Witnesses Testify Casey Anthony’s Car Reeked of a Dead Corpse

Casey Anthony’s car smelled like a human corpse, said her father George Anthony who took the witness stand today for the third time in the course of his daughter’s Florida murder trial.

“Please God, don’t let this be my Casey or my Caylee,” George Anthony said softly to himself as he opened the stench-filled trunk of his daughter’s abandoned Pontiac Sunfire.

It’s a smell Anthony had become familiar with in his former career as a detective and one he said could never forget. Anthony testified today that he was overcome with relief when he opened the trunk to find neither his daughter’s nor his granddaughter’s remains inside.

Anthony’s impressions of the odor were corroborated by witness, Simon Burch, a manager from Johnson’s Wrecking who helped George and Cindy Anthony retrieve the car from the company’s tow yard after Caylee Anthony went missing and after the vehicle had been towed from the parking lot of an Orlando Amscot.

Burch testified that over the course of his career he had become familiar with the smell of human decomposition and could distinguish it from the smell of household trash. Burch said he had towed hundreds of garbage trucks and on numerous occasions had picked up vehicles in which a dead body had been left inside.

The smell was “eye opening” explained Burch, recalling how he and George Anthony opened the car’s trunk standing side-by-side. Inside, the two found a white garbage bag containing what Burch described as typical household trash, along with a pizza box, flies and maggots. Burch removed the bag and tossed it over a fence towards the company’s dumpster.

But the smell of human decay, Burch said, did not follow the discarded trash. Instead, Anthony’s vehicle continued to smell so repugnant that George Anthony claimed he could drive the car home only with all of the windows down.

Once home with the car, Anthony said he noticed a subtle stain in the trunk’s spare tire area. He testified the stain was circular, measuring about the size of a basket ball.

On cross examination the defense attacked Anthony, claiming that the only reason he drove his daughter’s vehicle home from the tow yard was so that he could distance himself from potential evidence. In opening statements, the defense claimed Caylee accidentally drowned in the family’s backyard swimming pool while George Anthony was home and that he had been involved in covering up the death.

“The reason you drove that car home and didn’t call police and went to work is because you knew Caylee was dead already,” Jose Baez alleged.

“No. I did not,” Anthony said, visibly choked up over the allegation.

Casey Anthony’s trial continues tomorrow beginning at 9:00am EST.