Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - MURDERED: Caylee Anthony

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

When two-year-old Caylee Anthony vanished in 2008, her disappearance sparked frantic 911 calls, a media firestorm, and questions no family ever wants to face. Morgan and Kaelyn unpack one of the most heartbreaking and controversial cases in true crime history—tracing a web of lies, forensic red flags, and the clues that raised more questions than answers. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t Miss out on all things Clues! YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Dr. Khrini Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets uncomfortable. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is Crime House. Even though they looked kind of like this All-American family on the surface, just a lot of stories started coming up about how much they didn't get along. But here's where things start to get really suspicious. Casey goes back to her parents' house on Hope's Ring Drive,

except Kaylee isn't with her. It smelled like a body had been in there. It smelled like human decomposition. Only, there is no body in the car. Hi, welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. And these aren't just ordinary cases.

They're complex puzzles where forensic science, investigative techniques, and sheer grit collide in order to uncover the truth, deliver justice. I'm Kaila Moore, and I'll be piecing together the timelines, bringing the history, and breaking down the hard facts of these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'll be diving into the theories and pulling out the threads that may or may not add up. Each week on clues will explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, think microscopic fibers, partial fingerprints, even a small strand of hair, can lead to groundbreaking discoveries

and might even bring long away to justice. These clues shine a light. on stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard. So join us as we uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak, and the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations. At Crimehouse, we value your support. So please share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review, and follow, subscribe wherever you're listening to help others discover our show. For bonus episodes, early access, and add free listening, join our Crimehouse Plus

community on Apple Podcasts. Today we are talking about Kaylee Anthony, the little girl at the center of one of true crimes most haunting and heartbreaking mysteries. In 2008, Kaylee's mom, Casey Anthony, was on the cover of every tabloid after her two-year-old daughter's remains were found near her home in Orlando, Florida. What followed was a tangled web of lies, bizarre behavior, and a trial that gripped the nation. As the prosecution painted Casey as a cold-blooded killer, the defense told a different story, one of dysfunction and deep family secrets, which is why the truth about Kaylee's final moments still remain a mystery to this day. More on the case and all of the clues involved right after this

quick break. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break, but not just any break. This is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic real facts, so let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real Fact, 964. it is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013. It is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 2033, Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple Real Fact 705.

Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be their most. refreshing part of your day. Snapple. Make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to Clues. We have a big one that we're diving into today. But first, do you want to catch me up on what's been going on in your life? I just got back from Minnesota, took a little weekend trip. Oh, yeah. How was that? It was good, but like, I realized I'm having my wedding on my family farm, and there is a lot of work that needs to get done before. Like on the farm, the farm needs work. Oh yeah. A lot of dirt that's got to be

moved. Some gardening. And I also went back because my grandma, like, they thought she had a stroke a couple of weeks ago. But she's been dealing with this insane vertigo. Whoa. So if anyone out there has dealt with like month long vertigo or like has a grandparent that has dealt with it, because I know it's a bigger thing in the older adult community. It's not like an ear infection or something. They've gone through everything. It's like not positional. She went through like vestibular testing with a PT, like they cannot figure it out. So, wow. I'm sorry.

That's really scary. I know. The poor little thing. She's just like, she's over it. She just feels terrible. So we're trying to get her some answers. Yeah. My grandma had this thing where she would just lose track of time where she would think she

was getting in the car and then kind of come to a few hours later. Yeah. It's very strange what happens when you get older. It's really scary. What's going on in your world? Have you seen sinners yet? No. It's on my list.

I love Haley Steinfeld. So I'm like, she's so good in it. I've heard she's amazing. Everyone is so good in it. You have to watch it. I saw it last week and I need to go see it again. Definitely my favorite movie of the year so far. Wow.

You should go see it if you can. Well, on that note, we want to set today's bar high. We really want to do this case justice. So shall we dive in? Let's do it. So this one is a really big case. A lot of you know about this case. You might have preconceived notions.

Morgan and I, when we were doing the research on this one, we really got lost. in the research and we were reading books and going through documentaries and just like listening to so many other podcasts about it. What I want to have happen before we start diving into the facts of this case is leave a comment on what you think happened if you're familiar with this case. And then I want to hear from people if their mind changed at all by the end of this because the more I learned about this case, I think the more confused I got as to what could have happened. So I'm just curious what everyone thinks. And a quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube,

you're going to see some photos that'll help you visualize a couple of elements in this case. But if you're listening, don't worry. You can find the same photos on our social media at Clues on Instagram. Also, a little housekeeping before we get into it. I wanted to add here before we get started. I know this is a highly covered case. I know a lot of other places I've covered this already. We're actually going to talk a little bit about how covered this was as it was happening in the media.

But this is still a very important case to talk about, I believe, because a child did die. and someone was responsible for that child's death. But no one ever served time for the death of Kaylee Anthony. And personally, I just think it's worth it to keep making a racket on this case until justice can be served. And with that, let's dive a little bit into who the Anthony's are. Absolutely. I will say on the surface, the Anthony's seemed like this all-American family. There was the dad, George Anthony, who met his wife Cindy back in the late 70s in Ohio.

George was a police officer at the time and he worked his way up to being a detective. And meanwhile, Cindy was a registered nurse. She worked at a local hospital. And they had a son, Lee, in 1982. And then they had a little girl who followed in 1986. Her name was Casey Anthony. She's going to be who we talk a lot about in this case. But in 1989, the couple moved from Ohio to Orlando, Florida.

And while they were there, George worked a bunch of different security jobs to keep his family afloat at the time. and they bought this cute little house on Hope Spring Drive and this quiet middle class neighborhood in Orlando. And that's where the Anthony's would raise their family. And that's where this case takes place. As I was reading more about the family, even though they looked kind of like this All-American family on the surface, just a lot of stories started coming up about how much they didn't get along.

People sometimes described them as being sort of strange. I read this story about how George used to have to keep gas cans in the house because Casey would drive the car so much and always refused to fill it up with gas. So she would just like run out of gas in the middle of the road and have to call George and he would have to come fill her car up with gas again. So odd. In 2005, the family grew a little bit more because 19-year-old Casey gets pregnant with her own daughter. Morgan, do you want to talk a little bit more about Casey? Yeah.

There is a lot to unpack here when it comes to Casey, Anthony. Like the fact that according to a friend, when Casey learns she's first pregnant, she considers giving the baby up for adoption. She actually doesn't really tell her family she's pregnant right away. It's about seven months in her pregnancy when family finally are like, okay, no, like you're actually pregnant. But up until that point, she was saying, no, I'm not. I'm not even having sex yet. Wow. And so at that point, you know, Casey says, I want to give the baby up for adoption.

And her parents really step in and say, no, no, no, no, you're going to keep this child and we'll help you. We're going to step in and whatever you need. We'll make sure everything works out. And after she gives birth to Kaylee, she actually keeps living with her parents. Probably grateful for the extra help like you were talking about. They suggested that she'd keep the baby so they can all help. And she is a young single mom. She's working at Universal Studios, supposedly as an event planner for them at the time.

But in a lot of ways, Casey is still a kid herself. She never actually graduated from high school. She didn't have enough credits. She never really thought of going to college because that just kind of seemed out of the question for the time being. And plus, the more you read about Casey's backstory, it seemed like having fun was maybe a priority for her at this time in her life. There's a lot of stories about how much she did like to go out and did like to party. And there's a lot of mixed reports on this kind of behavior. So some people say that Casey would take Kaylee to the parties when she would go out and party.

Other said that Casey was actually a really good mom and sometimes would stay in with Kaylee. Sometimes she would yell at her friends for drinking too much. She was almost taking on like this motherly role within the friend group. Others told stories about how Casey would spend the night elsewhere and would bring Kaylee from time to time. Either way, Casey and Kaylee seemed to be pretty inseparable around this time. And that includes when it comes to her boyfriend, Tony Lazaro. So in 2008, Casey was dating 21-year-old Anthony Lazaro, who goes by Tony. He was a student at Full Sail University.

He was also a club promoter. When they started dating, it was very hot. and heavy. It kind of came on really quickly. I know they suggested that they move in together really quickly. This is also according to Tony, he talks about this too. One thing he said too is that he spent most of his time skipping class to stay in bed with Casey all day during like the early weeks of their relationship. But it's worth noting here, Tony is not Kaylee's dad. No. In the summer of 2008, they had only started recently dating. By the time he met Casey, she already had Kaylee. And the fact of the matter is, we don't really know who Kaylee's dad is.

Even to this day, we still don't know. And it's a pretty big part of the mystery, but we're going to talk a little bit more about that later. But what we do know about Kaylee is this. She was born on August 9th, 2005. Her grandparents, George and Cindy, said that she was a joyful and playful little girl. George even described her as, quote,

a comedian to me. Cindy's words are even more heartbreaking when you hear them now. She said, quote, from the moment I first saw Kaylee Marie, from the instant she was placed into my arms, she stole my heart forever. She wouldn't wake up crying. She would wake up laughing. She would wake up just smiling.

She was always a happy child. She loved her family very much. But as much as this seemed like your average family with their ups and down, there was definitely some tension building in the Anthony home, which Casey and Kaylee were still living at. I mean, in one source, this kind of started from the very minute Kaylee was born. There was a note that Cindy, actually held Kaylee before Casey did. And so her mom was really trying to step in or it would seem

kind of assert herself in a more motherly role. And it was around June 16th, 2008, that a 22-year-old Casey had supposedly had enough. She takes the almost three-year-old Kaylee and leaves her parents' house allegedly after a big disagreement. She tells Cindy she's bringing Kaylee to go stay with a nanny for the day. Someone named Zanida Fernandez Gonzalez, sometimes referred to as Zanny the Nanny. But the following day, Casey isn't back, and neither is Kaylee, which is a big deal because the two of them still live there. Instead, Casey calls Cindy and says she, Zanida, the nanny, and Kaylee are all headed to Tampa for a work trip that she has to go on. Remember, she is working as an event planner for Universal. But after that, they don't see Casey or

Kaylee for the next month. Now, according to Casey's boyfriend, Tony, there was no work trip, actually. During that time, it seemed Casey bounced between Tony's house and another friend's place, Amy Hizinger's. Amy actually says Casey said that she was trying to keep Kaylee away from negativity at her home, caused by her parents' arguments and potential separation. But here's where things start to get really suspicious. On the evening of July 15th, about a month later, Casey goes back to her parents' house on Hope Spring Drive. Except, Kaylee isn't with her. And Cindy apparently overhears Casey telling her brother Lee why Kaylee isn't with her. She says the nanny stole her and refuses to give her back. Okay, I want to interject here for a second because we need to know the real reason that Casey decided to come home after being gone for an entire month.

A month. Because it wasn't to tell her parents that Kaylee was missing. That doesn't seem like it was her intention. Let's take it back a little bit though. So earlier that afternoon on July 15, 2008, George and Cindy get a call. that one of their cars, a white Pontiac Sunfire, has been abandoned in a parking lot and has been moved to a tow yard. Usually, Casey drove it. This actually is the car that Casey would drive until it ran out of gas and then her dad would have to come fill her tank. Remember, at that point, they hadn't seen Casey for an entire month, but they get this phone call that the car has been abandoned. So they go and they pick up the car.

They're kind of used to bailing Casey out of these situations. But once they open the doors, they notice that the car smells horrific. Not just bad, but actually multiple people claimed that it smelled like human decomposition. This episode is brought to you by Instacart. I have a four-month-old at home, which means I don't leave the house unless I absolutely have to. Going to the grocery store is a really big deal for me these days, which is why I love Instacart so much. I hate grocery shopping. I always forget things. I get overwhelmed. I have decision paralysis or I shop hungry and then I get way too much, which is why I love. love to use Instacart. Keep me out of the store. I'm going to sit at home reading my book instead.

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gummy. Plus, it makes it a fun treat. Getting a daily treat is non-negotiable for me. And it includes six grams of prebiotic fiber. And you can feel good about Groo because their ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. So if you're ready to try Grooens for yourself, save up to 52% off with code Clues at grooens.co. That's code Clues at g-r-un-s.c0.co. Which brings us to our first major clue, or what a lot of people consider to be the first clue, the scent in the car. Earlier I mentioned that George had worked in law enforcement, right? Well, the first thing that came to his mind when he opened those car doors, it smelled

like a body had been in there. It smelled like human decomposition. But he's not the only one that thought this. There was a supervisor for the tow truck company that said the same thing. Smells like there was a dead body inside. Only, there is no body in the car. no obvious sign of one either. What there is in the car, in the trunk, is a big bag of trash and a stain where the trash was.

So I actually do have a question about this, and I want to hear your perspective on it, because did you, when you were in school for OT, did you ever smell human decomposition? Like, were you working on cadavers? I did have to work on cadavers in anatomy lab in undergrad, but the thing is, like, the formaldehyde smell is so overpowering by that point. Yeah. That you don't get a true sense of what just decomposition is. True. No, okay, that's a good point. So you haven't smelled human decomposition.

No, but you smell animals in Minnesota, like world kill or like you encounter things like that. Like there is a smell to rotting flesh. There's a very specific smell to rotting flesh. George was a cop his whole career. If he smells human decomposition and he knows that his granddaughter is missing, why didn't he call 911 immediately? And he didn't. And so you mentioned that there was actually trash in the car. Even though everyone's saying there's human decomposition smell, they pop open the trunk and there's trash.

Well, the Anthony's actually used to have to load their trash into the car in the trunk and then they would drive to a dumpster and drop it off. So it's not unrealistic to think that when Casey first took the car, she maybe threw the trash in the trunk because she was going to go drop it off somewhere and she forgot about it. And so while this car was impounded, the trash was actually in the trunk fermenting this whole time. And there's another person who is at the actual like toe area, the person who worked at the tow. And they interviewed him later. And he was like, oh, yeah, cars come in here all the time with dead bodies in them. Like I've smelled dead bodies in cars before. This smells like a dead body.

But again, George comes to him, tells him that Casey and Kaylee are missing. He claims that it did smell like a dead body. That guy also doesn't call 911. So I'm just a little confused. I think it's worth noting here that even though at that time people thought it smelled like a dead body, no one called the police to report it. My alarm bells would be ringing, but, you know, given that this girl doesn't like to even fill up her own car and touch a gas pump, hey, your dad put trash in the car for you to throw away, I could see I'm not going to touch it. Yeah.

That's not my job. And it would appear that Casey was, I don't know, telling people different reasons for the smell. Like she doesn't note the trash to her friend. Yeah. She actually tells her friend Amy Heisinga that the smell in her car could be coming from her hitting a dead animal. Right, right. So we're getting some conflicting info on the trunk smell here. Yes. The car smell is a huge question mark for me in this case. Yeah. And so up until this point, all Cindy and George thought was that Casey was off somewhere with Kaylee, right? She had said that they were going to a theme park. She said she had a work trip, whatever. But now they find her car abandoned. It maybe smells like decomposition, regardless. It smells very bad. And Cindy starts thinking, I have to find my daughter and my granddaughter ASAP. So, the parents end up taking the car back home with them. George has to go to work. So Cindy is left down to track 22-year-old Casey. And eventually she calls someone who maybe might know where Casey is, and that's Amy Hizinga. Amy says that Casey is at her boyfriend Tony's apartment. And Amy actually meets up with Cindy that afternoon and the two go to Tony's together. Lo and behold, Casey is there. Only Kaylee is not there with Casey. It is just Casey by herself with Tony. I'm not exactly sure what Casey says. says to her mother when she's asked about Kaylee in that moment, but I know that Cindy gets very

upset and forces Casey to leave the apartment with her. And Cindy later says, quote, I wouldn't let her grab anything but her shoes. And after that, Casey and Cindy drive around town trying to find Kaylee. Clearly, Cindy, is in an absolute panic here. And I mean, any grandmother would be. Is Kaylee with Zanny the nanny? Does one of Casey's friends have her? What is going on? You have Amy saying Casey's not at her parents' house because she wants to be away from the tension and their potential separation. But again, Tony and Amy, like, no one's curious or worried where Kaylee is. Right. Cindy is now panicking. Yeah, absolutely. And this is when she finally does the thing that I've been wanting people to do this entire time, which is she calls 911 from her cell phone as they're

in the car driving around. But what she says on this call is also a little bit strange. She doesn't mention that Kaylee is missing. Instead, she tells authorities that her daughter stole her car and she asks where she can bring Casey to have her arrested for grand theft of the car and money. And we're going to play a little clip here. I have a 22-year-old person that has grand theft with me. So the 22-year-old person stole something? Yes. Is this a relative? Yes. Where did they steal? Money from your car? No. It's your son? Me from your car? No. My car was stolen. We've retrieved it today. We found out where it was at. And I've got affidavit for my banking account. I want to bring her in. And she does this even though Cindy had actually given Casey permission to use the car. It seems she was just very upset that Casey had her car towed and impounded.

And so after this, Cindy drives Casey back to their house on Hope Spring Drive. We know that George isn't home because he left for work. But Casey's brother, Lee, is home. And it's kind of known, even though the family dynamic is strange, it was known that Casey and Lee talked to each other a lot. They usually would tell each other about their lives and share secrets and stuff. And Lee and Cindy start interrogating Casey about where Kaylee is this whole time. Casey is insisting. She's with the nanny.

She's with Zinida. So Lee and Cindy start saying that they're going to go. go to Zenaida's apartment and pick Kaylee up that night. We need our granddaughter back. But Casey tells them that's actually not a good idea. And this is when the second 911 call happens, and this is at 8.40 p.m. On this call, Cindy says she needs, quote, someone to be arrested in my home. She also mentioned something about a, quote, possible missing child, a three-year-old that's been missing for a month.

Here's a clip of that. I have someone here that I need to have been missing for a month. A three-year-old? Yeah, have you reported that? I'm trying to do that now, ma'am. After this call, the family continues to argue and sort out the details of what's going on. Cindy is getting increasingly frustrated because the police still haven't arrived. And that's at this point, she overhears Casey telling Lee that Kaylee's actually been gone for an entire month and that the nanny has stolen her.

So once again, Cindy calls 911 around 9.40 p.m., which is an hour after the 840 p.m. call where she said that there was possibly a missing child and no cop showed up. I want to play a little clip of that 911 call here. I found out my granddaughter has been taken. She has been missing for a month. Her mother finally admitted that she's been missing. Okay, what is the address that you're calling from? 9-3-7 what? Cross-P-R-I-M-G. The daughter admitted that the baby is where? But you said it took her a month ago that my daughter's been looking for. I told you my daughter was missing for a month.

I just found her today, but I can't find my granddaughter. She just admitted to me that she's been trying to find her. What is the three-year-old's name? So you can hear in this call, Cindy's very emotional, rightly so. She tells the 911 operator that her granddaughter has been missing for a month. She repeats Casey's claims about the nanny. She literally says, quote, I found out my granddaughter has been taken.

She's been missing for a month. Her mother finally admitted she's been missing. This is when she finally says to police that the car smell like human decomposition. But what's interesting is later on, she would actually confess that she only told the police about the human decomp smell because she thought it was the best way to get their attention, thinking maybe then they would actually show up to the house because they had not been showing up even though they knew that maybe a child was missing.

It is kind of concerning that you're mentioning a missing child on three calls and police haven't arrived yet. However, on these calls, Cindy wasn't prioritizing that. It was, I need to have her arrested for stealing my car and money. Right. And the child was kind of an afterthought, which you haven't seen her in a month. Okay, I feel like that would be maybe the top of your mind on these calls, but everyone handles things differently. But the 911 dispatcher on this final call does want to hear from Casey.

They're curious, what is the deal? Your mother's clearly frantic, but like, what's actually going on? here. So Casey gets on the phone and does confirm what her mom already said that Kaylee has been missing for a month. She also tells the dispatcher, quote, I know who has her. I have tried to contact her. And she goes on to talk about the nanny. So late on July 15th, law enforcement finally arrive at the Anthony home. And when they question Casey in person, she repeats her story about the nanny. From everything I read, Casey didn't seem to be frantic, distraught. She was somewhat calm, collected, just telling police all about this nanny's story, which to me seems very odd.

If I had a three-year-old that was missing for a month, it could be anything but calm. But regardless, police are like, okay, well, why don't you take us over to the nanny's place? Let's go investigate, see if we can find your daughter. They hop in a car, and she goes with the deputy to a complex called the Sawgrass Apartments to look for Kaylee and the nanny, Zanida Fernandez-Gonzalez. She points out the apartment where she said she last left Kaylee, the officer goes up, knocks on the door, peers in, no one's answering. And the more he's, you know, waiting and peering in, it actually looks like the apartment is vacant. No one's in there, which is even more suspicious.

He ends up finding an employee at the complex, and this employee tells the police that no one by the name of Zanita Fernandez Gonzalez lives here. they actually never have. Even knowing this case, I get goosebumps, like when you say that. So the officer takes Casey back to her parents' house, and that's when she gives the police a written statement. In it, she's doubling down on this nanny thing. This report even describes her saying, quote, Sanita is a 25-year-old, is from New York.

She is roughly 5 foot 7 inches tall, 140 pounds. She has dark brown curly hair and brown eyes. Zanida's birthday is in September. She also says she met Zanida through a mutual friend in 2004, and she's been watching Kaylee as her nanny for a year and a half or maybe two years. She rattles those facts off so fast for a person that doesn't exist. Yeah. There's one source that I saw where, you know, this friend, the mutual friend that she met Zanny,

the nanny through, was even like paying for Kaylee's nanny fees. Casey goes on to describe Kaylee as Kaylee will be three years old on August 9th, 2008. She was born on August 9th, 2005. Kaylee is about three feet tall, white female, with shoulder length, light brown hair. She has dark hazel eyes, brown green, and a small birthmark on her left shoulder.

On the day of her disappearance, Kaylee was wearing a pink shirt with jean shorts, white sneakers, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. But here is where it counts really start to blur. According to this statement, Casey says that on Monday, June 9th, 2008, which is about a month ago at this point, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Casey dropped Kaylee off at the Sawgrass Apartments to spend the day with Zanida. Her mother, Cindy, tells police during those calls that the last time she saw Kaylee was June 7th,

a few days before Casey says she dropped her off. Later, however, those dates really do change. Cindy says the last time she saw Kaylee was on June 7th. 15th. When you're going through the forensic records of who was home at what time, June 15th does seem like the actual date that the last time anyone saw, or at least the last time that Cindy saw, Kaylee. And it seems like Cindy's stories start changing a lot from this point. And that's something that I just want to make a note of here. But Cindy's not the only one who starts saying things that aren't necessarily true. Casey's story has a lot of holes in it. She continues by saying

that that day she actually went to her job at Universal Studios Orlando, where she had been working for over four years. And when she left work at around 5 p.m., she was on her way to pick Kaylee up, but Kaylee wasn't there. And neither was Zanita or Zanita's two roommates. So Casey waited outside of the apartment. She even tried calling Zanny. And even though the babysitter's phone worked that morning when Casey dropped Kaylee off, that afternoon when Casey calls, it's no longer in service. The phone number has been disconnected, she tells police. And about two hours later, Casey decided to go out and look for Zinida and Kaylee herself, not contact authorities. So she first decides to go to some of Kaylee's favorite places, like a nearby park.

And when she still couldn't find them, she goes back to her boyfriend, Tony's apartment, to figure out what to do next. And again, she does not call the police at this time. And according to Tony, her boyfriend, she didn't even tell him what was going on. And she certainly did not alert her family. Beyond shocking to me. Like, okay, she didn't tell Tony, but like, nothing appeared to be wrong at all. Casey does say she spent the next several weeks searching for her daughter. And her excuse for not alerting the authorities in this is, quote,

I have avoided calling the police or even notifying my own family out of fear. I have been and still am afraid of what has or may happen to Kaylee. And she goes on even further. Quote, I was never able to check on the status or well-being of my daughter. Zanida never made an attempt to explain why Kaylee is no longer in Orlando, or if she's ever going to bring her home. Here's where she really drops a bomb, though. Casey says that earlier that same day, before talking to police and finally reporting her daughter missing, she did get a phone call from Kaylee. She said it was the first time she had heard Kaylee's voice in weeks, and she said that Kaylee was really excited to speak with her.

Casey was convinced, you know, based on this phone call and this, this glimper. of hope she was getting that it would be only a matter of time before she would be reunited with her daughter. And of course, we know that all of that is a lie. We do know. And let's really see how the plot unravels here. Things start teed up and take a pretty interesting turn the following day, July 16th. An officer named Detective Mellish is looking into this case. I'm not sure if he was trying to find the nanny or if he was looking more into Casey's background, her employment history. But something isn't adding up for him.

he's basically questioning everything, and it's kind of already clear that this woman is putting them on a goose chase. There's some holes in the story. So later that afternoon, Detective Mellish asked Casey to go with him to Universal Studios. Because remember, in her statement, that's where she's been working for the past four years. And when they get there, Casey tries to go through and employ security gate, but she doesn't have an ID card. She forgot it. And she gets to the security desk and is asking them to let them. her in and saying, oh, well, this is my manager. Call my manager. Well, the manager isn't listed in the

company database. She's arguing. Supervisor gets called over. They just seem overwhelmed with this, but shockingly, security lets her in. Welcome, ma'am. Come on. Come on through the doors. So she takes police with her to an employee only building and is going down hallways and showing them, oh, this is my whatever office and making a show of it. I read that she was even like, waving to people walking through the hallway, just like, wave in. And they were like, uh, hi, okay. Who are you?

And, uh, she clearly doesn't know her way that well around because she eventually leads police to a dead end hallway. And it's kind of at that point she realizes, hey, gig is up. I, um, I don't work here, actually. She actually has not worked for Universal for three years since she went out on maternity leave. She's been lying about still working there to her friends, her family this entire time, which makes sense why she was always asking her family for money. But this is when Detective Mellish finally says, enough is enough.

It's time to come clean. So he brings Casey to a conference room at Universal and he starts to confront her about all these lies. And that's when Casey admits she did lie about where the nanny lived, but insist she's been telling the truth about her having kidnapped Kaylee. The detective is exasperated. They go back and forth. They say, if something happened, just tell us. It's okay.

Why would you lie about where the woman lived if you are trying to find your daughter and you aren't lying about the fact that someone took her? It's not adding up for that. It does not add up at all. And so later that day, Casey was taken to the sheriff's office and arrested for child neglect, providing false information to law enforcement and obstructing an investigation. And this is when the police really start to look a little bit deeper into this case. And this was like the domino that knocked over all the other dominoes. Like once this first lie fell, they just realized all of the things that Casey had been lying about. And one of the things actually that they learned was a big lie in Casey's life was the identity of Kaylee's father.

This is something that even Casey's closest friends haven't been able to get a straight answer out of her. Many of them have said they've been confused about various things that Casey told them over the years. But they know that Casey started dating a guy named Jesse Grun in the early stages of her pregnancy. That was around January of 2005. He initially took on the role of a father figure at the beginning of Kaylee's life because there were periods, even though the timeline didn't really add up where he actually believed that he was Kaylee's dad. But eventually a DNA test was performed and he was not the father. Casey reportedly told another friend that Kaylee's father was in the army and she later told that exact same friend that he had died in a car accident. There were actually a few times where Casey said that it was someone who had died in a car accident.

I believe there were two people who had previously died and when they looked into it more, those timelines didn't really add up either. She also said that one of these guys she had met while working at Universal Studios and that it was just a one-night stand. We'll probably never know the truth of who Kaylee's father is because, according to NBC, Kaylee's birth certificate never even listed a father. And while this isn't super important to the case. A lot of people have children where they don't know who the father was. You know, that doesn't really change anything about the case.

It's just interesting to note here that, like, this would have just been one more advocate for Kaylee as we went on. If Kaylee did have a father in the picture, someone else that could have been pushing the investigation to actually find her. It also really demonstrates Casey's line here. I mean, to tell multiple different stories to the same friend, almost as if you're forgetting which lies you've told to which people. Yeah. It just kind of leads back to her credibility and how she doesn't really have any. And knowing that Casey's stories are very prone to changing, the police start really taking that into consideration. And that's why a few days after Kaylee's disappearance is reported on July 22nd, Casey Anthony is officially declared a person of interest in her case.

And after a hearing, Casey's bail is set at $500,000. But not even a month later. On August 21st, Casey is released after her bail is paid. paid by a bondsman with the help of her parents. Another situation where Casey's parents come to her rescue. She's brought back to their house. She has to wear a monitoring device. And then a month and a half after that, on October 14th, Casey is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter, and four counts of providing false information to law enforcement. And that's because the investigators discovered a second clue in the case.

Investigators found a human hair. It was found in the trunk of the family's Pontiac, same one that Casey had been driving, same one where they smelled human decomposition. And after running it through DNA analysis, it showed that it belonged to either Casey, Cindy, or Kaylee. The hair wasn't the length of Casey's, and it wasn't color treated or dyed like Cindy's had been. And it also matched the color and length of Kaylee's hair. They then compared it to a sample from Kaylee's hairbrush. And when examined under a microscope, investigators are confident. It's a match.

Investigators also note on this strand of hair that it seems to have decomposition bands on it. Given this evidence, the case is really building against KC. And for those that don't know, a decomposition band is also known as a post-mortem root band, PMRB, for short. And it's this opaque band that you can see under a microscope. And it's observed near the root area of hairs from a decomposing body. But while this is being treated as a homicide investigation at this point, there's obviously one very big piece of evidence missing, Kaylee, Kaylee's body. That is until later that year on December 11, 2008,

when a utility worker named Roy Kronk is walking in the woods near the Anthony's home on Hope Spring Drive, about a half a mile away from it, actually, and he's out looking for a spot to relieve himself. And he sees what he thinks are unmistakably the bones of a. child. And I believe he also had tried to call multiple times. Yeah, he had seen the bones earlier and called and no one came to check it out. No. I mean, more of that evidence could have been tampered with animals, so that was frustrating for me. But on December 19th, 2008, these remains were taken in and they were positively identified as being Kaylee Anthony's. And this, as well as Kaylee's autopsy, becomes our next

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So from what the forensics investigators could tell, Kaylee's body had most likely been left out in the woods during what he says were the initial stages of decomposition. And based on the state of remains and the weather during the time of Kaylee's disappearance, remember it was summertime when she disappeared, they were still able to estimate that she had been dead for about six months. And that makes sense because when Kaylee first went missing, it was the middle of June.

The autopsy determined that the manner of death was homicides. Even though they could not determine the cause of death. And that's interesting that they were still able to do that. But even though they couldn't tell how she died, they knew it was homicide because of the manner in which she was found. Right. She was found in a bag that had been duct taped and like thrown off the side of the road. A laundry basket. Yeah. It did not look like an accidental situation. Like someone had intentionally put her there. Clearly placed here. No trauma was evident and no drugs were detected after. examining Kaylee's bones, although a lot of people do bring up here that because the, it was such late stages of decomposition, it was hard to tell if there were any drugs in her system. There was something else of note in the way that the remains were found, and it's really important to bring up here. And that is that pieces of duct tape had been found on Kaylee's body. And I know you really looked into this more. I went down the rabbit hole on this next clue, the duct tape.

There was an autopsy report that said, quote, Although there is no trauma evident on the skeleton, there is duct tape over the lower facial region still attached to head hair. This duct tape was clearly placed prior to decomposition, keeping the mandible in place. There were three pieces of duct tape on Kaylee in total, and the tape appeared to have an outline of a heart sticker on it. So on the very, like if you have all these pieces, the very outside heart sticker, that someone had intentionally placed there because Maybe, yeah. I don't know any duct tape that comes with heart stickers on it. This, I know, is a big part of why the medical examiner did rule homicide because unless there's ill intent, why would duct tape be placed on a baby's mouth?

Right. Absolutely. The counterpoint to that, though, that I had read is that it didn't, because, again, late stage decomposition, it wasn't exactly clear where on the head the duct tape was. I know it says here, the duct tape was placed prior to decomposition, keeping the mandible in place. So some people believed that it was just holding her jaw up. Others believed that it had been placed on her nose and mouth previously. That's going to come up again later. And I also want to mention here that, remember I was talking about these gas cans that George had in his garage for when Casey ran out of gas.

The duct tape that was found on Kaylee actually matched duct tape that was found on those gas cans in the Anthony home. just another huge thing to bring up. Chills. Literally, again, like, just chills. Yeah. And it's probably worth noting here, too, that even though Roy was the one that found the remains, there was a huge search effort happening. Massive.

I read people were driving hours into Orlando to help search for Kaylee. Like, the whole public was so invested in this trial. Yeah. I mean, there was an equine search team that came. The owner of the company didn't charge the Anthony's for them. I mean, it was a massive, massive effort on all fronts from the community and private investigators trying to find Kaylee. Right. And when her remains were eventually found, it just made the public that much more angry with Casey. And this is when the charges against Casey become very real, because now we do have the body, which is what was missing initially in the charges.

Yeah. Even though Kaylee's body had been found, there were still so many questions. Like, was the duct tape put there on purpose? Why was she found where she was found? There were so many questions, and the public was hoping that all of this would get answered in a big trial that was going to happen for Casey. A huge trial. They wanted nothing less for America's most hated woman. Yeah. And now these charges were no longer child neglect, manslaughter lying to police. The prosecution wanted to make sure that if Casey was found guilty of this crime, she would pay for it with her life.

So on April 13, 2009, prosecutors announced that they would be seeking the death penalty. But, as happens in these kinds of trials, it would take another two years before the trial actually began. It's really hard to get juries for death penalty trials. And by that point, Casey's initial bail had been totally revoked, which meant that she was going to spend a lot of time behind bars before her trial. And the trial finally came on May 24, 2011, when both sides delivered their opening statements. Now we have two sides in a trial. There's the prosecution and the defense. Let's cover the prosecution side first.

The prosecution painted Casey as this irresponsible party girl who showed no remorse after her daughter vanished. And they backed this up with all the evidence of her shopping, drinking during the month Kaylee was supposedly missing. There were Facebook posts really highlighting how Casey was out and about on the town. She entered herself in hot body competitions. Yes, that's like the famous photo of her that got passed around was her in that hot body competition. Yeah. She was out on the town having a good time, having such a good time that she even went and got a tattoo that said Bella Vita, meaning the good life. And a lot of the witnesses that the prosecution was calling for this trial were people that were really close to her, like her ex, Jesse Grund, who at one point thought he was Kaylee's father.

They brought in Amy Hizenga, the friend who helped Casey's mom, Cindy, find her that July afternoon and bring her home. Casey's own family took the stand. And just a reminder, too, it's the prosecution calling these witnesses. They are testifying against Casey. Yeah. Yeah. They even used Cindy's 911 calls and those were played in court as she was questioned about the disappearance. Lee, Casey's brother, also testified and spoke about the car's smell as well as the night of all the 911 calls.

In fact, a good portion of everyone's testimony really did focus on the car. Even George discussed the corpse-like odor that he noticed that day. You can have all these opinions. There's got to be hard evidence. And after this smell was discovered in the Pontiac, forensics were performed. And they did what's called an air sample test sometime before August 27th. Yeah, this is a really important one to talk about. This is like a huge deal in the trial.

They feel like this is the smoking gun for them. And this was about a month and a half after the car was discovered that they started conducting this. and we could get into the weeds of how this works. I'm still kind of like science. Where's my phoenic scientist button on this one? Yeah. But essentially this test indicated that there were very high concentrations of chloroform as well as other chemicals found in the trunk.

And they do this by cutting out a little sample and chemical compounds and they create gas. And it's this whole thing. Right. You guys watch a YouTube video on it. It's honestly mind-blowing how we got there. I think this is the first time that it was ever used as evidence in a trial, though. This is the first time it was used, yeah. It was.

You know, the fact that this chloroform was found in very high concentrations could mean a few things. It could mean that Kaylee was possibly killed or sedated using chloroform. Or it could mean that it was just naturally released from the body as it was decaying in the trunk, which can happen. As a body is naturally decaying, chloroform comes out. There's also other reasons that chloroform would have been found in the trunk. For instance, a lot of cleaning supplies have chloroform. There were other things found in the trunk, too, like gasoline. So it wasn't unrealistic to think that a cleaning supply had been used in the trunk.

And so the defense used an expert that was basically saying it could have been the cleaning supplies. And he stated that he could not conclusively, quote, determine that the presence of those compounds indicated that there had been human remains in the trunk of that car. Even though the defense did bring up their side on why the chloroform might just have been in the trunk and it not be suspicious, there is another part of chloroform in this case that does make it sound a lot more suspicious. There sure is. So the prosecution brings up the fact that they were able to find an internet search on chloroform. Something along the lines of how to make chloroform. During the trial they did, as we mentioned, call Cindy the mom up on the stand. And Cindy kind of took ownership of that one.

She said, no, I was searching something about chlorophyll because the dogs had been eating the chlorophyll, the bamboo. So I was curious if they had chlorophyll poisoning. So that's how they tried to give. explanation to why there were searches for chloroform on the computer, but I don't know, chloroform, chlorophyll. I feel like if my search terms for chlorophyll dog poisoning were that, I don't know how they got there. And, you know, maybe Cindy didn't know how to use the internet, but either way. I mean, I think of my mom using the internet. And if she was trying to search for chloroform, or for chlorophyll, it absolutely would have been chloroform that she was looking at. Just like a.

What type some key words? Why do you need to know how to make it if your dogs are getting poisoned by it. Chloriform aside, forensics also find a bunch of small flies in the trunk of the Pontiac, which according to an expert who testified for the prosecution, means that Kaylee's body had probably passed the initial stage of decomposition before she was placed in the car. But this is where the defense brings on another expert. This expert said that they only noticed that there were a few bugs on some paper towels that were inside of Casey's trunk. And if there was a body in the trunk, They said they would have expected to see hundreds of dead flies, which wasn't the case. Because, again, remember, the trash was in the trunk.

It's not unrealistic for there to have been flies there. Yeah, and I did see in some sources that the trash did have maggots in it. It did, yeah. So maggots are baby flies, for those that might not know. Yeah. But their main argument, the whole thing that the prosecution was really putting together is that Casey Anthony killed her daughter by sedating her with too much chloroform and then use duct tape to suffocate her. Then Casey put Kaylee's body in the trunk of the Pontiac and later disposed of it in the woods, all while lying and saying that her daughter had been kidnapped by the nanny, who police did discover in their investigation.

Zanaita was a real person, but was not a nanny, had no idea who Casey was, never watched Kaylee. So big lie there. Huge. And this trial at this point really did seem to be kind of this battle of experts, which isn't uncommon for a case this huge. We saw it in one of our first cases we covered Lacey Peterson. Yeah. But there's also the mention of the duct tape again. The prosecution argued that the duct tape proved the death was a homicide and not an accident, which the medical examiner did also rule. They even had an FBI forensic examiner testify about the duct tape found on a skull, and he said it did appear to have come in

contact with a small heart-shaped sticker, as I mentioned. And you know where else they found these heart-shaped stickers in Casey Anthony's bedroom. But another expert brought on by the defense said something entirely different. They claimed you couldn't see an outline of a heart. So again, just this back and forth war between the prosecution and the defense. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I kind of want to break down the defense's case. This is where things start to get really, really complicated, especially when it comes

to the entire Anthony family. So Casey's defense attorney, one of them, is Jose Baez. and he has represented Aaron Hernandez, Harvey Weinstein. He's kind of known for taking on these high-profile cases of people who are generally hated by the public. And he says that Casey did not kill her daughter. Instead, he insists that Kaylee's death was a wildly unfortunate accident, one that was mishandled, sure, but they say that Kaylee accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool on the morning of June 16th,

and her body was hidden as a cover. up with the help of Casey's father George. There was some evidence that came forward that didn't really look great for George Anthony, like the fact that he was the last person besides Casey to see Kaylee alive, and that was on June 16th. Apparently, he was home with Casey on the day that Kaylee disappeared, but he claimed that he went to work. We know that he was at work at 304 p.m. because he called Casey from his job. And his office was about nine to ten minutes away. That's very important. I'm going to come back to that. When he came home that night, though, he said both Casey and Kaylee

were gone. And now, these things alone are not enough to point fingers at him, but there's something else to really look at here. And that is the above ground swimming pool that the Anthony's had in their backyard. Apparently, and this is according to everyone, Kaylee loved this pool. Her family could not keep her out of it. And they knew that Kaylee could get out of the house through a sliding glass door by herself. And the defense actually showed a picture to the jury of two-year-old Kaylee opening the sliding glass door to let herself out. They knew she was strong enough and tall enough to do that. So they suggested that she spent what was the last day of her life on June 15 splashing around with her grandma Cindy. But that evening, the defense suggested, Cindy forgot to

pull up the ladder when they were done. And this is something that Cindy had admitted to having to do because Kaylee would get into the pool by herself. So they always had to remove. the ladder to the pool and they insist that Cindy forgot to pull up this ladder. So the defense suggested that the following morning, Kaylee might have gone out to the pool while George and Casey were preoccupied inside, climbed the ladder, fell in and accidentally drowned. And they suggest that George helped Casey cover this up. And that's kind of a new thing that was introduced into the case at this point, right? Even the general public hadn't really been thinking that maybe George was responsible for this as well. So they had to build this case against George. And that becomes a huge

part of the defense's case. To support this, the defense starts pointing to George's personal history, his behavior both before and after Kaylee's disappearance. For instance, detectives learned that George apparently had a mistress, who the defense claimed he met during the search for Kaylee. This mistress even testified that in private, George had told her Kaylee's death was in fact an accident that snowballed out of control, though he was asked on the stand about this, and George denied ever even having an affair with her. They knew that they had the affair, so that was kind of like an unexpected thing for him to say. Yeah.

But he said that he only visited her home once to console her because she had cancer. I mean, they had text messages between the two of them. Right. Right. George also during this trial starts lying about a lot of stuff that he doesn't have to lie about. On top of that, George was questioned during the trial about a past suicide attempt. And this also becomes a huge point in the defense case. So in January of 2009, about a month after Kaylee's body was found, George attempted to die by suicide with medication and alcohol.

He, as this was happening, was texting a lot of people, kind of saying weird things, saying goodbye, stuff that made people really concerned. So they ended up calling the police and he was found in a motel along with a five-page suicide note before he had died. They were able to save him. I think they pumped his stomach and he was over. Okay. I've read that note. I know you've read that note. Yeah. Personally, I think it's really hard to decipher what's going on in the note. You can tell he's getting a little loopier and loopier as it goes on. He had taken medication.

But this is what the defense really points to. In the note, he does say, quote, I blame myself for her being gone. And of course, this can mean so many different things. This can mean, I blame myself for Casey being this kind of mother. I blame myself for not searching harder, whatever. But he doesn't go on to explain that. But the defense goes on to say that he meant that he was partly responsible for Kaylee's death. Yeah. And I think we'll post the note on our Clues podcast on Instagram. And we'll have it on socials for you guys to read and kind of give your thoughts on.

But when I read it, I was very surprised by how guilty he was coming across in this note or just like remorseful for his actions. Like I've let everyone down. I've let you down, Cindy, because it was addressed to Cindy. Yes. But I've let you down, Cindy, Lee, Casey, Kaylee. It's a really confusing note to try to decipher. So I would love to hear some of your thoughts on this note and see what you guys think about what George was trying to say in it. It's hard to decipher any intention from it, which is why I personally haven't really used that as when I'm trying to think about what happened, I haven't really taken the suicide note into much account. But the most questionable evidence that comes out against George was the, abuse claims that are made against him in the courtroom. And again, this is also brand new information. Brand new information, a bombshell. This had not been discussed in the tabloids amongst the public. But according to Casey, George had sexually abused her from the ages of eight years old to 12 years old. And the defense didn't just say that George abused her. They also suggested that her brother Lee did as well. They even go so far as to have Lee and George paternity tested to see if they're the father of Kaylee.

And they're not. They're not. They're definitely not. But the defense really doubled down on these abuse allegations saying that Casey's strange reaction to the death, meaning her not reporting her daughter missing for a month, was a trauma reaction to George's alleged sexual abuse from when she was a kid. And later, Casey would go on to tell reporters that George abused Kaylee as well and that George killed Kaylee to cover up the alleged abuse. And these are huge allegations to make. and, you know, despite this, Casey did not take the stand during her own trial. She did take her lawyer's advice and did not get up there.

And after nearly six weeks of testimony from dozens of witnesses, you know, these experts going back and forth really debating the evidence and the clues, it was finally time for closing arguments. On July 5th, 2011, after 10 hours and 40 minutes, the jury returned with a verdict. And they found Casey on the charge of first-degree murder, Not guilty. On the charge of aggravated child abuse, not guilty. On the charge of manslaughter, not guilty. She was, however, found guilty on four accounts of providing false information to authorities.

And we're going to insert a little video of when this verdict was read. When I watched it, I was kind of dumbfounded. Most people in America were very, very shocked when this verdict was read. No one was expecting it. No. So here you go, guys. Let us know what you think of this. As to the charge of first degree murder, verdict as to count one, we the jury find the defendant not guilty, so say we all dated at Orlando, Orange County, Florida, on this 5th day of July, 2011, signed four person. As to the charge of aggravated child abuse, verdict as to count two, we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty. So say we all, dated at Orlando, Orange County, Florida, this fifth day of July, 2011, signed four person. as to the charge of aggravated manslaughter of a child.

Verdict is to count three. We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty. So say we all dated at Orlando, Orange County, Florida this fifth day of July 2011, signed four person. On July 7th, 2011, Casey was sentenced to four years in jail. Just for lying to police. And she was additionally fined $1,000 for each of her four counts of providing false information to law enforcement. However, only 10 days later, Casey was actually released from jail. Because this trial had taken so long to get underway, she was given credit for time served and good behavior.

And so she was released. Everyone in the entire country and even today is very confused as to how this could have happened, how a jury of 12 peers all agreed that Casey was not guilty for anything. Yeah, I mean, regarding this. Florida has a lot of interesting laws in regards to like information and it being public. So yes. A case coming out of Florida, it just, it spirals in the media. And it really did for this. She was on every magazine cover.

There was jury members leaking information to blogs. There was so much that went down with this. And you would have thought that that would have actually helped her case. And so that's why I want to bring up this book, Equittle, by Richard Gabriel. I have it here. I read this. He is a consultant for high profile cases. And he comes in and basically helps people build their case.

So he came in and he helped that. defense. And one thing he noticed was everyone in Florida knew everything about this trial because you have the sunshine laws in Florida where you can just release all the information. It's all out there. When Richard gets to Florida to help build this case, he realizes that everyone they pull knows, not only knows about this case, but thinks Casey is guilty. So they're having a really hard time building a jury because everyone automatically thinks that Casey's guilty and also the death penalty is on the table. So this is like a huge deal. What Richard suggests they do, do is build like a mock jury of 12 people. They get 12 people together. They pull everyone. Every

single person thinks that she did it. So they're like, okay, we're going to run through a fake trial. And we just want to figure out where you guys start getting confused. And what you noticed, this is so interesting, is when they were talking about Casey being a bad mom, Casey partying, Casey not looking for her daughter for 31 days, everyone was like, she's guilty, she's guilty. The second they started entering the evidence into the trial, people started getting confused. And there's a few things that they really got confused about. So one of the things was the chloroform test that was pulled. Yeah. Because that was never done in a court before that was like totally new science. And for this jury, they were like, wait, there's no DNA evidence that Casey did this. There's no DNA on the duct tape.

There's no DNA really anywhere on the scene. But you want us to believe that you took an air sample from a car from six months after this happened. And you were able to tell from that air sample. And even when you were describing the test, you were kind of getting confused. You're like, I don't know the science. I said watch a YouTube video guys. Right. I want to phone a scientist. Yeah, where's my scientist friend? Well, imagine being on a jury and having that explained to you. All of the jurors are feeling the same way too. They're like, I just don't know that I can trust the science. I don't understand how it works. Yeah. And that, I mean, for an average bear, it's, it is difficult. And I think that's kind of the feat that the prosecution has to overcome is like, how can you explain?

explain this evidence and the science in layman's terms. Absolutely. And so it's hard to take a jury 12 people of her peers and convince them without reasonable doubt that she did it. Well, here's the thing, too, is it was a death penalty case. So these jurors needed to be extra certain that they were sending the correct person to the electric chair or else they were not going to be able to sleep at night. So you have to really prove beyond a reasonable doubt. This is not just a murder charge. This is a death penalty case. So after they have this mock trial and they introduced the evidence to people, because it was Florida and all the information was out, people thought they were going to be coming into a trial that had new information because they had already read about all this in People magazine. They thought they were going to sit down on the jury and be told the smoking gun, like the big piece of information that hadn't been released to the public. And what they found was they were just given the same information they had read already in the tabloids.

Very anticlimactic. So they were like, wait, I know all this information. I know that I don't really understand the science, and now I'm just kind of confused. And so by the end of this mock trial, they pulled the jury and they found that only three people thought that she had done it. And after that, the defense was like, oh, yeah, we got this, one in the bag. There were a couple pieces of evidence that showed up on the trial that should have been slam dunks but were totally botched. And so you talked about the chloroform search. That was one that was hugely botched.

So the prosecution said that chloroform had been searched 84 times on the computer in like a three-minute span. And the defense was like, absolutely not. No one searched chloroform 84 times in three minutes. And then Cindy came forward and said that she was the one that made the chloroform search, but they were able to prove that she was actually at work during the chloroform search. So it wasn't her. It was most likely Casey that did it. And this kind of brings me back to what I said at the beginning of this entire episode,

is that the anthony's were very strange. And a lot of people thought that they had very strange family dynamics. And by the end of the trial, the jury agreed. They saw Cindy lying on behalf of Casey. They saw George not lying on behalf of Casey, really trying to send her to the death penalty. And they just thought, you know what, this family is too weird. There's a lot of weird dynamics going on. I could totally see this being an accident and them just all lying for each other.

Yeah. And when you have everyone lying to you, who do you believe? Right. And when it is such big stakes at hand, a death penalty case, I mean, you have to be 100% certain. And they weren't. They had reasonable doubt. Yes. But the public was not happy about this verdict. I mean, as you guys can imagine, this was the most hated woman in America at this point. And the public was completely outraged. There were protests happening all over Florida. Everyone was really emotional, too. I mean, a lot of people believed that Casey was guilty and that justice had not been served. What was the famous Nancy Grace quote from it? Somewhere the devil dances in hell to not. She said,

something like that and it became like the famous line of the trial. Good old Nancy Grace giving me the chills. Really upset about this. CNN did say that over one million people watched the live stream on the verdict, which at the time, I mean, that was a huge number. I think even today, if that many people watch CNN for one thing, that would be huge. Yeah. Well, I mean, and this number two is even more wild. 40 million people watched this trial at some point. Wow.

It's massive. That's wild. The media was heavily criticized in this. They were also paying people and Casey herself to access this story. ABC gave $200,000 to Casey in August 2008 shortly after she'd been arrested. The payment was so they could use family photos and videos of Kaylee, which she then apparently used to pay her legal bills. That happens a lot in the documentary space, by the way. If you're watching a documentary and they're like, we didn't pay this person for the documentary,

Yes, they didn't get a fee to be in the documentary, but they got a huge fee to license those photos. That's a crazy little fact. Yeah. Look you. That's how they get around it, yeah. It has been only 14 years since the trial ended, and people continue to still wonder why the jury decided on a not guilty verdict. I know myself before I really got into this and started looking up the definitions for everything she was charged with and, you know, what the definition of just reasonable doubt is. I myself question.

I'm like, it seems like a slam dunk. And yet, I think if I was sitting on that jury with the information that was presented to me, knowing what I knew, I could see myself agreeing with them. But there was a huge, huge piece of evidence that was not admitted into the trial. And this really could have. This would have changed everything. This could have changed everything. Do you want to talk about it? Yeah.

Where's my botched button? Where's my botched button? Slam it. Slam it. So about a year after the trial, it was actually discovered that computer investigators, failed to look at all the web browsers used. And just think about you guys out there. Like, I myself am a safari girl.

That's all I use. Justin uses Google Chrome. There's Firefox. There's so many different browsers. So when investigators were going through the family's computers, they only looked at Internet Explorer searches, not the additional history on those other search engines, which Casey's preferred browser was Firefox.

So when they did this, there was new evidence that showed someone searched for, quote, foolproof suffocation and clicked on an article about poison and putting a plastic bag over someone's head. And all of these searches were done on the very day Kaylee was last seen alive. If you were to tell a jury, hey, I know you don't understand the science that's going on, that's totally fine. You're just normal people. You're not scientists. But the last day that Kaylee was seen alive, her mother made a search. on our computer for foolproof suffocation. And we know that there was duct tape, three pieces of duct tape, one on the nose, one on the

mouth, one on both, perhaps. That was found on her head. What do you think about that? I don't think any jury takes that and thinks that there's not some guilt. No, I mean, that is, that would have been, in my eyes, the smoking gun to this case. What is the most shocking to me about this is Jose Baez later said that he knew about that search and he was waiting for the prosecution to bring it up. And he had a whole thing planned.

was going to go on this whole rant about George's suicide attempts and how George used the computer to Google or to search foolproof suffocation because he wanted to do that to himself. And they never brought it up. And he was like, that was the one thing that would have done us in. And they just never brought it up. Which is insane. You want to know why else I think that Google search is so important, which I don't hear this get talked about a lot. But there's a couple timeline things that happened on June 16th, the last day Kaylee was seen alive. So we need. We need. We need. We know from digital forensics that that Google search for foolproof suffocation happened at 251 p.m. And we know that George was at work at 304 p.m. Now, he said he left for work at 2.30 p.m.

But it takes him about 9 to 10 minutes to get there, meaning there was a chance he left his home as late as 255 p.m. And that is four minutes after the Google search for foolproof suffocation happened, which means, at least to me, there is a decent chance that he was home. when Kaylee died and he knows exactly what happened. But all of this was not really revealed until after the trial. No. The jury didn't know about any of this. And who knows what the outcome would have been if it was mentioned.

But truthfully, there's so many little details about this case, particularly in regards to Casey's story that just don't make sense. There were some people on the jury that came out afterwards and said they couldn't see her doing it. She was just too pretty and put together. Well, they also dressed her like a grieving mother. mother. The defense put her in sweaters with her hair up. They played it up. They definitely played it up. And I think it speaks to, you know, the halo effect and how you can present someone so do-eyed and endearing. And an image is perceived on that. And it's just, it's pretty baffling. Now that we know a lot more about the case and the trial and what was botched. What was botched. So there's a couple of possibilities that come to my mind when I think about this. So there's the possibility that Kaylee did actually. accidentally drown while Casey was home alone.

I don't know how you explain full proof suffocation searching that, but that's one possibility. There's also the possibility that Kaylee accidentally drowned while Casey was home with George, and he was privy to it, and he helped her get rid of the body. And then there are the possibilities that Casey intentionally killed Kaylee. Either George was there or wasn't there when that happened. We can talk a little bit more about Zanny the Nanny. Some people say that Casey had been drugging Kaylee with Zan. acts regularly as a way to keep her calm, help her sleep. And maybe that was where Zanny the

nanny came from, Zanida. Maybe it was kind of a really sick inside joke. So, so fucked up. Even George, Casey's dad would go public with the theory that Casey had sedated Kaylee with drugs so that she could go out and have fun. This was a huge thing too. George was just like on all of the prison phone calls was saying things to Casey. Like, yeah, I believe you will figure this out. It'll be okay and then was going straight to the media and straight to the police saying something's wrong. I think my daughter did this. Yeah. And something we have not talked about, which is the smoking gun for a lot of people as they dissect this case. Casey was in jail for quite some time and her parents visited her. There's one clip I've seen and her dad is saying things like, you know, Papa loves you

and blah, blah, blah, I wish I could give you a hug and mom chimes in. Like Casey, people are saying, that Kaylee's dead. And she just rolls her eyes and says, surprise, surprise. Yeah. So, you know, there's so much in this case. Like, I don't, again, like going back to the jury, I'm like, I don't know how a jury could see that and just be like, your daughter's still missing, but you say surprise, surprise, clearly this family was so dysfunctional. Everyone's lying. We will never know what happened in this case. No. Both Casey and George have come forward to say what they swear happened that day. They're still like somewhat changing their stories in recent interviews.

And what's crazy to me is now you have Casey going on social media and saying, I'm an advocate, I'm a legal advocate. It's like the disconnect. Yeah. Well, according to her, so this is what she said in that 2022 Peacock documentary, which she's, no matter how you feel about this case, Casey lies a lot in that documentary. Like we, you can look at the facts of the case and know that she's just saying a lot of stuff that doesn't add up.

But in that documentary, she comes forward and says that she will. woke up from sleeping, which we know that's not true, but she woke up from taking a nap and saw her dad outside with Kaylee in his arms. And she was wet. Maybe she had drowned, but she got the sense that George had killed her. And she didn't know if Kaylee was alive or not. And so George took her and said, everything's going to be fine. And the last thing she remembered from the situation was George leaving with Kaylee saying everything was going to be fine. And that's why Casey didn't feel empowered to go search because she always thought that Kaylee would come back and her dad would make it all better, though she doesn't really know what that means. Yeah. So, and then what you looked into a little

bit more of what George said happened. Yeah. I mean, he just basically said, you know, he went to work. I think, I think that's what's so hard to kind of wrap my head around in this case is it's, there's so much pathological line. Yes. And when you get to a point, you know, it's clear if you look at Casey's story, a lot of it doesn't add up. But it seems like she believes it. And I'm not a psychologist, but if you get into pathological line, you will oftentimes see that. Pathological liars do start to believe their own lies. It becomes the new reality. Their brain rewrites it that way. And so I don't think we'll ever know what happened. We have what Casey says happened, what George says happened. And then there's the truth.

And I don't know if we're ever going to get there. And there was this lack of anxiety, remorse. I mean, to go dance on tabletops and get a tattoo, I think what I think of this case is probably clearly coming out at this point. Well, I will say one thing that threw me off too, you know, there was security footage from police when they, when Kaylee's body was found, they hit it from Casey. They didn't tell her right away. And the police put a camera in a room and they played a news coverage of Kaylee's body being discovered because they wanted to catch her. being cold and being unremorseful. And instead, what they got on camera, she was by herself.

She had no reason to perform for anyone. She doubled over, sobbing. And police hid that footage from people as well because that was not the image of Casey that they wanted out. And that one really threw me off too because I agree with you. A lot of this, she comes off so cold and calculated and unremorseful. But watching that, you do kind of catch a glimpse of humanity that I found really complicated. I know, whether it's guilt or true. sadness. Yeah, right, right. I'm curious to see where all of you fall on this case. You know,

I think given all of this evidence, knowing how much we know now, what would you have done if you were on the jury? Since her death, various states have enacted versions of Kaylee's law, which makes it a crime if a parent doesn't report their child missing or dead within 24 to 48 hours, hugely beneficial to children. We know that the first 48 hours in a missing case is the most important, and that is huge advocacy. It's so critical. Florida also enacted a similar law in April of 2012, which made it a misdemeanor to knowingly give false information to mislead a police officer about a missing child. And if the missing child suffered great bodily harm or death, this crime becomes a felony. After her death, Cindy and George briefly ran a nonprofit in

Kaley's memory called the Kaley's Fund Foundation, but it was dissolved in May of 2012 after less than a year. And one note that we found was that Dr. Phil apparently gave $600,000 to it. In recent years, Casey has become estranged from her family, it seems. Reportedly, her parents think that she's maybe struggling with mental health and her father wants no contact with her. I mean, she accused him of abuse and she says that he did it. So they just don't want to talk to each other. I know. I have seen that mom still talks periodically. And when asked what she thinks about the verdict, she feels that just justice was enacted how it should have been. Which is wild. And that's actually one of the most heart-wrenching details from the case that I read about.

That even though Casey wasn't allowed to attend Kaylee's memorial, Cindy addressed Casey anyways saying, quote, she's got your beauty and your compassion. She had your spirit and she will always love you. She knows that she was loved by her family and that's all that's important. Which, I mean, if you really thought that your daughter did it, I don't think you would be saying that. So maybe she does think that what happened was right. With that, it is time to close this case file. In the end, no matter what anyone believes happened, one fact remains.

Kaylee Anthony is gone. If she was alive today, she'd be turning 20 years old on August 9th, 2025. She'd probably be in college, thinking about the next chapter of her life, what careers she wanted to pursue, who she was dating, who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Instead, no one will ever know where Kaylee's life. might have taken her. It was a horrible tragedy, but a lot of good advocacy has come from this. Like, Kaylee's life was definitely not in vain. She's, even in death, has been able to help so children, which is just so beautiful. And I want to end on that button. I appreciate that.

And that's it for today's episode of Clues. I'm curious to hear if you guys have as many questions as we do about this case. If your opinion has changed at all, please, like I said at the beginning, let us know in the comments. Yeah. As always, we do want to hear from you. thoughts, your theories, your feedback. That is what makes this community so special. It really does. The whole reason we dove into this case is because of you guys commenting. So please leave comments about any other cases you want us to cover some lesser known ones that might need some eyes and ears on it to bring awareness. At Crime House, we really do value your support. So share your thoughts on social media. Remember to rate, review, and follow clues to help others discover the show.

And if you're hungry for even more content, we have you covered. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access, add free listening. Join our Crimehouse Plus community on Apple Podcasts. All right, we will be back next week as we dive into another case. And until then, keep searching. And we'll see you next time on Clues. Bye. Bye.

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When someone goes missing, the headlines focus on what happened, but the truth often lives in the smallest details. I'm Sarah Turney. After my sister disappeared, I learned how those final hours, The last conversations, the last decisions can haunt families forever. And I'm Courtney Nicole. After seeing crime impact my own family, I've learned how overlooked moments, missed red flags, and unanswered questions can change everything.

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