Crime Weekly - S1 Ep55: Caylee Anthony: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Agatha Christie once said that a mothers love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path. Most parents feel that their main job is to protect their children from the terrors of the world, and they take this job very seriously, so when we hear of a child that seemingly was tossed to the side and forgotten, we have a very negative and visceral reaction. After all, children are the future, and they deserve a fighting chance. Two year old Caylee Marie Anthony had this chance stolen from her, she had her life stolen from her, and to this day we still don’t understand why. Caylee disappeared on June 16th, 2008, and it would take six months for the world to find out what had happened to her. Her skeletal remains were found inside a laundry bag, discarded in a wooded area. There was evidence that little Caylee’s mouth had been duct taped at the time of her death, and all eyes were on her young mother, Casey Anthony, who had failed to report the toddler missing for over a month, and during this time, Casey was seen at nightclubs and bars, having the time of her life.  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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we have you covered with bold hues, soothing neutrals, and everything in between. Shop the sale online or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only. Some exclusions apply. See store for details. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are jumping into part two of the Kaylee Anthony series.

Couple quick announcements before we get started. Derek, take it away. I like how you said announcements like they're like big things. Really quick to keep you safe kits. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just pretend I'm not saying this right now. Mentioned it on the lives. It was some self defense tools that I put together in a kit. I said that I was going to get something together and let you guys know so you could purchase them. I put it up on Instagram and then I put it up on the community page here on YouTube. They sold out in like 20 hours. So I only had a hundred of them. I didn't expect that. So it's not like supposed to be like this business thing. It was just something I was

doing because I thought a few people would want them. I was wrong on the numbers. He didn't expect it, but he should have because I told him. Yeah. And I mean, that said, I don't know like how many more are going to go. That's that being the case. I ordered another 100. They're all handmade by small local businesses that are in the US. So these guys are making them as needed. And so I don't know how long they're going to take.

But as soon as they come in, I will put them up needed. And so I don't know how long they're going to take, but as soon as they come in, I will put them up again. And then I was telling Stephanie, maybe I'll do like a pre-order to kind of preemptively plan for how many I need to have these guys make. Cause we were saying like the, one of the items is made on like a 3d printer and this guy's got like a small 3d printer that he's making them with. So it it's an, it's an involved process. And so I appreciate everyone who bought them. If you're one of the people that got them, I have the cards that are going in. I signed every single card and we're going to be packaging them this week. My oldest daughter, Tenley, she's the CEO of the company.

So she penciled me in for Wednesday for packaging and we'll ship them out by the end of the week. That's all I had. That's my announcements. Yeah. Get them while they last because I don't think he's going to do it again because he's been complaining about,

he's so curmudgery, curmudgeon-y. He's like, it's not as easy as you think. Well, you know, there's all the, you have the people that are like, what is this and what is that? And if you weren't following us on the live or you don't know how to use Google, even though I put the descriptions of what the things are, people are like, where is this coming from? Keep you safe kit. Like, what is that? So

I'll do another, like I said, if I do a pre-order, we'll see how many people order them. I'll make, I'll commission these guys to make enough for, to fulfill those orders. Although I can't promise how quickly you're going to get them but you will get them and we'll see i'll keep it going if it's something you guys want but it is something where like i don't i don't want people feeling like oh this is like a business he's doing so they're going to be in stock when i order it it's something i'm just kind of doing because it came from our live it like in not even a live for crime weekly was like when i did a live with you yeah forever ago forever ago and there were items that like i personally own and i've

given to my wife and stuff like that like these are just things that i have and and you guys really like them so i'm trying to do it but um we'll get it done if you want one you'll get one eventually better make sure one of those has my daughter's name on it man i already i already told you i have it's coming to you okay she wants the key right yeah okay she has a key coming she has a key coming this week all right beautiful let's get into it guys check those out get on the pre-order list if it's something you're interested in let's talk about casey and kaylee anthony So when we last left off, Casey Anthony was lying to everyone about everything, but mainly in our purposes here. She was lying to everyone about being pregnant.

And by the time her parents, Cindy and George Anthony, finally woke up to reality and brought her in to see a doctor, she was eight months pregnant. And for those of you who don't know, usually you're pregnant for 40 weeks, roughly nine months. I think it's actually longer. They say 40 weeks is closer to 10 months. I believe it. I've been pregnant three times. It's awful. But she's very far along at this point. And apparently, the fact that their teenage daughter was pregnant and had lied about it for months, that was not a problem for them, nor was the fact that she didn't seem to know who the baby's father was or she didn't want to say. There's going to be a lot of talk about how the dynamic between Casey and her parents was very toxic and the dynamic that would develop between Casey's daughter Kaylee and her grandparents, it was more of a parent-child relationship than a grandchild and grandparent relationship. And from the moment George and Cindy found out that Casey was pregnant, it seemed that they already felt a bit possessive of her child.

George Anthony said that when he found out he was going to be a grandpa, he was off the charts happy, higher than the clouds. And he and Cindy began going with Casey to her doctor's appointments and sonograms. And allegedly, when Casey finally told them she was, in fact, expecting a baby, her parents didn't even ask who the father was. And as far as they knew, Casey wasn't even seeing anyone at that time. They'd never even heard the name Jesse Grund before. And if you remember from part one, Jesse was actually the guy that Casey was dating at the time that she was eight months pregnant. They didn't even know he existed. So George Anthony claims that they did address the question of Kaylee's paternity

a few days later. And Casey told her parents that she thought her child's father may have been this one guy she was seeing on and off, but she didn't really want to think about that at the time. She just wanted to focus on having her baby, and her parents didn't want to put any pressure on her. George Anthony said, quote, I know one thing about pregnancy with a woman. If you put a lot of pressure on them, that can affect the child. And with Cindy being a nurse and stuff that she is and different things we talked about, we just said, let's just get her through this thing and we'll eventually get into knowing who the father is, end quote. Now, there's a lot of people, including mental health professionals,

who believe that the reason they didn't ask, the reason they didn't push her, was because the Anthonys didn't really care who Kaylee's father was, because that would be one more person who would get in the way of their relationship with Casey's daughter. But Casey Anthony would tell many different stories, many different lies about who her child's father was, depending on who she was talking to. You know, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm going to get killed for this in the comments. But I try to put myself, put a chill down my spine because my kids are so young. But if my daughter came to me and told me she was pregnant, I'd probably ask once, do you know who the father is? But if she was like, no, I don't, or I really don't want to get into that right now, we're not

together, I wouldn't really care either. Because either way, or I really don't want to get into that right now. We're not together. I wouldn't really care either. Cause either way now, like this is my daughter, she's having a child and I'm going to love that child either way. So if the father doesn't want to be involved and she doesn't want him involved, then I'm going to be there for her. Now with this family, I get what you're saying. It's probably a lot different, but just looking at it surface level hearing you talk about it um doesn't sound like a like a terrible thing to me like i'm not like completely blown away by i think maybe that would be the case for some other fathers and maybe i'm

just the one i don't know i don't know you're giving me a look a little bit i think that i i think you don't know what you would do in that situation and like yeah it would be one thing right if casey was like i don't i don't know who the father is like i just don't because you don't know what you would do in that situation. And like, it would be one thing, right. If Casey was like, I don't, I don't know who the father is. Like, I just don't, you know,

just what two weeks ago she was telling her parents, you have to be, you know, having sex to get pregnant. And now she's telling them, I don't even know who the father is, which means you must have been with enough, enough people to be confused about it.

So, so here's already like a complete curveball in the story. They just thought their daughter had an immaculate conception. And now all of a sudden she's saying, I don't know who the father is. And it would be one thing if she said, you know, he does not want to be involved, but she didn't say any of that. So what if he does want to be involved and he just doesn't know? As a father, I would hope you tell your daughter, like, I get it if you don't want to be with this person, but if this is his child, he has the right to know he's going to be a father. Does he know? Have you told him? Like, there definitely needs to be a conversation. Or maybe why does she not want to tell the father? Has he been abusive? Is she scared of him? Like, there's all these factors that you have to find out and wonder why this girl who's pregnant and alone doesn't even want to, you know, have the father involved or even tell her parents who this person is. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, it's some good

points. You know, I, I, who knows what they were saying behind closed doors. I don't think it was probably handled the right way, but I just try to put myself in their shoes. If I'd probably have all those conversations you said, like, Hey, listen, you know, if this guy wants any part of this, he has the right to know. But, you know, at the end of the day, I also wouldn't want to push her away where if I'm like forcing her to like reach out to this person, I would hate to like wake up one day and have her be gone because she feels pressured by me. And he did say something in there that, you know, is true. You don't want to stress someone out when they're pregnant. You know, it could affect her and the baby. I see you rolling your eyes, but listen, I'm trying to be impartial here. I didn't roll my, I didn't roll my eyes.

I tilted my head and lifted my eyes in a, oh, please God sort of way where it's Casey Anthony. You're not pressuring. I'm not looking at it if it's Casey. Okay. Well, we're looking at it's Casey. She's what? 19 years old at this point. She's an adult. Like you're not going to put her under this disordered amount of pressure by asking her a question that she just has to answer. And we're women. We're not pieces of glass. We're not going to break if you raise our heart rates. You know, come on, man. George Anthony. George Anthony thinks it's the 1950s. He's Don Draper over here. Like, you can't raise your voice to a pregnant woman. She might get upset and faint.

Sorry, go ahead. I can see and hear our listeners and viewers going, okay, move on. We get it. So that's what I'm doing. You're welcome. That's our question of the night, guys. That's our question. Yeah, there's our question of the night.

We might have others. We might have others from you. I can hear the couple people punching away. They spent five minutes on whether or not they were... We're done. You know how much I care? None. Okay, so in July, after she got confirmation from a doctor that she was pregnant, Casey

called her ex-boyfriend, Jesse Grund. But he was in a seminar for a new job that he was starting. So obviously, he texted her back and he's like, I can't talk right now. You should text me. So she texted him saying, quote, I'm pregnant and you're the father, end quote. Now, initially, Jesse believed that he was the father of Casey's child, but he told her that, you know, we're too young to be parents, like we're not even together. Maybe we should consider putting the baby up for adoption. To which Casey replied, this was out of the question. It wasn't even an option. She wasn't going to consider it. Now, there is some question about the whole adoption situation. According to legal court

documents, a friend of Casey's named Kiyomare Torres Cruz claimed that Casey was considering adoption. And Kiyomare, who was unable to have children of her own, she offered to adopt Casey's baby. And Casey apparently thought it was a good idea. And she was like, yeah, I'm going to consider that. You know, I'll get back to you. But then she called Kiyomara back. And she said that even though she really didn't want to keep the baby,

her mother, Cindy, had told her there was definitely not going to be an adoption and Casey needed to keep her baby. So it's really unclear where Casey actually stood on that topic. And she could have just been lying to Kiyomara and been like, oh, yeah, that sounds good. You know, she doesn't like conflict. So she may not have wanted to say no outright. And then she calls back and she has like a scapegoat like, I want to do it. I want to do it for you.

But my mom says no. You know, so we don't really know. It's Casey Anthony, man. She's a wild card. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think it could be all the above. Any one of those things are plausible. And when Casey told Jesse that the baby was his, they didn't get back together right away. But he promised that he would be there for both her and their child, even though at the same time he's doing the math in his head. And he's like, how is it possible that I could be the father? Like, how could I be responsible for Casey's pregnancy when, you know, with the numbers and pregnancy being a certain amount of time, like she clearly had conceived before we even met. So Jesse claimed when he would bring those questions to Casey, she would get very agitated and offended and just insist that he was the father.

So he wanted to stop bringing it up because she would just kind of get really mad at him. But Casey was telling other people that Jesse was not the father. And she had plenty of different stories for who the father really was. And although the details changed, there was a common thread amongst most of her stories. She said Kaylee's father had died in a car accident shortly before Kaylee's second birthday. Sometimes it was a guy she knew from school. Sometimes it was like a friend of her brother. Sometimes it was just some random guy who wasn't even from Florida. But every time she told the story, the guy always like tragically died in a car accident right around the time of

Kaylee's second birthday. Later, a source close to Casey Anthony would say, quote, I don't know who the father was. She doesn't talk about it. She will never tell anyone. She'll take that secret to the grave if she knows who the father is. She's not telling, end quote. Now, this is obviously going to lead to rumors, right? Because we touched on it briefly in episode one of this series, and we said there have been rumors and there have been allegations that Casey Anthony was sexually abused by both her father, George Anthony, and her daughter, may have been the daughter of Lee Anthony or George Anthony. Now, this is obviously not supported. I'm not saying it is true in any way, shape or form, but it is a theory. It's a common one out there. And it would make sense why she never wanted to tell anybody who the father is. And it would make sense why her father, George Anthony, didn't push her too hard to reveal the identity of the father of a

child. Okay, so I see where you're going with this now. So what I was saying earlier as far as like, you know, I can see why George really didn't care about who the father was. And I'm looking at it from like a genuine place where it's like, you know, listen, ultimately, I'm here for my daughter and I'm here for my granddaughter or grandson. And you're saying now like, yeah, that's an option. But it also could be based on what we're learning that maybe George knew who the father of the baby was. And that's why he was kind of like very passive about it. Yeah. So you were thinking like as a non-dysfunctional person, as a non-toxic person in a completely normal family dynamic, you would be like asking but not pushing because you just want your daughter to be happy and

healthy. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters. But the Anthony's were the furthest thing from like a functioning family, you know? So we have to completely... Casey was 19 at the time? When she was pregnant? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I know she's made accusations about

being molested as a younger child. Was there ever any allegations that this was happening into her teens and almost into her late teens? Not that she has said. And personally, I will say that I don't believe these rumors that Kaylee was George Anthony's or Lee Anthony's. It's such a popular theory, though, and it's so widely talked about and circulated. I felt like I had to touch on it and we will touch on it more later on. But if you're groomed from from a young age, you're constantly you never come to a point where you're like, OK, I'm old enough now and I can say no. It's not OK anymore. Yeah. And that's, that maybe I framed it wrong, but what I'm saying is when she came out and confessed that George had been molesting her as a child, like this was,

she made this public. She even said it during the trial, right? If that were the case, when she was 18 or 19 and having sex with him, even if it wasn't consensual, if it was something where she was being groomed and ultimately she knew it was wrong when she was a child. So clearly it wouldn't be right when it was older. Do you think if there was any legitimacy to it, she would have said at court, not only did he molest me as a child, but he groomed me and was still having sex with me late into my teens. And in fact, I think he might be the father of Kaylee. Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, there's a level of shame there. And once again, Casey's a wild card. Like you don't really know what's what's going on behind behind the scenes in her brain, you know, so there may have been a level of shame there that may have been,

you know, she didn't want to admit that it's one thing to admit to being sexually abused when you were a child. But like you just said, you know, you kind of proved that point. When a young woman is 18, 19, there's people out there who might be like, oh, well, you allowed this to happen now at this point. So it may have been just a stigma thing that she wanted to avoid. I don't know. Interesting. But I agree with you. I think I'm in the same school of thought where more than likely George was not the father of Kaylee. Well, let's take a quick ad break and then we'll be right back. This Father's Day at Lowe's, score free gifts for the greatest dad. Right now, get a free select DeWalt, Craftsman, or Cobalt tool with purchase of a select battery kit. Plus

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because he also thinks he's Kaylee's father and the baby's born now. And he didn't receive a warm welcome from either of Casey's parents. They believed that Jesse was Kaylee's father, and they did not think he was going to step up and take care of Kaylee. I also, once again, want to reiterate that I think Casey's family, her parents, were completely content with her being a single mother and not having a man in the picture because then that meant they could take over. They could be the ones to step in and help her. And that meant they wouldn't lose Casey or Kaylee. And I really think that's important. It's my theory, but it's also the theory of many mental health professionals, people who know these things. So the date of

Kaylee's birth also gave Jesse another reason to believe he was not the father because Kaylee was born full term. And later in an interview, he said, quote, Well, I'm not a doctor, but I know you have to be pregnant for nine months to have a baby full term, as far as I understand. And we were not together until the end of January. And the baby was born full term in August. It would be tough for the math to add up for me to biologically be her father, end quote. Now, while Kaylee was being born, both Cindy and George were present in the delivery room. I've said this before and I'll say it again, even though I know there are people who disagree with me because I talked about this on my YouTube channel and there was some

people who agreed and some who weren't. But I find it very bizarre as a woman to have your father in the room while you're giving birth. And he wasn't standing at the head of Kaylee's bed, holding her hand, giving her encouraging words. He was right there, right at the business end of things, at the center of the action, like watching the baby come out. I think it's real weird, real weird. Where are you on this? You're going to be in the room down there when your girls are having babies? I personally wouldn't. I personally wouldn't.

But I'm not, I don't feel as strong about it as you do. I'll say that. I think there are definitely relationships between, and I'm not going to ever say names, but between fathers and daughters who were like in their twenties. And I see them on social media and they're like very kissy huggy. And it's like, some people are more like that. It's a cultural thing. Well, there's things I'm not, I'm not, I'm not giving too many details here because it may connect to some people that I, you know, know people can put, you know, connect the connect the dots. So I personally wouldn't do that either. I wouldn't be in the room. But maybe, again, I feel like I'm an Anthony Defender here,

but maybe because there wasn't a father figure present at that point, he felt an obligation to be that for not only her, but for the baby. I don't know. Yeah, dude. He can do that holding her hand out by her head, not sitting there staring between her legs. It's weird, man. It's weird. Yeah, I wouldn't personally do it. I would feel uncomfortable. I could speak for myself. You should hear some of the things he said about it. When he went to the doctor with her to see the ultrasounds and stuff, he said, oh, it was so cool to see the hamburger of the baby. That's what what they say when they're when they're looking for the gender of the sex of the baby. And they say like, oh, the hamburger. That means the girl.

It's a girl. The baby's a girl. And they refer to that as like the genitalia. They call it like that. The hamburger or something. I don't know why. But he was. This is way too much.

He was super pumped about it. He was like, it was so cool. And like just to see like he's a weird dude, man. And I can tell you what. My dad's not a weird dude. And I don't want him in the delivery room. If George Anthony tried walking in the delivery room, I would get security in there right quick. Yeah. For my own well-being, I'm going to just say nothing. I just think it's a weird, uncomfortable topic right now. Exactly. You feel uncomfortable about it because it is uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable. And it's unnatural and it shouldn't happen. And now I know there's some people out there who will be like, yeah, my dad was right there between my legs watching the baby come out. Like, that's cool. If that's your thing, man, maybe you have a different relationship with your dad. Maybe it's like super close. I don't know.

I just don't like it. But anyways, some people may disagree with me. Listen, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't know. I just don't like it. But anyways, some people may disagree with me. Listen, you're entitled to your opinion. I don't think you're entitled to your opinion. That's the whole point of this, right? Like you're speaking your mind and that's what I'm saying. Like you and I are uncomfortable with it, but I, I will, I'm willing to bet not even knowing the context that you put it in as far as some of the backlash you already had from it. There's definitely gonna be people weighing off in our comments saying, my dad was there. No, I didn't.

And this was the reason why. I didn't have backlash because I think for the most part, people understand. People like, got it. Like from an outside perspective, it definitely does seem weird. But like my dad and I have this certain relationship where blah, blah, blah, he was there for me.

Like I got in an accident before I was pregnant. So he helped me bathe. And so it wasn't like weird. Like that was one thing that somebody said, like, you know, I had gotten into a car accident and I was, you know, in a really bad shape. And my dad was the only person there for me. I didn't have a mom. So he helped me bathe and recover. And then when I had a baby, it was like, you know, that's a different thing. But there's always the exception to the rule. And no, there's do you know Tom Brady is I'm assuming you do. Everybody knows who who tom brady is yeah there was a special that he did a while back and there was

this big topic that was covered in the special because it was a look behind uh the scenes into his personal life and he has a son i want to say his son's like uh eight nine years old maybe even ten and there was a quick scene where like he was saying goodbye to his son and he gave him a kiss on the lips and he said goodbye and that's kind of like what they do and like they're like social media was in an uproar no that's ridiculous that's completely different yeah and they were like this is super i had no issue with i was like listen dude like like that's why are we really focusing on that like clearly there's nothing it's just that's and he said that he was the same way with his father so i think i think that's great i think that's great. I think that's great. That's showing affection. That's teaching your son to be like a loving person. But again, to the point you were

making earlier, some people still had a problem with that and you and I don't have a problem with that. So everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think you got to raise people the way you want, but this in the context of what we know about George and some of the allegations that were made against him afterwards by Casey, it makes it that much more weird, right? I think that adds a lot to it where it's like, if it's true what Casey had said, by this point, he had already molested her. Exactly, man. And I can tell you what, giving birth, you're in an incredibly vulnerable position, right? Once you start pushing, you're not there in that room

anymore. So you don't have the ability to be like, oh, I would like you to leave respectfully, please. You're kind of just focused on doing this incredible thing that's very difficult. Maybe a little pain too. Yeah, it hurts like hell, man. And so- I might be focused on that a little bit. It's awful. You can't even think. I can't even think like there's no there's there's caveman brain happening with one goal.

So I think that it really was like an abuse of trust. And I don't like it. And like, listen, I'm Italian. Like my dad still kisses me on the lips. I'm in my 30s. We've always I mean, perfect strangers. When I say hello to them, I'll give them a kiss on the cheek. It's how I was raised.

But I can tell you, my dad will never be coming in the delivery room. He's gonna be waiting in the waiting room, smoking a cigar like Don Draper, right? Fair enough. Yeah. So this is another thing I have a problem with. The first person to hold Kaylee once she was born was not her mother, but her grandmother, Cindy. George Anthony said, quote, when Kaylee first came out of Casey, I don't even know why he said it like that. When she first came out of Casey, just say when she was first born.

What a weirdo. Anyways, he says, quote, when Kaylee first came out of Casey and she was placed and getting cleaned up and stuff like that, the very first person, that aide or whatever it was, the nursing assistant, was going to give Kaylee to Casey. But because Casey was getting stitched up and stuff like that, the doctor said no, that wasn't appropriate at the moment because she needed to be still and stuff like that. Kaylee was handed to Cindy. Naturally, Cindy is not going to turn the child away. Neither am I. And she opened up her arms. She says, oh my gosh, yeah, I'll hold my granddaughter. And I remember Casey did say, well, geez, you get a chance to hold my daughter before I do, end quote. So as a mother of three, this all makes me so uncomfortable because it doesn't check out that the doctor would have

said that Casey holding her child directly after Kaylee's birth would not have been appropriate. In fact, the American Association of Pediatrics has been recommending it for years, skin-to-skin contact with the mother and child directly after birth. And since Casey did not give birth to Kaylee via C-section, there should have been no reason why she could not have held her child while they continued to work on her, like I've done and a million other mothers have done for years. And she was bothered by this, understandably. And in the future, she would throw it in her mother's face during arguments. So they would be arguing. They argued a lot after Kaylee was born. Cindy and Casey argued all the time. And she would say, well, like you were the first, you know, you stole my kid from me. Like you were the first

person to hold my baby. Like you've been getting in the way of me and my daughter's relationship since day one. So this was clearly an issue for her and it's not just me. So as Kaylee Anthony grew, Cindy Anthony kind of assigned herself to the role of mother and she was often known to refer to Kaylee as her child, such as when she said, quote, once in a great while I might have to ask what she's talking about, but you learn your child's speech, end quote. And sometimes George Anthony would even slip up and refer to Cindy, his wife, as mommy when he was talking to Kaylee. I kind of find this to be completely normal as far as George Anthony goes, but I do understand that it would have been very annoying for Casey to hear her mother refer to Kaylee as her child.

I can see how that would be very annoying. George remembered that Casey had not been happy with this dynamic, and she would often comment on how it hurt her that Kaylee would always run to George and Cindy first, as if they were her mother and father. It was almost as if Casey had been a surrogate for her parents, and now that she had delivered the baby to them had been a surrogate for her parents. And now that she had delivered the baby to them, they had no more need for her. After the birth of Kaylee, Jesse Grund and Casey got back together, but he did ask for a DNA test to prove his paternity. And after six

weeks, the results returned showing that there was a 0% chance Jesse Grund was the father of Kaylee Anthony. But Jesse and Casey decided to give it a go anyway, because by that time, he'd grown very attached to little Kaylee, and he wanted to be her father. He felt he could easily continue to be her father, even if he wasn't related to her by blood. After Kaylee's birth, she and Casey spent a lot of time at Jesse's house with his family. Jesse's father, Richard Grund, said that they all loved Kaylee.

She was innocent and perfect and pure joy. Jesse's house with his family. Jesse's father, Richard Grund, said that they all loved Kaylee. She was innocent and perfect and pure joy. Jesse said that Kaylee, even from the time she was a baby, could just light up your life, and he loved her very much. On New Year's Eve of 2005, Jesse Grund proposed to Casey, and she said yes, and things seemed to be going really well. Jesse claimed that Casey was a good mother, a person who, quote, geared her life strictly around how she was going to be a mother first, wife second, and everything else third. That was her goal. That was her intention, end quote. But then something changed and Jesse doesn't know exactly what it was. But he claims Casey became a different person who, quote, stopped being the person that was dedicated to these things and started concerning herself more with the parties and the friends and the hanging out

and not so much about the responsibility of being a mother to a beautiful, joyous young girl. End quote. The question is, though, you know, what changed? Because Jesse isn't the only person who reported that Casey was a good mother for a good part of Kaylee's early life. She and Kaylee lived at the Anthony home, and Kaylee was the center of attention on a daily basis because it was very hard not to fall in love with her. You look at these pictures of her. She's a beautiful child. She's got this gorgeous smile. I understand when Jessie says she lit up a room because she has this big,

gorgeous smile. She's adorable. She had a huge personality. She was a ham. She loved wearing these huge sunglasses and big sun hats and making everyone laugh. She was incredibly friendly and not nervous at all around new people. Kaylee was smart, too. Her favorite show was Dora the Explorer, and she could count to 40 in Spanish. And this is a big achievement for a two-year-old. It makes me feel like a little bad about my own kids. I was just thinking the same thing. I'm like, damn, my kid wasn't even speaking English.

Right? My kid couldn't count to 40 in English at age two. This is crazy. Slow down, overachiever. All right? Easy. room in the Anthony house. It was decorated in the theme of Winnie the Pooh, and George Anthony constructed a playhouse for her in the backyard, complete with a little mailbox that had her name on it. It was said that Casey, in the beginning, was very attentive with Kaylee. She would play with Kaylee all the time. She was very patient. She never rose her voice. Kaylee was always dressed nicely, and whenever Casey took Kaylee out to visit with

friends, usually her friends, Casey's friends, Kaylee had a little book with her. She was always reading, even though I don't know, is she reading it too? I don't know, but she always had a book. She was well-behaved, quiet, respectful. And whenever Casey would get home from work, the first thing she would do was to run and find Kaylee to tell her how much she had missed her and how much she loved her. All right. So I have a question for you because this is something that I've definitely seen both as a police officer and in my personal life. And again, I'll qualify it by saying I know that based on what George has been accused of by Casey, he's not a good guy, right? We'll just put that right out there.

Based on that. Based on that. And we know Casey's a pathological liar, so take it with a grain of salt. So based on that, we don't really know. So we don't really know. So let's assume for a second, just for a second, that Casey was lying about that, okay? And she was doing it to garner sympathy from the court and all these other things. Okay. Let's just, let's say for a second that he did not do those things. Okay. And that, you know, the, him being in the, the, the emergency room when she had the baby was just, was weird, but in his mind it was innocent.

Let's just take, let's just agree to that for the second. Okay. Is it possible based on what we may have seen in our own life, I know I have, that this could have been a situation where the parent is not a good parent, is more selfish and caring about themselves and how they look and going out to parties. And you see the grandparents, even though they know their kid is a 14 karat F up, allowing them to still play parent when they want to. But in reality, they're playing parents and they're taking care of the child and they're, you know, making sure that there's some structure in their lives, even though they're still telling their daughter that, oh, you know, hey, she's your she's your child. You know, nobody's taking her from you. But in reality,

the real examples for Kaylee are her grandparents. I know I've seen it personally. I have someone in my life that it's going on with right now. Could this be a situation where people are judging the Anthony's and thinking they're bad parents when in reality, what they were doing was trying to be there for Kaylee in spite of the fact that their daughter was not the best parent based on what Jesse has been quoted saying? Well, you said a lot there. So I did. So lots, lots of stuff. Do I think it's possible that that was the situation? Not at first, because as we have just heard from Jesse, initially for a while, Casey was the best mother, completely there, completely attentive,

loved her daughter. Could it be possible that the Anthonys were not bad parents and just trying to keep everything afloat? No, I think that it's indisputable that these people were bad parents. I think that whether or not they, you know, they clearly raised Casey to be a pathological liar. Okay, that didn't come from nowhere. So right there, we have some issues. You can't raise a monster and then say you don't want to deal with her once she's done something you don't like. And I was a young mother, right? So I also know from that perspective, that even though you're completely ready to be a mother, sometimes, you know, I was, I said, I'm going to do this. And if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right. There's still going to be people around you who just look at you and think you're not

going to be able to do it. So they always try to like take things over from you because they think it's going to be too much for you and you're not going to be able to do it. And it becomes incredibly frustrating, especially when you're not dropping the ball anywhere and people are acting like you are. So and there's also going to be things that we talk about going forward where it did seem that Cindy Anthony was considering getting custody and used this to threaten Casey, to scare Casey. So I don't think that's a super healthy dynamic. I don't think that's a sign of a good parent or grandparent.

You would need to do whatever it is in your power, especially if the mother, even though she's a young mother, is there and willing to try and doing her best to make sure you strengthen that relationship between mother and child, not get in the way of it. Yeah, fair enough. I think that that's the two sides, right? I wanted to throw it out there because for the people out there who don't know the case that well, like myself, and I'm hearing things as we progress, I do think it's a plausible scenario at this point. I reserve the right to change judgment as I hear more, but I just wanted to throw it out there just to show that I am, I'm not automatically going to what I know how the story ends.

I'm taking it, you know, paragraph by paragraph as we go through it. But before we continue, let's take a quick break. All right. So after her maternity leave was complete, Casey told everyone that she was going back to work at Universal Studios and she would leave for work every day and come home from work every night. But according to Universal Studios, she never actually did return to her position. And after attempting to unsuccessfully get in touch with her, she was eventually terminated in April of 2006. Now, while Casey was at work, air quotes, she would leave Kaylee with, you know, several different people. Sometimes she would leave her at home with her father, George Anthony. George Anthony usually worked like a later shift. I think he was working like 3 to 11 or something.

Or she would leave her with friends, or she would leave her at the home of the Grund family. Sometimes Jesse would watch her, or if he was working, his parents or even his younger brother would keep Kaylee. Casey had even guilted one of her friends, Lauren Gibbs, into regularly babysitting Kaylee for free. Lauren and Casey had been friends since middle school, and Lauren said she wanted to help Casey as much as she could because she knew how hard it was to be a single mother. But Casey had told Lauren that she was working at Universal Studios, but also she was working at this place called Sports Authority. And I guess Sports Authority is kind of like a dicks they sell sporting equipment clothes shout out sports authority love sports yeah am i right is it is it like yeah it nailed it it's literally dicks

literally put them out of business oh no literally dicks you're a bunch of dicks man that was they were the ones that kind of replaced all their stores here in rhode island and in massachusetts so do you think dicks like looked at their business model and they were like, we can do that bigger and better? Screw you. I don't know. I don't know how they did it. I love Sports Authority. When they were both still in business, I went to both.

Well, so Casey says she's working at the Sports Authority. And one day Lauren can't get a hold of Casey on her cell phone. So she calls the Sports Authority store. She's like, hey, can I talk to Casey? And they're like, who the hell's Casey? And she's like, this girl works at your store, Casey Anthony. And they're like, we've never heard that name. That bitch did not work here. So now Lauren's mad. She found out Casey was not going to work at all. She was just dropping her kid off in the morning. And then she was going to hang out with friends and and play video games and just like I guess be a normal teenager and this made Lauren really mad obviously so she stopped babysitting Kaylee in May of 2006 Casey broke off her engagement to

Jesse Grund and he described it as a very bitter breakup Jessie said Casey accused him of loving Kaylee more than he loved her. She told him they could still be friends and he could still be a part of her life, but not as Kaylee's father. And obviously he's heartbroken by this. And he didn't talk to her for like 10 months after that, because at this point, Kaylee's born in August. They're breaking up in May. That's, you know, a good, what, eight, nine months that he's

been acting as Kaylee's father, that he's falling in love with this little girl. And this was about the time that he said Casey wants to start going out and she wants to start partying and stuff. And then she broke up with him and said it was because he loved Kaylee more than he loved her. So that's toxic. Could it also be that they were only together because, you know, Jesse was trying to be there for Kaylee, but Casey could tell that he really didn't want anything to do with her. I mean, the girl lied to him from the beginning. Why'd she say yes when he proposed to her then? Yeah, no, I agree. But she probably saw the writing on the wall that ultimately he was there for Kaylee, not her, you know?

Can't play with people's emotions like this, man. I give him credit for, you know, for sure. I don't know what I would do in that situation, but I mean, maybe I would have done the same thing, but it takes a strong person to, uh, again, I'm saying that now I'm going to find out Jesse was a scumbag. No, no, he's not. He's a great guy. Great guy. Good. Good. Well, I'll stick with that then Jesse, you know, stand up, dude, anybody who's willing to be lied to directly to your face and still be there for a young child who needs that father figure in your life, you know, respect, man. Yeah. And I mean, he did love Casey.

You know, he said she was clingy and stuff. And that's why he broke up because she was going too fast. But at this point now, like you're engaged, there's a baby in the picture. I think that ship has sailed. He was ready to really dedicate himself to both Kaylee and Casey. And she was like, screw you, man. You were just, you know, a warm bed when I needed it and on to the next. And she does go on to the next and the next and the next after Jesse. For the rest of 2006, Casey pretended to go to

work at both Universal Studios and Sports Authority, leaving Kaylee with whoever she could during the day and with her parents in the evenings. Now, the fake Sports Authority jab, it seemed to have been a cover that would give Casey the freedom to start hanging out with her friends at night, not just during the day. Casey would tell people, you know, her friends, her family, that she had to stay late at the store to do inventory. And so she wouldn't be home till like, you know, two in the morning because of inventory. Now, working these two jobs, you would think that Casey would have some money to show for it. You know, she's living at home. She's not paying rent. She's got no bills, but she's always asking her parents to borrow money, promising to pay them back once she got paid. Spoiler alert, she never got paid because she didn't have a job. And so

she never did end up paying them back. Right. And so one day, George Anthony, he decides to surprise his daughter at work and take her to lunch George Anthony, he decides to surprise his daughter at work and take her to lunch. But when he gets to sports authority and he asked for Casey, he was told once again, she didn't work there. She never had. These sports authority people are probably like, who the hell is this Casey Anthony girl that people keep calling the store and coming in here asking for? She didn't work there. So later he confronts her about the lie and Casey lied some more to cover her first lie. She told her parents that she didn't know what had happened, but whoever had told George that she didn't work there must have been mistaken.

Like maybe they were new. Maybe they just didn't know her yet. Maybe they were having a bad day. She did not come clean and admit that she didn't work there. And here's the kicker. When Cindy found out that George had been checking up on Casey, she got upset with him and told him to knock it off or he was going to make Casey mad. And at this point, George starts wondering, you know,

what is Casey being honest about? Is she being honest about anything? But he also claims he didn't want to push the issue because him being suspicious of Casey and like checking up on her, that was causing problems in his marriage. Now later, Cindy Anthony would tell the press that she wished she had seen the signs that something was going on with Casey. She said, quote, Casey was good at covering her tracks, which we found out later. There were subtle signs looking back now, but I

didn't realize it until the middle of it. End quote. There were not subtle signs, man. There was glaring signs that if we believe George Anthony, Cindy decided to ignore. Because he's coming up here and he's like, yeah, you know, Casey says she works at Sports Authority, but she definitely doesn't. And Casey's like, stop chucking up on her, man. You're going to upset her. You're going to make her mad. These are glaring signs that once again, we talked about this in part one a little bit.

Cindy chose to be willfully ignorant about what Casey was up to. I agree with that. I definitely see that in them. You see in a lot of parents where they know their kid is not doing what they should be doing, but they're making excuses for them and enabling to continue that behavior. It's not a very, it's not a uncommon thing to see, especially when you have a young child or even some, a young adult that conducts himself in a certain manner. And you can't, even as a police officer, when I show up to these calls, I'll have someone 18, 19, 20 years old, and they're acting like a complete idiot for no reason.

And I'm really wondering to myself, and they're acting like a complete idiot for no reason. And I'm really wondering to myself, why are they acting like this? And then as I'm standing there, here come the parents onto the porch and they're acting like even bigger idiots. And I just look to myself and I look to my partners and I go, okay, now it makes sense. Yeah. I'm really curious. What do you think it is that makes parents cover and defend for their grown children in this way? Like she's not paying rent. She's living at your house.

She's borrowing money from you. She's not paying you back. She's clearly lying about going to work. What is it that motivates them to just act like it's not happening and even go so as far as to like defend them? Best case scenario, it's out of love, but that love is misguided. Worst case scenario, they're just bad people themselves as well, and they don't see that what their child is doing is wrong. Yeah, but do they think that lying and allowing their child to be a non-productive member of

society is going to do good things for that child, that young adult going forward into the world? Don't they think ahead, I guess? You said it at the beginning of part one, Apple didn't fall far from the tree. So if you have parents who are unproductive and not contributing members of society, then more than likely their kid will be the same. Now, I shouldn't say more than likely, but it's a high likelihood their kid could go down a similar path. That's why I'm saying, best case scenario best case scenario, they're good, you know, parents that, you know, did well for themselves.

Their, their, their child, for some reason, just got off the beaten path and out of love. They're just trying to see the best in them, you know, making excuses for them because they're blinded by the love they have for their son or daughter. Worst case scenario, scenario, they're not really contributing members of society themselves. And therefore, they don't see nothing wrong with what they're doing. If there's a way to beat the system, if there's a way to avoid any responsibility, go for it. That's because that's what we did. And I see that all the time. I saw it all the time as a police officer going into these homes. When you have young

children committing crimes of violence at 13, 14 years old, we have to go back to the parents and inform them that their son or daughter... I had a case where a 14-year-old boy killed someone. And when I brought this to the attention of the parents, we got a warrant for him later. This was kind of like an ongoing investigation. The parents were upset, but they were more like, no, there's no way he could have did this. He got set up. But this kid had like a rap sheet a mile long. He was involved in arsons and all these other things.

So I don't know how it was so surprising for them. But, you know, to them, their son was still this perfect little angel who had been arrested multiple times before this. They just didn't get it. Did they think that all the other times he'd been arrested, he was set up? They always made excuses for him. It was always the police. You know, he's just, you know, they're out to get him. He was in a gang as well.

And it's, you know, every time we went there, there was always an excuse. It was always, he was all, all his actions were reactions to other people treating him poorly or unfairly. Oh yes, yes, yes. I know this. I know this story. Even in this case, even in this case, the person he killed was a rival gang member. And it was like, oh, you know, but he was coming after him. So maybe it was self-defense, you know, it's always something. Did they know he was in a gang? I don't think if I, this was a long time ago. I don't think they ever acknowledged them knowing to us, but we definitely told them multiple, I personally told them multiple times that he was hanging around with the gang members.

So they thought he was just an innocent gang member? Is that like an oxymoron? I mean, you know, again, these are the things where you have these parents who, do I think they didn't love this son? No, they definitely did. And they made excuses for him and which enabled him to do, to continue doing what he did. So you could have a situation here where on a, you know, at this point, a less extreme, although we're going to see, it does get to that point. Right.

And that could be an explanation for it. this point a less extreme although we're going to see it does get to that point right and that could be an explanation for it but at this point it could be a situation where these parents love casey you know cindy and george love casey you know they they are basically denying what they're seeing with their own eyes um but worst case scenario they're just equally as guilty as as casey is and i know it feels like I'm, you know, in these early episodes, I'm over here like just ramming on the parents like Cindy and George. But I mean, let's be honest, right? This all has a ripple effect. Like you can't just take somebody as a single person and say, why did they do this? You have to figure out what factors in their life

led them to this. And I think that the parents are super important to that. And also, I think that more than one person can be responsible for something when it ripples out in this way. And I just, I don't think that they're innocent in this. I don't think that they're blameless. But trust me, I'll go in on Casey soon enough, guys. Don't worry. I'm not defending her. Although I do think that I can align myself with her in some places because we've shared similar experiences. There is definitely an end to that coming up soon. So trust me. And I don't want to foreshadow too much, but I will say I'm developing an opinion because I do know the end of the story, right? I'm developing an opinion about my perception

of the Anthony's, the parents and Casey and how that all contributed to what we'll eventually get to. Not saying it's going to stick there, but I have been taking notes and there are, I do have some opinions on George, on Cindy, that may not, may be a surprise to you. So we'll see. I don't want to say anything yet because

I might change my mind. But as of right now- Work in progress. Yeah. I know how I feel right now. Okay. Let's take a quick break and we'll get back to the timeline. So with her parents focused on each other and on Kaylee, Casey was free to go out and party pretty much as much as she wanted to. In October of 2006, she attended a Halloween party, took pictures with her friends on her 21st birthday, which took place on Monday, March 19th, 2007. Casey can be seen in photographs literally hugging a toilet while her friends are surrounding her and cheering her on and taking pictures. And we will have John put these pictures up for the video version. She's also passed out in some of these pictures. She's just literally her head in a toilet. And then there's some pictures where she's looking up and giving a thumbs up to the camera and smiling,

but she looks wrecked, man. So the girl who didn't like to get drunk or be out of control, all of a sudden she didn't have an issue with it. And all throughout 2007, Casey was communicating with many people online. Most of them were different men that she knew. One of them was Christopher Stutz, who lived in Tallahassee, but he had met Casey at a football game in 2005. He says that they were initially friends and then they decided to start dating, but it was short-lived due to the distance between Orlando and Tallahassee. Casey would message Chris on Facebook and say things like, I miss my lover and you know me, I'm always up for dressing like a hoe.

Can't wait to see you. Oh, and thanks for making my day as always. She's so Scott Peterson, man. Like the way she talks to these men, she's laying it on thick. Like she's complimenting them. She's basically like, oh, she says this to so many people at the same time. Like, oh, you're my lover. I love you. I miss you.

I can't wait to see you. And she's talking to all these guys at the same time saying this. At the same time, she's talking to another man named Brandon Snow, who Casey had been dating on and off during the years 2006 and 2007. And in early 2007, Casey told Brandon she was pregnant with his child. Right after this, Brandon was deployed to Iraq. He was in the military and Casey messaged him to tell him that she had lost the baby on Valentine's Day. Now, Brandon claims he never believed that Casey was pregnant, but she would continue to message him on Facebook saying things like, I love you. It's worth it. Don't ever forget that.

And she also told him that they should go on a cruise when he got home. There was another man named Mark Hawkins. This was a friend of Casey's since high school, and it seemed like Casey was also leading Mark to believe that they were going to be together because she's telling him she wants him to come home. And he wrote her an email towards the end of July 2007 saying, quote, you have no idea how much I've missed talking to you. I care about you a lot, and I hope that maybe this could be something. And I only hope that I can be an amazing male role model for your daughter. End quote. She had an amazing male role model. She had Jesse Grund, but you broke up with him so that you could Facebook multiple men at the same time.

So Casey responded to tell Mark that she thought it was so funny that all those years they had known each other, she'd looked at him only as a friend when it had always been more. And this poor guy wrote back, quote, I can't stop smiling. I have to be honest. I've always thought of you as something more. I just had to be patient and wait for the right time in my life. And I think that time is now, end quote. So at this time, Mark, he was in the Navy and he was stationed somewhere outside of Florida. In the early spring of 2007, Casey told everyone that she'd got a big promotion at Universal Studios, and now she was an event planner. This fictitious promotion would allow her to have more freedom when it came to her coming and going as she pleased. Now that she had this big and important position, she would get a call or an email, you know, randomly throughout

the day or night, and she'd be like, oh, there's an event planning emergency. I have to deal with it immediately. And then she would leave. And she wouldn't be able to tell anyone when she'd be back because, you know, she's the super important event planner. And there's no way to tell what kind of things she's going to be needed for when she gets in there because she's so proficient at her job. And this just goes on to extreme extents, her making up this job and this promotion. She even went so far as to create fake email profiles and then send herself fake emails from these fake email profiles where she would then have fake conversations with herself about events that were being planned and then she would show her parents and be like, oh, see, we're doing a really

big event. I'm going to be needed this weekend. And then they'd be like, oh, this is great. Like, yeah, you're making something of your life. And I will defend the Anthony's here when I say that I think that they believed her because they were already sort of primed to believe her. And she had all of these receipts now. You know, she has like this legitimate what looks like a legitimate email. And they think maybe she's turned her life around. Yeah. I mean, there's so much to unpack right there. I agree with the last statement you made as far as giving the Anthony's a little bit of leeway on this one, because she went to such lengths to create this lie, which in and of itself, as part of everything you just said, is a huge problem from the fake, the alleged fake pregnancy to Brandon. and then obviously the story about Universal to get

more time out of the house and sports authority and all these things that you've mentioned, there's clearly some psychological issues there as far as her willingness to lie and the extent she'll go to to create these lies for something that's really not that important. As far as her motive behind doing it, I do think you can make an argument that she was still of college age when she had Kaylee. She felt like she was missing out on those things that regular college kids would get to do. And back to what we were just talking about a little while ago, whatever the motive was for Cindy and George, they were enabling Casey to do a lot of these things because they were basically acting as Kaylee's parents. And Casey knew that she had this crutch. She knew it wouldn't take much to create this diversion, this lie that her parents would buy

hook, line, and sinker, and it would allow her to go live the quote unquote college life, hanging over toilet bowls, sleeping with random men, because she knew at the end of the day, Kaylee was going to be in the hands of her parents, which she obviously trusted at that point. So I think it was a complete just recipe for disaster where Casey had this child. Initially, she was in love with her. She wanted to be a parent. She was excited about the idea of being a parent. But then that got old really quick. And Jessie referred to this as far as how she changed. She got caught up with the wrong people, started doing things that you would do if you were a young, dumb, stupid kid with no responsibilities like a child.

And the only reason she was able to do it was because of her parents. Yeah. And they allowed this to happen for so long. And then at one point they were like, oh, this is horrible. We can't allow this to happen anymore. And it's like, pull up a mirror, look at it because you were the one responsible for this. Because at any point you should have been like, Casey, this is it. Like you have a daughter, you got to be home to put her to bed at night. You got to go to work. You got to go to work. We think you're lying about that, but whatever. But you got to be home at night. Put your kid to

bed because we can't do all of this. They needed to put the foot down and draw the line somewhere and they never did. Here's the problem though. What? The monster was already out of the cage. And this is why I wasn't just speaking out my you know what on episode one. We spent a lot of time talking about Casey as a young kid and in high school and the whole graduation story. That's foundational.

You already created this person who's now 19, 20 years old. It's going to be very difficult to change her now. Where it should have been nipped in the butt was when she was younger. When she was in high school, you shouldn't have given her these outs. You shouldn't have enabled her. You shouldn't have defended her, even though you knew she was lying about, you know, you helped her create the lie about graduating. You help, you basically turned a blind eye to the fact that she was pregnant, even though

you knew she was, because again, that's what, that's what Casey was going with. So you decided to go along with her. So again, that's why it's so important that we go to such detail, just like in episode one, because now when you look at these stories and you're wondering why one, Casey's doing this and two, why Cindy and George are allowing it. Well, if you listen to part one, you know, this was something that's been going on for years. And now, honestly, the train's already off the tracks. So to change that behavior when you've been kind of condoning it for 20 years, good luck with that.

I think you're right. And I think you're right because as we'll see, when Cindy and George sort of finally did put their foot down and they were like, this can't go on anymore, what happened? Not having it. Kaylee disappeared. Kaylee, exactly. Because it's too late now. It's too late now.

Because Casey's thinking, well, like, okay, I don't have this anymore because I can't do this because they're not allowing it. So now I have to figure something else out. And not to go into other situations, but how many cases out there where you have these young adults who commit these heinous acts, right? And then you look at the parents and you look at the history in their childhood and you completely understand why they are the way they are. Because at some point, the parents have allowed certain behavior to go on for so long.

We just saw it with the shootings in Michigan, right? Oxford, where these parents are absolute morons, right? I'm not going to get into deep. Maybe we'll cover that one day, but the parents are idiots. We'll just say that. If you don't know the story, you should look it up. They enabled this kid to act like a moron. And when things finally got really bad, this person took the bullying, and I say that in air quotes, if you can't see, into his own hands and decided to retaliate with a gun that was purchased by his parents. Yeah, they're being charged, right? They're absolutely being charged. They were on the run. They were caught in a warehouse. Good for them. Absolutely agree with it. That said, you can kind of see these similarities in a lot of stories where you have these young,

they didn't just come out of nowhere. There's usually something in the household that allowed them to become this person. Not saying it's always the case, not saying parents are always bad, but in a lot of the situations that I've investigated, I've looked into, as soon as you start to unpack the person that you're looking into in their childhood, there's usually a connection. Not always, but usually. It's kind of terrifying, you know, raising children and thinking like that that might happen and you try to do everything you can, because children and thinking like that that might happen. And you try to do everything you can, because I think that there are parents who still try

to do everything right. Yes. And they they do their best and their kids still turn out all screwed up and they do something bad. And it's like terrifying. And then those issues is usually a mental health issue. Right. I usually see that in those cases, there's usually a deeper mental health issue that

the parents aren't equipped to handle. It needs professional attention, maybe medication, and you can't blame them with that. If they're trying everything they can, you know, listen, my heart goes out to you. I have never been in that situation. I can't imagine what it's like, but a lot of the times it is behavioral and those behaviors are either condoned or enabled by the parents because they see these things and whether it's out of love or just out of pure negligence, they don't address it when it should be addressed while they're children and they're still learning. And so when they get older and you maybe try to correct that or someone outside the household tries to correct it, you're faced with issues like this, where the person rebels, can become

violent, lashes out, a lot of different things. So this is not an uncommon story, unfortunately. Well, right around this time that Casey gets her fake promotion, she told her parents she was now in a relationship with a man named Jeffrey Hopkins, who also worked at Universal Studios and whose son, Zach, was just a year, I think a year younger or a year older than Kaylee. I can't remember. They were very close in age. And in her phone, Cindy saw that Casey had put this number in her phone and it used to

say Jeffrey Hopkins. But then when they started dating, she changed his name to the word boyfriend. And Casey told some intricate and detailed stories about Jeff. She said he was a wealthy, accomplished man who had moved to North Carolina for a bit, but now he was back in Florida. His mother's name was Jules. She was a lovely woman who was battling cancer. And Jeff also had a nanny for his son, Zach, a really nice woman named Zineda Fernandez-Gonzalez, who was originally from New York City. Now, this is where Zanny the nanny is introduced, and she comes to us through Jeffrey Hopkins, who, once again, spoiler alert, is a real person, but not the person that Casey described. So Casey's parents were just happy that their

daughter had seemingly gotten to a relationship with a mature and responsible man. He had his own kid. Maybe this would settle her a bit, bring her back to like family values. And they wanted to meet him. So they planned a dinner to meet Jeff and his mother, Jules. Casey was like excited about this dinner. She couldn't wait for her new boyfriend to meet her parents. The dinner was all set and Cindy Anthony even made a pie. But 30 minutes before Jeff and his mother were set to arrive, Casey got a call from Jeff. And sadly, she had to tell her parents that he was sick and he wasn't going to make it for dinner. So the dinner was canceled, but they planned another one, which had to get canceled as well when Jeff got called into work.

So Casey's parents continued to try and make plans to meet Jeff until finally Casey was like, ah, yeah, we're not together anymore. Jeff had to leave Florida for work. And so we broke up after we were unsuccessfully trying to make a long distance relationship work. And that was the end of Jeff, but not the end of Zanny the nanny. In August of 2007, this would be Kaylee Anthony's second birthday, Casey threw Kaylee a Mexican themed birthday party at her parents' house. But apparently, Casey was short on money. So she stole a check from her grandmother, Shirley, to make up for the difference. And Casey made the check out to Publix. It's like a grocery store. It was for $54. She got a cake and some decorations and stuff. And later, her grandmother, Shirley, commented on this, saying, quote, instead of asking grandma for some more money, she took the check. I would have gladly given her some money, end quote. This would not be the only time Casey stole money from her grandmother or her parents or from her friends.

I mean, if there's one thing we can say about Casey, she believed in equal treatment for all. It didn't matter who you were. She would lie to you and steal from you if it served her in some way. And this actually caused a great deal of chaos in her family home and amongst family members. One of the issues caused was between her parents, George and Cindy, because Cindy was finding money missing from her wallet, and she blamed George because she knew he had a gambling addiction, and she's accusing him of stealing money out of her purse. But even years later, George Anthony denied taking any money from his wife's purse. He said it must have been Casey. He would also mention that Casey had taken money from a savings account that the Anthonys had set up for Kaylee

when she was born. Yeah, this goes back to what we were just talking about earlier, right? Just the whole melting pot of mistakes as far as parental errors that were made. And now you've created this situation. You've created this person who's now a product of your parenting. And again, I said it earlier, once the person has the power of what they've been able to accomplish over the years under your watch, it's going to be very difficult to correct that course, especially now that in their eyes, they're an adult, quote unquote. They're an adult now, so they can do what they know is right for them and for their child. And you're just going to have to get with the program, which up to this point, you've always done now that it's, you know, how it's evolving and how it's escalating, right. As far as what she's willing to do and how brazen she is and saying, Hey, I could take

money right out of their accounts and cut a check. And you know what, they're going to let me do it. What's going to happen to me? Exactly. Yeah. What's worst case scenario? I've done worse things before. They're going to blame each other. Yeah. They'll yell at each other. They'll get in a fight and I will come out smelling like roses like every other time. Terrible.

All right. We're now in 2008 and by the summer of this year, Kaylee Anthony would be gone. In January of 2008, Casey took Kaylee to a party at the home of Troy Brown. So Troy Brown had met Casey at his birthday party the previous June, and apparently Casey had been brought to this party by Troy's then-girlfriend Lauren Copel. At this party, Casey also ran into another man she had met once before. His name was Ricardo Morales, and the two would start dating the following month. Once Ricardo started dating, he asked her, like, who, you know, who's the father of your daughter? And Casey told him that the father of Kaylee was a man named Brad or Brandon, who was a friend of her brother Lee's. She said this guy was in Orlando on vacation around Thanksgiving of 2004, and after some time, he returned to Tennessee, where he was from. And when Casey had told him she was pregnant,

he said he didn't want to be in the child's life, and then he ran off the road and died in a car accident just a few days before Kaylee's second birthday. Do we ever find out who the father of Kaylee actually was? No, we don't, but listen. There was like a ton of people that she knew who actually did like die tragically in car accidents. So there's several options, like guys she went to high school with, you know, people who she was close with and in proximity to around the time Kaylee would have been conceived,

who then went on to like die in car accidents. And sometimes, you know, people would come up and say, oh, I wonder if it's this guy. And then the family of that guy would respond and either say, no, we've never met Casey Anthony. We don't know who she is. Like, you know, our son didn't get her pregnant. Or there was even one mother who said she believed her son was the father of Kaylee Anthony. And she said, you know, looking at pictures of Kaylee, she thought that Kaylee resembled her son. And this young man did also die in a car accident, you know, right around that time. So who knows? But none of their names were Brad or Brandon.

What's your gut tell you? Do you think do you think Casey knew who the father was? Or do you think she just honestly, because of her history, just honestly had an idea but wasn't exactly sure? as she was later. I think she was still in that good girl thing, like going to school and I'm a really good girl. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. I think she was still kind of in that gear. And you would think if she had been like sleeping with a bunch of men at that time, some of them would have come forward and been like, oh, actually, I dated Casey Anthony during this time, you know, or I dated Casey Anthony during this time. And that hasn't happened. So I definitely think she knows why she doesn't want to say anything to anyone, especially now at this point where there's no, you know, you don't have to worry about someone coming in and trying to take your kid, et cetera, et cetera, because Kaylee's gone. Why she wouldn't

say now, I don't know, but it might just be something that she wants to keep to herself. But I think she knows definitely. I wonder. In April of 2008, Casey stole from her grandmother, Shirley, again. She took $354 from a bank account that her grandfather's social security checks were deposited into. Now, apparently, this was the account that was used for her grandfather's expenses at the senior care facility he was living in. And Casey used this money to pay her AT&T cell phone bill. So the next month, Shirley Plezia discovered the theft and she called Bank of America and she was pissed. She told Bank of America, like, you guys should call the police and like pursue charges against my granddaughter. But they were like, oh, we're just going to refund you the money, you know, and if you want to call

the police, you can do that. That's not really our job. And Shirley never did pursue charges against Casey. Shirley didn't call the police, but she called her daughter Cindy and gave her hell. And later she wrote an email to her sister, Mary Lou, in which she said, quote, I called Cindy. She doesn't sound good. She sounds depressed. Cindy was doing fine, supporting the house, saving, et cetera, till George put them in debt with the online gambling, end quote. Shirley also wrote that she believed George Anthony may have been struggling with bipolar disorder. His overspending and compulsive gambling could be an indication of that, something that he may be doing while in a manic state.

And Shirley also believed that her granddaughter, Casey, may have also been suffering from the same disorder. When Cindy got the call from her mother about Casey's theft, she apologized and she offered to pay the money back that Casey had taken, which is another example of how Casey was never left to her own devices to face the music for anything that she had done. Because if this is, I have a 20-year-old daughter, okay? And if this was my 20-year-old daughter, I would not be like, oh, I'll pay you back. I'd be like, let me talk to my kid and figure out how she's going to pay you back, whether she has to work it off, whether she's taking money, whether she's selling something of hers. This is a lesson that's worth being learned. If you pay the money for her, there's no lesson learned, Cindy. This is basic. It's so annoying that these people don't seem to understand it. Yeah. And these things start so small, even as a young kid, like when my daughters lie or they, or they take something,

you know, had Peyton a while back, maybe a year or so ago, take a pack of gum. And, you know, we went back into the store. She was traumatized by it, you know, but I, I went in there, I told the guy, the guy was super nice at the convenience store. I said, listen, she took this, she didn't pay for it. I'm trying to teach her that you shouldn't do this. She was so petrified. She was crying. She was mortified. She was, she took this. She didn't pay for it. I'm trying to teach her that you shouldn't do this. She was so petrified. She was crying. She was mortified. She was embarrassed.

Put it back, apologized. But guess what? Bet she never did it again, huh? Never happened again because she realized not only that it was wrong, but that dad wasn't going to protect her. I could have easily said, you know what? Don't do that again. Just a pack of gum.

Don't worry about it. Don't just give me the gum. Even that would have been bad because it would have said, oh, well, worst case scenario, he'll just take the gun. You know, he's going to he's going to be on my side. But she realized that it was tough for me. I was dying inside, by the way, because I'm her protector. And she was looking at me like, dad, you're going to let him, you know, because I was

like, I don't know what's going to happen. We'll see. You know, and she was like looking at me like you're supposed to do. No wonder she was scared. You were like, you might get arrested. You know, maybe you'll do two to three years. No big deal. I'll write to you. I said, listen, I did say she was five. So I had to go somebody's, but I'm like, you know, they could call the police. You know, this could be a report. I don't know. We'll see what happens. And she was looking at me like really, really scared. And I was literally, literally dying inside, but I, the guy was awesome and it worked out. And I'm so glad

I did that because she doesn't do it anymore. And, and, you know, if I had just kind of let her do her thing, maybe she would be, I don't know. I'm not saying every girl who steals a pack of gum is going to end up being a murderer one day, but I do think these little things add up to something big and it does create boundaries. It does create common sense and what's right and what's wrong in life. Exactly. It creates a roadmap in your child's brain. This is the road to take if I want to be a good person. This is the road I don't take. That's it. And the point we're making is Casey didn't just wake up one day and start stealing from her loved ones. This was an escalation over time.

It just didn't happen overnight. And that's why we're harping on it. And listen, there was even an indication at this point that maybe Casey did want to take some accountability because while Cindy was on the phone with Shirley, Casey was there and she was like, give me the phone. I want to talk to my grandmother. I want to like, you know, give her my side, probably lie. Who knows?

Maybe she wanted to apologize. I don't know. you know, give her my side, probably lie. Who knows? Maybe she wanted to apologize. I don't know. But Shirley refused to talk to her. So later, Casey sent an email to Shirley apologizing and offering to go and do some cleaning at her grandmother's place to make it up to her. But Shirley responded and said, basically, like, I don't trust you. I don't want you in my house. And the last words that Shirley Plezia ever said to her granddaughter, Casey, were, I love you, but I don't like you. Wow. That cuts deep, I'm sure. It's true. That's why it cuts so deep. She probably genuinely was like, listen, I can love you, but still not like the person you are. And there might be people who are like, well, she should have let her come and

work it off and that would have taught her a lesson. But at the same time, I can understand not trusting Casey. And maybe the lesson Casey needed to learn was you're losing people. You're hurting relationships. But maybe she didn't even care. Who knows? Around this time, George and Cindy Anthony, they were still being plagued with financial troubles. So they set up a meeting with a financial advisor and they discovered that over the past two years, Casey had stolen upwards of $40,000 from them. So the financial advisor did his job. He advised the Anthonys to cut ties with Casey, like stop financially supporting her. They couldn't manage it any longer. They were broke. If she keeps stealing from you, you'll be bankrupt. You'll have to lose your house again. All of these things that

you've already gone through and you've recovered from, you've got to cut it. You've got to cut it loose now. And he basically said, you know, after you get everything done and Casey's back on her feet and she's taking care of herself, you can then work on like fixing your relationship. But Cindy Anthony did not like this idea. And she asked the financial advisor about potentially seeking custody of Casey's daughter, Kaylee. Now, apparently the advisor told her, you know, this is a viable option since clearly Casey could not financially support Kaylee on her own. And the Anthonys were doing the bulk of the supporting financially. And he was like, you know, you can prove that you're the one buying diapers. You're the one buying clothes. You're the one financially taking care of her. And yeah, this is kind of where the idea started. And then in April of 2008,

Cindy Anthony actually started attending therapy. And apparently one of the things she really liked to talk about during therapy was Casey and her bad behavior. After she found out about Casey stealing money from Shirley, Cindy brought it to her therapist. And later, Cindy said, quote, part of it was me handling the financial aspect with Casey. So at some point, I did consider having her come into counseling, but then I nixed that because I wasn't happy with the counselor I had. She was telling me to abandon my daughter and to make her and Kaylee move out of the house. And that was not going to happen.

So I just quit her, end quote. All right. So for anyone who needs clarification about this situation, Cindy went to therapy for help. She was given advice from a mental health professional. This advice was that her grown daughter needed to be out on her own so that she could become responsible for her own life and her own daughter without her parents enabling her every move and paying for her every need. And Cindy was like, forget you, man. I wanted advice, but I didn't want this advice. I didn't want advice I didn't want to hear.

And this is bugging me. I hate people like this. They go to therapy and they're hoping to give validation. They want the therapist to be like, you are doing everything right, Cindy. You are the only good person in your family. You're holding everyone up. How do you do it? Aren't you tired? Take a nap on my couch. You've got to be so tired from being the hero of everyone's story. And then they hear something they don't want to like, like the therapist saying, you're enabling your daughter to be this way. You have some blame in this. And then they quit. They're like, oh, I don't like this therapist. I'm going to get a new therapist who tells me

exactly what I want to hear. Oh, I've definitely experienced that where it's like, is it me or did these people blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, it's you. And they're like, wait, what? Oh, forget you then. And it's like, oh, okay. So now I'm in, I'm grouped in with them too. Pretty much. Yeah. And I mean, I've been in therapy sessions where this happens and I'm like, I can't do this with you. Because you have no self-awareness at that point. You have no need or desire to look inside and say, how could I potentially be contributing to this negative situation? And there's no fixing people like that until they really want to take accountability.

But taking accountability is not a strong suit in the Anthony family, so why am I surprised? However, the therapist did mention something to Cindy that Cindy began to seriously consider. And the idea was that maybe Casey should move out and get her life on track. So basically, Cindy should kick Casey out, but Kaylee should stay with the Anthonys. And they would then file for legal custody so that they could raise her themselves. Now, according to Rick Plezia, Cindy's brother, Cindy and Casey would often get into these like drag down knockout fights that even the neighbors could hear. They would scream loudly at each other. And Rick claims that Cindy threatened Casey with this, this idea, losing custody of Kaylee at least three times that he knows of. Later, a neighbor across the street named Jean Couty would tell

detectives that she heard heated arguments between mother and daughter many times. And Casey would yell things at her mother like, shut up, or she would scream, fuck you. You know, like they're just really, they're screaming loud. Everyone can hear. And Cindy's brother, Rick said, quote, Cindy told me a couple of times that one of these times she was going to get custody. Cindy would have took that kid in a minute. She would. She wanted to be in charge of Kaylee, end quote. Man, I'll tell you what, again, maybe I'm naive here and I feel like that's what I'm going to be hearing in the comments, but I feel like Casey's parents did not raise Casey right, but it sounds to me up to this point,

maybe I'm going to change my mind, but they, I don't think it was like wanting possession of Kaylee, but it was more so like our kids, not a good parent and we need to have custody of Kaylee or she's going to end up just like Casey. And my, and I mean, maybe even there was part of them. That's like, we really screwed up with Casey. We're going to try to do right by Kaylee because we realize now we created this monster. But I don't see it as a possession thing, the way that was just quoted, where it's looking at her as an item. So I would agree with the second part of your statement where they said maybe we screwed up with Kaylee, I mean, with Casey. This is our second shot at getting it right. Although what's going to happen is you're just going to end up screwing Kaylee up too,

because you guys, you guys don't know how to be normal, man. Yeah. History's not in your favor. No, you don't know how to, like, you should have said we screwed up, like, let's call it a day, you know? Right. Right. But, uh, I'm going to respectfully disagree with you. It definitely was a possessive thing. I mean, if we believe, if we believe Casey, this sounds like so stupid to say, but that's what I'm saying. It's hard. But if we believe the things that Casey had initially said, like she wanted to give Kaylee up for adoption because she knew she wasn't ready. And her mother said, absolutely not. Her mother was calling Kaylee my child, our child. I hate it. They took control of this pregnancy and this child from the moment they knew about it. So when you don't give your child, Casey, the opportunity to strike out on her own, stand on her own two feet,

care for her child on her own, how does she learn to do it? And then after two years of doing that, you're like, all right, that's it. You haven't learned anything. We're taking her. But you didn't teach her and you didn't help her and you didn't basically hand her her baby and say, now you're a parent and we're here if you need anything. But this has to be you. This has to be you. Couldn't it be a part like I'm looking at if I was the dad, right? Like if I know what my daughter's out there doing, you know, sleeping with random men, drinking, doing whatever. Yeah, but they didn't know that, right?

She was a virgin. You don't think, but I, okay. Yeah. But I mean, at that point they probably had a clue that, you know, she's not working. She's doing these crazy things. She's hanging out with people. I don't want me teaching her a lesson to affect Kaylee because I could kick her out with Kaylee.

And what's that going to mean that Kaylee's at these parties in the back room with some crazy, you know, some random men and stuff. I, I, sure. Yeah.

That would be my fear. Like I'm trying to prove a point to my daughter, but the person who's the real victim here is my granddaughter. And is that the right move? No, that's not your kid, man. No,

it's weird. And is that the right move? No, that's not your kid, man. No, it's weird and like invasive. However, I will tell you that the first time I thoroughly went through this case, I felt bad for the Anthony's, Cindy and George. I was like, man, this sucks. And I still do feel bad for them because regardless of what they did or what part they had, they lost their granddaughter that they clearly loved very much, whether it was because of a possession thing or an image thing or whatever. They loved her and they really lost their daughter too, right? So I feel bad regardless for them because I still have sympathy in me for people I don't really like. But as I go deeper into this case, as I learn more about them the second, third, fourth, fifth time around, and I've read like every book that there is out there on this case, I think that they really were a big problem in this situation. I think they were a big problem,

and I do think that it wasn't a healthy, we love Kaylee and want to take care of her. It was, we want Kaylee. We don't trust you. We don't think you can do this. You're inept, so we're going to take take her i agree with that last part you just said yeah i think they didn't trust casey they're like if we leave her with you you're gonna something bad's gonna happen right but you made casey what she is like how dare you at this point you're the wrong people to be protecting kaylee at this point yeah i'm just saying you're the wrong people to be protecting kaylee and you're the wrong people to be judging casey for what she's doing because you clearly never taught her how to do the right thing. So it's like, I just, you know, it seems

like you like come in and make a mess and then you yell and you're like, oh, what's this mess here? But you're like, you made the mess. Yeah, no, that I don't, I do not disagree with that. I'll be interested to hear what you guys out there, you know, especially if you're watching on YouTube, you know, sound off in the comments because I'm definitely coming at this with a very minimal knowledge on the background. My involvement, as we talked about, it was mainly with the case itself. Once Casey was a prime suspect in Kaylee's death.

So all this stuff is foreign to me. So I wonder how you guys are feeling out there. Some of you are probably as knowledgeable about this case as far as the background as Stephanie is. But for those of you who aren't, what are your thoughts? What are your feelings right now? Because I'm a little torn on it. I'm a little torn on it. So definitely sound off. Let us know what you think. Well, in May of 2008, Casey brought up the idea of moving to Puerto Rico. So she brought this to her parents. And apparently, Cindy was not a fan of this idea. I have no idea why Casey would want to move to Puerto Rico. It probably wasn't even

something she was seriously considering. She does this a lot. You can see in like messages that she has on Facebook. She's always got these ideas. She's like, let's go on a cruise. She was telling one of her friends like that her parents were moving out of Florida and they were going to leave her their house. And then she and this friend would move into their house together. They were making plans. They were like shopping for stuff for the house. And there was no plan for Cindy and George to ever leave the house. So she has these ideas and then she'll just run with them. But Cindy was furious. She was furious that Casey would even consider taking Kaylee like out of Florida and, of Florida and make it hard for Kaylee to see Cindy and George. So Casey's newfound desire to move to Puerto Rico, it may have had something to do

with her new boyfriend, Tony Lazzaro. Now, I know I told you Casey was dating a man named Ricardo Morales, and she was. She was. But she met Tony Lazzaro on Facebook, and they attended a no clothes party together in May. And this is not a party where you go naked. Obviously, it sounds like it is, right? But you have to wear something that's not conventionally considered to be clothes. So like a blanket or something. And Casey decided to go to this party dressed in an American flag. And she and Tony, they had immediate chemistry. Very similarly to her 0 to 100 behavior with Jesse Grund, Casey's relationship with Tony

moved very quickly. Tony was a Long Island native, and he was in Florida studying music at Full Sail University in Orlando. Tony lived, did the purest form of a college life. He shared an apartment with two other guys, and at night and on the weekends, he worked as a party promoter for a local nightclub. So basically, he'd work for several nightclubs and he'd push stuff out through social media like, you know, big blue vodka party at Blue Vodka Nightclub this weekend. And, you know, he tried to get people to go there and he'd get paid by the bar or the nightclub based on how many people, you know, showed up. Now, through the months of May and June, Casey spent time with Tony a lot of time and she would bring her daughter Kaylee along because Tony's apartment had a pool and the three of them would hang out there while Kaylee played and swam.

Tony said Kaylee was an adorable and smart little girl. She always had a book in one hand and a teddy bear in the other. He said Casey was a good and attentive mother. But early on in their relationship, he had told Casey he didn't really want kids. And if he did have kids, he wanted them to be boys because boys were less trouble, apparently. I don't think that's true, but OK. And a relevant question to ask, I think, is did this affect Casey and her view of being a mother, of having a child, a girl child specifically, in a similar way that many people believe Chris Watts was motivated to kill his pregnant wife and two young daughters when he started dating Nicole Kissinger? You know,

was Tony's stance on children a factor in Casey possibly wanting to not have a child? Or could it have been Tony's free-balling college lifestyle that made Casey realize there was so much about her youth and her life that she had missed out on? Casey was pregnant young. She was a mother before she was even old enough to drink. She'd never gone to college, and therefore she'd never been a part of this lifestyle. And maybe being with Tony showed her that there was, you know, a whole chunk of stuff happening out there that she was missing. And there is evidence that she was greatly enjoying being young and of people and all sorts of places. And, you know, she even told her mother that she was being sent to Tampa for a few days for work, which is obviously not true because she didn't have a job. But instead, Casey actually stayed in Orlando and she hung out with Tony and his buddies. And she does this a lot going forward while Kaylee is missing. Casey will say like, oh, I'm here for work. I'm out of town for work. But the whole time she's still in Orlando and, you know, not actually doing anything, but hanging out with people. And Casey's friend, Amy Huizenga, told police that Casey was supposed to meet her out one night and Casey's boyfriend, Ricardo Morales, was going to be there as well.

But Casey texted Amy and said, you know, she might not make it out. And when Casey texted Amy, Amy said she thought that Casey was already out and she was hanging out with Tony. And Casey told Amy, I really like Tony, even though I know I'm with Ricardo. So this was June 1st. Casey and Tony went to a barbecue at one of his friends' house and they spent the night together at Tony's apartment. And the next day, June 2nd, Casey and Ricardo broke up when he confronted her about going behind his back with Tony. So after this happened, Casey texted her friend Amy saying, quote, so is it more sad or funny that Rick decides to spill his real feelings

for me after hearing that I made out with Tony? Stupid. So stupid. I couldn't wait for him forever and I'm truly glad I didn't end quote so Casey will tell you like she wasn't really dating Ricardo like they were hanging out and seeing each other and she wanted more and he never pulled the trigger so she just like up and you know started seeing Tony but it's not really the way it went down like according to Ricardo they were actually like dating together which is why he was so upset when he found out that she was with another guy because he wouldn't have been if they weren't an item. My gut tells me to go with Ricardo on this one.

Yeah. That's my gut. I don't know a lot about Ricardo, but I feel like there's some truth to what he's probably saying. Like Casey, everyone else, the gut's always going to tell you to go with everyone else. Yeah. And I mean, even Amy was kind of like, okay, Casey, that's not really how it happened. Because Amy was friends with Ricardo and this is a whole nother dynamic. But yeah, and I get it.

I get it to an extent. Like I said, I was a young mother, so I missed out on a lot of things. I went to college after I had my daughter, but there was no partying. I wasn't like, there was some party. But you just said it, right? There was some partying. You missed out on a lot. I missed out on a lot. Because you made a choice. Yeah, but I did strategically plan things. I'd have my mom take my daughter for the weekend

if I planned to do something, but it wasn't every weekend and it was far and few between. But I chose, yeah, I had to miss out on that stuff. Right. And I'm sure there were times where you were faced with something that you really wanted to do, but your mom wasn't available, whatever, and you had to make a choice. And my gut tells me that your choice was always for Nev and not for whatever you personally wanted to do. Yeah. I lived with- Congratulations. You're a good mother. I lived with FOMO for like so long, man, because that was like the advent of social media too, you know? So everybody was like, that's when Facebook was

popping and MySpace too, man. MySpace was popping. And I'd always go on there and I'd be like, man, everybody is having the best time. But you know, I'm kind of also like, I like to be at home too. And I always have been. So it wasn't a huge thing for me, but I get it. You know, I get it. Seeing that like your your youth is pretty much over and wanting to reclaim it. And I think that is what happened after she she decided to start hanging out with people that she decided to hang out with young people who had no responsibilities. You know, I also started befriending other young mothers. And so I was kind of hanging around people who had similar like motivations and similar goals. But if I'd been hanging out with people who were partying every weekend, oh, I totally would have been like, I would have been crushed. I would have been so sad all the time. But it's about what you choose to surround yourself with. It's not about what

happens to you, but how you how you react to it. You know, I've always thought that. So I get this, but I still, I don't have a ton of excuses for her because the reality was she was a mother and there was a little girl who was depending on her. No, but it's starting to make more sense of why we are where we are today. And I'm assuming when we speak next week, it's going to be into the meat and potatoes, starting to get into it, because now we're in 2008 and we're there. We're there because, yeah, we're right at the beginning of June, right? And this is the month that Kaylee goes missing. And the timeline of each day leading up to that is very important because a lot of things happen that you could say were triggers. Because at the end of the day, we sort of want to ask ourselves, what's the motive, right? Means motive opportunity.

We know she had the means. We know she had the opportunity. What the hell was your motive? Because there's oftentimes where she will defend herself later and she'll say, if I didn't want a kid, I would have just given her to my parents and let them raise her because that's what they wanted anyways. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of where I'm at. And, you know, there's a lot more to cover. But it's one of those things where I'm looking at it. We know Kaylee's gone, right? It's not unsolved as far as that's concerned. We know that she's deceased. It's a matter of whether you believe one, the intent behind this, you know, did, did Casey

intentionally kill Kaylee or, you know, we'll, I'm sure we'll cover, you know, could someone else have had done it, you know, without Casey's knowledge. But then there's also a real scenario where based on the woman that you've been describing for the last two episodes, is it possible that this person who clearly is a negligent mother could have been in a situation where Kaylee died because of her negligence? Just that part. We'm not going to get into what happened after the death, who covered it up, all these things. But just is there a realm where Kaylee was not killed intentionally, but her death was the result of Casey's poor parenting? And that's kind of where I'm trying to get ready as far as to keep my mindset open to both possibilities. You know, it's so tough because if you had asked me this question

two years ago, without a doubt, I would have come back and said like, she killed her intentionally. I have no doubt. And I have no doubt she killed her. And that's the end of the story. But I just posted something on Twitter like a couple of days ago where I was like, in the past couple of years, like I've grown and I've become much more open-minded and I've become so much less judgmental than I used to be. And in a way, that's great, right? That's growth. But it also makes life much harder because it was easier to look at the world and life and situations black and white, like it's wrong or it's right, and that's it. And that's so much easier than looking at the intricate details, like the little things, the context that makes someone and something who they are and what it is. And now I'm also sitting here thinking, what the hell happened, right?

It's not as easy as just saying, oh, clearly Casey Anthony was young. She didn't want to be a mother, so she killed her kid. That's it. That's all that happened. That's clearly not Anthony was young. She didn't want to be a mother. So she killed her kid. That's it. That's all that happened. That's clearly not all that happened. Other things are at play here. And that's what we're going to use going forward in these next parts. Thinking, what are those other things at play? What are those other factors that made this so much more complicated and less black and white?

And if you take Casey's name off of it, if you were to just tell this story and not put Casey's name on it, which has a lot of hate attached to it, right? The person you're describing, the mother you're describing, I don't think there are many people out there that would say, is this person capable of putting their child in a situation that was dangerous where it resulted in their death? Yes, absolutely it's possible. This type of person who was more concerned about herself than her child could have left her child in a very dangerous situation where she could have died because of it.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, but intentionally, that's the thing that there's a lot of people out there who think this was intentional. Now, I think- And I'm still open to it too. I'm still open to it, yeah. I know there are things that I read about in the court documents that show a possibility

of intent and we're going to get there. And that's why I'm saying I'm open to both. But so far, we're about almost four hours in to this, right? And I can see a real scenario where it was purely just negligence. Now, what happened afterwards to, you know, as far as the disclosure of what happened to Kaylee and how it was covered up, if that were the case, that's a whole different ball game. But we'll compartmentalize it, break it down.

Like, how do we think she died? And then obviously based on that, we can start to develop our opinions as far as what transpired after she was dead. Yeah. And I mean, I think even two years ago when I did this case on YouTube, I think I ended saying like, I do think Casey was responsible, but I feel like it may have been accidental. But like you said, there are there are pieces of evidence that point to it not being accidental. And that's a hard pill to swallow. You know, even hating Casey the way I do, because I hate that bitch. I to swallow. Even hating Casey the way I do, because I hate that bitch. I hate her. Even hating her the way I do, it's hard for me to look at

anyone and knowing she had other options, like give her child to her parents who clearly want to raise her, knowing she had other options, that that would be the choice she made. It's so hard to wrap my head around it. So I think that's what we really need to focus on and work on in these upcoming parts. Yep, absolutely. I'm with you. But let us know what you think. If you're watching on YouTube, tell us in the comments. If you're listening on audio, go ahead and pop a five-star review into Apple Podcasts and tell us what you think there or contact us on social media. We want to hear your thoughts and your opinions. We talked about a lot of stuff and And I think that there was, you know, even a little bit more disparity in my opinions and Derek's opinions on this one than there usually is. So I'm really interested to hear which side you guys fall on or if you fall in the middle or if you have a completely different angle.

Please let us know. Twitter, Instagram. It's at Crime Weekly Podcast. Nope. Crime Weekly Pod. Crime Weekly Pod. CrimeWeeklyPod. CrimeWeeklyPod. CrimeWeeklyPod. But we do have a website too, CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com.

Which you won't be able to weigh in anywhere on there. We could leave a speak pipe. You can leave us a speak pipe there. Yeah. Spoke too soon, man. Yeah. You can leave a speak pipe. Or you can just email us at contact at crimeweeklypodcast.com.

Just to be transparent, you're better off commenting on a post or something like that because we get a million emails a day. And I don't want to lie to you and say that we're checking every email in that sense. Check a lot of them for work. We will get to them eventually, but you're going to get more of an immediate response from us in the comment section on YouTube and on the post. I usually post every week when we put up a new episode. Comment down below that. That's where your best chances of us seeing it sooner than later. I do really want to hear your guys' opinions on all these sorts of different opinions that we had, like the whole George Anthony being in the room, right at the business end of Casey giving birth,

Cindy being the first person to hold Kaylee and how that seemed to drive an initial wedge between her and Cindy. You know, all of these things we discussed. Let us know what your stance is on them. We love hearing from you guys. And until next time, what do we say? Just, you know, don't get yourself killed.

What? We don't have a tagline for the end. It's so weird because on YouTube, I have one. But here. When in doubt, I always just say, stay safe out there. Yeah, that is good. Stay safe out there. Probably a little bit more classy than telling people not to get killed.

Thank you, Derek. No problem. That's what I'm here for. We'll see you guys next week. Bye. Later.