The smell bothers a lot of people, but I just don't know what to believe about it.

Not everyone at the scene smelled it. There was no note of it in the initial reports. It wasn't until a year later that anyone mentioned anything about a smell.

Honestly from the way they've run the investigation, it wouldn't surprised me one bit if they were told to play up the "smell of death" thing on the stand to distract from their ultra crap police work.