For more than seven years Annie’s parents have fought ferociously for a fuller explanation, and now they have a powerful ally: Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley on Monday released letters he sent last week to the Baltimore police, the FBI and Bayer asking some of the many unanswered questions surrounding Annie’s death. Grassley’s letters in another Fairfax County case, the 2013 police shooting of John Geer, led to a judge’s order that forced police to finally provide information to Geer’s family in January 2015 about who shot Geer and why.

The discovery of Annie’s body near a dumpster at the Perkins Home apartments in Baltimore, at 3 a.m. on Nov. 2, 2008, was the shocking end to a life lived almost totally in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County, where Annie was a well-liked junior at West Potomac High School. The Baltimore police said there were no obvious signs of trauma, though Annie’s parents Daniel McCann and Mary Jane Malinchak-McCann have since learned otherwise. With no “signs of foul play,” the Maryland chief medical examiner turned to toxicology and ruled that Annie had ingested a fatal amount of lidocaine, one of the active ingredients in Bactine. She had a bottle to spray on her recently pierced ears, her parents said.

“Annie drank Bactine,” Baltimore homicide Maj. Terrence McLarney told The Post in 2009. “It’s just a poison. People drink poison. It’s true we can’t find another one with Bactine. When they decide to kill themselves, they use what is there. The point is, she poisoned herself.”

Renowned pathologist Michael Baden told The Post that Annie would have had to drink five or six bottles of Bactine to ingest the amount of lidocaine found in her system. A Bayer Corp. representative told the family the same thing. Other experts have said even trying to drink Bactine is nearly impossible, and would leave burns or noticeable internal damage, which Annie didn’t have.

But there are countless other loose ends to Annie’s death. Four Baltimore youths were charged with stealing the McCanns’ car, but claimed they had found it with Annie already dead inside. A private investigator found two witnesses who clearly described a woman with Annie in a Baltimore pastry shop on Nov. 1, 2008, whom police have not been able to find, though Daniel McCann has provided them with numerous leads over the years.

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And then there is Annie’s body. Her fingers were heavily wrinkled, “like she had been in water,” said Diana Downey, manager of Demaine Funeral Home in Alexandria which received Annie’s body after the autopsy. “She was in a shower or bathtub to take away evidence.” The McCanns repeatedly requested the rape kit that had been done on their daughter at the autopsy, but the Baltimore Police have refused to provide it for more than seven years.

Last year, the McCanns purchased autopsy photos from the medical examiner which they hadn’t previously seen. There they saw what appears to be a cigarette burn above Annie’s left eye, described in the autopsy report as “an old abrasion.” Then on Annie’s lower leg, the McCanns spotted what appeared to be “a stylized capital letter ‘J’ on Annie’s left ankle,” they wrote in a recent online post about the case, “followed by a stylized banner, or another letter, perhaps a capital ‘D,’ distorted around the natural curve of Annie’s ankle. But there’s nothing natural about that ‘J’ or ‘JD.’ Anyone can plainly see — it’s man-made. Not livid and red. Clear and white. It looks like a tag or a pre-brand, commonly used by human traffickers.”

Encountering human traffickers had long been a theory, and fear, of the McCanns for how Annie might have met a sudden demise. But the Baltimore police have long treated the McCanns like just another family who won’t believe their child committed suicide. Every homicide detective has stories about family members who won’t accept the obvious, that their loved one killed themselves. One witness contacted by Baltimore police in 2013 was told, “The McCanns just won’t face facts, so I have to ask you a few questions,” Annie’s parents were informed. The McCanns would have accepted a suicide finding if the evidence pointed that way. Instead, the evidence, as well as Annie’s sudden flight from Fairfax with $1,000 and the family car, indicated something else.

The McCanns pleaded with Baltimore police and elected officials to review the case, and in 2013 new police commissioner Anthony Batts promised them a full re-investigation by the cold case squad. The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit was enlisted to examine the case as well. But the McCanns soon realized that none of the pertinent witnesses were being contacted and evidence was not only ignored, it was lost: Annie’s computer hard drive was lost, the McCanns were told, much as Annie’s heart and brain had somehow been lost previously by the state medical examiner.

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In October 2013, the FBI called the McCanns in to tell them they agreed with the finding of fatal overdose by Bactine. Then in late 2013 the McCanns were provided the Baltimore police investigative file. In one internal police email, a Baltimore official wrote, “It appears that everyone (at BAU Quantico) knows about the McCanns and aren’t thrilled about the thought of being involved in this case.” Shortly before the FBI’s meeting with the McCanns, a Baltimore official wrote, “The overall message from the FBI is they believe that maybe the investigative results are not being explained/communicated to the McCanns by the BPD in a way that they can accept/understand. This is what they (FBI BAU) agreed to do for us (BPD), which I accepted.”

Then last November, Downey from the funeral home wrote a long letter to Grassley. “Our staff at the funeral home always believed that Annie was raped (sodomized) and beaten,” Downey wrote, based on an examination of her body. The McCanns continued to request the rape kit from the police, and were denied.

Grassley’s letter to Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis asks how the police investigated and confirmed the science behind a Bactine-related overdose, whether the police gave Annie’s rape kit results to the FBI, and why the police have withheld the rape kit from the McCanns for seven years. The senator’s letter to the FBI, citing his committee’s oversight of the Justice Department, requests non-redacted copies of all records related to the FBI’s involvement in the case. Grassley asked Bayer for their findings on the lethality of lidocaine in Bactine and the company’s communications with Baltimore police.

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Baltimore police and the FBI both acknowledged receiving the Grassley letters Monday. The FBI declined to comment further. Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith said, “There’s no indication of any type of situation where the young lady was murdered. All the evidence pointed away from murder and any type of sexual assault. We got the letter and we will respond.”

Bayer spokesman Christopher Loder said in an e-mail that Bayer was preparing a full response to Grassley’s letter. “We have great sympathy for the McCann family, and we continue to take this matter very seriously,” Loder said. “Bayer cooperated fully with law enforcement authorities during the original investigation into this tragic death, and we are cooperating fully today. As clearly stated in its label, Bactine is for external use only and is not intended or indicated for ingestion.”

Taylor Foy, a spokesman for Grassley, said the McCanns had reached out to the senator last fall, and that Grassley “does a lot of reading of the news. If there’s something he can do to get some answers and maybe make a difference, he starts the process.” The Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight of the Justice Department enables the senator to inquire of federal cases, his letters noted. It was the Justice Department’s lack of movement in the Geer shooting which caused Grassley to write them in 2014, sparking a chain of events which led to the long-secret case being revealed.

A letter from Downey at Demaine Funeral Home, detailing the trauma she and others witnessed to Annie’s body, also played a part in Grassley’s letters, the senator wrote. Downey said she has been in touch with the McCanns throughout the last seven years. “I just want that family to have closure,” Downey said Monday.

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“I don’t know what to hope for,” said a still determined Daniel McCann Monday. “I hope that my daughter’s death is investigated with real vigor and real rigor. But seven years on, it’s going to be tough.” He said he thought the Baltimore police were capable of doing a full investigation, but “they’ve made a mockery of the investigation” so far. McCann said the FBI had dipped into the case but “never really investigated Annie’s death. They owe us an investigation, based on their pitiful performance to date. I’d like Annie’s cause of death to be properly identified, as opposed to ‘undetermined.’ I want an investigation into her murder.”

Grassley to Baltimore Police Department:

Grassley to Bayer:

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