Remember that scene from ET, where Elliot is in biology class preparing to dissect a frog, and he sets his frog free and convinces his whole class to do the same?  If not, I’ve pasted it below.  Well, take notice to how they’re “killing” their specimens?  They drop a cotton ball soaked in chloroform inside a glass jar in order to anesthetize the animal to the point that it stops breathing and dies.  Or at least the frogs are anesthetized enough that the students can humanely kill them with their little scalpels.

Now, could this be what was done to poor Caylee Anthony?  Caylee is the Florida girl who went “missing” about 2 months before her third birthday during the summer of 2008.  The case made national news because her mother, Casey Anthony, failed to report the girl missing for an entire month.  Well, the body of Caylee was found about six months later by a meter reader who stumbled upon it near the Anthony house.  Casey maintains her innocence despite her confusing stories and the evidence that is being stacked against her.

Most recently, the investigation has turned up traces of chloroform in the trunk of Casey’s car, where a bloody imprint of a child was found.  Casey’s computer is full of internet searches for chloroform recipes, death, and neck breaking.  The body of the child was found to have duct tape over the mouth.  Did Casey force her daughter to inhale chloroform to anesthetize her and kill her?  I guess we’ll have to stay tuned to find out.  Unfortunately, the chemical remains of Caylee’s body were already decomposed, so no toxicologic analysis could be performed.

Chloroform is an old anesthetic, no longer in clinical use for humans.  It is a liquid that vaporizes to a gas at room temperature, so it is easily inhaled.  It is highly lipid soluble, which means that it’s clinical effect is very fast.  Patients/animals can be anesthetized very quickly.  It is slightly sweet smelling as well.  I’m not sure how one would make it, not having done the internet search myself, but it would be easy to get.  When I was an undergraduate student I used chloroform on a daily basis to extract lipids from various tissues for a research project.  I went to the laboratory supply store and purchased it very easily.  Could Casey have had access to a lab?  She doesn’t give the impression of being capable of performing chemical reactions in her home.

Tags: anesthetic deaths, chloroform

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 3:55 pm and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.