From the Dateline story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10644398/(This is horrifying - warning for triggers do not read if you can't handle)
Prosecutors pointed out she’d lied to police dozens of times before her facade finally crumbled six hours after Jacob was reported missing— and she made a surprising proposal, to this detective.
(court transcript) Det. Bjornson: She then told me, or asked me, if I could find her a cigarette.
Prosecution attorney: What’d you tell her?
Bjornson: I stated I would try. And she said if I could find her one, she would help me.
Detectives testified it was shortly after Heidi Anfinson had gotten a cigarette, about 10:30 that night, that she finally led police to Saylorville lake.
In these waters, 16-miles from the Anfinson home, lay the object of their search.
Lt. Dawson: She pointed out to them an area where she said she’d put Jacob.
And what investigators found left even hardened veteran detectives, shaken.
Harvey: I went over and observed the baby. It appeared to me it was in one foot of water. It was laying on its back.
Lt. Dawson: There was no signs of life. There was no reason for us to move it.
Had Heidi Anfinson put her own son in a car, driven him to a lake almost 30 minutes away, placed baby Jacob underwater, and simply left him there?
Sarcone: There’s no question in my mind that that baby was submerged in that water, he was still alive, and that he was drowned in that lake.
There seemed to be every indication that Heidi Anfinson loved her child. Now, she was accused of purposely drowning him. What could have happened? Was there some medical explanation? Some post-partum depression that contributed to her actions? The defense would get its turn later. For now, the prosecution would move to tell the jury what really happened that day. Heidi Anfinson’s version, and then theirs.
Det. Bjornson: She stated that it was an accident.
The detective who gave Heidi the cigarette that helped crack the case interviewed her for a third time that day, after she led them to the lake.
She claimed it all started as she was giving Jacob a bath in an infant tub, in the kitchen sink, when the phone rang.
(Police tape) Heidi Anfinson: I took it out on the deck, which was asinine, because I wanted to smoke and I’d been trying not to smoke around the baby. And I had taken the sponge thing out because I just thought he’d fit in there better. And when I came back his face was turned to the side and he was blue. And I just, I freaked.
Bjornson: Was he underwater or above water when you found him?
Heidi Anfinson: His face was underwater. He had slipped down.
Police: What do you give me the approximate time from when you left Jacob until the time you came back to him and found him underwater?
Heidi Anfinson: Seven, ten minutes…
Sarcone: To leave a child for a telephone call, when you have a handheld phone, you can stay right there. But to go out and smoke cigarettes, that’s just reprehensible as far as I’m concerned.
But prosecutors then pointed out that Heidi told a different version of the story to her mother— not mentioning the cigarettes or phone call, but saying a dizzy spell caused her to leave the baby unattended.
And then, Heidi told her sister-in-law something else— that she may have just dozed off.
Sarcone: The story kept evolving and changing, and our argument was the truth never changes.
Hoda Kotb, Dateline correspondent: What happened that day?
Sarcone: There’s a million twisted reasons why someone kills someone. I think probably something happened there that maybe he was fussy and she may very well have just lost some control. If it was purely accidental, she knew how to call 911 and she didn’t do it.
In fact, the state pointed out that the week before Jacob’s death, his parents did call 911 in a panic, when the baby stopped breathing.
And the prosecutor went even further, implying that a lesion later found on Jacob’s brain led him to believe that the baby stopped breathing because maybe, just maybe, his own mother had tried to kill him that day too.
Sarcone: I think something happened happened with that child where he had a lack of oxygen.
Kotb: So you’re saying at six days, the baby suddenly somehow isn’t breathing, and then winds up dead at 15 days, all spells abuse?
Sarcone: I think you can connect those things together.
After implying Heidi was abusing her son, showing that the Anfinsons had called 911 before, and listing Heidi’s repeated lies, prosecutors then moved to the heart of their case.
Investigators testified there wasn’t nearly enough water in the infant tub for baby Jacob to have drowned as his mother claimed. One of America’s most prominent pathologists agreed.
(court transcript) Dr. Michael Baden, pathologist: In my opinion in 40 years, I’ve never seen a baby drown in that type of device.
Dr. Michael Baden has done 20,000 autopsies. He’s been called on to help investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.
He said it was clear to him that baby Jacob did not drown in the tub.
Why? An autopsy revealed microscopic plants from the lake deep in Jacob’s lungs. That meant, the doctor testified, that the baby was still breathing when his mother placed him in the lake.
It meant, he said, that Jacob’s death was a homicide.
And to back up that theory that Jacob died in the lake, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, Doctor Francis Garrity, then took the stand.
The medical examiner said he found evidence that the baby’s heart was still beating in the lake. The autopsy showed bacteria from the lake in the baby’s heart blood; bacteria that were not in the tap water at the Anfinson home.
But the medical examiner wasn’t done. And what he was about to reveal only added to the prosecution case for murder: It turns out that on top of Jacob’s body, police found 2 large rocks, weighing more than 25 pounds. Rocks anchored the body in the water, put there with such force, the medical examiner said, that they caused a wound on the baby’s spine.
And there was something else. The baby was also tested for drugs and alcohol. There was, the ME explained, alcohol in the baby’s bloodstream. So much alcohol, he said, that it contributed to the baby’s death.
And the ME went on to say that the baby suffered some injuries caused by wildlife and some from another source: Gashes on the baby’s head and neck, apparently made by a sharp instrument.
Dr. Francis Garrity, medical examiner: It could be a piece of broken glass, it could be a kitchen utensil – anything that has the ability to cleanly incise the skin such as I see here.
Sarcone: Those all add up to me, to clearly demonstrate malice.
Kotb: Do you think she’s that malicious?
Sarcone: There’s no question in my mind.
With that, the prosecution wrapped up its case, claiming Heidi Anfinson was an unemotional, cold-blooded killer, who slashed her baby with a sharp instrument, and told lie after lie to cover up her actions.
Now, it was up to the defense: How could it prove to the jury that Heidi was no killer?
