Casey Anthony Murder Trial: Day 13

I'm looking forward to today's testimony. We will first hear from Kristin Brewer of the Osceola County Sheriff's office. She is the handler of Bones, the dog she received from Dep. Forgey. After that, I'm not sure where the prosecution will head next. I'll let it be a surprise today!

Casey arrived in court and quickly sat down at the defense table. She seemed serious this morning and didn't have smiles for her attorneys.

It seemed as though the defense is trying to hide her as much as possible from the jury's view. She is seated on a chair that is lower, and there are piles of papers in front of her.

Judge Perry entered the courtroom and today's session came to order.

Baez renewed his previous objection to the testimony because of the “Harris” matter he mentioned yesterday. The judge said, as he did yesterday, it is the responsibility of the jury to decide the issue.

The jury was brought in.

Sgt.Kristin Brewer was the first witness called to the stand. Sgt. Brewer is a patrol supervisor with the Osceola Sheriff's Office. She handles Bones, the cadaver dog she received from the OCSO.

Handling Bones is her secondary job and has worked with him since 2005. When Bones was transferred to Osceola County, his paperwork came with him. She is the person who keeps and maintains the records for him.

Linda Burdick showed her Bones’ certification and records, excluding veterinary records. Brewer examined them and the exhibit was accepted into evidence.

When she first received Bones, she spent several weeks bonding with the dog and she spoke with Dep. Forgey about how he worked.

She trained Bones several times a week. They attended several independent schools. First was a basic cadaver course with Andy Rebman(sp?), the well-known expert in cadaver dog training.

Brewer identified the certificate from the school and went into detail about the types of training he had and under what conditions. She did not know where all the training aids were located and she kept records of his finds, missed alerts, and false alerts. He had no missed or false alerts. He found all the targets.

Brewer used a wide variety of training aids with him, as had Forgey.

The second trainining school they attended was a Water Seminar. The dog was put on a boat and had to locate a body. He also searched near water.

Again, Bones had a perfect record!

The third school they attended was a seminar on human remains detection.

Brewer continued to train Bones and work as needed in between the seminars.

Burdick asked if she trained Bones on distractions and Brewer told her she used toys, dog treats, food, and animal remains, among other things.

Bones was exposed to other dogs on searches and at the schools and seminars they attended.

She has never had any problems with Bones alerting to foods of any kinds.

Bones attended an advanced land searches workshop. Bones had to do the same type of training as at the other seminars. The sources were buried and hung and in other locations. Bones trained alert is to sit. When the source is hanging, but out of his sight, he tries to sit below it.

Bones also received his NNDAA certification at that time. This organization certifies both drug and cadaver dogs. This certification lasts for one year.

Burdick asked if Bones has been trained to locate residual odor.

Brewer said he had been. She also said that his favorite reward is his tennis ball.

Sgt. Brewer testified that she keeps track his training records and his real world records.

August 23, 2005, Bones was called out on a search and Bones did not alert. The area was excavated anyway and a deceased dog was found.

May 1, 2006, Bones did not alert. The area was searched and a dead animal was located.

May 10, 2006, Bones did not alert. The area was dug and another deceased dog was found.

September 5, 2006, Bones did not alert and the area was searched. A dead possum was found.

June 6, 2009, Bones did not alert and the area was searched. Small animal remains were found.

Bones has not given a false alert on any item, he has alerted and found human remains.

March 31, 2007, Bones alerted to several small bone fragments of a skeleton that had been removed.

October 8, 2007. Bpmes alerted to a body buried in the woods for two to three weeks.

October 28, 2007, Bones they did a sniff of the exterior of a residence and he alerted to the wall behind which an elderly woman was deceased.

Bones found a comforter a baby had been born on and later discarded in a landfill.

In March, 2008, Bones alerted to additional bones in the area where a skull had been found.

In May, 2009, Bones and she were called out for a water search. In doing a boat search of a large lake. Bones alerted in one area and a dive team located the body.

There are more, but those examples should give you an idea of Bones record!

Bones, as a single purpose dog, is called out in other counties and states. Many of the searches end with no alert.

Bones signals when he is going to a final alert. He will pick up his head, his tail will become fluffy, he will leave her and not come back even when called because his's so interested in locating the scent.

I would certainly hope this is enough information to establish a foundation.

After a brief side bar, Ms. Burdick was allowed to begin questioning about this case.

Brewer responded to the Anthony home on Hopespring Drive on July 17, 2008 at about 8 PM. It was pretty dark during the search. It did not inhibit the dog's ability to do the search.

Dep. Forgey took her to the back yard and told her he wanted to have it searched. She wasn't aware that Forgey did a search. He said that he hadn't.

She then brought Bones to the back yard on lead and entered the back yard on the left side and put on his search collar. She took him off lead and told him to search. He checked the entire yard and spent 3 to 4 minutes. She saw he had an area of interest. After another search of the yard, he returned to the area and sat (his final trained alert).

Ms. Burdick published a picture of the back yard and Brewer indicated the area she indicated and marked the area where the dog alerted.

Dep. Forgey then told her that Gerus had alerted within 6 to 8 feet of the same area. However, when she returned the next day, there was dirt and mulch that was disturbed. Bones did not alert. She attributed this to the fact that the soil had been moved or that they had not dug enough.

I wish Ms. Burdick had been able to use the picture marked by Det. Forgey. It clearly showed that the dogs alerted in the same area. I suppose Jose Baez, in his cross examination forgot about that picture. I sure hope the jury didn't. Forgey's marked picture is to the right.

Jose Baez then cross-examined the witness.

Baez first asked if there was only one command for the dog to search. There weren’t different commands for various materials the animal should search for. Brewer agreed.

Baez then asked if Bones alerted to material from live persons. Det. Brewer answered that he would only if it was outside the body, like blood.

There was another question I missed here, about the trunks of cars they use in training.

Baez then asked if Dep. Forgey told her where his dog alerted. She explained that Forgey didn't show her. Baez asked her where 6 to 8 feet would be. Baez seemed to be trying to get her to say the only place Forgey could have meant was towards the swimming pool!

Baez mentioned she was never deployed inside the house or the screened porch. She pointed out that the OCSO didn't ask her to do it. She was not aware of any searches done in the home as it wasn't her case.

With that Brewer was excused.

The next witness called was Det. Sandra Osborne. She is a computer examiner for the OCSO. She's finishing up her 21st year there. She held many positions from patrol to sex crimes over the years.

She studied and went through a lengthy certification process to become a computer examiner. She has testified in Orlando County Courts.

Without objection, she was accepted as an expert in computer forensic analysis.

Regarding the case, she received Casey Anthony's cell phone, which was identified and entered into evidence.

Det. Osborne used Cellbrite to retrieve some of the data stored on the phone. It could not retrieve all the data from the phone.

The original purpose of taking the phone was to find references to Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez.

There was a brief discussion of Sim cards and Det. Osborne checked her records. The Nokia phone had a Sim card. The Sim card had the same information as the phone. She did not notice any data related to Zenaida, but she gave the information to the detectives to use.

Det. Osborne also received two computers. Charity Beasley gave her the phone as well as the Compaq laptop computer to find information about Zenaida. Awilda McBryde gave her the desk top computer, a Hewlett-Packard. She also received a Polaroid digital camera and Nikon Cool Pix camera as well.

She used Encase to examine the Nikon Cool Pix camera files. She located video files of Caylee Anthony as well. The video files were generated June 15, 2008. She reviewed the video and it was the one of Caylee at the nursing home.

She was able to learn that information from material embedded in the file. She was able to establish that the time settings on the camera were about two minutes off from the clock in her office.

Ms. Burdick went on to discuss the laptop.

Det. Osborne testified that she couldn't tell if the laptop was powered on or turned off. If a computer is powered on, she will note programs running, etc. and remove the batteries.

She explained that they remove the hard drive from the machine to examine it.

The desktop was then described. The hard drive had 160 gigabytes and was powered down when she received it. Det. Osborne used Encase with the computer. It is an industry standard as a reliable tool. It can examine every bit on a computer hard drive, whether the user can see it or not.

To protect the original evidence, the HP hard drive, she attached it to a write-blocker to prevent her computer from writing to it. Then, she can read the drive from a copy. The original hard drive was replaced in the machine and returned it to the family.

Osborne stated that shedoes not do extensive studies on cell phones, but she does evaluate the evidence extracted from the hard drive.

At that time, Judge Perry called for the morning recess.

When court reconvened, Linda Burdick continued with her examination of Dep. Osborne.

There was more technical information about Encase and what she can see of the material on the hard drive.

I am not a computer person when it comes to the technology. I'm most interested in the information she found! As time goes by, I want to see a huge chart with the computer usage, cell phone usage and location which will pinpoint what Casey Anthony was up to on any of the given days involved in this case.

Of note, there were two browsers on the computer, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. (I know from JWG at the Hinky Meter that this is very important to the case!) There was a third browser, Safari, usually used on Apple products.

There were two user accounts that were created by the owners. One was "Owner" and one was "Casey."

Her first task was to locate information about Zenaida and any idea where Caylee was. She went through the user folders and active files. She looked at the internet history and temporary internet files. She also looked for phone numbers and other such data to get to "know the user" and what they do on the computer.

She located references to Zenaida Gonzales in the temporary internet files. She found them on July 16th, 2008.

There were several internet searches for Zenaida Gonzalez on the morning of July 16th. The user was looking for one between the ages of 22 to 29 at various sites. There were no earlier searches for Zenaida.

As for the general usage of the computer, she found it appeared to be running most of the time. There were few documents, wills, and some personal paperwork. There was a lot of Windows Internet History. One file was 4 1/2 years old!

One of the accounts, the "owner" account was password protected. The password was rico23 which was originally set earlier in the year 2008, probably March.

There was another program, Net Analysis, that she used with some of the temporary internet files. She was able to tell which user account did the searches. The same was true of the history.

When the files were deleted, that information as to which user account was being used for a search was no longer available.

Osborne was asked to do searches for chloroform (with various spellings). She did them in August. She was able to confirm the keywords by the unallocated space on the hard drive. She stated she could view part or all of the internet record. They got a complete internet history from Mozilla Firefox. She alerted her sergeant to the situation, and he created the report from there.

Ms. Burdick then moved on to the computer owned by Ricardo Morales. She also removed the computer and copied the hard drive.

The picture of Caylee and Casey in his bedroom was on the computer. Oops! All of a sudden, she decided she wasn't sure if she recognized the computer and she didn't print out the records!

I thought I heard Jose Baez say something and Perry called a 5 minute recess. Meanwhile, the camera picked that time to Casey busy working on her defense!

Before the jury was brought back, Baez reminded th
e judge about the jury instruction about the bruise.

I would think it would not be necessary to read it EVERY time the jury sees the picture!

Judge Perry couldn't find the written paper, so he asked the court stenographer to do a keyword search on the word "bruise"!

The jury was returned to enjoy more computer forensic testimony!

Judge Perry "winged" the jury instruction about the bruise.

Linda Burdick was able to locate the information about the photo. It was among a collection of photos from the Globe that Yuri Melich gave her on a thumb drive. She found the same pictures on Ricardo’s computer.

The photo was taken was January 28, 2008. She got this information because when the file was downloaded from the camera, the date and other information was stored with the image.

The picture of Caylee and Casey with a guitar in her hand was shown next.

Baez had some sort of objection and there was a bench conference.

When they returned, the objection was overruled and Dep. Osborne was allowed to testify that the photograph was taken was... (objection, goes to camera, not computer). Baez had indicated that since Osborne had not examined Ricardo’s camera, she could not say that the date on the camera which was imported to the computer was accurate.

Linda Burdick went back through the whole series of questions about the camera, the information imbedded, etc., all to get the date of that picture!

The camera was set to March 19, 2008 when the second picture was taken.

Ms. Burdick sat down and Jose Baez got up to cross the witness.

Baez said he wanted to clarify the user profiles on the computer. He asked if more than two people could use the computer. Yes, they could.

He then said that the password only means something only if a person hasn't told anyone or if the computer is turned off. Osborne agreed.

Baez asked if the password would be "alive" if the computer was not used for a while. Someone could use the password protected file, leave the computer running and someone else could come in and use it. She said she couldn't say if their might be an automatic reset after a period of time.

We can see where this is going!

Baez asked if the computer had the correct time. Osborne indicated that it did. He then asked if every computer and every camera she inspects has the correct time. Osborne responded that they didn't.

Baez then moved on to Ricardo Morales computer. He asked about a search for chloroform. Osborne said she found no searches or web pages for cholorform on the computer. Baez showed her the chloroform picture.

Baez had a hard time getting the whole picture up, even with the help of Ms. Burdick.

Osborne said she'd seen the photograph, but that she had not seen it on his Myspace page.

Baez asked her to describe the contents of the picture and read the caption. After she did so, he wanted her to explain how that picture would not show up on her inspection.

Osborne explained that there are multiple ways to post on MySpace and it could have been posted from another computer, phone, etc. It also could have been deleted and overwritten.

Baez was finished with his witness and Ms. Burdick did a brief re-direct. She asked if the pixels of the picture would be visible in her inspection. Osborne said she couldn’t Therefore, words embedded in a picture would not appear in a keyword search. Other than the picture, which was not on his computer, there were no searches for chloroform.

Baez did re-cross.

Osborne again said there were no searches or pictures related to chloroform.

The witness was excused and we could all go to lunch!

Court resumed at 1:30 and the jury returned without any discussion among the attorneys and Judge Perry.

Next on the witness stand was Sgt.Kevin Stenger. He is the Sergeant of Computer Crimes of Orange County. He's been in the Computer Crimes Unit since 2002 when the unit was formed. Ms. Burdick proceeded to have him list his credentials, which were substantial.

He was accepted as a computer forensics expert.

As Sandra Osborne's superior, he assisted her work for peer review. In addition, he assisted her with whatever she needed.

He took an active roll in preserving the chloroform keyword search.

The search was in unallocated space. He recognized that it was in a Mozilla Firefox history file which had been deleted. If not automatically deleted, a user can use a tool in the browser to manually delete the file. That browser does not store the user name of the person doing the searches. Internet Explorer would save it even in the deleted files.

Stenger was able to manually extract the information and use internet history tools to read the records stored in the file.

He used Encase to extract the file. He had a problem with the times where half the records were in daylight savings, the others weren't. He used a program called Cacheback to correct the problem.

The internet history began March 4, 2008 and ended March 21, 2008. He created two reports, one for each date, March 17 and March 21. Those dates contained information about searches for chloroform.

The report from March 17 and March 21 were introduced into evidence.

With that, Linda Burdick finished her direct examination.

Jose Baez did a cross-examination.

Jose Baez questioned Stenger about the searches. Stenger could not say when the files were deleted or by whom.

Baez also informed Stenger that these searches were done 3 months before Caylee Anthony died.

Baez went to the times of the searches and tried to get Stenger to say that on one occasion, the view of a chloroform page was only 7 seconds. He pointed out that was not the case here. Also, they were unable to reconstruct the page the person was viewing.

Sorry folks, I couldn't follow all the details.

One detail I heard was that after one of the searches the user went to MySpace.

With that, Ms. Burdick did re-direct.

She asked why he couldn't reconstruct the page because... and I lost him right there! Let it be enough, he couldn't reconstruct the page.

There was one question on re-cross by Baez.

He asked if one could find the author. The search was specific for chloroform. He said he couldn't.

The witness was excused.

The next witness was John Dennis Bradley from Cacheback. He owns a software development company. He is a former Canadian policeman. He spent 10 years in uniform and was transferred to the Computer Crime Unit. In 2000, he was transferrd to Major Crimes. He was then promoted to Sergeant and went back to uniform.

From there, he went to work for the Scotia Bank. He quit banking and went to work in the computer field.

The witness was accepted as an expert witness in forensic computer analysis.

He developed the Cacheback program. In giving his teaching experience, it is obvious this man is a Super-Techie!

He met Sgt. Stenger at a conference. Stenger asked him to look at a file he had. Stenger was having problems with the Firefox file and the word chloroform. Bradley copied the contents of the thumb drive and worked on his laptop.

Kudos to Ms. Burdick, she has this material down pat. For me, I can't figure out all the technical factors, let alone type them!

Apparently the file was 3.5 or so megabytes, and it was amazing that it was recoverable and not written over. However, there was no way to tell when it was deleted. That older version of Firefox, meant that the history had to be deleted manually.

The Cacheback program produced reports which were admitted into evidence and published to the jury.

The person who did these searches did Google searches. Other than that, without being able to read the report, I couldn’t quite follow what all this meant.

In the testimony about the report from March 17th, I did figure out that there was a search for chloroform!

Apparently, MySpace was included in there as well. There was then access to Photobucket, where the report showed activity there.

There was a Wikipedia search which led to other topics. It started with chloroform and went on to, alcohol, inhalation, death, self defense, hand-to-hand combat, head injuries, middle meningeal artery, ruptured spleen, chest trauma, internal bleeding, and hypovolemia

This list did not appear in the testimony easily, Ms. Burdick and Mr. Bradley had to go through every painful line and eliminate adware, cookies, and all sorts of internet junk that inhabits the contemporary computer. Back a few years, we at T&T covered the Mark Jensen trial. One key nail in his life sentence were the computer forensics. Covering that was a piece of cake, especially for one such as I who can use a computer but relies on my resident IT person for the fine points of keeping one in order!

This tedious, but necessary testimony was ended for a blessed 15 minute break.

After the break, Ms. Burdick and Mr. Bradley continued to wend their way through the March 17 records. Here’s a lit of what they found of significance.

Facebook - from a link, user activity

Too many auto generated things really interfere!

MySpace Profile

Adware go away!

MySpace/View Album

Facebook/Profile

View More Pics/MySpace

Facebook

We were then on to the March 21, 2008 report.

3:21:08 Beginning Time

Google Search - chloroform
Google Search: How to make chlorAform
How to make chloroform (same search)
Google Search result for chloroform
Instructables.com Making weapons out of household products
Google Search: Neck breaking
MySpace
MySpace: Read message

After the last two, it was determined that the remainder of the report only contained Facebook activity. (It filled quite a few pages from what I could see.)

Mr. Bradley was finished and Jose Baez began his cross.

(This was going to be painful.)

Baez said he wanted to put what Mr. Bradley into context. He went back to the fact that he was approached by Mr. Stenger because there was a bug in his program.

Bradley said that this case was extraordinary (due to the use of an outmoded Firefox 2 browser)..

Baez told Bradley that he worked all night to fix the problem and put something together for him.

Bradley said he spent a few nights and his spare time between giving classes at the conference solving the problem.

Baez said he was then hired for the case.

Bradley asked Baez to clarify "hiring" because he volunteered to come down as a witness. He was not concerned about remuneration, but he may be paid something.

Baez then asked if it was the advertising that concerned him.

He's done it again! I think the jury was getting the idea that Jose Baez thinks that the only reason people get involved in high profile cases is to get the same fame and fortune he desires. It didn’t work with Gerardo Bloise and the TV crew, it didn’t work with Dr. Arpad Vass, and it certainly didn’t work with Mr. Bradley!

When Baez asked if he advertised using the case, Bradley said that there was a link to an article about how his program might be used which Sgt. Stenger sent to him a few months earlier.

Bradley also explained that the problem was that Firefox 2 was outdated and his software didn't deal with it (a rather time-consuming professional courtesy mixed with probably a curious mind).

Bradley said he had not sent out any promotional material involving the case. He only linked to the article because Sgt. Stenger sent it out to them.

Baez then went on to ask a series of questions as to how long the person visiting the sites had stayed on them before moving on to something else. The range went from a second or two to a couple of minutes.

Bradley then explained that his role was to decode the data. Based on the clues left behind, they would have to do experiments to find out why such visits to a site showed up (hinting the visit could have possibly been longer).

After going over the rambling Wikipedia search mentioned earlier, Bradley said that, after looking at the site, many words are underscored as a link and the user clicked on them in rapid succession.

Having been to that site a couple of times, I know it is almost impossible NOT to click on one of those links!

Baez went through all the searches and regularly asked Mr. Bradley if he was aware that a particular topic had nothing to do with the case.

At this point, I developed a headache and I don't know why Baez kept asking this super-geek if the investigators told him that thus and such was not related to the case!

At a certain point, Baez asked Mr. Bradley if this was more surfing the net than reading. Bradley pointed out that what goes on on the screen was different than what goes on behind the scene.

Baez then continued with his line-by-line questioning and highlighting the time intervals.

Baez then said that Mr. Bradley came on the case, it was in 2009. Baez asked him if it would have been better evidence to show the page, and not the link. He aslo asked him questions about the content of the pages, which had nothing to do with Bradley’s role in the case.

He also asked if a computer examiner could ever tell if the person had read the page. He also asked if the URLs and their topics was not telling anything about the user.

Mr. Bradley pointed out that it could, and could set a context. In addition, he pointed out that he only decoded the pages and was not asked to do any continued review. He only decoded the two dates mentioned.

Finally, Linda Burdick made an objection dealing with the fact that Bradley's job was only to deal with the decoding of the Firefox Browser 2, and not the content of the web pages as they appeared in 2008, 18 months before he was asked to help.

Baez then yielded the floor to Ms. Burdick.

She did a re-direct which straightened out some of the issues Baez had raised. One of them was that web pages change frequently and Bradley did not know when the crime occurred, just that it was a while ago.

One of the best questions she asked was that Mr. Bradley would have no knowledge if some of the pages had been printed out, he could not know if the contents of a web page were the same after 18 months (when he started working on decoding the files).

She also brought out that one site dealing with chloroform had been visited 84 times!

On that high note, Ms. Burdick completed her re-direct.

Jose Baez then decided to re-cross the witness.

Baez then handed the witness a report someone else had written. Linda Burdick objected that he could not testify to someone else's report. Judge Perry sustained the objection and Baez took the report back from the witness and read from it that the site which he had said had been visited 84 times, had only been visited once.

Ms. Burdick objected. Baez pointed out that it was a Cacheback report. Judge Perry called them to the bench.

When the bench conference broke up, Judge Perry dismissed the jury for the day.

Then, everybody sat down again, including Mr. Bradley.

Everyone was excused until the morning, including Mr. Bradley.

Judge Perry told Bradley that "they" would explain it to him.

They lawyers approved the movies X-Men and Hangover Two for the jury’s viewing pleasure.

Perry said court was in recess, but didn't mention the time! Let's hope it's 9 AM tomorrow morning!

It’s obvious that something interesting happened at that bench conference. My main thoughts are about the mysterious report Baez tendered to the witness. First, Baez had asked Bradley if it was his report. Bradley looked at it and said it wasn’t his. If that’s the case, whose report is it? How could Baez hand it to Bradley and, once he knew it wasn’t the witness’ report, then start to quote from it.

It was not identified by the witness as his product. It wasn’t entered into evidence. Where did it come from and why was Linda Drane Burdick smiling after court was ended for the day? Why was Casey apparently angry with her defense team?

Tune in tomorrow to find out!