Caylee shrine property for sale – Owner ID’d

For New Documents Released This Morning, See Post Below This One

Exclusive Story

News surfaced on Wednesday that the wooded lot where Caylee Marie Anthony’s skeletal remains were found is up for sale. It was put on the market this week at the ridiculously inflated asking price of $89,900. Both the prosecution and defense teams performed highly sophisticated and very thorough forensics work on that property and I decided to do some investigative digging of my own. Who owns it and what is it really worth?

I will say upfront that none of the media outlets have been able to confirm the actual identity of the property owner, just that his name is Thomas Hendricks and he has a Winter Park, Florida P.O. Box address. In other words, there is no physical address linking one particular Thomas Hendricks to the piece of land. If you Google the name, you’ll find lots of listings. How does one go about isolating this one person out of the many that share the same name? In the following paragraphs, I will explain what I found out, who he is and where to find him; right down to his FCC amateur radio call letters.

First of all, this is not the order in which I made my discovery. It just makes more sense to explain it this way and besides, I do not wish to give away all of my tricks of the trade. Secondly, I found all of the information on the Internet. Let’s take a look at some documents…

(All images may be clicked on to enlarge)

Here is a copy of the defense team’s motion to inspect the crime scene, filed by Casey’s attorney, Jose Baez. This was requested after the state’s team of experts had meticulously combed through the area.

If you read through the document, you will see that Jose Baez had a tough time locating Thomas Hendricks, too. Next, I took a look at the property from public records available at the Orange County government website. From this site I was able to reference the property’s parcel number:

13-23-30-1290-00-021

If you have sharp eyes and a mind to go along with it, you’ll also notice that Mr. Hendricks owns the land on the north side of Suburban Drive, right across the street from where Caylee’s memorial shrine is. To be more precise, he owns 25 properties in Orange County alone. One of the things I found out while searching through media websites is that he is, indeed, a very difficult person to track down. No one could find him and his only address is P.O. Box 4602, Winter Park, Florida  32793. That is not all. Here is a property he owns in Bucks County, PA, and it gives as his contact information the same Winter Park address. This guy moves around. Coincidentally, Bucks County is right across the Delaware River from Hunterdon County, NJ, where I grew up.

You’ll notice I highlighted the information in gray. From there, I begin to get down to the nitty gritty. I was hoping that by digging deeper into this land’s property tax information, it would yield more than a post office box. I was hoping for a real address of some kind, plus an idea of what the property is worth.

Along the way, I did find something of interest. Having been to that area several times, I couldn’t see that particular tract as being worth much. The property’s code description has it classified as vacant home owners association (019). It’s not very large and I don’t think it could be developed for anything, like putting up a house. As a matter of fact, in my research, I discovered it’s not worth much at all, according to the amount of taxes Mr. Hendricks paid on it in 2008.

OK, so the property is only appraised at a mere $100. Sure, and up until Caylee’s body was found, that’s all it was probably worth. You’ve probably heard of those schemes to sell Florida land and when you finally get the chance to visit your new homestead, it’s a swamp. This is almost the same thing and until history changed it, that’s all it would probably ever be worth. Remember, after T.S. Fay came through in August, this land was under water for months and it confounded all search efforts until Roy Kronk came along on December 11. Now, you can second-guess all you want about the property’s value today and be my guest, but is it really worth almost 90 grand or is the owner greedy? What would a potential buyer do with it but keep it as a shrine and charge admission?  How can anyone justify that price? For that reason and that reason alone, I am going to share the name, address and phone number of the owner for being nothing more than a money hungry bottom feeder off this Caylee Anthony affair. Sure, Tom, join the bandwagon. Me? I’m going back to work to find you.

I had the name of Thomas Hendricks and a box number. I looked up his name on a website I utilize for this sort of purpose. I find it very revealing at times and no, you can’t have it. There are certain secrets I must keep. Along with his name, I put a Winter Park location, just the name of the city. Now, I had no idea whether he lived in Winter Park or not, but I figured I had to start somewhere. Of course, in Central Florida alone, more than one Thomas Hendricks appeared. One of the things that caught my eye was that one of them is a ham radio operator with the call sign, N4HTH. Hmm, another coincidence is that one of my grandfathers was a ham operator and he worked for years for a company called Hendrick’s Appliances as a repairman in Stockton, NJ, directly across the river from Bucks County. Interesting, I thought, but unrelated. Here is what I found:

Alright, so none of this information is private property. This list of names came off of a website that anyone can find and research, but right there, in living RGB color and B&W, was one particular guy with the same name who lives in Winter Park. Had I hit the mother lode? Fat chance, I thought, because there was nothing linking that physical address to the post office box number any more than any other Thomas Hendricks would link to it and I really had no idea what state he even lived in. I could be looking for hours, I thought, but in cases like this, I like to write things down. By the way, there’s a clue in that directory somewhere.

After extensive work, searching through records, I still had a few more ideas up my sleeve. The next one I tried struck gold and I got myself a positive match. Where everyone else seemed to have failed, doing my homework paid off.

Look carefully at the Quit Claim Deed below. Do you see his name there, near the top? Underneath it, you’ll see Post Office Box 4602, the numbers that stuck in my head, but keep scrolling down, because this is where this particular piece of public property yielded the biggest clue and an on the mark ID. Some might say it’s right on the money.

There. See it? In the middle of the deed is the name of his wife and it matches the name of his Successor Trustee, Faye M., on the White Pages Winter Park address. The mystery is solved. I lucked out, but I have always had a pretty good nose for scoping out information and knowing how to manipulate key search terms helped tremendously.

Under normal circumstances, I would not disclose private information, but at the same time, the asking price of this land is so grossly out of touch with reality, it unnerved me. Ouch! He paid $1.64 in taxes in 2008 on a piece of land he now claims is worth $89,900. That is terrible and it is a sure sign, in my opinion, of someone trying to get richer off this dead girl. Remember, everything I found was available on-line. To those of you not all that familiar with Florida’s open-government laws, also known as the Sunshine Law, you just saw it in action. To Mr. Hendricks: I know you have to go with the flow, right? Take the money and run. Please remember one thing – I didn’t try to peddle this story to the highest bidder because everything I found was free for the taking. No bones about it. I hope I rattled a few.

The land where Caylee Anthony’s remains were found is for sale. Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla said he wants to buy the property. (RED HUBER, ORLANDO SENTINEL / March 20, 2009)

Leonard Padilla offered $50,000 for the land to keep as a permanent memorial.

©2009 David B. Knechel. All rights Reserved.

see next post (below) for updated transcripts 3/20/09

New documents: The name that scares Casey the most

State Attorney’s Office releases about 500 pages of legal and investigative documents and photographs in the case

Daily updates are posted at the bottom of this article

UPDATED FEB.18

UPDATED FEB. 19

UPDATED FEB. 20

“I hope I made the right decision. I just hope the end justifies the means…This is the happiest I have been in a very long time.”

The date puts it a few days after Caylee was last seen alive, assuming it was written in 2008. Read the Diary Entry.

Photo shows ’03 in upper left corner

Several weeks ago, I began writing an article about one person in particular, Annie Downing. She was Casey’s best friend until late in 2007, when she decided she couldn’t handle Casey’s lies any longer. Why I picked her out of the crop of friends and acquaintances was because her name was consistently mentioned in many of the interviews with others, but her conversations with police were conspicuously left out. I found that a bit odd, or was it revealing? By not saying a word about her, were law enforcement officials saying something? That is exactly what I believed and that was my angle. Here is a report of released documents as I know them now, approximately 1:15 today.

As I wrote in yesterday’s post about the lack of fingerprints being found on the duct tape, that turned out to be correct. No fingerprints of Cindy, George, Lee or anyone else were present. The silver-colored duct tape found on Caylee’s skull is consistent with tape found on one of the gas cans, a red one. The report released today states that the duct tape “originated from the same source roll.” A piece of “Henkel Consumer Adhesives” duct tape was found wrapped around the skull and was attached to a gas can at the house, according to the report.

Investigators have amended initial reports that determined the body was thrown into the woods on June 18 and was in the trunk of the car for two days. They now say that Caylee died between June 16 and June 27 and detectives believe the body was stored in the Pontiac for an undisclosed period of time, but was removed before the 27th.

“Evidence on the body suggests that the child’s death was not accidental but an intentional act,” Detective Yuri Melich wrote Feb. 5. “As of this writing, there is nothing to suggest that anyone but Casey Anthony is responsible for the death and disposal of Caylee Anthony.”

Lee Anthony’s former roommate and long-time Anthony family friend, Michelle Murphy, stated that Casey often complained about having a very bad relationship with her father. On two occasions, George and Cindy told Murphy that they were considering trying to get custody of Caylee. Casey allegedly had a miscarriage in Februay of 2007 from a man named Brandon Snow. She told Downing and Murphy, but neither of them believed her. In March of that year, Casey called Murphy and told her she was feeling “crazy” and was considering having herself committed. She had imagined a life with Brandon and the baby, due in October. She told her she didn’t feel she was a good mother to Caylee. When Murphy called her the next day, she blew her off.

When Casey was released from jail last year, Annie Downing went to visit Casey at home several times and spent the night once. Casey told her, “When this is all said and done, I have so much to tell you.”

While visiting the home, Casey found Cindy on the computer using Casey’s e-mail address and signing her name. They argued, but Cindy said that “if this can find us Caylee, then you know I’m going to do whatever I can.”

When Downing confronted Casey about the chloroform found in the trunk, Casey shrugged it off by saying she had stored cleaning supplies there. Besides, she eluded, ex-fiancé Jesse Grund had a key to the car and he might have done something to it after it was abandoned. Downing told investigators that Casey wasn’t smart enough to have acted alone if she had harmed Caylee, but that was strictly her own opinion.

In late 2006 or early 2007, Casey visited Downing at work and told her she needed to talk to someone. She said, “she needed to get away and felt like she was having a breakdown.” She added that she wanted to go to “an institution” and told her that Caylee could stay with Cindy, but when Downing called her later that night, she said she was fine, she’d had a good talk with her mother. The friendship really unraveled around August, 2007. They remained friendly, but it never was the same again.

During an interview with Downing, she told detectives Casey was jealous of her mother’s relationship with Caylee. Casey told her that Cindy wanted Caylee to call her “Mom” instead of “Grandmom.” On Caylee’s 2nd birthday, Casey told Downing, “Oh my God, this is supposed to be Caylee’s Day. I’m her mom. She’s not her mom.” Cindy was helping Caylee open presents.

Annie Downing received a phone call from Lee Anthony in October, after Casey was re-arrested and information had been made public about Casey telling a friend she could get Xanax from Annie. Downing said that Lee told her, “We all know Casey’s done bad things but you need to protect yourself. You need to …if they call you. You need to tell them the truth. You need to tell them anything you know because if you know something you need to tell them…. Don’t protect Casey.” Both Downing and Murphy told investigators that Casey had an emotional breakdown at one time and wanted to be committed.

Document PDFs:

All documents can be accessed HERE

♦

A sticker missing its heart. A sheet was found with similar hearts, some missing.

 

Heart found at crime scene stuck to cardboard

Click HERE to link to some of the images

The Discovery Documents also include lists of dozens of all relative personnel who had been working at the crime scene, including FBI agents, Orange County Sheriff’s Office detectives, crime-scene technicians and prosecutors. Included is a letter requesting the FBI to compare items taken from the Anthony house in December, when a search warrant was executed. Some of the items taken from the house are multiple garbage bags, a Bissel steam cleaner, Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner, a Bissel spot cleaner and one red gas can with duct tape.

The sheriff’s office asked the FBI to compare the black plastic bags found with Caylee’s remains to the garbage bags taken from the Anthonys’ home, to compare the duct tape found on the remains to the duct tape on the gas can from the Anthony residence, and to examine vacuums and cleaners for potential decomposition materials and/or other related items.

Detectives noted that the body was found in the wooded area and not far from the road. The skull was near a plastic bag. There was no flesh on it, but quite a bit of hair. “I immediately noticed that there appeared to be a piece of silver duct tape across the mouth area of the skull,” Detective Yuri Melich wrote. “The tape appeared to have been purposely placed there.”

The remains were found inside of two black plastic bags and a canvas laundry bag. There was a stained Winnie the Pooh blanket, a pair of size 24 month pink and white stripe shorts, a pink size 3T shirt with the words “BIG TROUBLE comes small” written on the front and what was thought to be pieces of a child’s pull up.

Investigators combed the crime scene where Caylee was found with a metal detector but found nothing of note. A cadaver dog, the same one that reacted to decomposition in Anthony’s car, searched the scene but did not hit on anything. John Schultz, a University of Central Florida assistant professor, was called in to work with investigators. He specializes in biological anthropology and recently co-authored a book titled, Forensic Recovery of Human Remains: Archaeological Approaches. Also called in was Neal Haskell, a forensic entomology expert and professor at St. Joseph’s College in Indiana. He asked for soil samples to be taken to examine bugs at the scene.

Here is a partial list of what was found:

• Several bones, including human teeth and animal bones

• Numerous pieces of plastic bags

• A pregnancy test – Several discarded soda cans

• A broken Winnie the Pooh helium balloon

• Barbie doll legs

• A disposable camera

• A piece of “Henkel Consumer Adhesives” duct tape

• World of Disney bag near Caylee Anthony’s remains. Inside the bag was a Gatorade Cool Blue bottle with an unknown liquid and white sediment.

• A syringe in a wrapper was found inside a toilet paper roll that was in the bottle.

Investigators conducted a search warrant at the Anthony’s Hopespring Drive home immediately after Caylee’s remains were found. Here are some of the items seized:

• Nine pair of women’s shoes from Casey Anthony’s closet

• A white/red heart-shaped sticker backing with sticker removed that was found in a shoe box in Casey Anthony’s dresser

• A sheet for red heart-shaped stickers with the three remaining on the page found in a red folder in her dresser

• A sheet for multi-colored heart-shaped stickers in a black binder in her dresser

• Two white-rimmed plastic children’s sunglasses

• Two pair of children’s denim shorts — size 24M

• Three denim children’s skorts – one 3T and two 24M

• Miscellaneous doll clothing

• Five pairs of children shoes

•  One black garbage bag found inside a suitcase in the garage area

– Two handwritten notes from a chest in Caylee’s room

• Some muscle-relaxers and anti-anxiety medications were taken from the master bathroom that were prescribed to Cindy Anthony

Lawyers for Casey Anthony released this statement today:

“The State’s forensic report on duct tape, plastic bags and other items is a one-sided law enforcement-generated report and is biased and speculative. It uses ‘junk science,’ the kind of flawed comparative analysis that the two-year study by National Academy of Sciences released today.”

♦

Jose Baez Should Be Your Friend

Don’t laugh until after you read this. In light of this new and revealing information, let me say a word about a name you may not be familiar with: Jonathan Kasen. He is Casey Anthony’s second best friend. He wasn’t before she was arrested, but he is now. And here you thought that Jose Baez is the only non-family friend she has left. You know, Baez, the guy you love to hate. Jose Baez is a criminal attorney. Jonathan Kasen is a civil attorney and he is representing Casey in the defamation lawsuit filed on behalf of Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, the woman who has the same name as Anthony’s alleged nanny.

Through the grapevine, whispers among lawyers in O-town, also known as O’do, say that Baez is really stupid. I know you all agree, but he should be your friend, not your enemy. You know why? If Baez really had any smarts, he would have insisted on the right to a speedy trial. That’s right. Because any good lawyer will say that without a body, it would have been tough to convict, in spite of the charge and evidence on hand. By now, Casey would be free and could never be tried again for her daughter’s murder, so you see? Baez turned out to be your biggest ally because today, the state has overwhelming evidence to send her away for life with no chance of parole. To be frank, they can ask for the death penalty now, but in my opinion, they won’t. It’s tough for a jury to send a crazy person to their death.

What happened that fateful day of June 16, 2008? George Anthony watched Casey carry Caylee out to the car, put her in her car seat and drive away, never to be seen again. Not by George or anyone else in the family, and no one else has come forward in defense of Casey. I wonder how much longer George, Cindy and Lee can do the same thing?

As more information comes in, I will update this article. Please stay tuned…

ADDENDUM 2/18/09

• Cindy told detectives in December that Caylee’s Winnie the Pooh blanket was missing.

• Lee went to a nightclub looking for Casey when she made it a point to avoid the family. When she got word he was on his way, she sneaked out before he arrived.

• The defense team got the documents last week. No member of the defense has visited her in jail since receiving the documents. That is 9 days, and it’s the longest she’s been with no one visiting her. This had to have been a devastating blow to the defense. In my opinion, it says Casey lied to Baez all along. No wonder he checked himself into the hospital.

• Casey Anthony hyperventilated and needed medications to calm her down after she got word that Caylee’s remains were finally found. Her reaction could be analyzed by both sides and I wouldn’t factor her demeanor in so much. On one hand, the prosecution will say that her reaction proves her guilt. “Oh, no! My goose is cooked. They found her!” On the other hand, the defense could easily say that any mother would respond that way when her daughter’s body is discovered. She went into a state of shock knowing that she would never see her again.

ADDENDUM 2/19/09

• In December, Cindy told investigators she sent someone to those woods in November, to take a look around. Nothing was found at the time. Could this have been the phone call to Dominic Casey the phony psychic took credit for that was captured on Jim Hoover’s video? In any event, it was most likely a hunch on Cindy’s part because she knew that was a favorite hangout for Casey and other neighborhood children.

• Investigators found mysterious stains on patio furniture and a rug at the Anthony home, along with a jug and bottles of pool chemicals. Those items are being tested.

• It was revealed that the potentially damaging duct tape found at the crime scene and in the Anthony home could have come from the homes of thousands of other people. It is commonly sold at Walmart and Ace Hardware stores.

• Investigators found a Whitney Design canvas laundry bag wrapped in a black plastic bag on the top shelf above the washing machine in the Anthony home. That was the same kind they recovered from the crime scene.

• Defense spokeswoman Marti Mackenzie said in an e-mail, The state’s forensic report on duct tape, plastic bags and other items is a one-sided law enforcement generated report and is biased and speculative.”

• Defense attorney Jose Baez said in a statement: “It is just as important to focus on the fact that there are no fingerprints on the duct tape and there never was any red sticker of any shape or size found on the tape.”

• Casey’s defense team visited her in her cell today, the first time in 10 days.

• 1,000 pages of documents will be released next week, including interviews with Jim Hoover.

ADDENDUM 2/20/09

• The Orange County Jail secretly taped Casey Anthony when she was told a body was found in the woods that was similar to Caylee. She hyperventilated and asked for medications to calm herself down. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office refused to release a copy of the videotape, saying it was evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation, Deputy Carlos Padilla, a sheriff’s spokesman stated. If the tape is turned over to the State Attorney’s Office as part of the prosecution’s case, it could then become a public record.

• Dominic Casey, the Anthony’s private attorney once worked for Casey and Jose Baez. He entered the woods in search of Caylee a month before she was discovered. He claimed a psychic told him where to look and even directed him while he was there.

There are conflicts of interest at play here because he specifically went to those woods. Who really told him? Did Casey? I doubt it because had it been her, he would have found the toddler, for sure. Was it Cindy? It could have been, but I assert that if she did, it was on a hunch because it was a favorite spot for Casey and other neighborhood children when they were younger. Was he lying about the psychic? Was he lying about talking to his sick daughter on the phone? He is a person of interest, but for what?

Caylee’s murder: premeditated and pretty stupid, too

I was the only father Hannah ever knew. I remember when she used to come up with every excuse in the book. She was about 10 or 11 when it all began and, God knows, how hard she tried to gey away with murder. Her mother and I were much too quick, despite the fact that she never believed it. When children are around 13 years of age, they suddenly turn 30. Not all children, mind you, but Hannah sure felt that way. Some children are so confident at this stage of life, in spite of hormonal imbalances, they think they are unmatched in the smarts department. Perhaps it is nature’s way of attempting to create a balance. In any event,  it seems to be around this time that they begin to hone their manipulative skills and think they are way superior to their parents. They rebel and lose interest in cleaning their rooms and stop helping with the chores. We call them lazy. To make matters worse, they become obsessed with learning more about the opposite sex. It is a natural rite of passage and most children outgrow it by their late teens. Some, much later. Casey never did and because of her complex feelings of superior intellect combined with inferior power and confidence, she resented her mother and hated her father all of her teen and adult life. She overcompensated and never came back down to earth. “Mom and Dad are so stupid,” she’s thought for so long now. “I should be in charge.”

Casey’s goose began cooking years ago

Dissecting Casey’s youth is difficult. None of us were there to witness the treatment she got from her parents, but looking from the outside in, what seems to unfold are a whiny, demanding mother who Casey readily outsmarted, and a father bombarded by inner conflicts with moral correctness and the wont of punishment for her lack of respect, especially towards her mother. Oh, how many times he wanted to slap her hard across that foul mouth that also spewed despicable lie after despicable lie. Sometimes, he felt worthless and powerless to stand up to this little wench, watching and waiting to pounce if not for the wall of protection Cindy built around her. Out of frustration, he gave up and looked the other way. Cindy was never any help, but oh, how he loved her so.

George Anthony told law enforcement that the last time he saw Caylee was on June 16, when Casey put her in the Pontiac and drove off. That was the day she made a lot of cell phone calls to family and friends that no one seemed to want to answer and it was the day police think something happened to Caylee. No one saw her after that fateful Monday. Except Zani.  Later that night, Casey went to see her boyfriend who, when later interviewed, told police she acted as if nothing was wrong. From forensic reports, it was determined that the body was in the trunk for 2 days. Of course, the defense will adamantly disagree, but plant and bug specialists brought to the scene of where Caylee was found have determined the date she was placed in the woods to be June 18, from those analyses. I contend the body was stuffed into the laundry bag and placed in the vehicle until Casey found fluid leakage in the trunk. It was then that she put the cloth bag into the plastic garbage bag and decided it was time to get rid of the goods.

Why Casey would stash the trash bag coffin of her daughter in the same woods where she used to play as a child somewhat eludes me. Sure, I understand the “nearby” angle, so Caylee is never too far, as she may have inferred in cryptic messages, but all it proves is her own stupidity and laziness. She was too lazy to drive it somewhere else, she was too lazy to dig a hole after she borrowed a neighbor’s shovel, and she was too stupid to realize that little Caylee would eventually be found in such a convenient location. Had she dug a hole in those woods like she may have begun to do in her own back yard, Caylee might never have been found. (Maybe, she was smart enough to figure that the back yard is the first place the police would look.) In an odd twist, the cruel method of taking her daughter’s life was nearly matched by her complete lack of thought and concern that other children would one day play in there and find her little skeleton. She didn’t care because she was too lazy to walk even a few feet into those woods, so she just gave the bag a heave. See ya, you little bitch. Good riddance. Time to party!

Out to party she went with her friends, but were they really friends? No. By the looks of the photographs found on her computer and elsewhere, none of those people thought of her as anything more than just another dumb party girl willing to do just about any dumb thing to maintain her dumb party girl image. She seemed to enjoy the reputation of a girl willing to allow others to party with her body, too. For party favors, of course. (To set the record straight, I am basing this on evidence of public record, not on anything I personally know about or from any inside information, but even her father said he didn’t want to describe some of the disgusting photographs found on her computer.) What prompts a girl to be that way? By the sound of things, it wasn’t because she never got attention as a child. Though not wealthy, her parents fed and clothed her. They sent her to school and it was her decision to quit. No, I think it was of her own accord because she wanted to escape a world she thought was mediocre. She wanted to live the flamboyant lifestyle with lots of socializing and boyfriend after boyfriend who would spoil her silly. She lived in a fantasy world where she held a good job at Universal, home of glamorous movie stars. They all knew her there. But, they didn’t. This almost sounds like a psychopath. Psychopaths tend to be low in self-esteem and social cognition. When her party friends take the stand at her trial, they will probably describe her as whimsical, self-centered and always wanting to be the center of attention. Look at me! Whee! Psychopaths sometimes have a violent side. They have a terrible time keeping a job and stink in long term relationships, including friendships. They are shallow. They are impulsive, and that may lead to why she killed Caylee. Something finally ticked her off, but it was a festering anger and lack of conscience that may have triggered her into doing it. She had finally had enough. The foundation was set soon after Caylee was born, when she was no longer the star she had to be. It was now Caylee, and her fantasy world was crumbling away as reality tried to force itself in. No way. Something’s got to give and it wasn’t going to be her. Everything was now conceivable, even murder.

A premeditated crime is one that is plotted out beforehand. Things are set in motion so when it’s time to do the crime, everything runs smoothly. After Caylee’s body was found, several search warrants were issued to look for evidence in the Anthony home. Police told the press that plenty of items were taken that strongly incriminated Casey, evidence that could have come from no where else. Caylee was found inside a plastic garbage bag, the kind you use in your home. Inside that bag was duct tape and some of that tape was covering Caylee’s mouth. I don’t know if her hands and feet were bound or not, or whether it sealed the bag, but that’s not the most important thing to prove premeditation. All it proves is hatred for the deceased and hatred usually means that the victim and murderer were a lot closer in life than mere strangers. What may prove premeditation are the search terms on her computer and whether Casey walked out of that house with duct tape, most likely planted in the trunk, prior to taking Caylee that fateful and final time. Prior. What a chilling word it becomes in this case and it may be a key piece of evidence proving premeditation.

There is speculation about the duct tape. Word leaked that Casey borrowed some from her party friend, Amy, to hold up the sheet she wore at a naked party with her and some of her other naked party friends. Wherever the tape came from is not of importance if the tape holds evidence, such as Casey’s DNA and/or fingerprints. Where there may be a problem with premeditation, and an avenue the defense will not want to travel down, is how Casey never did quite think things through properly. OK, she planned how to kill her, but it may have been something that made her snap in the end. Planning something doesn’t necessarily prove premeditation because we all plan things on impulse and never follow through. What is the piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit is that she stopped at the killing level. After that, she didn’t have a clue what to do next, so she haphazardly plotted how to deal with the mess she created and never let on what she had done. She did a lousy job of cleaning up that mess, too, as the police will prove by the abundance of evidence against her.

The goose is cooked

Whether premeditated or not, which I believe it was, Casey acted like nothing happened the entire month before her mother called 911 to report her grandchild missing. The state will prove to the court just what her state of mind was from the middle of June leading up to her arrest through key testimony from friends, relatives and mainly, by her own actions. She did not act like a mother in distress. She did nothing out of desparation to find her daughter, instead, partying night after night. She lied to her parents and brother about Caylee’s whereabouts. She lied at every turn to law enforcement officials, trying to confuse them at every turn. She has never shown an ounce of remorse. There are no pictures of Caylee in her jail cell and the only time she burst into tears was when Caylee’s body was discovered. They were tears of fear. Fear that her hiding place was no longer a secret and afraid that more evidence would be found and an odd fear that the party was over. Premeditaion or not, at the end of her trial, when the jury walks back into the court room, her goose will be cooked. The state will say “well done!” and the judge will sentence her. Good bye and good riddance. She will become a footnote in history; another murderer who deserved her just dessert – to eat candy for the rest of her life in the confines of prison and to party no more.

In the end, it was freedom from responsibility that Casey wanted. No work, all play, and Caylee’s death was her way of returning to the carefree days of her childhood. She never wanted to grow up and this was her chance to punish her parents for taking it away from her for denying an abortion. I don’t want her and you can’t have her. Free at last! Soon, the only freedom she will ever have again is the freedom to reminisce about her past, to dream about what might have been and to think about why she didn’t get away with it. After all, she’s still way smarter than her parents. Right?