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Published January 25, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," July 11, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Tonight: Not guilty. Now, how did that happen? For the first time, you will find out. You will hear from the foreperson. Casey Anthony Juror Number 11 goes "On the Record." As foreperson, he had the job to run the deliberations and then sign the verdict form, the form that read "not guilty" to the murder of little Caylee.
Now, we know a lot of you are stunned and many outraged by the verdict. You want to know how and why 12 citizens said not guilty. And tonight and only right here, you get that inside information. Here's the foreperson.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VAN SUSTEREN: Nice to have you join us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Greta. It's an honor to be here.
VAN SUSTEREN: You are Number 11, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number 11.
VAN SUSTEREN: And the foreperson?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was the foreperson.
VAN SUSTEREN: You've asked us not to use your name.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I greatly appreciate that.
VAN SUSTEREN: So you get to the first day of the trial and opening statements. After you heard the opening statement of the prosecution, before the defense opening statement, what did you think?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll tell you what, it really threw me for -- it was shocking. It was very shocking. Because again, I really didn't follow much of the case after the first couple of weeks. And with what the state was presenting, I thought that was pretty standard. You know, in the opening remarks, they did show some pictures that were -- you know, that will stay with you for life. And we realized just how intense and how serious this case is.
When -- you know, when the defense got up, then that's when they started throwing out things that we did not know. And that's where it really kind of hit us. It was something that we had to kind of sit back and let soak in and just see where he went with from there. So it was shocking. It was very eye-opening. You know, it's a situation -- that's a time I will never forget.
VAN SUSTEREN: You know, the people who watched it on television, or even in the courtroom, we can divert our eyes from the pictures of the remains, or whatever it is, I mean, the really horrible -- you're the fact- finder. You can't. So you actually -- you all had to actually look at the really...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had to look at it.
VAN SUSTEREN: ... the worst pictures.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we did. We had to look at it. It was right there in front of us. And we had to, you know, make sure that we take -- you know, take the notes that we needed to take on those pictures. And it was tough. You know, and I told the judge this. I've never been -- I've never once made a decision in my life where I wanted to get in a profession where I'd have to see those types of things. And we were forced to. And it was tough.
VAN SUSTEREN: In terms of the picture of the remains, one of the issues was the duct tape.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
VAN SUSTEREN: Did you actually see a picture of the remains on the ground and placement of the duct tape? I mean, is that something that you saw?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We did. Yes, we saw that numerous times. That was shown us to, the duct tape, the -- you know, the skull -- that was something that was a major focus at times. And you know, we were able to see, you know, all of that.
VAN SUSTEREN: Was the duct tape on the skull or was it adjacent to the skull?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was -- as far as on the skull, there was one area where it was connected, and that dealt with more the hair. It was not on actually a part of the bone. But it was right there in the vicinity of the nasal cavity and where the mouth would be.
VAN SUSTEREN: So one interpretation would be that it -- that the duct tape was over the mouth and nose.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
VAN SUSTEREN: From what you looked -- I mean, that's one interpretation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's one interpretation, yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: How was that explained to you in terms of -- you know, I mean, some people have thought and -- that the prosecution obviously thought that that showed an effort to suffocate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. Right. And that's what the prosecution was explaining to us, that that was -- the purpose of the duct tape was for suffocation. And they explained to us, you know, the vicinity of where that duct tape was, the age of the duct tape. The one thing that I never really bought was the duct tape was placed at a later time because you could look at that duct tape and you could tell that it's been aged.
But as far as where the duct tape was at the initial point and to where the duct tape was when the body was found, that was argued and that's where a lot of the discrepancy was. You know, it was attached to a part of the hair, which makes you think that it was placed on there. But that was the only -- placed on there before the body was placed where it was. I don't like using the word dumped. But it was something that, you know, we had to really take a long, hard look at because it was there for some time. And we needed to -- you know, where it was actually from the get-go, we don't know.
VAN SUSTEREN: When you say the hair, when I hear that (INAUDIBLE) piece of duct tape up here on the head is hair, down here -- I realize it's a smaller -- you know, remains ... that is down here. Was it more on the hair region or more on the nose and mouth region of what you could -- the best you could see, when they found the skull?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. When they found the skull, there was the longer part of the hair that came down towards the ear. Now, the hair formed what's called a hair mat. And that's where the hair then -- as the decay was taking place, the hair then fell to form sort of a -- like a horseshoe ring around the head. So...
VAN SUSTEREN: You mean like looped around the head?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, looped a little bit around and underneath it, but more back around the base of the skull and up towards the sides of the jaw.
VAN SUSTEREN: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So sort of like this horseshoe-type of look to it. The duct tape was where and what part of the head and where -- what part of the hair that it was attached to would have been very difficult to see just because of all of the hair being there on the ground. There was only a few strands of hair that really covered the skull, not to go in depth in what the visual of the skull was. So I couldn't exactly tell you where that tape was on -- in the vicinity of hair, when the hair was actually to the - - to the skull.
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, so was the duct tape on the hair? And if the hair moved, the duct tape moved?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could have.
VAN SUSTEREN: So it wasn't, like -- I realize (INAUDIBLE) the thinking by the prosecution is it was on the flesh, and when the flesh recedes and decomposes, that then that moves the tape.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, the tape was a little -- the tape was more attached to the side. As it got up towards the mouth, it became more detached. And that's where, you know, a lot of the discrepancy could have been.
But you know, it was a situation really where, with decomp and with time spent, with time gone by, we knew the vicinity of where that tape was, but we just didn't know, you know, exactly where. But it was -- you know, we knew the vicinity of where that tape was in relation to the skull.
VAN SUSTEREN: Were you convinced where that tape came from, I mean, the source of the tape?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: Where did the tape come from?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tape came from wherever they store the tape at the Anthony house.
VAN SUSTEREN: So it was Anthony tape. You don't have any doubt about that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. It was a very distinctive type of tape. The tape was shown numerous times, the same type of tape, which was made in -- in Avon, Ohio, which had its mark on it. It was not your standard silver duct tape that did not have any markings on. This did -- this did have a mark on it, and it was on throughout the tape consistently. Every couple of inches, there was that mark.
I've never seen that tape before, and I've bought duct tape numerous times. I know that that same tape was spotted in a video at one of the centers that they opened up for the missing Caylee. It was noted to be on numerous signs to be posted for -- that had pictures of Caylee. It was also placed on the gas can, which was, you know, something that was attributed to the house there.
VAN SUSTEREN: It's amazing how you become an expert in things like -- even now, you're an expert in tape. I mean, you...
(CROSSTALK)
VAN SUSTEREN: ... day in and day out, things that you never ordinarily in your career might become so familiar with.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. Right. Exactly. You never know. I mean, those things -- some things that we would never want to learn, we had to learn. Some things we knew a little bit about, you know, that was only refined.
VAN SUSTEREN: How -- how do you -- or what did you believe to be or conclude was how the remains or the body got from wherever the child died to the -- where the remains were found, a couple blocks away?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I mean, we know that it was -- I mean, obviously, the body was -- it was dumped there. It was left there. As far as -- there's a lot of gray area, a lot of gray area that goes from on that June 15th to when the body was discovered.
And there's a lot of that, you know -- there's just a lot of speculation as to how it got there. Who took it there? And just a lot of unanswered questions in that regard. So I can't really comment on that. I don't know how it got there, how Caylee got there. I don't -- I can't tell you how or who, but ultimately, the body ended up there.
VAN SUSTEREN: Did you -- were you ever convinced how she died?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. Never.
VAN SUSTEREN: So what's your most likely, which is -- which is -- apart from -- beyond a reasonable doubt is a very different standard than what's most likely or what you think or what you guess or anything. Where do you fall in the spectrum?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, as far as -- again, this is all -- this is all speculation. There's a number of ways that Caylee could have died. You know, there is the possibility, there was the evidence of chloroform, which we can touch on later. There was a pool right there just a -- feet away, you know, a couple feet away from the doors that, you know, has had pictures of her being able to open, ladders that she potentially could really have climbed up herself.
And I know that that is a major way that a lot of children die down here in Florida. But we don't know if that's the cause or if that was the cause of death. We don't know the cause of death, and that was one of the major issues that we had and one of the major issues that we had to address. We don't know the cause of death. Everything was speculation.
VAN SUSTEREN: You mentioned the chloroform. How did that figure into this and into your thinking?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the chloroform -- it really -- as far as the development of the chloroform, the Internet search on the chloroform, you know, really, there was the MySpace or FaceBook posting of the "Win her over with chloroform" picture. And then there was the actual Google search the next day that was done from the computer, not the laptop, but from the actual desktop computer in the Anthony home.
You can speculate, you know, hey, here it is, the boyfriend posts this, "Win her over with chloroform." The next day, I want to know what chloroform is. You can speculate into that. There was no documentation on buying anything to make chloroform. The one Internet search that she made from Google was a three-minute Internet search. And then it subsided from there.
And you know, if there was possible more traces of it in greater amounts, more of a way of how it can be concocted, how it could be purchased, whatever may be -- none of that was ever there. So we were very limited in what we had when it came to chloroform.
We were told, and they did, you know, as far as how -- and what chloroform is detected in other products at the levels -- you know, chloroform is detectable in other products, as well. But there just was not enough, there really was not enough for us to bring chloroform into the mix.
We know there were smaller levels of it in the trunk. We know there was a Google search on it. And that's what we had. It wasn't detected anywhere else. It was not on the steering wheel. It wasn't on the handle of the door, going into the car. And even if there was, there still is a question of who and where.
VAN SUSTEREN: Did you think that Cindy Anthony was telling the truth when she said that she had done the searches for chloroform?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, there's a lot of speculation into that. There's a lot that went into her and looking for the chlorophyll because she was worried about her dogs. You know, I don't know. With Cindy, it wasn't as obvious to me, the lying. I mean, she was -- she was in a lot of pain. She was in a lot of stress. You know, allegedly, she was on a lot of medication. And she's been questioned a number of different times.
But you know, as far as her going back and forth with that, you know, that was something that you always kind of kept in the back of your mind. You know, as far as her lying about it, well, there's, you know, people that may look into that and people -- but that was not something that we really considered much when we were going into deliberation.
VAN SUSTEREN: When Cindy testified, she said something to the effect -- and I don't know the exact words, but that the car smelled of death or something. And I guess the prosecution's theory is that the child decomposed in that car, in part.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
VAN SUSTEREN: Did you credit what she said? Did you believe that that body -- that the child decomposed in the trunk?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, you know, there was the smell of decomposition that some police officers said they noticed and others did not. Here's the problem that I have with the decomposition, and this could -- this may lead into other questions that you may have for me.
The day that everything went down in July, the car was there. People were not going in and out of the front door. They were going in and out of the garage door, and the car was right there. And there was nobody that detected the sign of decomp in that regard. If it was something that was that pungent, something that was that obvious, with the law officers that were going in and back -- in and forth -- in and out of the garage at that state, the father said that he smelled it earlier, but didn't bring it up at that point.
I didn't -- the smell of the decomp was argued. And some people smelled it, some people did not smell it. So as far as whether or not the body did actually decomp in that trunk, you know, there is evidence that there could have been the decomp in there. But again, you know, we were looking more towards the cause and the who and the how. You know, with that car, there were a number of people that had a number of different -- that could have had access to that car.
It wasn't just one key. And you know, you don't know how the body was actually or who put the body in the trunk or how long the body was in the trunk. Was there the smell of decomp in there? Yes, there was the smell of decomp from some people that would speculate that the body was put in the trunk. But then there were others that did not smell it.
VAN SUSTEREN: So I think Lee did and Cindy did, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, and George did initially.
VAN SUSTEREN: And George -- who you would think would have a motive to try to protect their daughter or sister, but who actually went the other way because that was something that would most likely hurt her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I didn't understand his -- when you go back to the tow yard, I don't understand his rationale and what he did...
VAN SUSTEREN: Who's his?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George.
VAN SUSTEREN: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, here it is, you haven't seen two members of your family in a very long time. You make the comment that it smells -- there's a smell of decomp. And you being a law enforcement officer, you would think that this is something that you might think could have been one of the two, you know, that -- causing that smell of decomp.
But then he goes and gets in the car and drives away and he -- you know, he makes the comment that, you know, we need to get this car home, we need to get this -- this car stinks, you know, him not calling Casey at that point in time to see if, you know, she's all right or what's going on here. There's -- it raises a lot of questions. It really does.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAN SUSTEREN: There's much more of our interview with Juror Number 11. The jury foreman tells you what the jury thought of George Anthony and whether they believed George and Lee sexually molested Casey. More with juror number 11, the foreperson, next.
Also, Casey's defense attorney, Cheney Mason, calls it a total failure. What's he talking about? We ask him. Defense attorney J. Cheney Mason goes "On the Record" in just a few minutes. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAN SUSTEREN: Here's the foreperson, Juror Number 11.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VAN SUSTEREN: Jose Baez's opening statement said that there was child molestation in the family, George on Casey and also Lee.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
VAN SUSTEREN: Did you believe that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
VAN SUSTEREN: You didn't believe it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was not something -- well, there was no evidence to back that, so I could not really take it into consideration. You know, him just saying that this is what happened, I wasn't going to use that to formulate my opinion of George in any way. I was going to let what he did up on the stand dictate how I felt about him. And so no, that was not something that I really took into consideration at all. And many of us did not.
VAN SUSTEREN: Did some people think that he had done it and concluded that during their deliberations and some say that they believed that he had?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. It was -- that not really much of a -- that was not a discussion of ours when we got into deliberation as far as the sexual abuse. What was, was George Anthony's actions and his demeanor and, you know, the way that he presented some things up there on the stand.
VAN SUSTEREN: And what about his actions and his demeanor? What was the -- what did you think and what did others think?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, that's a good question because, you know, I was right there. You know, I was 10 feet from him. And you know, I'm used to reading -- because of my profession, I'm used to reading people. And I really thought that George had a very selective memory in the whole regard. I thought that George at times could remember something to be as vivid as it just happened the day before. The way that he described a number of things that happened on June 15th would be one example. He could tell you everything that happened. He could tell you everything that everybody was wearing. He could tell you the show that he was watching, the topic that they were on.
But then you go and he's questioned on a gas can. And I don't know if you remember the whole situation with the can and how long it took for that full scenario to play out. He couldn't remember which can or -- and we had to go back and forth. I know him and the defense went back and forth as to which picture he was shown when he was really only shown one. And he went back and forth on that. You know, he had very selective memory for me.
And that in itself was something that I always kept in the back of my mind. For every time he got up there, I was just kind of on guard for that. You know, when it came to -- and this may be snowballing into a whole 'nother question that you may have for me but you know, with George, with the can, the selective memory, the way that he handled the tow yard incident, the -- you know, River Cruz, the lady that he could have had an extramarital affair with -- it raised questions. It really did.
VAN SUSTEREN: Raised questions about his character, or whether he had some involvement in the death of his granddaughter?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really both for me, character as far as the fact that he could be possibly lying. Also, the fact that his involvement was going to be in question because he was there on the 15th. He was the -- you know, he can tell you exactly when Casey and Caylee left. How do we know that that is -- that that is right? So it questioned a lot for us. It really questioned a lot.
VAN SUSTEREN: To the point where he would let his daughter face the possibility of execution?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I really can't answer that question, but it was -- you know, it was something that we felt, you know, we need to take a close look at with George.
VAN SUSTEREN: Did anybody think George was a believable, out of the 12 you? Anyone thing George was believable or credible, or were otherwise likewise suspicious of him?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a suspicion of him. That as -- that was a part of our conversation that we had of the -- well, what I'd call the round robin topics that we had when we were doing deliberation. That was brought up.
VAN SUSTEREN: Suspicious that he was involved in covering up the death, suspicious involved with the -- an accidental death, or suspicious he was a murder?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All three.
VAN SUSTEREN: Really, that he was a murderer?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All three. We don't know. We don't know. The suspicions were raised.
VAN SUSTEREN: In the deliberation room?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We talked about it in deliberation. Yes, I can go a little more in depth into what we did in the deliberation room since I was the one who had to orchestrate the whole situation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAN SUSTEREN: Tuesday night, Juror Number 11, the foreperson, will take you inside that jury deliberation room. You will hear for the first time what went on behind closed doors, right here "On the Record" at 10:00 PM Eastern.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/exclusive-casey-anthony-jury-foreman-on-forensic-evidence-and-suspicions-of-george-anthony