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ORLANDO, Fla. — A crucial piece of evidence in the Casey Anthony case may have been overlooked, evidence the lead prosecutor didn't know about until long after Anthony was acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter.
On June 16, 2008, the critical day everyone involved with this case agrees Caylee Anthony died, Orange County sheriff's officials now confirm someone in the Anthony home that afternoon did a computer search for the term "foolproof suffocation."
But suffocation was misspelled with an "i." Investigators admit they never found that potentially incriminating evidence.
Richard Hornsby, an analyst on the Anthony case, said, "The words to describe hearing there was a search that was not identified by law enforcement that implicates Casey Anthony stuns me, that's the best way to describe it."
This summer in his book, defense attorney Jose Baez first revealed their computer expert found the Anthony computer suffocation search in a mirror image of the hard drive the state provided them.
Someone in the Anthony home that afternoon did a computer search for the term "foolproof suffocation."
A sheriff's official now confirms their experts failed to find in the same hard drive what the defense expert had discovered.
"Everybody got so involved in the different scientific issues that they just didn't focus on the basics," Hornsby said. "The basics would have gotten them a lot farther."
Lead Prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick confirms she asked the sheriff's office to investigate Baez' claims and discovered they were true.
Before or during the trial, Burdick confirms she never asked them to search for the term suffocation specifically, but "I asked for a full history of 6-16-2008 before trial," she said.
Did the sheriff's experts miss a potential trial-changing clue?
"We're looking to see how we can do things better in the future," said Cap. Angelo Nieves. "There are a number of things we can take away from the episode."
Casey Anthony was acquitted in July 2011 for the 2008 murder of her daughter.
