Murder of Caylee Anthony
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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In 2008, two-year-old Kaylee Anthony from Orlando, Florida, was reported missing by her grandmother. The toddler hadn't been seen or heard from in over a month. Her mother, Casey Anthony, told police that her daughter had been kidnapped by the babysitter.

Within hours after police took the missing person's report on the toddler, Casey Anthony was arrested on suspicion of being involved in her own daughter's disappearance. The child disappearance case turned into a murder investigation after the body of two-year-old Kaylee was found inside of garbage bags in a wooded area about a half mile from the Anthony's home.

What happened next captured the attention of over 5 million Americans who tuned in daily to watch as the case unfolded on live television. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 54, Casey Anthony and the murder of Kaylee Anthony.

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that covers real, bone-chilling true crime stories with a forensic science twist. Some of the cases have been solved by the help of forensics. Others have turned cold. The stories we cover each week send a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

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Now, let's jump right into this week's story. Hi, everyone. Before we get into the episode, I've got some really exciting news to share with you. And that is we finally have some show merchandise.

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So the case we're covering this week is one of the biggest criminal trials to come out of the state of Florida in recent years. And quite frankly, it's one of the biggest trials in a decade. It's a story that drew in millions of people who sat in front of their televisions and they followed every single step of this case.

In the 1990s, we all watched the white Ford Bronco chase and the OJ Simpson double murder trial that followed. In the 2000s, we had Top Mom. I'm talking about the story of Casey Anthony and the death of her daughter, two-year-old Kaylee Anthony. Casey's story is one of division. You either sit on one side of the aisle or you sit on the other.

You either believe that Casey Anthony murdered her own daughter and got away with a perfect murder, or you believe Casey is innocent and was wrongfully accused of the worst possible crime. Either side of the aisle you sit on, what happened back in 2008 caused Casey Anthony to become the most hated mom in all of America?

Before we get to what happened in 2008, the story really begins in 1986. We have to know who Casey Anthony was before she became the most hated mom in all of America. Casey Anthony was born on March 19th, 1986 in Warren, Ohio to parents Cindy and George Anthony.

Growing up as a kid, Casey was described as being bright. She was personable. She had a ton of friends. Casey was just your typical American girl until she got to high school. When Casey got to high school, that bright, personable girl, well, that girl started to change.

And the most notable change was described by many as a pattern and behavior of lying. And the lies that Casey told weren't just your small little white lies. We're talking about big, big lies. At her high school graduation, her parents, Cindy and George Anthony, were there. She had her grandparents with her. Everyone was there.

That day of her high school graduation, her whole entire family discovered that, well, Casey wasn't actually graduating that day. She wasn't graduating high school because she was missing a lot of credits. In fact, she stopped attending all of her classes her senior year. Casey had lied to her parents that entire time. She wasn't ever going to be graduating high school.

Now, Casey's lies about graduating high school wouldn't be the only lie that she told her parents. In 2005 came another shock to the Anthony family. On August 9th, 2005, when Casey was just 19 years old, she gave birth to her first daughter and named her Kaylee Anthony.

This was a shock to Cindy and George because for most of Casey's pregnancy, she denied it. She lied about being pregnant, even though at some point it became pretty obvious that she had been gaining weight and she clearly looked to be pregnant. Meanwhile, Casey denied it to her parents for months. In fact, she lied about it right up until she was about to give birth.

She even told her mother at one point, hey mom, I can't be pregnant. I'm a virgin. So after Casey gave birth to Kaylee in August of 2005, the father remained a mystery. Her parents didn't know who the father was. Casey's friends didn't know. Nobody knew. At one point, Casey said that Kaylee's father was her ex-fiance, a guy by the name of Jesse Grundt.

Then later on, she said, well, maybe it's not Jesse. It might be one of my ex-boyfriends who died in a car crash. Was this another lie? Or did Casey really not know who Kaylee's father was? Over the next two years, while Casey is in her early 20s and her daughter Kaylee was just a toddler, Casey lived with her parents, Cindy and George, in Orlando.

And Casey's ex-fiance, Jesse, even started acting like a father figure to Kaylee, despite the fact that arguably the time at which Casey got pregnant would have made it impossible for him to be the biological father because Casey and Jesse didn't even know each other at the time.

In mid-June 2008, that's when things really started to get rocky between Casey and her parents. Casey leaves her parents' house in Orlando with her daughter Kaylee on June 16, 2008, the day after Father's Day. Casey decides to leave after getting into a really heated argument with Cindy and George.

The argument between them started after her parents started to question Casey's suitability as a young mother. Cindy and George were starting to get concerned about the well-being of their only grandbaby. And despite Cindy and George's efforts to reconcile and to talk things out with Casey, she packs a few bags for herself and her daughter and she leaves.

By this point, Casey wants nothing to do with her parents after all of this fighting and after them questioning her suitability to raise her very own daughter. She was out of there. So the day that Casey left her parents' house in Orlando on June 16, 2008, would be the very last day that Kaylee was seen alive.

Over the next four weeks, Cindy and George desperately try to get a hold of Casey. And they're even more desperate to find out if their granddaughter Kaylee is okay. Every time that Cindy and George get a hold of Casey, she wouldn't ever let them speak directly with Kaylee over the phone. She just kept saying, everything's fine. Stop bothering us. We don't want to talk to you. Kaylee's fine. Go away.

But when Cindy and George continue to press her, Casey eventually says, hey, Kaylee is with her babysitter. She's with a woman by the name of Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, a name we'll want to remember. June 13th, 2008, Cindy and George received a letter in their mailbox from a local tow company. And the letter says that Casey's car has been towed.

They thought, well, that's weird. Why would her car be towed? So like any parent would do, they tried calling their daughter to see what was going on. Maybe she needed some help. But like many of the previous times, they can't get a hold of her. She isn't answering their phone calls.

So, unable to get a hold of Casey, George decides, well, I'm just going to go to the tow yard for myself. I'm going to go there. I'm going to go pick up the car. The car belongs to us after all. But as George, as he gets to the car, he has no idea what he is about to discover. Inside the car, George found Casey's purse, Kaylee's car seat, and the car.

as well as many of her toys. But that's not all he noticed about the car. The second he opened the car door, he was hit in the face with a strong odor coming right there from the trunk. According to George, the odor was the undeniable scent of decomposition.

Later that same day, Cindy and George tracked Casey down at her boyfriend, Tony Lazaro's apartment. And the first thing out of their mouth was, where's Kaylee? Your car's been towed. Kaylee's car seat is in there with some of her toys. The trunk smells like a dead body. Where the heck is Kaylee? Now, Casey really doesn't know what else to say to her parents. Her car's been towed.

Kaylee is obviously not inside the apartment with her. So she told her parents that she left Kaylee at her babysitter's, Zaneta's, or Zanny, as she called her. And that wasn't it, though. She also told her parents that the babysitter had kidnapped Kaylee. This was the final straw. The Anthonys know Kaylee isn't with Casey like she's been saying all along,

The car smells like a dead body had been inside of it. What is happening here? So Cindy reports Kaylee Anthony Missoning to the Orange County Sheriff's Department on July 15th, 2008. This is now 31 days after Kaylee was last seen by her grandparents. The first thing police do when the call comes in is that they track down and speak with Casey Anthony. And right away,

The police notice some pretty major discrepancies in her story. Number one, she tells police that she works for Universal Studios. She even takes investigators around the theme park with her, pretending that she's an employee there. A couple hours later, police learned that she lied. She isn't employed by Universal Studios. Number two.

Police also speak with Casey's friends and family. And after they speak to every single person in her life, one thing is crystal clear. Nobody has ever heard of Kaylee having a babysitter by the name of Zanada. In fact, no one recalled Kaylee ever having any babysitter. This so-called Zanny isn't real.

And if this babysitter isn't real, she couldn't have kidnapped Kaylee and she couldn't be the reason why she's now missing. Casey Anthony was arrested by Orange County Sheriff's deputies the next day on July 16th, 2008. She's initially arrested on charges of child neglect, giving false statements to police and obstruction charges.

And as soon as Casey is in police custody, the very first thing they want to do is get their hands on Casey's car. The car that smelled like there'd been a dead body inside. The same car that had Casey's purse and Kaylee's car seat. So the day after Casey was arrested on July 18th, police searched Casey's car and brought with them a cadaver dog. Cadaver dogs are great for these type of searches.

These dogs are used to detect the presence of human remains, which is what they believe they might find inside of Casey's car. These dogs are used all over the world. They can be used on land and even in some cases of water. And they aren't just used in murder investigations. They can be used in cases of major natural disasters, earthquakes,

accidents, acts of terrorism, bombs, and sometimes even suicides they're brought in. So these dogs are brought in and at the slightest scent of human remains, they alert to their handlers by providing some sort of signal. So the Orange County Sheriff's Department uses one of these cadaver dogs on Casey's vehicle. And right away, as soon as they brought in the dog, a minute or two later, they

The dog signals to its handler that there's a scent of human decomposition inside of the car. The dog made its way and gave its handler the signal once it got to the trunk of Casey's car. A couple days later, this is now July 22nd, Casey is finally in court for a bond hearing. Keep in mind, at this point, she's only being held on relatively minor charges. They haven't yet charged her with murder.

So at this bond hearing is when the court hears this evidence about what the cadaver dog found in the car and how the dog zeroed in on not only the trunk of Casey's car, but this is when we learned that the cadaver dog also detected human remains in the Anthony's backyard. This testimony from the dog is pretty damning for Casey because

And the Florida judge in the case seemed to think so as well. And he decided to set her bond again for relatively minor charges at $500,000. $500,000 is a bond amount that you'd see in murder cases. So while Casey is sitting in jail, everyone starts to learn more and more about this mom.

And the more we learn about Casey Anthony and who Casey Anthony is, is when the media just couldn't get enough of it. We learn about the amount of partying that Casey was doing in the days and weeks when Kaylee was nowhere to be found. We learn about the shopping sprees. We learn that in early July, also when her daughter is missing,

Casey gets a tattoo that reads Bella Vita or Beautiful Life in Italian. The world learns that Casey's actions are the complete opposite of what would be considered quote normal for a mom whose child has been supposedly kidnapped by the babysitter, which at this point we know isn't even real.

Someone who takes notice of this case is the unlikely figure, the reality TV slash bounty hunter, Leonard Padilla. On August 20th, just over a month after she was arrested, Leonard Padilla posted Casey Anthony's $500,000 bond.

He says he did this in hopes that once she was released from jail, once she was out on bond, that she would lead authorities to Kaylee or at the very least start talking to them. Well, Casey doesn't exactly do that. She not only lets Leonard Padilla down by not providing authorities with any additional clues about where Kaylee might be, she disappoints the entire nation.

An entire nation wants to know where Kaylee Anthony is. Just days after Casey is released on bond, authorities announced another bombshell in the case. And this bombshell is in the way of forensic science. On August 27th, authorities say an air sample test from Casey's car indicates that human remains had once been inside of the trunk.

This is huge. This air sample test confirms what the cadaver dog found. In case you haven't heard about air samples tests, you're not alone. This type of test is extremely new and groundbreaking to the field of forensics. Even now, the Casey Anthony case is one of the biggest to use this type of test during a criminal investigation.

One of the experts behind these types of air sample tests is Dr. Arped Voss, a scientist from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Dr. Voss is an expert in this new area of forensics. His team out there in Tennessee has done some really groundbreaking work to analyze the odor us humans leave behind after death and

and his team has been able to capture this odor right from the air. Using air sample tests, experts can find and locate what they call a signature scent for human decomposition. This signature is used to then create an electronic detector to basically do the work of a cadaver dog with an even higher rate of accuracy.

a rate of accuracy that can even be used as courtroom testimony. The use of air samples test in forensics is even currently being used by the FBI, where right now the FBI is creating a national database of the chemicals found in human decomposition, just like the databases we have of human DNA and human fingerprints.

So the way an air samples test is taken, just like what they did on Casey Anthony's car, is that they take an air sample through a stainless steel tube called a triple sorbent trap, which this tube is filled with three types of activated carbon, hence the triple in the name. So the tube is placed near the location where they believe a body was, and

And then an air pump is used to basically trap the air inside of the tube. The tube is sealed, where it's then later on heated up in order to concentrate the air inside of the tube. Finally, the sample is then injected into a gas chamber. The chemicals in the sample are separated, and the end result tells us which chemicals are present in the air sample.

In the case of Casey Anthony's car, the air sample test came back positive for what Dr. Voss described as, quote, an abundance of chloroform and signs of human decomposition. In other words, George Anthony was right. The cadaver dog was right. There had certainly been a dead body inside of Casey Anthony's car.

This air sample test provided the first big physical evidence linking Casey to the possible murder of her daughter Kaylee. It provided evidence that Casey possibly used the trunk of her car at some point to move Casey's body. But let's stop for a second. Even though this test came back positive for human remains inside of the car, okay, they think there was a dead body there.

But authorities still don't have a body. We didn't know where Kaylee was or if she was dead or alive at this point. It's still a missing persons case, not a murder case.

Even without a body, in October later that year, a Florida grand jury sat down and voted to indict Casey on capital murder charges, as well as four counts of providing false information to law enforcement. She was officially being charged with the murder of her own toddler. The state felt like they had more than enough to convict her, even if they didn't have Kaylee's body.

After the grand jury indictment, Casey got pretty lucky when it comes to defense attorneys. That's because she was represented by Jose Baez. Nobody knew at the time just how lucky Casey was. But after this trial, Jose Baez would go from a nobody to defense attorney stardom.

Before the case would go to trial and Jose Baez would become a miracle worker, in December 2008, there was another really big update in the case. On December 11, 2008, a utility worker made a shocking discovery in a wooded area just about a half mile from the Anthony's home in Orlando. The worker discovered bones.

He found bones inside of a garbage bag. And a couple days later, on December 19, 2008, authorities announced that the remains had been positively identified as missing two-year-old Kaylee Anthony, confirming what many people already knew. Kaylee's death was ruled a homicide of undetermined means by the medical examiner.

And at the autopsy, the medical examiner noted that her bones didn't show any evidence of major trauma. The only thing that the medical examiner really recovered from the autopsy was duct tape. The examiner recovered duct tape from around Kaylee's nose, jaw, and mouth. But because the decomposition was in such an advanced state,

The medical examiner wasn't able to determine the exact cause of her death, and she wasn't able to determine which day she actually passed on. So the autopsy left so many unanswered questions about what really happened to her. This discovery, this official discovery of Kaylee's body, really sucked out all of the hope many had left in this case.

Of course, reality was setting in that it had been months since anyone saw Kaylee alive. We knew how strange Casey's behavior was. We knew this wasn't going to have a happy ending. But as humans, we naturally like to hold on to some pieces of hope. We continue to look towards the light even in the darkest of times.

But when Kaylee's little body was found, stuffed inside of garbage bags, left alone in the woods, anyone and everyone who followed this case lost any hope we still had. Now, at this point in the game, America really hated Casey Anthony. I mean, everyone hated Casey Anthony.

This hatred across the entire nation for, quote, top mom was what really fueled the prosecution's decision to pursue the death penalty against her. At first, they went back and forth on whether to file death penalty charges. But I think this was a case that public pressure and media pressure played a really big role.

Florida prosecutors couldn't ignore this immense amount of public pressure to ultimately see Casey be punished for this, even be punished before her case has even been heard in front of a trial or in front of a judge.

So the prosecutors gave in. Florida prosecutors announced on April 13, 2009, that their office will seek the death penalty in the case, basically reversing that earlier decision not to. They would be pursuing a capital punishment case.

Something that us as a society reserve for the worst of the worst. Something that many people saw in Casey Anthony. After the prosecution announced their decision to pursue the death penalty, the case would take another close to two years before it would go to trial. Justice isn't always as swift as we'd like to think.

Of course, you can't ignore the fact that this is now a capital case, capital punishment. We are talking about the possibility of putting someone to death, taking their life. So it's going to take several months, in this case, a couple years in order to gather all of the evidence in order for both the prosecution as well as the defense to go over all of the pieces of discovery.

So the murder case against Casey Anthony finally gets started at the end of May 2011. Casey, who is now 25 years old, was facing seven criminal charges in her daughter's murder, including first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and misleading investigators. And we know if she's convicted, she's also facing the death penalty.

The murder trial right from the get-go went from zero to 100, and the country took notice. At the most popular part of this televised trial, more than 5 million Americans at once tuned in to watch this case. And when the trial began in May 2011,

The prosecution painted a picture about Casey to the jury right from the beginning, that she was a party girl with no use in her life for a young daughter. They zeroed in on the 31 days that Kaylee was missing before the Anthonys reported it, where Casey went on shopping sprees.

She was seen out drinking at bars and nightclubs practically every night. And of course, they zeroed in on the tattoo that she got during the time her daughter was missing. The life is beautiful tattoo. The prosecution point blank said, what about your daughter being missing is beautiful.

One of the first pieces of evidence the prosecution presented was a forensic search that was done on the Anthony's home computer. The search revealed that someone had used the Anthony's home computer to search for the word chloroform. Someone had searched for chloroform 84 times. There were also searches for head injuries,

ruptured spleen, chest trauma, and internal bleeding. All of these internet searches on the Anthony's home computer were done back in March 2008 during what the prosecution said was during normal business hours for George and Cindy. Basically saying these internet searches were done on the family computer during the time at which both George and Cindy would be at work.

leaving only one other person in the house, Casey. During witness testimony that would take place several days after this digital evidence was presented, Cindy Anthony, Casey's mother, she would go on to take responsibility for these internet searches of chloroform. She said she was the one who did the search, but claimed that it was completely irrelevant and completely unrelated to Kaylee's death.

The defense team also called their own digital forensic experts to testify. And this expert said that there was actually only one search made for chloroform on the home computer, not 84, like the prosecution said. This defense expert said that this could be chalked up to some sort of reporting error sometime while they were retrieving the search data and

Initially, it said 84, when in fact, the word chloroform had only been searched once, and Cindy Anthony took responsibility for it. Now, the biggest piece, the biggest piece of forensic evidence that the prosecution presented at trial, and quite frankly, the only solid piece of evidence against Casey in the trial, was the testimony from Dr. Arped Voss, the expert we talked about earlier.

Dr. Voss explained to the jury all about the air sample test he conducted on the trunk of Casey's car. And his testimony was pretty straightforward. He believed that the only plausible explanation for the odor that was found inside the car is the presence of a decomposing human body. And the only dead person here is Casey's own daughter.

And the only person that could have put Kaylee's body inside of the car must have been Casey. Dr. Voss also testified to the, quote, shockingly high amount of chloroform detected in the car trunk. According to his tests, the amount of chloroform led him to one conclusion, and that that conclusion was that a dead person had been recently inside of Casey's trunk.

Like I said, this is really big. This really is the biggest and only physical forensic evidence tying Casey to Kaylee's death. The prosecution doesn't have anything else. They didn't recover anything from Kaylee's body linking her mother to the murder. They don't even have a crime scene. The prosecution doesn't 100% know where Kaylee was murdered.

Of course, they have a mountain of circumstantial evidence against Casey, her behavior, her lying. But not many murder cases can be tried and convicted simply based on circumstantial evidence. The jury in this case can't convict Casey Anthony of murder simply because she's a terrible mom. We know that.

So the prosecution's case really relied on this one physical forensic evidence, the evidence that there had been a dead body inside of the trunk of Casey's car. That's it. So when it came time for Jose Baez, Casey's defense attorney, to begin his defense, I think what was on everyone's mind was,

What is he going to say? What defense do we have here? Like, what could Baez really use or say to defend Casey? We pretty much all had our minds made up from the beginning that she was guilty. Even though the state doesn't have much physical evidence, many people had already made up their minds. But when Jose Baez got up there in front of the jury...

I don't think we could have ever been prepared for what he was going to say inside of that courtroom. Hey, Forensic Tales listeners, Courtney here.

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The defense claimed that two-year-old Kaylee drowned in the Anthony family swimming pool back on June 16, 2008, and that George Anthony, the grandfather, was actually the one who decided to cover up the accidental death. The reason for the cover-up was in order to protect Casey from any possible potential child abuse charges that might come from it.

This was a complete defense bombshell. This was the first time we've ever heard that one, Kaylee's death was an accident, that two, George Anthony was in on it, and three, that this was a family cover-up. Now, as shocking as all of this was,

This wasn't the only bombshell that Jose Baez would drop on that courtroom. Casey's defense also went on to claim that George Anthony was a sexual predator, that he had on multiple occasions molested Casey as a child, starting when she was just eight years old.

Baez also said that Casey's brother Lee had also sexually assaulted her as a kid, which, according to Jose Baez, was the cause of Casey's pattern of lying as an adult. She did it as a way to cope with the sexual abuse she endured from both her father and her brother.

Also, according to Baez, that utility worker who found Kaylee's body in the woods, well, according to the defense, that same utility worker was the same person who put her body there to begin with. This guy was contracted or hired by George Anthony as a part of this cover-up.

The defense also had their own forensic experts testify to that same air samples test on the car, and they testified to the amount of chloroform detected in the trunk. The defense had an FBI scientist take the stand, and this scientist testified that he believed, based on his knowledge and his experience, that

that the amount of chloroform found inside of Casey's trunk was equal to the amount that you'd expect to find in chemicals such as common household cleaners. According to him, the amount of chloroform wasn't unusual, that the level didn't amount to the level that you'd expect to find if there was a dead body in there.

So both Cindy and George Anthony took the stand at trial, and both of them completely denied all of the statements made by Jose Baez and Casey's defense team. The accusations, especially against George, were extremely emotional to watch when he took the stand.

This was a guy being accused of molesting his own daughter and on stand at his very own granddaughter's murder scene.

So whether you believed in Casey's innocence or not, you couldn't help but watch Cindy and George Anthony and just have your heart break into a million pieces and just feel so bad for them. So bad for them, not just as people, but as parents, as grandparents and all of this.

So after Cindy and George took the stand and denied all of the accusations made by Jose Baez and Casey's defense team, the prosecution had an opportunity to offer a completely different explanation about Kaylee's death. The prosecution told the jury that Casey likely used chloroform on Kaylee, and then she likely suffocated her by putting duct tape over her nose and her mouth.

The prosecution said she then put her dead body inside of the trunk of her car and then drove her out to the woods about a half mile from Cindy and George's house. The motive was simple and heartless, according to the prosecution. They said that Casey never really wanted to be a mom to begin with. She was young. She was 19 years old.

She wanted to party, to go out and drink. And having a two-year-old toddler at home just wasn't conducive with that type of lifestyle. So she killed her. Prosecutor Jeff Ashton argued during closing arguments that, quote, something needed to be sacrificed. That something was either the life she wanted or the life thrust upon her. And she chose to sacrifice her own child, quote,

During the defense's closing arguments, Jose Baez made a point to call out to the jury that there was really no hard evidence definitively placing Kaylee's body inside of Casey's trunk other than the results of the air samples tests. And he also pointed to the fact that there just wasn't enough evidence to link Casey to Kaylee's death at all.

The prosecution relied so heavily on the air samples test done on the car, a science and a forensic science tool that is still relatively new to the field. So on June 30th, 2011, both the prosecution and defense rested. And by this point, it was up to Casey. Was she going to take the stand in her own defense? And probably wisely, she decided not to take the stand.

So once she decided that she wasn't going to be testifying, we weren't going to hear from her, the case was then left up to seven women and five men to deliberate and to decide whether Casey Anthony was guilty of murdering her own child or not. During deliberation, most people sat back behind their televisions and waited for the guilty verdict.

This case was almost as popular as the O.J. Simpson trial and attracted millions to tune in to live courtroom footage. And similar to O.J., we all sat back and waited to hear that guilty verdict. The Casey Anthony trial lasted just over six weeks. There were over 400 pieces of evidence presented. And now after all of that was said and done, all we could do was wait.

And we didn't have to wait very long because after 10 hours and 40 minutes of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict on July 5th, 2011. And, well, yet again, they delivered a bombshell. The jury found Casey not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and not guilty of aggravated manslaughter of a child.

The only charge that jury found her guilty on were four misdemeanor counts of providing false information to law enforcement. Basically, finding her guilty of being a liar. Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder. Now, a few days after this shocking verdict, Casey Anthony walked out of the Orange County Jail.

She'd been sentenced to four years and a $4,000 fine for those four counts of lying to police. And she was ultimately given credit for time served. She had already been in custody this entire time. After all of this, after all is said and done, Casey Anthony walked free on July 17th, 2011. After Casey was released, many people felt the same way that they felt back with OJ Simpson.

Many people, the media, the eyes of the public, believed Casey Anthony got away with murder. This not guilty verdict didn't sit well with many people. This not guilty verdict provides no justice for the victim, two-year-old Kaylee Anthony, and to some, lets a guilty person off. After the trial ended and we heard the verdict, Jose Baez, her attorney, said,

became sort of the new dream team, the Johnny Cochran-type defense attorney. It became a thing. If Jose Baez could get Casey Anthony off, he could get anyone off. His defense of Casey Anthony was the biggest case that he had ever taken on in his career. He went from the no-name defense attorney that some fellow jail inmate recommended to Casey to begin with,

to a defense attorney who would defend people like the former NFL star Aaron Hernandez. He would go on to work on the George Zimmerman case. And he's been sought out by celebrities, by big-name people to defend them, like Harvey Weinstein reached out. Casey Anthony, on the other hand, she doesn't have quite the high profile. Casey Anthony is now in her 30s.

Most recently, what I could find on the internet about her is that she's started a private investigation business. She started the business in West Palm Beach, Florida. The business is called Case Researching and Consulting Services, and they focus on locating missing persons and helping crack unsolved cases. Yeah. Yeah.

So to many, her choice to open up this type of business is unsettling, to say the least. That someone who was once accused of killing her own daughter and having her go missing is now running a missing persons business. Regardless of her innocence or guilt,

Casey Anthony will live the rest of her life in infamously. She will forever be remembered as top mom. I don't think she really will ever get to go on and live any sort of normal life after this. Everyone knows her name. I just don't know how you could. And to many, there's still so many unanswered questions about this case. The biggest being, what really happened to two-year-old Kaylee Anthony?

Who is responsible? Who knows someone? Did that person get away with murder? And unfortunately, with the acquittal of Casey Anthony, it doesn't appear like we'll get too many more answers to those types of questions. The Casey Anthony case is one where the forensic science and the evidence just wasn't strong enough. Many articles that you can read on the internet about this case say

Describe the prosecution's use of the air samples test as being similar to the prosecution's use of the black glove in the O.J. Simpson murder trial that we keep talking about. There is an ABC article out there that describes and regards the air samples test of Casey's trunk. They describe it as an O.J. Simpson moment.

This, of course, is referring to the infamous prosecution's decision where they had OJ put on that black glove that they had supposedly found at the crime scene next to Nicole and Ron Goldman's body. And of course, when OJ puts the glove on in front of the jury, it doesn't fit.

So many saw the same thing happen here with the air samples test. The prosecution relied so heavily on this idea that they detected human remains and human decomposition inside of Casey's trunk.

which was and still is a relatively new method to the field of forensic science. And they said that this was an OJ Simpson moment. This was a black glove moment in the eyes of a jury that would ultimately acquit Casey Anthony. So many speculate that this new science certainly backfired in the prosecution's face.

The murder of Kaylee Anthony and the ultimate acquittal of her mom, Casey Anthony, has been talked about for years. Again, this is a case with so many unanswered questions. If you would like to join in on this discussion, and if you want to share what you think happened, make sure you follow us. Follow the show on Instagram at Forensic Tales or on Facebook at

And if you want to check out pictures from this case, we always upload pictures, videos, a lot more stuff about the cases we cover in the episodes. All of that is available on our website, ForensicTales.com. Also, if you want to see a full list of sources that were used in this episode, check out our website.

Okay, everyone, that just about does it for this week. Thank you so, so much for joining me. Of course, we will be back again next Monday. We've got a new case, a new story. So until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. ♪

Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fratwell. For a small monthly contribution, you can gain access to bonus content and be one of the first to listen to new episodes.

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