“Riders on the storm, Riders on the storm. Into this house we’re born, into this world we’re thrown. Like a dog without a bone, an actor out on lone, Riders on the storm. There’s a killer on the road, his brain is squirmin’ like a toad. Take a long holiday, Let your children play. If ya give this man a ride, sweet memory will die. Killer on the road, yeah.” Riders On The Storm – The Doors – LA Woman
A body is deposited at Point A. Some time passes by. Then the body is moved from Point A to Point B. Some more time passes by. Then the body is moved again from Point B to Point C, which becomes its final resting place, for six or seven months, anyway. This is not my theory, this is a logical deduction I made from the testimony of Neal Haskell, an expert in forensic entomology.
What supports this theory? An evidence analysis of paper towels found in the trunk of the Firebird had insects that were classified (by Dr. Haskell) as late colonizers, such as Beetles or Black soldier flies. These types of insects, according to Neal, will enter the picture only after a body has reached a certain level of maturity in decomposition, say three or four days.
The insects most often associated with the earliest stage of decomposition would be blow flies, which have 90 different variations in North America. The association of these different types of insects, which thrive on decomposing bodies (lay their eggs and produce families), with the various stages of decomposition, is the way in which a trained forensic entomologist can detect how long a person has been deceased.
I have in my notes, ‘post mortem interval,’ which is I believe, an area of expertise that Dr. Haskell has a monopoly on. Okay, maybe I ought to include Arpad Vass in this, who is an expert in human decomposition. But when you add in the bugs to the mix, you have to emphasize the contributions of Neal Haskell.
As I see it, the post mortem interval analysis allows us to see how the body was moved on two different occasions. As impressed as I was with Dr. Haskell’s analysis, I will say that Jose Baez, in his cross-examination of the witness, made him out to be a hired-gun, what with all the money he’s been paid by Orange County. Neal gets $400 per hour for his testimony, $150 per hour for travel time, and $200 per hour for research case work.
The next witness for the prosecution was Jennifer Welch, a CSI who did much of the photography at the Suburban Drive scene, where Caylee’s remains were found. Ms. Welch was also responsible for the collection, processing, and preservation of evidence at this pivotal location, which must have been mayhem back in December of 2008.
Not to get ahead of myself, but this Henkel duct tape ties in nicely with the testimony of the very next witness, Ronald Murdock, a forensics supervisor with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. You will want to view Mr. Murdock’s testimony in its entirety; it’s just that important. The lions share his words lie on Reels 5 and 6, Day 27, over at the Casey Anthony archives, on WFTV 9 Orlando, where you can watch pristine footage of the entire trial.
Ronald Murdock supervised a search warrant of the Anthony home on Hopespring Drive on December 11, 2008. Good photos of the evidence confiscated from the home are included by the prosecution on the above Reels just mentioned. None of this is more important than any other thing. What I mean to say (as I stumble), is that each of the photos and each of Ronald’s words are of equal importance to the prosecution’s argument.
I’ll let you figure out how. But you must know, I might add, Jose Baez gives Murdock a good drilling on the ubiquitous duct tape. But maybe not that ubiquitous, seeing how it could be replicated (from where the remains were found) at the Anthony home only on the handle of the red gas can. What about when the flyers were distributed and posted from back in late July of 2008?
When you see these items of evidence, you think, at what point is the prosecution going to tie this together to the actual crime? Okay, they show you the black garbage bags at the Anthony home, so big deal! Doesn’t nearly every American in the United States have the exact same kind of trash bags? In fact, I just put one of these black kitchen liners in my trash can this morning.
The same thing could go for the duct tape. Isn’t Henkel duct tape one of the most popular brands of duct tape around? What’s so unusual about one tiny strip of duct tape on a gas can? How about the laundry bag? Or was this a rarer brand for a laundry bag? I have that it was a Whitney design in my notes. If the one at the Anthony home was a Whitney, and the one found on Suburban Drive was a Whitney, that would be something.
Back to the first paragraph. Don’t think of me as morbid, but here’s what I learned from yesterday. Just after killing Caylee, Casey puts the body near the playhouse in the backyard. This is Point A. About three days later, probably when she knows her parents are at work, she returns home and places the body in the trunk of her Pontiac Sunfire.
She parties for three or four days, even with friends driving around with her (while the body decomposes in the trunk). As the odor overpowers her car, she returns home one summer day (around June 19th or the 20th), puts the body in the garbage bags, and as a departing gesture, seals her daughter’s mouth with a heart sticker. Then she coldly drives over to the neighborhood park and tosses the bundles amongst the rotting vines, roots and broken palmetto trees. Now she’s off on her merry way.
“Girl ya gotta love your man. Girl ya gotta love your man. Take him by the hand, Make him understand. The world on you depends, our life will never end. Gotta love your man, yeah. Riders on the storm. Riders on the storm. Into this house we’re born, Into this world we’re thrown. Like a dog without a bone, an actor out on lone. Riders on the storm.”
