by Lise LaSalle
It is hard to believe that it has been more than two years since Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder. How time flies when you are not having fun! But I am glad not to be inundated anymore by the images of little Caylee Anthony. This case, like a toxic fume, was floating in the air and had become hard to avoid. It was on the lips of people from all walks of life and most of the comments were harsh – either that or sanctimonious ranting and raving. All in the name of a poor little innocent 2-year old girl. No one seemed to care, however, about the other lost young girl in this story: her mother, Casey Anthony.
Like many others, when I think of Casey Anthony, the expression “liar, liar pants on fire” comes to mind. It is a fact that this young Floridian had very few rivals in the lying department. And recently, her pants, apparently still on fire, were being sold by the website Serial Killers Ink. This site sells serial killer “Murderabilia’’ from Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer and David Berkowitz among others and was now offering Casey’s used pants and some of her pocketbooks. Even if Anthony was not convicted and was not a serial killer, she was now considered part of that category, and any of her personal items were considered Murderabilia. How lovely!
Anthony’s personal items were purchased by Christina Werner on June 28, 2013 from a garage sale organized by Cindy and George Anthony in Florida. Werner said to Radar Online “I drove by and noticed the house looked familiar to me…I had seen this house before. I got close and noticed that the people outside really looked like George and Cindy Anthony. It was the home of Casey Anthony’s grandparents.”
Casey’s pants were now being sold at $800 each and came with a certificate of authenticity.
Crime related merchandise was banned from being sold on eBay in 2001, but sells very nicely on Serial Killer Ink, the site that calls itself “the leading and most popular true crime collectibles company worldwide.”
On January 15th of this year, Eric Holler, the site owner, declared, “Casey Anthony is a money-making business. She herself is a money-making business and I’m just cashing in. I’m living the American dream.” ‘’I feel no guilt.’’
Two days later, Holler took down his Casey Anthony items and released this statement:
“I have decided to remove the Anthony garage sale items from my website, Serial Killers Ink. No one else was involved in this decision other than myself. I have given it much thought and I do not wish to be associated in any way, shape or form with the death of Caylee Anthony. I apologize to anyone that may have taken offense in the offering of these items.”
So maybe her pants were too hot to handle after all and he decided to pack them up and not sell them anymore. Or maybe he received an underground offer and decided to save face. Which would mean the pants are probably traveling to an unknown destination to form a strange and dark new sisterhood that I would rather not be part of.
When Holler says that Anthony is a money-making business herself, I wonder in what polluted pond he dredged up that information. Since her acquittal, she has been trying, with the help of her lawyers, to untangle the twisted web she wove with her string of lies and deceptive actions. And we have not seen her making any money up till now. On the contrary, she has filed for bankruptcy, settled a lawsuit with Tim Miller, the owner of EquaSearch, and has been trying to get the monkey that is Zenaida Gonzalez off her back. There is also the matter of Roy Kronk and the fees she owes her lawyers and the court. It is a never-ending story with no financial reprieve in sight, at least not in the near future.
I can clearly understand why Tim Miller would go after her for wasting his time and resources when she knew full well her daughter was dead. But I am at a loss for an explanation in the case of Zenaida Gonzalez. It looks like this lady has been convinced by fame-mongering attorneys that she should get retribution, but for what? She was never designated as the culprit by Anthony, whose fake nanny was described as tall, in her twenties with black hair, perfect teeth – in short, a perfect 10. So what’s up Zenaida? Move on please.
Roy Kronk, the poor sap who thought he was doing a good thing by succeeding where others had failed at finding the body of Caylee Anthony, had every right to feel bamboozled and slandered by Anthony and her lawyers. And he wanted retribution, but with Anthony filing for bankruptcy after she claimed she was $800,000 in debt because of legal fees, things don’t look too promising for him.
After her release from prison, Anthony had been offered a lot of money for interviews and to pose nude for Hustler magazine; Larry Flynt was willing to shell out $500,000 to exploit the controversy. Who does not want to gawk at a disturbed naked girl who lost her daughter?
If there is one thing we know about this little woman, it is that she is pretty crafty when it comes to covering her behind. So with the right advice from her circle of attorneys and devoted fame mongers, she decided to refuse all offers while cleaning her own slate first.
We will undeniably see her try to profit eventually but only if she does not have to make any financial restitution. Let’s face it, she is pretty astute but the Club she joined was way more tactically savvy and they welcomed her with open arms. Which brings me to my thesis that this case was not only about a little liar but about a gigantic Liar’s Club.
It is a known fact that most people charged with a crime try to minimize their involvement or plainly lie through their teeth to avoid punishment. It is human nature to try to avoid dire consequences for our actions. So we could say that many people start lying even though they may have no history of it prior to their conviction. I have seen it happen countless times in the courts.
In the case of Casey Anthony, lying had long been a way of life. It did not suddenly appear after the death of her daughter Caylee. In fact, it comes as no surprise that confronted with this difficult situation, Casey would fall into her pattern of hiding behind lies and untruths.
Friends from elementary school and high school have related stories of her lies and gross exaggerations. Her level of dishonesty escalated when she reached her teenage years and was confronted with an unwanted pregnancy. It was a lot to handle for a young lady who had not developed any tools to deal with difficulties or adversity. For some reason, her parents, and especially her mother Cindy, had never found it necessary to teach her to face the consequences of her actions. She was always excused from acting like a responsible citizen.
Cindy thought her daughter could do no wrong but at other times, she would explode and expect her to behave properly. But there was no consistency in Cindy’s mixed message, and like any teenager testing her boundaries, Casey stretched the limit until it blew up in her face.
When Casey Anthony got pregnant, she waited months to tell her parents and lied about being a virgin and being bloated because of ‘feminine problems.’ As a nurse, Cindy should have known better, but as usual, she chose to put her head in the sand and did not question the expecting mother. She could have avoided catastrophe by being more aware, but opted for not confronting her golden child.
In her defense, as a teenager I had a friend who managed to hide her pregnancy from her family and her father was a general practitioner. They were good people but totally not vigilant and living on planet delusion when it came to their perfect children.
It is difficult to fault a teenager for reacting this way when she was raised and encouraged to behave in this manner. Some floated the ridiculous theory that her father or brother had impregnated her to explain why they did not announce it earlier, but I will not even dignify this accusation that is totally unfounded and unfair to the Anthony men. This is the kind of hogwash pushed by the likes of Dr. Drew and HLN who considered George Anthony guilty because as a teenager, he wanted to work at Disney World. So without any evidence, I refuse to go there. We have to consider the reliability of the sources and the circumstances that in no way match the allegations.
Even if Casey Anthony’s behavior might resemble that of a victim of sexual abuse, it is also very common among young people afflicted with personality disorders. She could have been borderline, bipolar, post-partum and so on. She would have needed a good evaluation as soon as she started showing signs of mental instability. She even told a few friends that she was going crazy and needed to be institutionalized. She also had unexplained seizures.
A member of George Anthony’s family was afflicted with mental illness so it would have been wise to have their daughter examined before she rolled off the hill, all the way to prison.
When Casey Anthony got pregnant and subsequently met Jesse Grund, she lied and told him he was the father even if it was chronologically impossible. He called her on it by having a paternity test but was nice enough to want to marry her anyway and raise her child as his own. She soon got tired of that situation – it was much too normal and boring — and ended the relationship stating that he loved her child more than her. After she gave birth to her daughter Caylee, she lied to her friend Lauren Gibbs who was babysitting for free by telling her she was working at Orlando Theme Park. When the friend found out she was lying about working, she stopped helping her out and distanced herself.
It was obvious that Casey was in trouble and not at all ready to be a mother but no one acted on it and she received no psychological evaluation or counselling.
Your daughter pretends to go to work for two years with a fake name badge. She steals every penny you have and also steals from her grandparents and you let it ride? No wonder Casey thought she could do the same with her so-called friends. She stole from her friend Amy Huizenga and tried to make her believe that she had sleepwalked and probably misplaced her money in the process. She told Amy that her father had a mini-stroke to avoid driving her to buy a new car as she had promised.
She learned to use lies to resolve any unpleasant situation or to avoid any real effort. It worked so she kept doing it until it became second nature. She also switched friends because they were tired of her game and she had to move on.
Casey’s father, George Anthony, was the only one who seemed to try to intervene by following her and checking up on her employer, but he was told immediately to forget it and not to get involved. His gambling problems usurped his authority and he was now more or less emasculated by Cindy who had to support the whole family. She had the economic power and made the decisions.
But even Cindy Anthony knew there was something wrong with her daughter. And she consulted a specialist at her job about it. She realized there was a problem and even thought of asking for sole custody of her granddaughter. But in the end, she refused to face the seriousness of her daughter’s behavior and did not act fast enough. There is quite a gap between lying, stealing, being lazy and getting rid of your baby. So Cindy never saw it coming.
The Anthonys are not the only parents to have ignored their child’s flaws or mental disorders. It is not easy to know the extent of a loved one’s problem when so much of it is hidden and covered up.
But when Caylee Anthony ‘disappeared’, it should have been the huge wake-up call her parents needed. At first, George seemed to realize the enormity of the situation and was willing to help the police and the FBI. When they were visited by former detective Mark Furman, who told them in no uncertain terms that Caylee was dead and not missing, George was on board. He even had a huge blow up with Casey in front of witnesses where he pushed her against the wall and demanded to know where his granddaughter was. But it was short-lived as Cindy read him the riot act and told him to leave Casey alone and leave the house.
So George joined the Liar’s Club to please his wife and save his daughter from facing her responsibilities. And then came Jose Baez, the president of the Liar’s Club, or the treasurer, depending on how you look at it.
If from the very beginning, Casey Anthony would have been confronted by her family and her lawyer, she would have folded and they might have been able to cut a deal and get her some help. Because there is no doubt in my mind that she was not well. You do not act the way she did if you are not mentally disturbed.
But instead, Baez saw the case as high profile and decided to milk the situation by making a name for himself instead of really helping Casey. He told her to keep silent and distanced her from her own family. They basically all rallied around her lies. The parents kept feeding the stupid ‘missing child’ bullshit to the media and Baez did the same. And the media jumped all over it.
I wonder what this young woman thought when all the adults she tried to fool jumped on the liars’ bandwagon to help her. What kind of lesson did she learn? That lying works and telling the truth has no value. Instead of learning to face her problems head on and assume the consequences of her actions, she ended up starring in a soap opera based very loosely on the truth.
I do not have to go through the details of the crazy trial during which Jose Baez lied, Jeff Ashton lied and Casey’s mother lied. They threw her own father under the bus and told outlandish lies about his sexual abuse. Ashton said that they searched for chloroform 84 times when it really only happened once. Cindy claimed to have done the search when she was at home, when it was proven she was at work and could not have looked it up. This is a very dark example of collective deception but for this Liar’s Club, the bigger the whopper, the bigger their respective reward could be.
What troubled me was the constant portraying of Casey as a good mother. I mean, seriously? She knew she was not and had admitted to her brother and a friend that she was a lousy mother. It was repeated by Lee Anthony at trial; she said her mother was right to call her an unfit mother.
Cindy had told numerous people that her daughter was an unfit mother. Who brings her child to share the same bed as a new boyfriend? Who pretends to go to work with daughter in tow? Who lies to a good friend about working to get rid of her daughter? Who dumps her child on her parents all the time and ignores her welfare? Certainly not a great mother.
Most of the witnesses who testified to the fact that she seemed to be a good mother had only known her for a few months. They also believed Casey was a college student with money in the bank. How great was it to bring her daughter to the apartment of her new beau Tony when they were smoking pot all the time and leaving her unsupervised? A witness testified that little Caylee was the one who opened the door when she rang the doorbell and that she was left alone on the balcony when Casey and Tony were having fun in the bedroom. Yes, that is mother of the year material.
No doubt she showed her daughter affection and could enjoy her company at times, especially in public as she was a great pretender, but her actions were not those of a responsible and loving mother. After a huge fight with her own mother about money stolen from her grandfather, her daughter ended up dead. That is a great mother? More like an overwhelmed young girl trying to find her place in life and realizing her daughter did not fit in.
Once again, if Cindy had not lied about having a big blow-up with Casey the night preceding the tragedy, it could have explained the circumstances of Caylee’s demise. But she decided to lie to cover up for her daughter and also for herself because if she had choked her as was reported, she is the one who might have faced charges. The fight was reported to Jesse by Lee before he realized it could have a potential impact on the case. And of course, the family lied about it afterwards.
It seems that Cindy’s mother was the wisest of the bunch because she wanted her granddaughter stopped before it went too far. Her conclusion was that Casey hated her mother more than she loved her own daughter and it ended up tragically. She told Casey that she loved her but did not like her and to stay away, a very telling statement.
If the District Attorney had not charged Casey with 1st degree murder and brought the death penalty to the table, perhaps Casey’s parents and Baez would not have been so motivated to lie on her behalf. But she was overcharged and they rushed to try to spare her a life sentence or worse, life on Death Row. I do not know many parents who would not try to spare their child the death penalty.
But honesty might have actually spared their daughter all this trouble. If Baez had gone to the authorities and stated that the child was dead and that his client was not well and had killed her child in a moment of despair, things would have been different. Or why not give them the scenario of the pool accident right away? It would have been more credible than coming up with it two years later after reading on social media that George Anthony was not popular. But he wanted to keep the ball rolling as long as possible and harvest all the glory. The same principle applies to her family but in their case, it is because they did not trust the system. Maybe they all feared that the state of Florida would not be merciful. But now we will never hear the truth from any of them for obvious reasons.
The prosecutors did not help either. How could they try to slap a young troubled mother with the death penalty? They should have taken their time and tried to get to the bottom of it. They could not say for sure that Caylee was murdered with premeditation. They could not even be certain if it was an accident or not. They could only speculate. Ashton tried to backpedal and say that he was against bringing the death penalty but it was too little too late. And what was up with Linda Drane Burdick with her ad nauseam emphasis on the lies Casey had told? By not focusing on solid evidence, the jury listened to her and only found Anthony guilty of being a liar.
Who transports a child in the trunk of a car and goes partying while the car is abandoned in plain view? The body was dumped close to her home near the pet cemetery. It was not the work of a hardened killer but more the work of a disturbed young woman on the verge of losing it. If she wanted to premeditate the murder of her daughter, she would have at least come up with a plan. She was a smart girl. She would not have driven around with a corpse decomposing in her car and not even think of a half-plausible explanation for her daughter’s disappearance. As the first lady of primates from HLN, Jane Velez Mitchell, says so well with her ‘it takes one to know one’ professional assessment of mental illness, it is too Cuckoo for Coco Puff.
I am not a fan of Casey Anthony and never was inclined to defend her but I have to state the obvious: A trial is about evidence and the jury was not convinced. Case closed.
What disturbed me more than the verdict is the creation of this Liar’s Club by the family, the attorneys and the media. They kept that poor child alive and missing for the longest time solely to feed their own agendas. No respect for the truth, it was all about the bottom line. And everybody got what they wanted except for the prosecution. And Ashton came out just fine because he published a best seller about the case and won his election.
The verdict was obtained because of the excellent jury selection, the lies Baez fed them to hang their hat on, and the fact that the prosecution did not lay out the facts properly, was too aggressive and over-confident at times, and also did not hesitate to fudge if necessary.
Baez ended up writing a book peppered with verifiable mistakes, untruths and even plain lies. He coasted on his new-found fame and went on to defend Garry Giordano and his wig on CNN. And now he is defending a 12-year old accused of cyber bullying. Everyone is entitled to representation and Baez is only doing his job by assisting his clients, but let it be known for the record that I was not impressed by his lack of experience and unabashed willingness to lie.
We are inevitably left with Casey Anthony and I cannot help wondering what was the moral of the story for her? Simple, the message was that in life, you can get out of any bad situation by lying and you do not have to work or be productive. You can sacrifice your daughter, throw your own father under the bus and be rewarded for it if you wait long enough to write a book and give interviews. And all the adults around you will go along with it because they too have no moral compass. I hope Casey gets mental health care, becomes wiser and cancels her membership in the Liar’s Club. I would not bet the house on it, but I suspect her traveling pants are still on fire!