Mother at centre of daughter's death

Casey Anthony case

Kenya: It is a story that gripped America for three years. Toddler Caylee Anthony disappeared only for her skeleton to be discovered six months later a short distance from her home. The bony remains were found stuffed in plastic bags with the mouth area sealed with duct tape.

The first person to be accused of her death was her mother, Casey Anthony. On June 15, 2008, according to CNN archives, Casey’s mother, Cindy Anthony, called police to arrest her daughter on suspicion of stealing the family car and money. She had noted that her granddaughter was missing. A while later, she found the car and told the police: “I found my daughter’s car today, and it smelled like there’s been a dead body in the damn car.”

Case unraveled

After Casey was arrested, she admitted that she had not seen her daughter for 30 days.
It was until December the same year when remains of the missing girl were found in a wooded area near the Anthony home by a worker that security officers pieced together the tragic story.
While in police custody, Casey sprung the story of a fictitious babysitter who had kidnapped her child. The 25-year-old maintained the same story to her family but changed it when the child’s skeletal remains were found.
During her trial, prosecutors argued that Casey killed the girl by smothering her with duct tape. But defence attorneys suggested that Caylee died from an accidental drowning in a backyard swimming pool.
As the case unraveled, forensic expert Dr Arpad Vass testified that the odour in Casey’s car trunk indicated the presence of a decomposing human body and, therefore, was the only possible explanation as to what exactly happened to Caylee.

When her trial began, Casey changed the story from kidnapping to accidental drowning. Casey’s defence lawyer, attorney Jose Baez, implicated the father of the accused, George Anthony, for sexually abusing his daughter as a child.
In Baez’s arguments, this tragic revelation explained why Casey’s behaviour at the time of her daughter’s disappearance was ‘bizarre’ and ‘inappropriate’.

Guilty of lying

Evidence showed that Casey’s dumped car had chloroform and pieces of human hair.
At the end of her trial in June 2011, Casey was cleared of the murder of her two-year-old daughter, a verdict that was met with much public uproar and online disapproval. She was found guilty of lying to police and providing false evidence to subvert justice, a sentence which earned her three years behind bars

Casey’s parents recorded an interview with TV host Dr Phil McGraw. In the interview, her mother said while she believes her granddaughter drowned, she did not believe defence attorney Baez’s assertion that her husband George was there at the time of the crime. Casey’s father, however, expressed conviction that his daughter was responsible for the death.
In August of 2011, Florida’s Department of Children and Families released a report saying Casey was responsible for the death of her daughter.

-— Additional reporting by Agencies