A Note to the Reader
Under United States law, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and Casey Anthony has yet to be tried by a jury of her peers. What follows is merely the author’s recreation of what might have happened, if the charges against Casey are true. This recreation is based on the author’s analysis of the law enforcement forensic evidence, the medical examiner’s autopsy report, and other available information. Casey Anthony’s movements during the critical period were documented by the pings from her cell phone. Time frames are estimates, based on evidence and interview statements.
After Casey left her parents’ home with Caylee on Monday, June 16, 2008, she hovered around the neighborhood as she waited for her father to leave for work.
She returned to 4937 Hopespring Drive when the house was empty. Caylee raced to her bedroom and changed into a pair of striped shorts and a tee shirt proclaiming: “Big trouble comes in small packages.”
The police found evidence that three months earlier, someone using Casey’s computer had conducted internet searches for chloroform recipes. Police believed that person was Casey, and now was the time to put that knowledge to use. Assembling the materials needed would not have been difficult—pool chlorinator, a bottle of acetone, a glass container, and lots of ice. She would have also needed an abundance of caution to avoid inhaling any of the escaping vapors.
When the process was complete, it would have been easy to persuade Caylee to inhale the sweet-smelling fumes. It would not have taken many whiffs to render the small girl-child unconscious. When she was out and unable to defend herself, multiple layers of duct tape were wrapped around the little girl’s mouth and nose and into her hair to ensure that she never awoke from her chemically induced sleep.
Law enforcement suspected Casey carried the limp body to the bedroom where the red heart sticker was placed on the tape over her daughter’s mouth. Then, Caylee was wrapped in her Winnie the Pooh blanket, slid into a waterproofed canvas bag and stuffed into a black plastic garbage bag.
Then, in this scenario, she carried the delicate bundle out to her car and placed it in the trunk. Mission accomplished, she drove to Tony Lazzaro’s apartment, where Tony would have been unaware of Casey’s actions or of Caylee’s whereabouts.
Ironically, records indicate that the couple went to Blockbuster that evening and rented two videos: Jumper, about a 5-year-old child abandoned by her mother, who masters teleportation; and Untraceable, about a kidnapper and killer. Casey remained at Tony’s all night.
Casey drove back to her parents’ empty house on Tuesday. Normally, Casey pulled straight into the driveway and parked outside of the garage. On this day, she backed in, raised the automatic door and parked with the rear-half of the Buick hidden from view inside the garage.
Neighbor Brian Burner was in his freshly mowed front yard, clearing clippings and other debris with a leaf blower. Casey approached him at about 1:30. “I can’t find the key to the shed, and I need to dig up a bamboo root I’ve been tripping over. Do you have a shovel I could borrow?” she reportedly asked.
Brian handed her a round-bladed shovel with a rubber grip. She stepped into her parents’ garage, disappearing from his view. At that point, it was suspected that she carried the garbage bag from the trunk into the backyard, looking for a place to bury her daughter, setting the bundle down in three different locations—next to the playhouse, near the screened patio porch and at a spot behind the swimming pool.
At the latter location, evidence indicated that someone started to dig a twelve-inch-wide hole, but quit after achieving a depth of five inches and covered up the effort. The backyard no longer seemed a viable option. The garbage bag went back into the trunk, and the lid slammed shut. Casey walked over to the Burners’ home, knocked on the front door and returned the borrowed shovel. Brian noticed nothing amiss—no strangeness in Casey’s behavior, no dirt on her shorts or sports bra.
Casey drove around looking for other disposal options. Cell phone pings tracked her meandering through a remote spot near the airport. And also showed her travelling to a sparsely populated area in the vicinity of the University of Central Florida.
Casey spent that night and the next day at Tony’s apartment. On Thursday, June 19, according to the authorities, she went out on another scouting mission. She roamed around Blanchard Park and Little Econ Park. She was running out of time.
In the sweltering heat of a Central Florida summer, the smell in the car would have become unbearable. Documents indicated that no later than June 26, she settled on a location within her comfort zone. She stopped at the woods of scrub pine, red maple, saw palmetto, wax myrtle and heavy undergrowth less than a mile from her parents’ house—the same overgrown area she’d frequented with her friends in middle school.
She must have held her breath as she lifted the foul-smelling bundle out of the trunk of her car. She carried it a little ways into the woods, dumping it into a patch of fern, ground cover and fallen leaves, where poison ivy and air potato vines snaked across the ground and embraced tree trunks in their effort to stretch out of the gloom and toward the sun.
If the pending charges are true, Casey then turned and walked away, leaving behind the remains of her child, her flesh and blood—the beloved granddaughter that George and Cindy Anthony would never again see.