Transcript
The prosecutors podcast is brought to you by Progressive Progressive helps you compare direct auto rates from a variety of companies so you can find a great one, even if it's not with them. Quote today at progressive.com to find a rate that works with your budget. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Reverie, the state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts a day dream. But what if those daydreams turn to nightmares? Reverie, true crime shines a light on the dark tragedies that have happened and are continuing to happen all throughout the world. We interview and work with families to bring awareness to forms of injustice. We explore the depths of cases from around the world to include missing persons, mysteries and more. True crime is found wherever you're listening to this podcast. Remember, you don't have to live in fear, but stay aware of your surroundings. Stay safe and take care. Jennifer Harris disappeared from Bonham Texas on Mother's Day 2002. The secrets in the Jennifer Harris case have been hidden for 20 years. When someone disappears, you have to look at who would benefit from their disappearance. What happened to Jennifer Harris? And who is responsible for her death? Coming May 10th, Final Days on Earth Season two The Life and Death of Jennifer Harris available wherever you get your podcasts. And. And and I'm Bret and I'm Alice, and we are the prosecutors. And today on the prosecutors, she was dubbed the most hated mother in America. And Casey Anthony get away with murder. And let everybody in, welcome to this episode of the prosecutors, Brett and I'm joined, as always with my pleasant co-host Alice that sounded like Hwasong, which is a delicious bread. Yeah, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly. That was Janine. It means powerful and fresh. Oh, I love that. Beautifully. Thank you. It was a whether it was correctly pronounced or not. You said it with such beauty. Exactly. Whatever word it was, I said, I said beautifully. Who knows what it actually means? And to me, it sounded like a crescent. There you go. And everyone loves a croissant. Well, you know, there's nothing I'd rather be doing than on a weekend night hanging out with you. Recording what might be even more controversial or more heated in debate than Jbr JonBenet Ramsey. What do you think is possible? It definitely brings people some, some real emotion. I think this is probably one of our most requested topics. JonBenet was way up there. We get this one a lot and people are constantly sending us messages, emails, tweets, every form of communication to cover this case because a lot of people just don't understand why. Casey Anthony, spoiler alert in case you've, you know, haven't paid attention to true crime in the last 20 years, was acquitted of the murder of her daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony. And so over the next few episodes, this is a one that's probably going to take a little while. We're going to try and dive into that. Do you want to say as we start off, if you haven't followed prosecutors legal briefs, which is our new podcast that we're doing, I hope you will check it out. We cover mostly sort of in the news, true crime, legal developments, that kind of thing. So whereas this is a case from two thousand eight or so 2009, we're trying to to cover in real time some of the things that are happening. So I hope you guys, if you enjoy our show here, will check that out. It's been out for a couple of weeks now and it seems like people are enjoying it. And we like, you know, doing two two shows a week for everybody. Why not? Like I said, this is what we like to do anyways. You know, it just shows you we really do like what we do because that first episode were like my 20 minutes ended up being almost an hour in and of itself. It's true. It's true. I just like talking to you, Alice. I like to get to know you. And guess what? We're probably going to talk a lot today about Casey Anthony. We are. We are. Like I said, this is going to be a pretty in-depth coverage. This is a case a lot of people know a lot of things about. But I will say, I think there are some real misunderstandings out there about this case. I'm really excited to talk about it. So let's just dive in. And I'll take you back to 2008. On July 15th of that year, a Florida woman made a panicked call to 9-1-1. According to the recording of that call, she hadn't seen her granddaughter for a month. And most disturbingly, her daughter's car smells like a dead body has been inside it. The woman on the phone is Cindy Anthony. Her granddaughter is Caylee Anthony, and her daughter Casey is about to become the most hated woman in America. She'll soon be charged with murder. But after a lengthy, controversial trial, Casey, to the surprise of everyone I think including herself, is acquitted. How did this happen? Did the jury get it right or did Casey get away with murder? And those are the questions that we are going to endeavor to get to the bottom of over the next three or four weeks as we talk about this case. Easily one of the most famous cases in true crime. While, Brett, since this is such a famous case, let's dive into the timeline because I think we've already had enough of a preface of what this is going to be. It starts back in August 9th, 2005. That's when Caylee Marie Anthony is born on December 2005. George moves out of the house. George is Caylee's grandfather, and Casey's father. George and Cindy were having problems as a result of George's money woes. George like to gamble on the internet, and he wasn't very good at it and lost a lot of money, which caused a lot of marital strife by the middle to late 2006, though they make amends and George moves back into the home. It's important to sort of lay the foundation here for the kind of family situation that Caylee is born into. So when Caylee's born in 2005, the family's already in this turmoil. There's the possibility that George and Cindy, who is Casey's mother and Caylee's grandmother, are going to get divorced. Family dynamics kind of falling apart. Caylee herself. There's some strange things about Casey's pregnancy. No one, no one knows who Caylee's father is to this day. No one knows, and certainly no one knew at the time. And as a matter of fact, Casey's parents were. I don't really know how to describe it. They embarrassed might be one way to put it about the fact that Casey was pregnant at a relatively young age. She's a teenager at this time. And in fact, might have even been described as in denial. They had attended a wedding sometime before this a family wedding, and I believe it was Cindy's brother asked, Are you? Do you have anything to tell us about Casey? And the parents asked as if they had no idea what he was talking about, and this was six months or so into the pregnancy. So there is a strange family dynamic at work, already a stressed family dynamic. And I think as we see this case develop, that is going to become even more evident. And that's a great point to make. But Casey Anthony is a teenager, a really a child herself at this point when she's pregnant with Caylee and even as Caylee is born. And so she is still living at home, and she depends a lot on her parents for everything, including after Caylee is born June 13th of 2008. So we have fast forwarded, and Caylee is now about three years old, just shy of three years old. Casey tells her friends that she can't go out with them because she's at the hospital with her dad, George, who has had a stroke. This may sound completely normal, except for the fact that George did not have a stroke at all. On June 15, 2008, Caylee and Cindy go to visit her grandfather at an assisted living facility that night. Things seemed to go wrong. Jesse Grund, Casey's erstwhile fiancee, will later say that on this day, Casey and her mother, Cindy, got into such a fight that Cindy ended up grabbing Casey by the neck and strangling her before Casey's brother, Lee Anthony, could break them up. Both Lee and Cindy will later deny this fight happened. Nevertheless, it's pretty clear that there was some sort of family dispute that happened on this day despite this argument. Caylee and Casey stay the night at the Anthony home. Cindy and Caylee go swimming. And Cindy will later say that she closed the gate and removed a ladder to the above ground pool after the two of them went swimming. And so now this is three years after Caylee was born, and you know you're already seeing some strange things happen. We talked about the family dynamic June 13th. You have Casey telling friends she can't go out because her father had a stroke, but her father didn't have a stroke. And this is just one example and an early example of something that Casey has become famous for, and that is her seeming inability to tell the truth. This is a this is a small lie. It may seem like a white lie, but there's something about how gratuitous it is that she can't go out there. Some friends are going out, she can't go out with them. And it's not just a normal lie like, Well, I don't feel well or, you know, I don't have child care tonight or any number of things. You know, one might come up with. Instead, she goes to this extreme lie that her father has had a stroke, and that means she can't go out with him in the grand scheme of things. This is not going to have a huge effect on this case. But it is an example of the things that Casey will do in the links that she will go to when she's telling these fabrications, these lies just to get herself out of a sticky situation. So something to remember. And it shows the types of lies that are big lies, right? We always talk about how small lies kind of the the small lies that have an ounce of truth are kind of the best lies because it's hard to catch you on them. But the big lies are harder. All right. We've talked about people making excuses, like Maura Murray saying that, you know, a grandparent has passed away. You only have so many grandparents or parents who have strokes in this in this instance. And they're kind of big big lies. Maybe so big. You think people won't question them? But not only does Casey have a flair for telling lies, but telling big, dramatic lies. Yeah, it's kind of crazy because this is a lie that demands a follow up. You know, this is not the kind of lie that you tell and then might never get questioned again. Your friends are going to want to know, how is your dad? How's he doing? And the other thing is, when they see him, they're going to ask him how he's doing. So the fact that she's willing to tell this lie with seemingly no consideration for the consequences down the road. I don't know. It's I hate to harp on this. We have a lot to talk about. So maybe this is going to be more like 10 episodes before we spend as much time on little things. But I actually think this is really important because it's a window into Casey. Most of the things you hear about Casey Anthony or about the things she did and the things she said after Caylee went missing. And there's a natural sort of devil's advocate argument there. Highly stressful situation, very difficult situation. How do you know how you would react in that situation? Maybe you would tell some lies to maybe you would be a little disconnected too. This is before that. This is June 13th, and she's telling this massive lie about her father and for what purpose. So she doesn't have to go out with her friends. I mean, I don't know. I think it's significant. And then you have June 15th. Why is June 15th important? Because we're about to talk about June 16th, which is the last day the Casey's daughter, Caylee Anthony, is seen alive. And what do you have happen here? You have some sort of big fight. And others tell you, I don't think that Jesse Grund have you pronounce his name, had really any reason to lie about this. Maybe he exaggerated, you know, maybe this fight wasn't quite as bad as he makes it out to be. But it was probably pretty bad. You know, this was a yelling screaming, got a break up mom and daughter fight? It's unclear exactly what it's about because everybody denied it happened, and that's another thing that you're going to see. I think this fight probably has a lot to do with what's going to happen, and we'll talk about that more as we go through these episodes. But assume it doesn't. Even if it doesn't have anything to do with anything. It illustrates that it's not just Casey who denies things. Her parents, her family, deny things as well. This entire family. Has a difficult time coming to grips with reality and truth, and they are willing to lie to avoid embarrassment and to protect the family. And that's another thing you're going to see again and again so we can debate the significance of this night as we go forward. But I think there's no doubt that it tells you something about this family. The prosecutors podcast is brought to you by progressive insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming. 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Or is it true you can't die in your dreams? You'll find out with Nikki and some of her hilarious friends on her podcast. Call Me Curious. Listen to Call Me Curious on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts or listen. Add Free by joining 100+ in the Wondery app. Alice All my life, I've struggled with sinus pain, congestion, pressure allergies, runny nose headaches, all the things that drive you crazy and make it hard to enjoy anything, particularly anything outdoors. And that's where Tivicay clear up comes in. Clear Up is a revolutionary, compact handheld device that provides a safe and drug free way to clear congestion and relieve sinus pain. Typekit clear up is FDA approved, non-invasive and delivers therapeutic benefits safely and comfortably. It's also rechargeable reusable, which means it's environmentally friendly over the massive waste of disposable products. How does clear up work? How does a device treat pain? Will it work as well as medication? 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Again, that's two I. Health.com: and promo code prosecutors. Twenty two to receive $20 off plus free shipping on your clear up device. Alice, it's summer, and you know what that means. It's time to get outside and fire up the grill, and that's why I'm so excited that Butcher Box is one of our sponsors. Butcher Box is the subscription service that delivers high quality meat and seafood right to your doorstep, and at a time when prices are going up and selection maybe isn't what it used to be. You can choose from a carefully curated selection of 100 percent grass fed beef, free range organic chicken, wildcat seafood and more. And new subscriptions can receive a free grilling bundle in their first order. Brett, my kids love Butcher Box because there's always the freshest meat that comes to our door. Recently, my boys were yelling that they wanted steak one night and boom, I had. Beautiful steaks in my freezer ready to grill. And there was nothing left over at the end of the meal. 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Casey is on her computer searching for sexy costumes for waitresses to wear at an upcoming event that her boyfriend is hosting. Her boyfriend is sort of a party planner kind of guy alec clubs. These are shot girls, as I understand. So they're the ones who were selling shots, carrying shots around the bar and cases helping to find some sexy outfits for them to wear, which obviously encourages the customers to buy more shots from them. Casey herself is often said to be a very attractive woman and stylish person, the kind of person who spends a lot of times at the clubs. It's not surprising that she would be helping her boyfriend in this endeavor. At 11:27 a.m., Casey uploads a photo from Facebook to Photobucket. At 12:50. According to George Anthony, this is the last time he sees Caylee. He says that at 12:50 on that day, he sees Casey and Caylee leave the family home. He will discuss this in his testimony during the trial. That's going to happen in this case. And in that testimony, George is absolutely adamant about the time. 12:50 a.m. And in fact, he says it's something he would he would never forget and that he would never forget this moment. Now we have talked about before how difficult it is to nail down a timeline, how difficult it is to know time and when certain things happen. And we've often said what you really need is some sort of anchor. I mean, unless you literally look at the clock right of something's happening and for some reason, remember it, unless you have an anchor, you're always going to be off on time. Always. But in this case, George does have an anchor. He says that he was watching a television show he enjoyed called Drive Up Diners and Dives. He said it is a commercial break. When Casey and Caylee were leaving and in fact, he remembered exactly what Caylee was wearing when she went out of the room. Kelly would tell him that she was going to see Zanny. He says that he watched them leave in their car. So according to George, he remembers, is like it was yesterday. He remembers everything about it. The time he remembers always watching. He remembers what Kaylee was wearing. He remembers what she said. And he literally watches them leave in their car. This was at twelve fifty p.m. on that day. Now here is the problem. At one, thirty nine p.m., there is activity on the family computer, and it's the user profile that Casey uses, and not only is it the user profile, but the things that are done on the computer are the things that Casey would be doing, logging in to her A.I.M. account. For those of you young whippersnappers out there who don't know, that's AOL Instant Messenger, which for Alice in my generation was the way that you communicated with your friends. I still miss those messages. I mean, crafting your away message was basically the most important thing you would do every day. Alice might be too young for no. Are you kidding? Aim was like the best thing ever, and you hear the little ding of a message and you would run to your computer. And if you said no way, I would set an away message and then watch how many people like, liked it or comment. It wasn't like back then, but they would comment on it like, haha, great away message. It was a big thing. It was a big deal. And it's a big deal, but the point of this is a game is the way you communicate it, so it's a chatting mechanism and usually you don't share accounts because people look at your username and assume they are talking to you. It is text messaging of the day and you have long conversations with people. Buy it really through. I am is how I learned how to type so fast, not any typing class or, you know, being a lawyer, but really typing on aim. Absolutely. I've said that before, too, that that was the reason I can type as fast as I can is because I and I will. I will stick by. That is pretty clear what George logging in to. This is clearly Casey. So you might be asking yourself what's going on here? How is Casey logging in to aim if George saw them leave at 12:50? I don't know the answer that I'm going to talk more about that as you sort of go through this. Not only is Casey logging on to aim, she's also logging into Facebook and into that that truly moment in time thing. MySpace, which was a big thing for Casey, apparently. I never had a MySpace page, so I can't really speak to that. I think I think I had a couple of MySpace pages and I say it with a little bit of I think I had like, you know, one where I was trying to be autistic. The thing with MySpace is you could have lots of pages right for like different moods and you could have like music in the background. It's your own personal website. So again, Casey's own personal website, there are messages on there she can post on there. It's like your online journal. And there's no indication that any other family members are using her MySpace. I had one of the very first Facebook accounts. It was like Mom's like, no, a thousand or something. So that was kind of cool. How did you know you were a thousand? Do they have numbers back used to back back in the day? Your account was the URL or whatever would show the number of what your account was? I don't do that anymore. Wow. But yeah, because at the time only I think it was only Harvard had Facebook. Yeah, yeah. So this is your that was like a humblebrag, except not humble at all. By the way, I just want to thank you. All right. First of all, it reminds you that you went to Harvard, but second of all that, you're so old that you were only like user a thousand on Facebook. I know, I know, I know. I'll never forget it. Somebody was like, Wow, there's this new thing called the Facebook. Like, OK, check that out. Anyway, here we are a multibillion dollar corporation by listening to us right now and not in a good way. They're like spying on us, listening to us anyway. So that's one. Thirty nine p.m. at 1:42. Casey calls her friend, Amy Huizinga. Amy's good friend of hers. She spent some time at her apartment. She's lived with Amy at various times, and they are on the phone until two twenty one. So this is like a 40 minute long phone conversation. And like I said, this is three minutes after there's activity on the computer. So what it seems like happening is cases on the computer messing around with Facebook and MySpace calling her friend Amy, chatting with her for about 40 minutes between 2:30 and 2:40, George leaves for work. We know this because his work started at 3:00. He was working as a security guard. I believe in a Porsche dealership, maybe making that part it. But he was working as a security guard. George was a retired police officer and oftentimes police officers will take jobs as security guards when they retire. He had this job. It took him about 20 minutes to get there. He was there that day. So we know he would have had to have left the home to 30 to 40. At 2:51. Someone searches on Firefox for quote unquote foolproof suffocation. That's a pretty strange thing to search on your computer. Whatever the reasoning behind that, there is a story there. We can all agree on that. That's it. 2:51 Interestingly, at 2:52, someone logs back on to MySpace. So a few things here, George has to be at work. He has to be work at three. He's at work at three 251. Someone searching for foolproof suffocation. 252 someone's logging onto MySpace. What are those two things tell you? The person using the computer? Probably Casey, most likely Casey. Her mom's not there. Her dad's not there. No one else is using MySpace. It's on the computer that she uses. Probably the same person is doing both those things. One minute later, at 253, Casey answers a call from Jesse Grund, who we discussed earlier her former boyfriend, who she still was close to 11 minutes later, and three of four. Casey hangs up with Grund, and George called her. Now, there's a little bit of confusion about exactly what happened here, you often hear that the call lasted 26 seconds. It's unclear whether or not this phone call was answered or not, or whether it was sent straight to voicemail. I have never I have not been able to find anything definitive on this, which is weird because this seems like a pretty important thing. There's a telephone call between Casey and her father. Maybe that day that is very brief. That is very short. The fact of this call and the fact of its brevity is something that will become important later on in the case. Like I said, I can't nail this down. Lost a lot of interviews of George watched George's testimony. It's not clear from any of that whether George actually talked to Casey this day, why he called her, what the purpose of this was. All we know is that this call happened and whether she answered it or not, this was the end of her call with Grind. Now what we do know, though, is that night, around 8:00 p.m., Casey is seen on blockbuster video surveillance with her current boyfriend, Tony Lazaro. Lazaro would later testify that Casey showed no sign of having anything wrong. She was happy and carefree, and video of her and Tony at the blockbuster would show her with her arm around him as they ranted to videos, If you seen this video, she seems perfectly fine. And it is the two of them. There is no Caylee anywhere to be seen. So let's fast forward a couple of days on June 18th. Casey Anthony, that same boyfriend, she was seen on the blockbuster surveillance camera with borrow a shovel from a neighbor, Brian Berner. Casey returned the shovel an hour later, and Tony will later testify that they used the shovel to break into George's shed to steal some gasoline. OK. Let's go back. Let's go forward a couple more days on June 20th. Casey goes to the Fusion nightclub, where she takes part in the quote Hard Body Contest. In other words, she's going out having fun. She is young. And not only is she going out with friends at a nightclub, but she's actually and there are lots of pictures of this participating in one of these, you know, get all the hot people on a stage or on a table so everyone can gawk at them and cheer about who is the hottest. This is what it is, and she bears a lot of skin and she is a beautiful woman. And there are pictures of her just on top of the world participating in this hard body contest. And if you've seen pictures of Casey and it's not her in court and it's not her Caylee, it's this picture or these pictures. You know, these pictures become very famous because I mean, this is this is June 20th. Remember, the last day anybody saw Caylee alive was June 16th. So whatever happened to Caylee, whatever you're going to end up believing about what happened to Caylee, it happened four days before at most. Four days before and four days later, you have KC dancing on top of tables in a in a hard body contest at a club. And that fact had a big effect on a lot of people, and this is as good a time as any to say this case. We're going to talk about the evidence in this case. We're going to talk about forensics. We're gonna talk about circumstantial evidence. We're going to talk about all that. But because of some factors that we're also going to discuss a lot of this case in the way you feel about this case turns as much on. Casey and her behavior in the days and weeks after Caylee disappears, as anything, we've talked about behavior before and we've talked about how it can be dangerous, but one thing to remember. We're going to have to figure out a way to like, define this in a better way because I feel like the distinction we make makes sense. But I also can understand how it's a little confusing. This kind of behavior that you're looking at here in the days and the weeks after Caylee disappears. This is not focusing on some minor thing and deciding that that's the tail. You know, you'll see people say things like in five minutes, I can determine if someone's a liar. Look, I don't, you know, maybe they can, but in my opinion, they can't. In my opinion, that's the kind of stuff that's just complete hogwash. I mean, they might as well be doing remote viewing or psychic readings to determine if they're lying. And. I just don't buy it. I don't buy that you can decide whether somebody is lying based on the way they look, when they answer a question or if they live their lives or if they stick their tongue out or if they breathe or if they don't breathe or they blink, or if they shake their head or if they look down or if they look up and they look right, look left. I don't buy any of that right. I think all that stuff is just as likely to be random human reaction as anything else. I also don't think you can determine whether someone's lying, whether they're crying on the 9-1-1 call or whatever. But I do think you can look at behavior writ large in the way someone behaves, not in little minor things, but the way they're living their lives. I think you can look at that kind of stuff and make some pretty big determinations. I'll give you an example. One thing the FBI looks to when they're looking for. Possible suspects in a case are people who people who are close to someone who dies and then immediately leave the area after the crime. Right. So someone does, maybe it's the next door neighbor. They die, and suddenly the next door neighbor goes on a two week unplanned vacation to Florida. That's the kind of thing that people in the behavioral profiling world will look to. That's the kind of behavior the getting away from the crime that they will look to is an indication that someone might have a guilty conscience and they'll use that not necessarily as evidence in trial, but to focus in on who might be the suspects. Right. And I feel like that's the kind of thing that that we want to look at here. So what the big picture stuff? So whatever you think happened to Caylee? You have a mother who four days later is partying, having the time of her life, as Alice said to me, that significant right because we're not even saying whether what are you saying that she's partying if she murdered her child four days earlier? What we do know is she herself hasn't seen her daughter for four days, and she'll say otherwise if she knows where she is. But if you haven't seen your child for four days and you don't know where they are, even if you're not the one murdering them, we're saying this type of behavior is suspicious and something that law enforcement would look at. This is sort of the inverse of what we talked about with the Ramsey case. So one of the things that we probably harped on longer than we should have in the Ramsey case was the fact that if the parents were involved, it wasn't premeditated murder. It was at best or at worst, an accident or something that got out of hand. It might have been murder, but it was an accidental murder, wasn't premeditated murder or even worse. Maybe, you know, the other child did it, and it's a cover up. And based on that fact, we thought it was highly unlikely that the parents would have taken the steps that would have been necessary to stage the crime to look like it eventually looked like the sexual assault. The Garet, those just didn't seem like the kind of things that line up with what we knew. About how the murder would have had to have happened here, I think the point Alice is making is a really good one. Whatever happened to Caylee, whether she was kidnapped, murdered, died accidentally, was killed by her mother, no matter what happened. We know that at this point, Casey has not seen her daughter for at least a year, for four days. She has not seen her daughter for four days. And you would expect a certain reaction to that, regardless of her own culpability. You would not expect to see her out at the club. Let's go forward a few more days on June 23rd. Casey and her boyfriend Tony, break into a shed at her parents home to steal some gas cans to fill up her car. And remember, a few days earlier, she had said that she used a shovel from the neighbor to break into the shed. This time, though, which is about five days later, on June 23rd, her father actually confronts her about the stolen gas and they start to fight. And George asks Casey where Caylee was. Casey responds that Caylee is with her nanny, Zanny call back to about a week earlier, the last day when Caylee was seen, George saying that Caylee was saying, I'm going to go see Zanny her nanny. And I think this is just another sort of insight into this family as well. I mean, clearly, Casey just on regular occasions, breaks into the shower to steal gasoline, you know, by her own admission. I just I feel like these little details about what Casey's doing are significant and sort of the the family dynamic here, according to George. And this is one of those details that you wonder. Did it really go down this way or was this more sort of 20, 20 hindsight? But George wanted his gas cans back and sort of made a move towards the trunk of his car to get them in case he sort of threw herself in front of him and ran back to the trunk and yanked the trunk open, grabbed the gas, can slam the trunk and threw him in his. Feet and said something like here's your F-ing gas cans or something like that. Now why is that possibly significant? As we're going to talk about later, there is a not insignificant possibility that Caylee at some point in time, was in the trunk of that car, possibly as late as this day, June 23rd. Well, let's talk about that, that there are a couple of things that stick out about this. First of all, why would a fight about gas cans and stolen gas end with a question as to where her daughter was? We don't know the full context of the fight, but and it might be something as simple as you're so irresponsible you can't even get your own gas. Like, for example, where is your daughter? You don't even know, even know what your daughter is. Maybe that's the way unfolded. But it is strange that this fight about gas and stealing gas ends with kind of the ultimate question Where is Caylee? Another thing to point out here about this family dynamic. The last time George saw Caylee was seven days earlier a week, and she hasn't. George hasn't been concerned, and no one has asked concerned, and sounds like no one has asked where Caylee was up until this point. Meaning that there's a lot going on in this family and not a lot of eyes are on Caylee. And it's not unusual that Caylee is being taken care of by somebody else for extended periods of time. Seven days is no small thing. Zanny doesn't live in another town. Zanny is local. She is a local nanny. She is a babysitter. This is not a situation where the family, the Anthony family, had to leave town and leave their child with a caregiver because they were out of town. Zanny lives minutes away within the same town. But grandparents are not seeing her for an extended period of time. And it's not unusual because they're not even asking about it until seven days later. And I think another aspect of this, and I think it's one we're going to see repeat, is Caylee as leverage. I don't think this is an example of or this is sort of a a window into the way Casey has used Caylee. The grandparents want to see Caylee. It's pretty obvious they want to see Caylee. Casey, I think at times, may keep her away from them in the past. And it's leverage like you need to treat me. You want to see her. Well, you need to be nicer to me, right? And this sort of comes up in this fight that George brings Caylee into it. And I don't know. I think that's an interesting thing, and I think you're going to see that even more as we go on June 25th, the manager of a check cashing store calls a tow truck to remove a vehicle that had been in the parking lot for several days. The vehicle will later be found to be Casey's car. Again, this is local. You know she could park at her home. There's no reason for her to park somewhere else and essentially abandon the car for so long that the store calls a tow truck to move the car. And I think it's interesting because they it almost seems like Caylee would have had to have taken that car, the one that she just drove over to George's house and returned the gasoline cans. She essentially that day would have had to have taken it to the check cashing store because the manager says the car's been there for some debt for some time. So that was on the 23rd. Presumably that means she basically drove straight there and left the car there that day. Then the next day passes the cars there. The next day passes the car still there. And so the manager calls the tow truck to get rid of this car that's been in the parking lot for a couple of days. That's interesting to me because what was the plan? Right? You can't just kind of abandon a car and not expect someone to eventually tow it when it's towed. You can inventory, search it. Anyone can look inside of it. It's abandoned. And also like a car is something that is, you know, expensive. They're not really disposable things. And so I'm not sure what the plan was here in terms of her just leaving her car there. I'm glad you asked that about what was the plan because and we fall into this too. But sometimes people fall into the trap of thinking that every crime is planned and well planned, and that everything that happens happens for a reason and that criminals are geniuses and they don't just do dumb things. Sometimes criminals just do dumb things. Sometimes they do whatever is the most expedient thing. In fact, oftentimes they will do whatever is the most expedient thing without thinking about the consequences. Remember? This this person, Casey Anthony, is the same person who in order to get out of going out with her friends, told them that her father had had a stroke. Right. She clearly wasn't thinking about the future, she was doing the most expedient thing. This seems like that. Why did she do this? Why did she just Parker car in the parking lot of a check cashing place? Who knows? But at that moment, that was what she wanted to do. She wanted to get away from the car and abandon it. And so she did not, apparently thinking that eventually that was going to come back to her. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think repeatedly we're going to see Casey at what, when when we start hearing her own words, we'll see that she speaks and she repeatedly gets gets caught in her own lies. And there is an absolute. There's absolute indifference to being caught in lies. So you're right about this, something as big as a car just being left like, what's your plan? I would think like, wow. Like, what about my car? That's one of my most valuable possessions. I can't just go out and buy another car on a whim. Those things cost money. I need to get places, but that just kind of shows you. The mindset that Casey has had is there's no big lie that can stop her hit in her tracks. There's kind of nothing that keeps her from plowing forward with what she's doing. June 30th through July 15th. So for about two weeks, Casey is caught on camera at various stores, including J.C. Penney and Target, and she's buying clothes for herself on July 3rd. So during that time period, Casey gets a new tattoo on her back that reads Bella Vita or Beautiful Life. So what we were saying sort of metal behavior. Those of you who remember the Scott Peterson case, there was a point where Laci Peterson was missing and Sky had a bunch of porn channels. Installed or turned on on his cable at his home. And, you know, it's not that if you want to have porn, fine, no biggie. But when your wife is missing, that's a strange thing to do. Little unusual. You know she's going to be pissed off when she comes home and finds out that while she was missing, you got all the, you know, most extreme porn channels or whatever for your cable. And that is sort of a thing that you can look at, and it gives you context for everything else. This is another thing. You have, Casey, weeks after the last time anyone seen her daughter, weeks after she seen her daughter going on a shopping spree, buying a bunch of clothes, getting a new tattoo that says Bella Vida. What is she doing in? Why is she doing it? This is all going to come to a head finally around July 15th. Remember, the last time Caylee was seen alive was July 16th. On July 15th, George and Cindy Anthony go to pick up Casey's car. So Casey's car, as we said, had been towed. Now we call it Casey's car, but of course it was George and Cindy's car, a car that they were letting her use. It gets abandoned. It gets towed. Eventually, they figure out who owns it. They give them a call. And so now they have to go down to the tow yard to pick it up. So Cindy drops George off, he goes in, he finds the attendant for the tow yard, they go out to the car and as soon as he opens the door, George is hit with this overwhelming smell of decomposition and he realizes it's coming from the trunk. And the smell is so strong that he and the tow yard attendant both believe that there is a body in that trunk, and George believes he hasn't seen a whole lot of Casey. We talked about this. They got into this big fight, right, right before Caylee disappeared. They got into this big fight. They still spent hours. They still spent the night at the family home. But since that point, Casey and presumably Caylee have been staying with her boyfriend. And as Alice said earlier, the grandparents haven't seen Caylee despite asking to see her. They haven't seen her case. He's always got an excuse. Now she's with Zanny. Oh, they went to Disney World there at SeaWorld. They went to the Orlando studios. Whatever it's called Universal Studios, she always has an excuse. So they haven't seen a lot of her, and they haven't seen a lot of Casey. They get a call. The Casey's car has been towed. They go down to get her car there. They smell this. George thinks that Casey might be in their trunk. He thinks the worst. And I can only imagine how he felt when the attendant and he opened that Trump to see if there was anything in it, but when they did, all they found were a couple bags of garbage of rotting garbage that had just been left in the trunk. Now, George would later testify that the smell that came out of that trunk. Was so overwhelming and so strong that even though the car had apparently been sitting in this impound lot for two weeks, he could barely stand to drive the car home and George was pretty specific about the smell. At least on the stand. There was garbage in the back of that car, but George was very clear that to him, this was the smell of a dead body. George was a former police officer. He had been to scenes where bodies had been decomposing for quite a while. I have never been in that situation, but if you talk to anyone who has anyone who has, they will tell you. And I imagine we're going to get emails and comments that will say this exact thing that once you have smelled the decomposition of a human body, you never forget it and you don't. You don't mistake it for anything else, and you don't mistake anything else for it that it is this sort of unique smell. Actually, that's really interesting. I kind of wonder if there's an evolutionary sort of basis for that and that, you know, the smell of a dead human body is something that you need to recognize as being different from, you know, the smell of a dead animal or something like that. Yeah, Brett, you know, I think that's a great point. I think there is something evolutionary about it. And also, you know, I think all of us react viscerally when we smell a rotting when we smell rotting flesh, even if it's not human roadkill animals, that sort of thing. You know, when I'm on a walk and I can smell, you know, roadkill even if it's far away because the smell of rotting flesh kind of emanates and the reason it emanates and not the reason it emanates, the fact that it emanates is partly why vultures know to go to the deep decomposing body in order to kind of help the process of breaking it down. So, you know, that stench is incredible, which is part of the kind of evolutionary breakdown process as well. And you bring up a great point. George is a former law enforcement officer. Not only does he know what a decomposing body smells like, he also knows tactics in which to cover it up those bags. The first thing I think of from my law enforcement perspective is clearly something was in that trunk, and those rotting bags of garbage are meant to be there to smell bad, to try and cover it up. Right. We see this all the time in drug cases where an officer will say, Yeah, I walked up to the car window and I was hit with a million air fresheners, you know, with the kind of the spray ones or the ones that hang from the rearview mirror. And it drew my attention because it was so overwhelming that it kind of assaulted my nose. And right behind that, I could then smell, you know, marijuana. And so the fact that he's a law enforcement officer, I'm surprised he wouldn't immediately look at those bags and think I know what rotting trash smells like and I can smell the rotting trash. This is not rotting trash. And so someone has placed this rotting trash here in order to detract or distract from the overpowering smell of human decomposition. And it's so obvious that's what it is. You know, I mean this this becomes a point of contention throughout. And like, was the smell a body or was it the trash? The trash is obviously in the trunk to cover up the smell of a decomposing body. There's just no question about that. Just like trash. Well, who puts trash in their trunk? Because if you're taking trash to go throw away, say in a dumpster, you wouldn't put it in the trunk. You'd probably put it just in the back seat because you planned to remove it right away if you put it in the trunk. You can't control if it's standing up and so could spill over, things can leak out of it. You actually have to probably lay it on its side in order to fit it into the trunk, which causes trash to leak out of your garbage bag and then, you know, contaminate your your trunk. Whereas if you just put it in your back seat, it can at least sit straight up because it has a higher vertical than the trunk. And so, like I said, the first Spidey sense that I have just from reading lots of police reports is duh, that's just a distraction. The garbage bags are there for distraction. And yet George doesn't take any action to report this, even when someone else standing next to him confirms what he thinks. Oh, my goodness, is there a body back here? So you got George, who's a police officer who's been in the presence of dead bodies before? Incidentally, the the two owner told the person attendant had also been in the presence of dead bodies before and knew what they smell like. And they will not be the last people to think this. Now, George, despite this, doesn't call the police. Is George in denial? The answer is yes. And that is going to be clear as we continue to talk about this. And he's not the only person in the Anthony family who is in denial. But the parents, at least at this point, are finally concerned. So George and Cindy, they find the frantic cases and this person takes them to the apartment, the boyfriend's apartment where Casey is staying. Casey agrees to come back to their home. And it's then. On the way back to their home that Cindy Anthony confronts Casey and asked her about Caylee and Casey at this point, Casey will admit that she has not seen Caylee in a month, that she will tell her mother that the nanny Zanny has kidnapped Caylee. Cindy will call 9-1-1 three times. We're going to listen to those calls at some point in this coverage, culminating in a call where she tells the 9-1-1 operator that her granddaughter has been missing for a month. And she says, quote, There is something wrong. I found my daughter's car today and it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car. Cindy was a nurse. Cindy had also been in the presence of dead decomposing bodies. She knew what it smelled like, and she is the third person who was around their car and thought that it smelled like a dead body. And it wasn't just these three imperfect humans with their imperfect human noses. Cadaver dogs will later confirm the smell of human decomposition in the trunk of the car. Now, you may be wondering, how is it possible that the grandparents are only now learning about this? Well, it's like we said Casey has been lying to them over the course of this month. She is basically told them that Caylee is on this sort of world wind trip around all the various attractions in Orlando, in Central Florida where they live. You know, she's going to Disney World, she's going to SeaWorld is going to Universal Studios. She's doing all this great, exciting things and that's why she can't see her grandparents. And now finally, a month later, that lie is collapsing around Casey, except it's collapsing with yet another lie to try and bolster the lie again. Casey doesn't just say, I don't know. She's been missing. She she got away, you know, when we were shopping and I just couldn't find her. She says that there's the nanny. Zanny has kidnapped her again. A massive begs the follow up question sort of assertion. You know, this brings on even more inquiry because now you're alleging a crime, and it makes no sense because if in fact Zanny had kidnapped Caylee, why wouldn't Casey have said so earlier if she had no fault of this and she wanted her daughter back? You would immediately tell someone, even if for some reason you didn't want to tell the police, you tell your parents you would be calling Zanny frantically, you wouldn't be getting Bella Vita tattoos and going shopping and being in hard body contests. And so even in as the lies collapsing around her and she kind of throws this massive lie out there about the kidnapping, it makes no logical sense what she is saying in this instance. And I got to say there are. There's lots of people who have kids and they don't love their kids, and I treat them like crap and they do terrible things to their kids. That happens, obviously happens. You see it all the time. But it's also the case that really terrible, crappy people who live really terrible, crappy lives love their kids a lot. And Casey. There's no indication, and in fact, there will be testimony that she did love her daughter. And then she, you know, she didn't abuse her daughter, and there's going to be people say all these great things about her and in fact, that they'll be used as a defense for her later on. And if all that's true, you have to ask yourself, what in the world is she doing? Like Alice said, if your daughter is missing for whatever reason, even if you don't want to tell your parents for whatever reason, you would do everything in your power to find her. You wouldn't spend a month going on shopping sprees, getting tattoos and going to the hard body contest. That's just not what you would do. But yeah, that's what she did. And this all of this is colliding together at this point when finally, 30 days after Caylee's gone missing this this edifice that she had created this lie that she was living. Much like as we started this timeline with this law, she tells her friends about George having a stroke that was a lie for which there would be consequences. It was a lie that would collapse under its own weight. It was inevitable. And yet she said it anyway. She has been living this life for 30 days at some point. The lie is going to collapse. It's going to happen. And yet she continues to tell it and doesn't seem to recognize that it's all going to collapse at some point. Well, now it has. We're going to stop here for this week. There's so much more to talk about. We're about to really get into even more of the lies and the lies, just get more and more complicated and difficult to understand and difficult to even imagine and amazing. I mean, if you don't know this story, you're going to hear things that will blow your mind that it's going to happen in the next few days as the police become involved. And as it becomes obvious that something terrible has happened to Caylee, and then we're going to get into the trial, we're getting to the evidence, we're getting to some of the things that the defense said. Talk about how this case shook out and why it ended up the way it did. Excited to hear your thoughts on this case? Send us an email ! Prosecutors pod at gmail.com at Prosecutors' Pod for all your social media. Hello to everyone on YouTube. And I hope those of you listening on Patron are enjoying your early ad free episodes, as we said at the beginning of the show. We now have a new show prosecutors legal briefs about the breaking stories in true crime. Analyzing the law is more of a discussion based show. We talk more about some of the legal things that you guys apparently love, but we thought were boring, but apparently aren't. So check that show out Subscribe Lever if you leave our review here, we're so appreciative of all you guys who listen to this show and that show or both shows or whatever can do this without you. And I got to say we enjoy this so much. There's a reason we're doing this on a Friday night. Alice, do you have anything else to add before we sign off? True, Brett, and we have so much to say. We are just like at the tip of the iceberg and you can tell we are so excited to really dive into this because this case is just twists and turns galore and there is so much to discuss. So join us next time because we are just getting started. And with that, we will sign off for today, but we will be back next week with more on this intriguing case. But until then, Brett and I'm Alice and we are the prosecutors and. What do you and I'm sorry. Let the dust up between these two looks like, OK. Sorry. That's OK. I didn't know what that was. All right. No dust on my table. I'm sorry. I need a clean workspace. No, I got you. Yeah, I just didn't know what the sales were coming up. OK. We are down. Yes, Ms. And also. Well, I'm ready whenever you are. Sorry, I'm recording. Sorry, I was just sitting here waiting. That's okay. Testing, testing, testing. Sorry about that. I have really been doing it for years. And I want to. All this month, stream the funniest films for free on Pluto TV. Watch comedy classics like Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Mean Girls, or Drop In for a Tyler Perry marathon with a Madea Family Funeral and Madea's Witness Protection. Pluto TV also had hundreds of channels and thousands of movies and TV shows like Get Shorty Because Key and Peele, Comedy In Color and more. And no contracts, no subscriptions, no fees, no joke. 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