Cops in Casey Anthony Case Missed Internet Search for 'Fool-Proof Suffication'
Police investigating the disappearance of Caylee Anthony overlooked an Internet search for the misspelled phrase “fool-proof suffication” on the family computer.
The problem: Orange County sheriff’s police checked out the search history on the Internet Explorer browser, but not the Mozilla Firefox browser, report the Associated Press and CBS News Crimesider.
Casey Anthony, who was acquitted of her daughter’s murder last July, had preferred Firefox, according to WKMG, which broke the story. At trial, prosecutors had claimed Caylee Anthony was poisoned with chloroform, suffocated with duct tape and placed in plastic bags.
The person who conducted the “suffication” search on June 16, 2008, clicked into a story on suicide, WKMG says. Next the person went to MySpace, a website used frequently by Casey Anthony, according to the report by the broadcast station. The searches were performed on the day Caylee Anthony was last seen alive.
The computer expert for the sheriff’s department who searched the computer for evidence has defended her work, claiming she was never asked to search for the word “suffocation.”
Defense lawyer Jose Baez tells WKMG he was shocked when prosecutors didn’t refer to the Internet search. In his book, Presumed Guilty, Baez mentioned the search but suggested it was performed by Casey Anthony’s father because he was considering suicide after Caylee accidentally drowned.
The mention in Baez’s book spurred a Phoenix lawyer to obtain the browser histories through a public records request, according to WKMG. The lawyer turned the data over to a computer expert who found the search for “fool-proof suffication.”
Prosecutors did introduce evidence of searches in March 2008 for the word “chloroform,” but Casey Anthony’s mother testified she performed the search by mistake while looking up information about chlorophyll, according to the AP account.
