Casey Anthony Trial Day 17: A missing heart shape on duct tape and corpse hair

Casey Anthony trial resumed on Monday with an FBI fingerprint expert testifying she found a heart shaped outline on the duct tape, which was the alleged weapon used to kill 2-year-old Caylee.

Elizabeth Fontaine, an FBI fingerprint expert, took the witness stand on Monday. She said she found a heart shaped outline on a piece of the duct tape that was hanging on Caylee's remains. She said she had examined the duct tape through a reflective ultraviolet imaging system that can highlight existing fingerprints.

“It was approximately the size of a dime,” she said?“If you were to wear a band-aid for an extended period of time you have that glue and debris outline,” she said. “Rather than a band-aid it is in the shape of a heart.”

Fontaine said she showed the heart outline to a supervisor, but when she prepared to photograph it, the heart shape mysteriously disappeared and no fingerprint was found.

Actully, after Caylee's remains were found on December 11, 2008 in the woods, the police found a sheet of heart-shaped stickers, whose size is similar with the heart shape Fontaine testified about on Monday. Some of the stickers were already missing at the time the police executed a search warrant at the Anthony home.

Beside Fontaine, an FBI hair analyst Stephen Shaw also took the witness stand on Monday. He testified that the strand of hair found in Casey's car is consistent with the hair left on Caylee's comb. According to Shaw, the hair found in the car showed post-mortem banding, which is a dark band of color near the root sometimes seen on hair from a corpse.

On Monday, Judge Belvin Perry adjourned the proceedings until Tuesday afternoon, because the next witness will be available then.

Casey Anthony's trial, which is expected to take 6-8 weeks before a verdict is reached, is on its home stretch. The jurors are expected to begin their deliberations as early as June 25 or June 27, a few weeks earlier than initially expected.

The prosecutors say Casey chloroformed Caylee and then put duct tape over her nose and mouth, suffocating the girl.

Casey's lawyers claim Caylee was not murdered. They say the toddler accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool and George, Casey's father, helped her keep the death a secret. George has denied the claim.

Caylee was last seen alive on June 16 and it was only on July 15 that she was reported missing to the police. Cindy had alerted the police by calling a 911 dispatcher and saying that she had smelled a dead body in the trunk of Casey's car that was spotted in an impound lot. The car was later towed by authorities for forensic analysis.

Initially, Casey told the police that a babysitter had abducted Caylee. Investigations showed Casey was lying as the babysitter Zanny was fictitious. Five months later, in December 2008, Caylee's decomposed skeletal remains were found in a wooded area near Casey's house by a meter reader who was relieving himself.

Casey has been charged with seven counts, including first degree murder, aggravated child abuse and misleading the police in the death of Caylee. If she is convicted of first degree, she could be sentenced to death by the seven-woman, five-man jury.