Report: Body Was Decomposing in Trunk of Car Driven by Missing Tot's Mom
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Results taken from air samples reveal that a body was decomposing in the trunk of a car driven by the mother of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony, a local TV station reported.
Detectives with cadaver dogs said they detected the smell of human decomposition coming from the trunk of the Pontiac Casey Anthony was driving when her little girl disappeared more than two months ago.
The University of Tennessee "Body Farm" conducted the tests on the car's air samples Aug. 10, and on Wednesday their conclusion was released: a human corpse had been decomposing there, according to WESH-2 TV.
Initially, Anthony's mother Cindy Anthony made a frantic 911 call to report that her daughter's car smelled like a dead body. She later retracted that story and said she believed the scent was that of rotting pizza.
Anthony, 22, remains a person of interest in her tiny daughter's disappearance on or around June 16. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of child neglect and lying to investigators and is out on house arrest on $500,000 bond. She was released Aug. 21 after a month-long stint in the Orange County Jail.
Caylee was two years old when she vanished; her third birthday was Aug. 9.
The test results are reportedly the first scientific evidence that there was a corpse in Anthony's vehicle.
Also Wednesday, news emerged that a policeman was fired for allegedly lying about a rendezvous he had with Anthony.
Anthony Rusciano, a deputy with the Orange County Sheriff's Office, was terminated on the grounds that he wasn't truthful about meeting Anthony at a party, detectives wrote in a memo obtained by MyFOXOrlando.com.
"When investigators contacted Deputy Rusciano by telephone, Deputy Rusciano admitted that he had met the individual for a very brief moment at a party they both attended," wrote Chief Frank Fabrizio in an interoffice memo on Aug. 20.
Some media outlets reported that the officer and Anthony dated — but Rusciano said his involvement with the young mother ended after that one night out.
"Deputy Rusciano denied ever having any further contact with that person," Fabrizio wrote.
Orange County authorities said Rusciano gave answers that were inaccurate and incomplete when questioned about communication he'd had with Anthony that came to light after a search of her computer, MyFOXOrlando.com reported.
When confronted, he confessed that he didn't tell detectives the truth and he was fired Aug. 22. He joined the force in February.
"Lying to investigators during the course of any investigation is unacceptable and reason for termination," wrote Fabrizio.
On Tuesday, 400 pages of case documents released by police revealed that Anthony wanted to give Caylee up for adoption before she was born, but her mother Cindy Anthony convinced her not to.
Among other new details disclosed in the documents:
• Anthony wrote a poem on July 7, eight days before she reported her daughter missing: "What is given, Can be taken away. Everyone lies. Everyone dies."
• Cindy Anthony described her daughter Casey as a sociopath.
• An unclothed doll belonging to the tot and a washed dinnerware knife were among the items found in Anthony's Pontiac Sunfire, which had scratches on its trunk.
• A man identified as an ex-fiancé of Anthony's told detectives that she deleted hundreds of photographs of herself with Caylee from her Web pages on various social networking sites.
Don't take my advice, I'm just a poor Pastor with a Zecco account
