Bantling's shed

Bantling's shed is the outbuilding behind William Rupert Bantling's house that prosecutors identified as the place where Anna Prado was killed. Its importance lies in the gap between the scene the state described and the limited physical evidence the defense said could connect the shed to her death.

Setting and Alleged Use

The shed appears in the case as a working space associated with Bantling's taxidermy. The state alleged that Anna Prado was killed there, and relied on blood evidence from the shed to support that account. Its ordinary use as a place for Bantling's craft also supplied the defense with an alternative explanation for at least some of the physical traces found there.

Forensic Evidence and Dispute

At trial, the defense argued that the scalpel found in the shed was a taxidermy tool, not a murder weapon, and that microscopic blood traces on it were animal rather than human. It also challenged the interpretation of luminol results that had indicated blood throughout the shed: although the state alleged that Anna's blood had been sprayed there, the defense emphasized that only three microscopic stains in the shed matched her DNA.

The shed thus became a contested measure of the case's evidentiary strength. The prosecution treated it as the setting of Anna's killing, while the defense drew attention to the small number of matching traces and the shed's connection to Bantling's work. The dispute made the distinction between an alleged crime scene and what forensic evidence could establish at that scene central to the trial.