Throughout the course of this case, I have noticed many assigning geek-like computer skills to Ms. Casey Anthony – our nationally recognized high-school drop out, party girl, and all-around bustdown. She surfed the web through anonymous IP portals, used a sophisticated software program called “timer55″ to hide her internet surfing tracks, and remembered to carefully delete her web browser history every single day. This chick could make a computer sing.
I don’t mean to ridicule anyone for sleuthing the above, but if you have tried to do any of what I mentioned on a consistent basis you’d realize how much attention to detail is actually required. It’s not that it is hard – its that is requires focus. And for Casey Anthony, we are talking months of focus. But Casey is not about focus at all. Proof points include her evolving stories around she and Amy getting a place together, her whereabouts with Caylee (as told to Cindy), the changing stories about Zenaida, and the damned smell in the car. Just a few examples.
George and Cindy seemed to think Casey possessed some degree of computer skill simply because she had a password-protected account “owner” and they weren’t skilled enough to do the same with their account “casey”. “owner” was probably something Lee set up back in the day when they first got the computer, and he showed Casey the basic skills to manage user accounts as needed. That level of computer administration is really simplistic. Show me once and I remember for life.
Casey is pretty simple. And in my opinion, the simplest explanations for Casey are often the best. In this case the simplest explanation is that Casey did not, as a practice, cover her tracks on the computer. She used a password-protected account and her parents, even if they knew the password, were not themselves savvy enough to track her activity. Why bother?
This begs the question then as to how the infamous Google searches for chloroform, One Tree Hill, and shovel ended up in the deleted file space graveyard: unallocated space. The answer has always been that Casey was good at covering her tracks. Or maybe Lee did it. Or Cindy. Or George.
Recent discovery contained a report from computer forensic expert John Bradley. Something that really caught my eye was this passage (page 12478):
During the time of my stay in Orlando, I had occasions to examine the history in detail and develop a solution within CacheBack to decipher this history file. What was very unusual about this file was the fact that the file size was extraordinarily large. Moreover, it was VERY interesting that a history file such as this was able to be recovered “intact” from Unallocated Space. This suggests that the file itself (that is, the file that once contained the recovered history content) was, or may have been, deleted very close to the time of the date that the host computer system was seized by investigators.
The computer forensic report released in September 2008 included an interesting item as well: the last login for the desktop “owner” account was 07/16/08 04:57:56 AM. This was Casey’s password-protected account. The one she Googled from. The one she browsed from using Firefox.
These two pieces of forensic information point to a very last-minute attempt to cover some tracks, but by whom?
We know Lee was having a devil of a time that morning and prior evening getting the passwords from Casey for her online accounts, such as Myspace and Photobucket. Forget about trying for the “owner” account on the home computer – if it even occurred to him (he may have assumed Casey used the “casey” account!). I think it is pretty unlikely that Lee logged into the account at that time, and even less likely that Cindy or George did as well. I just can’t see Casey coughing up the account’s password any more readily than she did for he online accounts.
No, in my opinion, the discovery points to it being a last-minute cover up on Casey’s part. But did she really have time?
At 0:4:11 detective Yuri Melich began his very first interview with Casey. That interview ended at 04:30. Det. Melich’s intent was to take Casey to Sawgrass following the interview, which he eventually did do that morning. It is unknown at what time they left Hopespring for the nearby Sawgrass complex. Could it have been another 30 minutes before they left?
We don’t have detailed information available as to when Yuri and Casey left Hopespring. However, according to Cindy and George’s depositions they returned at roughly 7 AM. I have a hard time imagining Yuri spent much more than an hour or hour and a half driving Casey around to be shown the various residences of her fantasy nanny and friend, Zenaida. Thus, I think it is not only possible, but likely, Yuri remained in the home another 30 minutes to an hour, gathering additional information from the other members of the family as well as various police on the scene. Do you have some pictures of Caylee we can have? Have you ever met Zenaida? Have you ever spoken to her on the phone? Do you have an emergency contact number for her? Possibly, during this time, George first made his offer to the police to do whatever is necessary and take whatever is necessary to find his grand-daughter, including the computer.
Casey – not yet a named suspect or person of interest – was more or less free to wander the house. Somehow she came up with an excuse to hop onto the computer, and I think it was to be “helpful” and get some pictures of Caylee to give the police. At 04:41 AM there was a brief blip of activity from the “casey” account – the U3 flash screen from a SanDisk thumb drive registered. What better way to quickly turn over photos of Caylee as part of the missing persons investigation?
Given Casey now had an excuse for being seen at the computer, she managed to find a quiet moment just before 5 AM to log into her “owner” account and quickly erase one or more items she knew might be incriminating, including the Firefox browser history.
Five minutes or so after the login someone surfed to the ATT wireless website and attempted to login to a wireless account. This was done from the “casey” account, so whatever tracks she tried to cover on the “owner” account happened fast and furious. Access to the wireless account appears to have been a success, but I cannot be certain based on the limited information. I think it is a safe bet it was Casey, and she may have been trying to be “helpful” again, this time by locating a number for Zenaida. Perhaps she thought she could erase her phone records, but the fact this was done from the “casey” account indicates she was not being terribly secretive about it, so I think it was the “helpful” Casey in action.
Another 15 minutes after the ATT activity there was a stretch of activity involving searches for “zenaida” across various websites. We now know this was George, based on his July 24, 2008 interview with OCSO. It’s probably safe to assume Yuri and Casey had left the home by then.
But not before Casey tried to cover her tracks. Computer savvy, indeed.
JWG
Related posts:
- The Anthony Encycliepedia: Casey talks about Imaginanny
- 200,031 Reasons I believe Casey is Guilty
- Convicted Felon Casey Anthony…
- The Anthony Encycliepedia: Dominic Casey and the psychics
- Cash for Casey
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