So, we’ve discussed the Gatorade bottle and syringe. I think the claim it’s a “smoking gun” is a fair measure of hyperbole. As stated in my write up on the Entomology results, I think the bugs are far more problematic for Casey than the syringe. That and the duct tape, of course. But another sticky area for Casey lies in the chemical analysis results for the trunk liner. That’s where REAL chloroform returns have to be explained. Let’s start on page 645 of the mega-document, where we have a summary of chemical analysis for the various trunk liner pieces tested: Q22-Q25 and Q44-Q45. All showed signs of chloroform in varying amounts and, unlike the syringe, all were reportable. Q25 is the only piece that is logged as “trace” and it’s taken from the right side of the trunk – interestingly, the opposite side of the trunk from where the Q12.1 “death hair” was collected. All of the rest are truly worth discussing.
There’s probably some things we ought to discuss about chloroform before we go any further. Chloroform is a VOC (volatile organic compound). The main thing you need to understand about a VOC is that it has a high vapor pressure. When a liquid has a high vapor pressure it simply means it wants to evaporate easier than a liquid with a low vapor pressure. Think about the “vapor pressure” being inside the liquid and trying to break free, and it being greater than the air pressure on the top of the liquid trying to keep it in, and you’ll have it straight. So a VOC, because of it’s high vapor pressure, will begin to evaporate at a much lower temperature than a liquid with a lower vapor pressure. In fact, liquid chloroform starts evaporating as soon as you take the top off the container. BUT, and this is important, once chloroform evaporates from a liquid to a gas (vapor) it has a density 4 times greater than air. So it sinks. That’s important in looking at the trunk liner. If chloroform was spilled in the trunk, or if it was even evaporated into the trunk, it would sink to the bottom and reside at, in, near the liner.
The next thing you need to know is that the number one “killer” of chloroform is UV light…sunlight. That is why chloroform is typically stored in dark bottles, to prevent UV degradation. So if you have vaporized chloroform out in the sunlight, it won’t live long. When chloroform breaks down in sunlight it creates phosgene, another not so pleasant gas. It was used as a chemical agent in World War I. The important point here is that chloroform, in a protected area (away from sunlight), can hang around as a vapor due to the fact that the vapor is heavier than air and will sink and kind of “hang out” at the lowest level. Inside Casey’s trunk it was protected from UV light, and could continue to reside there, near the liner, in vapor form.
It’s probably worth noting here before we go on with the chloroform issue that every single liner sample (6 in total) was noted to have a “putrefactive odor” when it was pulled from it’s sample container. They all smelled like death – or rotting pizza, depending on what your last name is.
Q22 is the mother-lode for chloroform. It is a piece of the spare tire cover where we have read accounts of the “basketball sized” stain from George, and possibly (though we can’t confirm) a child-shaped outline by at least one law enforcement agent. I’m not even going to venture a guess at what the order of magnitude of concentration is on this test because I’ll tell you right now that’s above my pay grade. You have a couple of snippets of carpet in a 20 mL vial (there’s actually two sets of tests ran, one with 20 mL vial and one with 10 mL vial), and I’m not about to take that one on. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of chloroform here. While I won’t guess, I would be willing to bet around a thousand times more than in the Gatorade bottle (in the ppm range, but possibly even higher for at the liner itself)…at trial we’ll see if I have to pay up. The below graph is from the 20 mL test.
This last one shows the stacked results from all the liner samples.
Valhall.
Related posts:
- Caylee Anthony case: Chloroform in
- Caylee Anthony case: Chloroform and GC/MS
- Caylee Anthony case: Defense moves to have trunk smell excluded
- Decomposition Gases in Casey’s Trunk
- Broward county man arrested after killing dog with chloroform
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