Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
The mystery surrounding the death of little Caylee Anthony gripped the nation. Was she the victim of her neglectful, party-girl mother Casey, or was a darker family secret to blame? The only thing more shocking than the testimony was the verdict itself.
more than a decade after the OJ simpson murder trial captivated people around the world another case made it’s way onto our TV screens
and another name became infamous,in 2008, a missing toddler from a quite Orlando suburb became the focus of international news,her mother ‘s name was casey anthony, and her trial for the little girl’s death would grip the nation …..
the anthony family was a really typical looking familyit was a cop,a nurse ,their two children and then the daughter had a baby.
non of that is out of the ordinary
at the center of this case,we had a beautiful little girl, and she was missing and it was a mystery
and we didn’t know why…
but what we did know was that mom was out parying,miss while the baby was missing.
July 15, 2008
casey anthony admits to her mother that caylee has been missing for 31 days…..
july 16,2008, casey anthony is arrested for child neglect provading fals statements to police and obstruction.
october 14, 2008 ,casey anthony is indictced on capital murder and other charges. she pleads not guilty.
April 13 ,2009 . prosecutors announce they will seek the death penalty.
anytime a young mom is charged with killing her children,it makes the headlines,because that is such an aberration ,it’s such a deviation from what young mothers are.
she did appear normal,she was about as abnormal as you can get, but people wanted her to show some emotion , she never did.
may 24,2011 , orange county courthouse orlando, florida
this is the case of the state of florida versus casey marie anthony however, it is time to tell the story of a little girl named caylee.
George anthony specifically recalls that at 12 :50 pm on june 16 th of 2008, george anthony kissed his grandaughter goodbye and never saw her again.
his daughter ,casey ,left the residence on hope spring drive with caylee marie anthony, she told her mother that she was ging to spend the night with a babysitter by the nameof sammy.
you will learn there is no sammy.
the body of caylee marie anthony had been wrapped in a winnie the pool blanket and thrown into a littered swamp, like she was just another piece of trash.
caylee’s death allowed casey anthony to live the good life at least for those 31 days.
everybody had convicted casey anthony in the court of public opinion long before she ever walked in that courtroom.
and so Jose baez and his group of attorneys had to undo that with these jurors,who a had all kind of heard about the case
the media latched onto this case
death penalty attorney ann finnell’s job was to save casey anthony from the death penalty if the case went south , then for whatever reason the jury came back that she was guilty of first degree murder.
her job was to try to save her life,she believed they could have mitigated the death penalty.
The defense for casey marie anthony.
count 1. first degree murder
count 2. aggravated child abuse.
count 3. aggravated manslaughter of child
count 4,5,6,7 providing false information to law enforcement officer
how in the world can a mother wait 31 days before ever reporting her child missing?it’s insane.it’s bizarre.well ,the answer is actually relatively simple,she never was missing.
caylee anthony died on june 16th ,2008, when she drowned in her family’s swimmingpool.
as soon as casey came around this corner and went back ,she saw george anthony holding caylee in his arms
she immediately grabbed caylee and began to cry.
her death was covered up.
this family must keep it’s secrets quiet and it all began when casey was 8 years old and her father came into her room and began to touch her inappropriately.
casey has a brother,when he was a teenager ,he attempted to also touch his sister.
casey was raised to lie.
that will help you understand why no one knew that her child was dead.
finding out all this dysfunction in this family, al this lies , all these secrets, all this backfbiting that was going on.
in this famiy before caylee even went missing and that casey was willing to at least accuse her father and her brother of molesting her so that she could get out of jail for killing the baby.
that’s not a normal family , that’s dysfuncution.
the prosecution questioned casey’s friends aboout her actions and demeanor during the 31 days that caylee was missing.
she always seemed like she was having a good time
no one saw her distraught or depressed or scared and she didnt tell anyone that her daughter was missing or kidnapped .
they were also asked if they asked casey where caylee was and the response was that she was at disney world with the nanny ,that she spending the weekend at the beach with the nanny
casey never told her friend that caylee was missing and looking for her or that she needed any help and she never cried ,never act scared.
during this night she never told that her child was missing
once the jury was there. they would glare at her ,they didn’t like her they would shake their heads when they’d see pictures of her dancing on tables and everything,nobody knows where she is.
but all we know is that mom,casey anthony was out partying when she should have been looking for her daughter.
as details of the anthony case unfolded each day ,public interest intensified,along with protests and anger towards casey
and even her family…
on many days , tension outside the courthouse was matched by the friction inside the courtroom.
the prosecution and the defense of the casey anthony case couldn’t stand each other soometimes,nobody could see it but those of them in the gallery.
watching them backbite each other watching them snip at each other, watching them roll their eyes while somebody on their own team was up there cross examining a witness.
the level of tension in this one here was probably a 10,the judge’s major concern was 1 ,courtroom control.
the judge made it loud and clear that he was not gonna tolerate anyone braking any rules be it the prosecution ,the defense , or the public.
never before seen so many people so invested in the outcome of a criminal case, everybody had adopted caylee anthony as their own and they wanted to avenge her death in some way.
casey’s statement to the police
on monday , june 9th , 2008,between 9 am and 1 pm i casey anthony , took my daughter caylee marie anthony , to her nanny’s apartment.
zenadia hernadez hyphen gonzalez has watched her for the past year and a half to two years.
however , after reaching the apartment, i realized that neither zenaida,caylee,or either of her two roomates were home.
apartment manager amanda macklin researched the prior occupants of that apartment and it was not zenaida Gonzalez who occupied it.
it’s very simple .she wanted to party, she had looked at different ways to knock the child out and maybe she’d done it before successfullly that Xanny the Nanny reference.
like Xanax for the baby ,that’s really the keeper of the child.
it would have been very hard for casey anthony to take the stand because casey anthony had lied so many times so what would she do under cross examination?
the defense team knew that casey couldn’t take the stand.
the women on the tape was someone who was completely in charge,she would be demanding , she would speak up,she would challenge them.
they had to to something to counter all the video that were seeing in court of her yelling at her parents and swearing at her parents.
at the beginning of the trial she was a little bit more defiant she was outraged that she was on trial for this.
and at s0me point the courthouse started seeing casey anthony wearing blouses that came up to her neck,to look as innocent as possible.
they even lowered her seat,so she looked smaller than everybody else on the defense table.
because what they were trying to do was show, this is a girl who could never kill anybody.
as the search efforts for caylee anthony stretched into 5 months,the news spread like wildfire that human remains had been discovered not far from the anthony home.
the discovery comes a week after a child’s skull was found in a nearby wooded area blocks away from where the 2 year old lived with her mother and grandparents.
they found duct tape and they actually did a graphic of the four parts of the skull and put it back together for the jury so they could see the duct tape around the child’s face.
it is a red flag that when a child is not reported immediately to authorities, that something medical examiner look for for foul play .
besides the delay ,besides the being founf in a field,decomposed,would be the duct tape.
somewhere located on on the lower half of this face,there is no chuild that should have duct tape on it’s face when it dies.
the medical examiner put ” homicide of undertermined means”
while the prosecution maintained that casey suffocated caylee usingduct tape, the defense argued that caylee’s death was an accident.
they presented a theory that had surfaced nearly 2 year earlier.
this is the proof ,that she was big enough and strong enough to open the door.
when the defense gave their opening statement and said :
caylee anthony was found face down in the pool”.
what the prosecution should have done at that point was to say:
when you find your baby face down in the pool, you call the police, you can call an ambulance,because you don’t know if she’s dead or not”
and if you decide then to put duct tape around her and wrap her body in a trash bag and throw it in the wood,that is aggravated child abuse.
that’s a 15 year charge.
they wanted a first degree charge so much they didn’t bother to explain it’s child abuse.
you started off with pointing the finger at george , the father,you start questioning his credibility, his believability,so you would discount his particular testimony and what they did is what they created a ball of confusion.
george anthony was asked if he was home the day caylee died ,his answer was no.
he was also asked if he dispose of the body of his granddaughter and the answer was no.
casey is staying with her boyfrien tony, and sadly ,caylee is in all likelihood, in the trunk.
forensic science took center stage at the anthony trial ,over several weeks , 37 expert witnesses took the stand.
but would any one of them sway the jury?
most of the forensic science in the anthony case focused on caylee’s remains , and the trunk of casey’s car.
you had a death scene,caylee probably perished,it was the trunk of that car , and that’s why she’d been in the car, and that’s why she lied so much . that’s why she waited so long.
and the fact that she waited so long in saying anything meant that child was so decomposed , the didn’t know the cause of death.
that trunk smelled like a dead body.
the trunk of my daughter’s car smelled like human decomposition .” – george anthony
he was a cop, he knows what a dead body smells like.
casey’s mother was a nurse, she knows what a dead body smells like.
in the significance of the evidence,such as the smell of death,what that really meant,the fact that you had decaying hair in the trunk of the car, the defense wanted to call some of it voodoo science.
the judge call it cuttin’ edge science, that basically had support in the literature and a scientific background.
the thougt was that perhaps casey had used chloroform just to put her to sleep,so she could go out.
whatever it’s true or not that wasdone from time to time.
and mabybe in earlier years,when people didn’t understand how dangerous it was and that she accidentally killed her.
they late into the trial got into some of the internet searches that were done , and then they tried to attribute them to casey anthony
she had researched chloroform.
in this case with the chloroform keyword search hit , they were able to recover a complete internet historyfrom mozilla firefox.
the prosecution said that casey anthony used chloroform to kill her child
did casey ever buy those ingredients?
do you have any proof that she did?
they never saw that,so that’s a big piece of the puzzle missing.
juror’s don’t know anything,you are painting a picture on a canvas, everything that you want them to see,you gotta paint it in that picture.
the defense,not only did that ,but they did something thatmost people really didn’t notice they were doing.
they were throwin’ out reasonable doubt in every corner that they could.
at week number 4 in the casey anthony trial ,tempers flared as the defense doubled down on the strategy they had floated in opening statements.
destroy the credibility of george anthony.
casey’s car was in orlando,casey’s purse was on the front seat
and caylee’s baby doll ,her favorite doll was in the car seat ,like it was sitting where caylee would have sat.
cindy anthony was a compelling witness, there were times when she burst into tears on the stand,she was doubled over inagony as she’s listening to the 911 calls, the jury,their heart went out to her.
when you look at the dynamics of the testimony of george and cindy anthony, you really look at the ebb and flow of that particular trial.
here you have these loving grandparents,who would move heaven and earth for their granddaughter, but also you have them in their role of being the parents of the person who’s accused of murdering this child.
you got cindy faced with this proposition.her testimony not only could lead her daughter bein’ found guilty of murder in the first degree,but it could also lead to the imposition of the ultimate sanction of death.
defense calls George anthony.
the defense didn’t try to throw george anthony under the buss,the defense threw him under the bus ,backed up the bus, ran over him again ,backedhim up again and ran over him again.
they crucified him in court.
the jury not necessarly believed what they were saying but george started to
show this defiant side of him.
george anthony is now a cop with a chip onh is shoulder testifying and he looked like
‘ yeah, he probably could’ve done something wrong.’
which came directly from him being accused of something that he says he didn’t do .
there was a insinuation here that perhaps george had somehow been responsible in some way for the death of caylee.
and tht casey’s reluctance to turn on her father had something to do with the fact that he hadbeen abusing her.
you don’t talk about a fact if you know that there is not a way to prove it, and generally ,the only way to prove something is through testimony of an individual .
death penalty attorney ann finnell don’t believe that jose or cheney was intended on calling casey as a witness.
so it was unclear to her how they were going to prove up those accusations.
the defense did a really good job of the congusing the issues maybe it was george anthony, maybe it was somebody else ,maybe it was the meter reader.
and by the time 7 weeks worth of trial,everybody looked guilty.
the prosecutors set for themselves avery tough bar in seeking death.
every piece of evidence is weighed under the microscope by the jurors if there’s any flaw or any missing link no matter how apparently insignificant it may be,it’s not insignificant to death panelty jury.
after 5 weeks of testimony in the anthony trial ,the 7 women and 5 men on thejury prepared for closing arguments.
but millions of people around the world were preparing too.
they remained fixed on the case and hopful that justice for caylee was just around the corner.
june 16, 2011 orange conty courthouse florida vs. anthony closing argument begin.
the state.
when yhou have a child,that child becomes your life!thiscase is about the clash between that responsibility and the life that casey anthony wanted to have.she took her life , and she put her in the trunk and forgot about her
she disposed of her body in a swamp.
it’s a trip down a rabbit hole into a bizarre world where men who love teir granddaughters,find them drowned and do nothing ,this is the world that the defense invites you to occupy. casey anthony is guilty of murder in the first degree.
the defense
it is extremely reasonable that she could’ve dorwned in the pool and that’s where the state fails ,they must rebut each and every reasonable hypothesis of innocence.
they cannot rebut this,they’re hopin’g they throw enough against the walland see what sticks
right down to their cause of death, one week it was chloroform ,today it’s duct tape.i ‘m not proud of the way casey behaved i don’t think anybody here can justify her actions but they do not constitute murder.
the defendant is not required to present evidence or prove anyhing, never forget no matter what the issue is,they have all of the burden , and there is none over here!
the judge’s job is to give the standard jury instruction ,is the prosecution or the defense,to request a special instruction.
one , would a special jury instruction indicating that proving how she died was not an element of the crime to be proven.
that may have made a tremendous difference,the judge had already prepared that instruction ,but when he got no request for that ,he didn’t think it would come form the defense.
he figured it would come from the state but they never asked.
they needed an instruction on how they could convinct on a lesser charger because casey was looking at murder one
but she was also looking at basically negligent, treatment of a child , super easy to prove but they didn’t give that.
july 5 , 2011 , thetrial had lasted 6 weeks, the jury reached a verdict in less than 11 hours.
it was totally quiet in the courtroom and the jury started coming in there was this tension in the room,it was so quiet in that courtroom that you could hear a pin drop.
exept you could hear the helicopters from the local news stations circling around overhead.
the jury actually read the verdict twice to make sure that the judge’s eyes were not playing tricks on him .
so when the jury said not guilty, you could hear 25 floors below the crowd outside , you could hear them gasp.
justice for caylee! justice for caylee!
then each count was being read, and she’s being found not guilty.
and watching casey , she’s standing there , she’s sort of breathing heavily and as each verdict is being read , youcan see her shoulders are getting a little less tense.
you can see that jose’s shoulders are getting a little less tense.
and you can see the prosecution getting more and more tense and more and more angry.
and the cops who investigated the case were sitting 2 rows behind and one of them walked out and said to the other..
that was some bullshit “
..because they were furious.
one of the jurors indicated that the reason she found,the defendant not guilty was because the state could not prove how the child died.
it was a travesty,like the prosecution hadn’t adequately explained circumstantial evidence.
because this was a circumstantial evidence case.
it wasn’t a suprised. the suprised was at the total acquittal , as the prosecutors they shoud’ve put everyone on alert, and be very careful before you recommend a prosecution on a death penalty.
had they charged casey anthony with manslaughter or second -degree murder ,ultimately the case may have resulted in another manner.
casey anthony is sentenced to 4 years in prison for lying to the police
Judge perry orders sentences to run consecutive with credit for time served.
casey anthony is released from jail at 12:10 am on july 17,2011
casey anthony beat the system, she sat there trying to look like a choir girl the whole time, and ringing her hands and everything else.
she lied to everybody , people hated her.people still hate her.
there’s not but 2 people that you know what happened one is dead, that’s caylee and the other person is casey.
maybe one day for the sake of that child, she will answer that question what really happened.
if you would ask casey anthony a question , you wouldn’t ask her what happened to caylee. you not gonna get the truth from her . you would ask her ,how do you sleep?how do you sleep each night?
what haunts you casey? what did you do …?
the public outrage over casey anthony’s verdict prompted the Florida legislature to pass caylee’s law in 2012.
that makes it a felony for a parent or a legal guardian to fail to report a missing child.
several other states have passed versions of caylee’s law inspried by that little toddler from Osceola county.