Some time ago in response to my statement that (like one of the jurors who spoke to the press) I suspected Casey Anthony might have used chloroform as a babysitter, blogger “Voice of Sanity” contacted me:

'Easy' to concoct is arguable - it is 'easy' to accidentally produce phosgene, a deadly gas, instead. DuPont had a release from their plant, killing a worker. VOS

Two chemistry professors in this video clip from In Session disagree: they claim that not only is it easy to concoct, chloroform is also released from chlorinated swimming-pool water and lingers for a very long time in enclosed spaces, such as a car trunk and a sealed can (used by Orlando CSI’s to capture the gases in the air of the trunk and later tested at Oak Ridge National Labs and the FBI lab). (They also admit that pure chloroform is hard to make, but for most people’s purposes the purity is irrelevant.)

Two pieces of evidence presented at trial hinted that Casey Anthony might have used chloroform to sedate her daughter:

• a computer search for “how to make chloroform” found on the Anthony-family computer
• a minute amount of chloroform detected in the air in the car trunk

Unfortunately for the prosecution, the evidence did nothing more than hint; the defense thoroughly shredded the forensic analysis of both the computer search and the air in the trunk—and the jury understood this.

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, the chloroform junk should never have been admitted into evidence. It was nothing but hot air. I am absolutely certain now that chloroform played no role in Caylee Anthony’s death, but not because of the difficulty or ease of concocting it at home.

The idea that chloroform might have been used as a murder weapon came initially from a poorly conducted computer forensics analysis of the Anthony hard drive. First, a police officer created a report listing all the Google searches on the hard drive. He found nothing sinister other than a single search on “how to make chloroform.” Because he did not know how to use the analysis software properly, he put the report he had generated aside for almost a year before asking a real software expert to look at, but he did initiate an investigation into the presence of chloroform in the remains and the “crime scene” (the wooded area and the car). The remains and the wooded area produced no hint of chloroform.

Some time later, forensic anthropologist Voss from Oak Ridge examined the air in the trunk in hopes of discovering it contained gases that would prove a human body had decomposed there, one byproduct of which is chloroform. He ran a test on the air using a gas chronometer/mass spectrometer: an instrument that determines the chemical makeup of a substance. Voss found chloroform in the sample—as expected, since he had been told that a body had decomposed in the trunk.

But he did not conduct a test to determine how much chloroform or any other single chemical was in the sample. Instead, all he did was determine that chloroform was present and was the dominant gas in the sample.

And here is where logic flew out the window: Voss assumed the air was filled with the gases of human decomposition, but his studies of the gases of human composition had never before shown that chloroform was the dominant gas. Therefore, he concluded, most of the chloroform in the car trunk sample must have come from some other source than the victim’s body.

Since he was also told that chloroform intoxication was suspected as the cause of death (because of the Google search), he ran to the prosecution with his GSMS readouts—and a theory of the crime was formed.

Let’s look at the prosecution’s syllogism again:

1. The gas in the car trunk was from the decomposing body of a child killed with chloroform (a faulty premise).
2. The gas in the car trunk was composed of too much chloroform to have come entirely from the process of decomposition (if you believe Voss’s database).
3. Ergo: chloroform was the murder weapon.

What?

There was nothing fishy about the Google search for “how to make chloroform,” because it was made in the context of someone’s visit to the Facebook page of one of Casey Anthony’s boyfriends who had written a remark about winning girls over with chloroform.

There was nothing fishy about the findings of a very, very minute amount of chloroform in the air of a smelly car trunk. Chloroform is present in many common household products and produced by the decomposition of mammal flesh, such as pork chops. It’s even present in pool water in which the child could have drowned, as the defense claimed.

Casey Anthony’s bizarre behavior after her child’s death compels me to believe she felt guilty about something. Her mother’s apparently false testimony about being the one who searched for “how to make chloroform” makes me wonder if she doesn’t suspect Casey used chloroform as a babysitter.

But there is no evidence at all—not a shred—that chloroform had anything to do with Caylee Anthony’s death.

So, I still feel Casey Anthony felt responsible for her daughter’s death—even if it was because she didn’t keep an eye on Caylee when she most needed to, and Caylee sneaked out of the house one June morning to go swimming alone.

The Casey Anthony trial should be a wake-up call to the forensic science community: a few more public spectacles like it will sour the public on the whole profession. “Forensics” may produce intriguing clues the likes of which Sherlock Holmes would delight in, but clues aren’t evidence. Detectives need to get back to basics. Prosecutors need to learn to respect juries and present them with solid cases.