Analysis: Did Caylee die on June 15 or 16?

The bloggers were restless in Anthonyville the past couple of weeks. Boy, were they. As nothing new surfaced in the Casey case, several blog writers went after each other with a vengeance. I found it comical because, as the real perp sits in jail, these people – including commenters – went on the attack and gathered around the wagons to pick sides. One week, they’re shooting poison tipped words at each other and playing make-up the next, only in real life, they’ll never fully trust each other again. All in the name of justice for Caylee. And the commenters who stuck by one side were somewhat left in the dust to hang by the other. What’s funny about it is that they’ve always been in agreement on vilifying the entire Anthony brood and that left but one cause for those angry debates: ego pitted against ego. It was almost cannibalistic in nature because the flesh of their messages was the same, with similar word bites skewed different ways. Thank goodness for the trolls. If not for them, who knows how many more blogs would have been chewed up and spit out? Trolls make much easier targets because they can’t defend themselves from attack. They were relegated to the spam dumpster months ago. Not that they didn’t deserve it.

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Here is something I’ve seen brewing for a long time now and I wonder why such highly opinionated bloggers aren’t dissecting it more because it is very intriguing to me and several contributors on this blog, and we have had our moments. One of the most interesting aspects of this case focuses on two different and very distinct dates, although only a very short period of time separates them. The dates in question are June 15 and June 16 of last year and the perplexing part dwells on the explanation of a concrete motive for murder. This is not to argue over whether it was accidental or not. The medical examiner already decided that. Why was Caylee killed? I haven’t seen an awful lot of infighting over this issue and, by all rights, it could easily erupt into something at any moment as people on-line set up opposite camps on the topic. I know where I stand, but I would never say never to the other theory and deny anyone their reasons for why they feel the way they do. First, I’ll try to explain the two sides and take a look into two possible motives for the kill.

Whether Casey and Cindy had a fight the night of the 15th is fast becoming legendary. There are no documents supporting that, not official ones, anyway, but some words have been said. Yuri Melich mentioned it to Cindy’s mother, but she didn’t have a clue. Leonard Padilla stated that Lee told him about a fight that night. That might have been where Melich heard it, but Leonard Padilla also implicated Roy Kronk in some sort of nonsensical daisy chain theory, where everyone is in bed together. Casey is controlling people from her jail cell, sort of like the opening sequence of The Outer Limits, where the voiceover says, “We are in control of your television set…” only replace “we” with Casey and “television set” with anyone who comfortably fits in at the time. Oh yes, and follow the money trail because everyone is involved in a cover-up so they can get rich. OK, there were probably others who said they heard about a fight, including neighbors, only the neighbors said they heard them on a number of occasions and not one of them could specify that night in particular. Fine, fine, but where’s this going?

If you follow this train of thought, you believe that Casey yanked Caylee out of the house the night of the 15th and killed her in a fit of rage. There lies the motive, plain and simple. That’s certainly a possibility and I would never say no with total authority, but I will say that if this is what caused Caylee’s death, then it would be a crime of passion and not a well thought out scheme. Because it might be this crime of passion, the state would not be seeking the death penalty and authorities would not be looking into other areas such as what the Anthony household computers held on them; with search terms like “chloroform” and “neck breaking.” Some have speculated that Casey and Caylee went to Lee’s apartment, 2 miles away, but Lee had roommates and no one has come forward making that claim. Just bloggers and forums. By cell phone pings, which are well documented, she had to be in the house the night of the 15th or very close by in her car, and unless she brought her cell phone adapter to plug into the lighter, her phone would have died long before Caylee, and she would have had to have been slaughtered somewhere in the open, risking discovery. Possible? Absolutely, but not very plausible in my book.

As of this date, the prosecution is going with the 16th as the probable date that Caylee was last seen alive by anyone other than Casey and that is based on George Anthony’s testimony to detectives, which I will detail later in this article. Remember that Cindy was interviewed first that day, and separately.

As much as lots of people hate the Anthonys and as long as they hate them, there’s no way these types can look at this case with a clear conscience and a straight forward approach. There is no objectivity, as they abjectly feel that every word spoken by George, Cindy and Lee are nothing but lies. And they hate them with every waking moment. Why? Who among us has the right to judge? None of the family have been charged with a crime; no lying, no obstruction of justice, no nothing. Are they guilty of telling the truth at all times? No, of course not, but to think that every word they say is a lie is absurd. Oh, and follow the money trail.

My contention is that George did, in fact, see Casey and Caylee walk out the door on June 16th because no one in law enforcement has said differently and I choose to stick with what the law says. Granted, none of it is set in stone and I will readily admit that the 15th is still quite the possibility, but no one from Attorney General Bill McCollum on down has said otherwise, and they have not found what George told them to be untrue. To be fair, no one from Big Bill on down has said anything about a specific date, but why the 16th makes sense to me is obvious. Casey planned the whole thing. Sure, she did a lousy job of it, but that’s why those computer search terms are so crucial. That’s why, when some of her boyfriends told her to lose the kid, she took it quite literally. She wanted a free life with no responsibilities. Her men, except for Jesse Grund, wanted no part of instant daddydom and she never wanted the little snot-nosed brat to begin with. I’ve thought for some time that it was several things that motivated her, with not wanting a child as one of them. Of course, her mother insisted that she go to term, she was the first person to hold the newborn and Casey has held her parents in contempt for a long, long time. Not only did she not want that child, there was no way her mother was ever going to have her, either. In a sad way, it’s a shame that Casey never had a pot to pee in or she would have gone to a clinic and disposed of the “problem” before she popped her little head out. It’s a cruel thing to say, but a one pound fetus is less to mourn over than a 30 pound toddler and at the time, Rick Plesea, Cindy’s brother, never would have had to end up telling her that Casey was pregnant and she never would have had to be in denial, which fueled Casey’s resentment. The amount of love Cindy and George gave Caylee drove a toxic wedge between any affection she might have had left for her parents as she gave up all hope of ever being treated like a daughter again. Caylee was her replacement and Caylee got the love and attention she felt she never got as a child. A bad seed was somehow planted in Casey when she was young and it had years to fester. This was a childhood that languished in school as she excelled in nothing and it wasn’t until she blossomed as a perky young woman that she realized what power she held over boys. Finally, she had something to latch onto; a talent. There was where she found her love and her family was lost forever. Thus gave birth to a final act of murder that was 3 years in the making as she became more and more determined to take the happiness Caylee gave to her parents away from them. I don’t want her and you can’t have her. What the final straw was we may never know, but it had been coming a long, long time.

On July 16th, Casey was arrested. The following day, she was officially charged with child neglect, lying to investigators and interfering with a criminal investigation. No one needs to explain the frustration she put her family through when she disappeared for an entire month, ignoring desperate text and voice messages from her frantic mother and making every excuse in the book about Caylee’s whereabouts when Cindy finally reached her. If anyone chooses not to believe that’s what was going on, there are documents to prove it’s true.

When Orange County Sheriff’s Office deputies were summoned to the Anthony home on July 15, Casey gave a written statement that began, “On Monday, June 9, 2008 between 9am and 1pm, I, Casey Anthony, took my daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, to her nanny’s apartment.”

How does the 9th fit in? It really doesn’t. Casey took that date from her mother’s original suggestion of the 9th being the last time she had seen Caylee. This is something they discussed before law enforcement arrived. Cindy had gotten her weeks confused because she later recollected the trip to Mt. Dora the following Sunday, on Father’s Day. Since we have established Sunday, June 15 as the date of Caylee’s last video, we can surmise that the 9th, a Monday, is actually the 16th, seven days later.

Casey continues, “I spent the rest of that evening pacing and worrying at one of the few places I felt ‘at home’, my boyfriend Anthony Lazzaro’s apartment. For the past four weeks since Caylee’s disappearance, I have stayed at Anthony’s apartment in Sutton Place. I have spent everyday since Monday, June 9, 2008, looking for my  daughter… I have not had any contact with Zenaida since Thursday, June 12, 2008.”

In my opinion, this is Casey’s cryptic way of announcing Monday as the day of death. On the same day, Casey told her brother she hadn’t seen Caylee in 31 days, which would have made that June 14, if counting back.* As confusing as all of the dates originally became, one credible thing came out of Casey’s statement and it may validate the day Caylee died. Casey, in her original statement to law enforcement, declares that the day of the week she last saw her daughter was a Monday. By her own admission, she does not say Sunday or Tuesday or any other day of the week. This is why law enforcement asserts that Monday, June 16, 2008 was most likely the final day Caylee Marie Anthony was alive. She also says on that date she began staying at her boyfriend, Tony Lazzaro’s house, which is true.  She validates it further by stating she left for the nanny’s between 9:00am and 1:00pm, which backs up George’s claim of the date and time he saw Casey and Caylee leave the house.

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On August 4, 2008, George Anthony sat down with Detective Eric Edwards and Detective Mark Hussey, both of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, to be interviewed about his knowledge of the events that led up to his daughter’s arrest. Remember, at the time, Casey was charged with neglect, Caylee was merely listed as missing and murder had not quite fit into the public equation, and certainly not from George and Cindy’s perspective. The following text is a part of the written transcript of George’s interview. The reason why I choose to believe his version of events has more to do with some of the things he said and not from a specific date, although it does back up the 16th theory. Why I feel it is true deals with the fact that it became the last time he saw Caylee and Casey had virtually fallen off the face of the earth. The next time he saw her was the day she angrily removed the gas cans from the trunk of her vehicle, on June 24.

This is the way George’s interview was transcribed. All spelling and grammatical errors are left intact. Detectives Edwards’ and Hussey’s comments are in green. George’s are in red. From page 9…

The night of the 15th when they come back, I know they had chili at uh, great grandma’s house cause she made her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she’s very articulate about that, at 81 she’s got a lot on the ball. Um…

She’s tough.

Yeah. Uh do you remember…

I was…

…seeing the baby to bed that night or were you working?

I, I was working.

Okay when you came home who was at the house at that time, do you remember actually seeing…?

She’s tough.

Yeah. Uh do you remember…

I was…

…seeing the baby to bed that night or were you working?

I, I was working.

Okay.

I was working 3 to 11.

Okay when you came home who was at the house at that time, do you remember actually seeing…?

Well I, I’m, I’m almost positive that uh, Casey’s car was in the driveway and I would be lead to believe then that they were both there, Casey and Caylee, I know my wife was there because I got home shortly after 11:00. And the next morning, or let’s put it this way like 10 minutes to 1 that afternoon on the 16ht is when I actually saw Casey and Caylee together, they’re both leaving with backpacks and so my daughter said she was going to work and she was taking Caylee to the, to the nanny, to the babysitter. But I knew it was 10 minutes to 1 cause I was watching this food channel thing that I watch between noon and 1:00. So I’m positive that, that I know for a dog gone fact.

A minute or so later George describes the backpacks he saw with Casey…

But she had a backpack at the time?

Oh she definitely had some stuff cause she sat is on our one chair that was right there, one lazy boy recliner that we have. She just set it down and she says, “Hey”, she says, “I’m a be working a little bit late, uh, Caylee’s gonna be staying with the nanny, I’m gonna come back and stay there and I’ll see you and mom tomorrow afternoon”.  That’s not nothing unusual, she’s done that a few different times so. She said she already had, he says, “I already talked to mom, mom knows I’m gonna be staying over”, I said, “Okay just be careful and I’ll see you tomorrow type deal”. I was one of those…

And that’s on the 15th?

No that was on the 6…

Or the 16th…

That was 16, that was Monday.

Alright.

Here are parts of Cindy Anthony’s interview on the same day with the same detectives. Her statements are in red:

[On page 27 of Cindy Anthony's interview, she discussed (with the detectives) something I found peculiar. She had sent Lee over to Anthony Lazzaro's apartment to pick up Casey and Caylee's things on the night of July 15th...]

Until he picked it up, actually it was the morning of the 16th cause it was after midnight…

Like 2:00 in the morning.

Right.

It was like 2:30 and then he got back to the house with it.

Right.

And she was [Casey] very descriptive about the bag of clothing and…

We had two bags of clothes.

No, no, no Caylee clothes though?

No nothing…

No diapers or anything like that?

No the only thing that was left was what George had seen her with the 6, the morning of the 16th of June when he left. And he said Caysee had her backpack and her backpack was some of the stuff at Tony’s. And then um, Caylee’s backpack only had a couple of things in it. There was no clothes in there like there would be. There was a couple of diapers in there, a toothbrush, a couple of hair things. And then maybe some wipes and that was it. Which is unusual cause their backpacks are usually full…

What struck me was Cindy’s description of the backpack as being unusual. Unusual is not a word one would use to defend another person. Bear in mind that Caylee was gone a month and her mother had no clothes for her. Cindy relayed that to the detectives.

… to the brim and usually books, toys, clothes. Caysee from day one wherever she took Caylee, whoever was watching her she said there was always, there was always clothes and things for her there. And, and diapers and stuff even though Caysee did pack a bag. Cause I used to unpack Caylee’s bags all the time and take stuff out. Take, you know, left over food, you know cause she’d take little baggies of you know pretzels or Cheerios or she’d have different juice things and stuff like that. And I would usually empty stuff out, clean the stuff up and put it away and then we’d repack it every day cause you don’t wanna leave anything in there that would like spoil.

Clearly, Cindy is stating that something was amiss when the items were returned from Lazzaro’s and everything came down. If Cindy was lying to protect her daughter, she was doing a damn bad job at it. Further in the interview, Cindy asked deputies about the smelly pants in the car. Do you want them or is it OK to wash them. Deputies told her they weren’t interested. This is certainly not an issue of tampering with evidence as so many blogs and comments have accused. Read it yourself. Page 30-31.

What puzzles me are those who insist George lied during that interview. In my opinion, he had no reason to protect his daughter at that point. George firmly believed that Caylee was merely missing and he wanted to do his best to try to find her and bring her home. As for why, in particular, he remembered that specific day, I contend that it was because he never saw her again after that. I would most likely remember the last day I ever saw someone close. I can still vividly recall the last time I looked into my grandmother’s eyes and she died 32 years ago this month. At the same time, I will not allow myself to stick with the 16th as the date of Caylee’s disappearance strictly because it is the generally accepted day and one which fits nicely into play with law enforcement and the state. She could have driven off the night of the 15th in a fit of rage as some theorists suggest. I just don’t think so because I have not heard one official statement from the state of Florida that promotes it as feasible since nothing has proved George’s sworn statement to be untrue.

As for Cindy, just go on thinking everything she said was a lie, but be ready to acknowledge that Caylee’s backpack was really filled with her things because Cindy must have been lying about that.

In closing, this still leaves the door open on the date of death. The indictment against Casey states:

In the name and by the authority of the State of Florida:

The Grand Jurors of the County of Orange, duly called, impaneled and sworn to inquire and true presentment make in and for the body of the County of Orange, upon their oaths do present that CASEY MARIEE ANTHONY, between the 15th day of June, 2008 and the 16th day of July, 2008, in the County and State, did violation of Florida Statute 782.04(I)(a)(1), from a premeditated design to effect the death of CAYLEE MARIE ANTHONY, a human being, unlawfully kill CAYLEE MARIE ANTHONY.

And that’s just one charge out of seven. Just remember one very important thing. It was George Anthony’s crucial testimony against his daughter that indicted her. Was he lying? This was over 2 months after he gave his interview. Why was he a liar during the original interview and not one during the Grand Jury testimony? To me, this is a matter of selective and convenient thinking that bends the case to whatever one wants to believe. Bear in mind, too, that the indictment leaves at least a full month open for the murder. Does anyone want to argue it was June 24 that she died? Why not?

Oh yes, and one more thing. If the motive was anger brought on by this fit, this “argument” the night of the 15th, why does the indictment say premeditated?

*If you count days, day 1 is a full 24 hours before the initial date, so from July 15 to the 14 is 1 day. Day 2 would be the 13 and so on, so by the 31st day, the date would be June 14. But Casey stunk in math.

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