They painted him as a sadistic child molester who sexually, physically and psychologically abused Casey as she grew up and caused her to be the loose and lying character she was. The stress was so bad that George Anthony threatened suicide and had to be hospitalized for psychiatric observation.

During the trial, the Baez team never entered a lick of evidence that Caylee drowned or that George Anthony had one bit of involvement in her death, never mind abusing Casey. They accomplished their strategy through suggestion, innuendo and letting their powerful opening statement stay planted in the jurors’ minds while the prosecution failed to squash that misleading bug.

In closing to the jury, prosecution lawyer Jeff Ashton told the panel to use their common sense when deciding their verdict. “No one makes an accident look like a murder,” Ashton said.

Jose Baez took a more strategic summation. He sensed jurors would base their verdict on emotion, not evidence. It might have been a gamble when Baez said, “If you hate her, if you think she’s a lying no-good slut then you’ll look at the evidence in that light. I told you at the very beginning of this case that this was an accident that snowballed out of control. What made it unique is not what happened, but who it happened to.”

He continued. “The burden rests on the shoulders of my colleagues at the state attorney’s office. They must prove their case beyond all reasonable doubt and jurors are required, whether they like it or not, to find the defendant not guilty if the state did not adequately prove its case against Casey Anthony.”

The jury deliberated for 10 hours and 40 minutes. On July 5, 2001 they returned with an acquittal on Casey Anthony for all charges except for the minor one of lying to police. Casey Anthony was granted time served, and she was out on the street in a week.

Why the Jury Acquitted Casey Anthony

There are two principles dear to Anglo-American criminal law. One is an accused is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Second is an accused has the right to be tried by a jury of their peers. The peers must unanimously agree that all elements of the state’s case were supported by evidence that convinced them—beyond all reasonable doubt—that the accused committed the crime they were charged with.

That’s a big burden to carry. In Casey Anthony’s case, the jurors were not split on their decision. Each of the twelve jurors—unanimously—voted to acquit her because they felt—as a group—the prosecution failed to meet their burden of proof and did not take them—the jurors—over the threshold of doubt. Reasonable suspicion? Yes, in spades. But… not past reasonable doubt.

Why did this happen? There are twelve reasons. Some were acknowledged in public interviews jurors gave to media sources after the trial. Others are identified by psychologists and criminologists who’ve had nearly a decade to dissect the Casey Anthony case.

1. Casey Anthony’s legal defense team did a better job relating to the jury than the prosecution did. Jose Baez led a masterful coup of jurors’ emotions and used them to neutralize their feelings against Anthony. From his opening remarks, he and his support staff implanted seeds of doubt to have jurors discharge their duty in Anthony’s favor.

2. George and Cindy Anthony were unreliable witnesses. The jurors saw enough of their dysfunctional home structure to truly wonder if the grandparents had some part they weren’t telling. It was one more brick in the reasonable doubt wall. Jurors were initiated with the accidental drowning theory and they never got past it, regardless that no proof of an accident ever surfaced.

3. The “CSI Effect” came into play. This is a relatively new phenomenon with juries who’ve been exposed to TV shows and movies where the screenwriters manage to solve—beyond all reasonable doubt—their plot within their time frame through some sort of scientific or forensic proof. This didn’t happen in the Anthony trial, and throughout the defense kept using the term “fantasy forensics”.

4. Jury members got hung up on issues of motive and cause of death. Neither is a required element in proving a murder case, although they’re certainly nice to have to shore up a prosecution. Because the state never proved either motive or cause of death, the defense capitalized on this to further form doubt in the jurors’ view.

5. The prosecution became overzealous in persecuting Casey Anthony. Long before the trial, the state attorney’s office sought and got death penalty approval. They never relaxed on it. It was too much responsibility for the jury to know might send a young woman to her end if they convicted Casey Anthony with any sort of doubt in their minds.

6. The defense did an outstanding job of deselecting jury members. They “deselected” people rather than “selected” them. This was a truly unique approach. The defense team painstakingly used social media boards to build a profile of what a sympathetic (to the defense) juror would look like. They used this formula to question potential jurors and deselect or disqualify 392 candidates who didn’t fit their ideal profile.

7. The selected and accepted jury members were analytical types. They were interested in hard proof and not circumstantial evidence. When the “fantasy forensic” ruse set in, the jurors became more and more doubtful  they had any concrete evidence to convict Casey Anthony.

8. The jury was sequestered. They spent nearly a month and a half locked together. Humans being what they are, jurors quickly became a tribe. Leaders and followers emerged through group dynamics. Most humans prefer harmony to discord, and they naturally compromised in agreements. The Casey Anthony jury became one unit during their sequester period, and they solidified towards giving Anthony the benefit of the doubt despite compelling circumstantial evidence.

9. The jury played favorites with the lawyers. Jose Baez came across as a genuine, likeable person. In the words of one juror later interviewed, “He seemed like the only one in the room who cared. Jeff Ashton was ambitious and arrogant. He was mechanical and cold and we didn’t like him.”

10.  Jury members caved-in. In another interview, a Casey Anthony juror said, “We did our first vote and it came out half to acquit and half to convict. We talked about it for a while going through the evidence. I’d say some people got intense, but there were no personal attacks, no yelling. Then the vote was 11-1 to acquit. The one guy who wanted to convict basically looked at us and said, ‘Okay. Whatever you all want.’ He knew he wasn’t going to convince us.”

11. The prosecution failed to deliver clear, relatable and understandable circumstantial evidence. Still another juror had this to say. “The prosecutors didn’t give us enough evidence to convict. They gave us a lot of stuff that made us think she probably did something wrong, but not beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution didn’t even paint a picture for me to consider. How can you punish someone if you don’t know what they did?”

12. The jury members gradually diminished their common sense.  “No one makes an accident look like a murder.” They forgot the big picture—the duct tape murder weapon. This became not a trial about who intentionally killed an innocent and defenseless child. Here was a horrible mother who did not report her missing daughter and compounded the tragedy by lying to the police about what happened.

Casey Anthony refused to take the witness stand.

She had her chance to explain. There’s no other rational conclusion. Casey Anthony murdered Caylee and the jury wrongfully acquitted her.