ORLANDO, Fla. – Duct tape found both on Caylee Anthony's body and a gas can found in the Anthony family home is a rare, industrial fire-resistant tape, according to a court filing Thursday by the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office.
And prosecutors said they intend to use the evidence at trial, where they will claim Casey Anthony murdered her daughter and dumped the body -- the rare duct tape still attached to her skull nearly six months later.
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Investigators believe both the gas can and the body were at one time in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car.
The industrial fire-resistant tape, marketed as "Fire Guard DUCK," was manufactured by Henkel Consumer Adhesives, of Avon, Ohio.
Until it recently sold its duct tape division, Henkel was by far the largest manufacturer of duct tape in the nation, according to its Web site.
And, when Local 6 first revealed the same brand tape was found on Caylee?s body and in the Anthony home, her defense team dismissed that, noting how widely Henkel tape is sold.
But assistant state Attorney Jeff Ashton contacted the Henkel company, now known as ShurTech Brands, and discovered the tape found with the body and on the gas can was actually an extremely rare type of industrial fire resistant tape.
Only 134,719 rolls were sold in 2006 and 2007 in North America, according to the records submitted to the court Thursday.
That constitutes less than 0.2 percent of all duct tape sales during those years, based on more than $100 million in duct tape sales reported by the industry in 2002, the last year for which Local 6 was able to obtain data.
The odds of two pieces of randomly discovered duct tape manufactured in 2006 and 2007 being of that same, rare type approach 250,000 to 1. The odds of such a coincidence are much higher, if you factor in all the duct tape in existence, regardless of when it was manufactured, and determine how much duct tape sales have grown since 2002.
One distinction that links both samples of tape, from the body and the gas can, is an imprint on the tape, which the records indicate was added to only those Fire Guard DUCK rolls sold after 2005: Henkel Consumer Adhesives Inc., Avon, OH 44011, MAX. TEMP. 200 [degree character] F.
That specific tape is so rare, it is not even available at Home Depot, but was sold almost entirely at Lowe?s during those years, according to the records.
Local 6 could not find a roll Thursday at a Lowe's in Altamonte Springs.
The FBI Laboratory in Quantico, VA, has already examined the tape samples found with the body and on the gas can and reported in December that they "are comparable to one another in all physical attributes and in the chemical composition of their backing and adhesive components. Therefore, they originated from the same source roll of tape or from rolls of tape manufactured in the same manner."