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Hi, listeners, it's Vanessa. Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love. Hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhat. Every Monday, Dr. Bhat goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files. Not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. Hidden History drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, so you never miss a mystery.
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This is Crime House.
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In the summer of 2008, a two year old girl named Kaylee Anthony vanished from her home in Orlando, Florida. For an entire month, nobody reported her missing. Not her mother, Casey, not her grandparents, nobody. But then Casey's car turned up at a tow yard and it smelled like death. What followed was a cascade of lies so elaborate, so brazen and so relentless that investigators could barely keep up. A fictional nanny, a fake job, a mother who spent the weeks her daughter was missing getting tattoos, going to nightclubs, and sleeping at her boyfriend's apartment. This case didn't just grip a nation, it forced America to ask an uncomfortable question. What kind of mother doesn't report her own child missing for 31 days? Today, I'm going back to the beginning, to the Anthony family. The tension simmering inside of their home on Hope Spring Drive. And the night everything finally came crashing down. Down. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. I want to thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow America's most infamous crimes wherever you get your podcasts and to get all episodes at once ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of child death and references to allegations of abuse. So please listen with care. This is the first of our three episode series on the death of Caylee Anthony, a case that captivated tens of millions of Americans, destroyed a family, and ended in one of the most controversial verdicts in modern history. Today I'll introduce you to the Anthony family. The young mother at the center of it all and the month long disappearance that no one reported until a car with a terrible smell Force the truth into the open. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. If you're the proud parent of a puppy or kitten, you know you can't pet proof your entire life. There simply isn't a sock drawer high enough or a couch cover thick enough. But you can pet proof your wallet with Lemonade Pet Insurance. Whether it's an unexpected accident or a routine checkup, Lemonade can cover up to 90% of the bill, plus they can handle claims in as little as two seconds. So before you turn into a complete helicopter pet parent, get a quote at lemonade.com/pet on the surface, the Anthony's looked like an all American family, the kind of household you'd find on any cul de sac in any suburb in the country. A working dad, a dedicated mom, two kids and a cute little house on a quiet street. George Anthony met his wife Cindy back in the late 1970s in Niles, Ohio. George was a police officer at the time who eventually worked his way up to detective and Cindy was a registered nurse working at a local hospital. They had their son Lee in 1982 and a daughter who followed five years later in 1986, who they named Casey. In 1989, the family was ready for a change. They packed up and moved from Ohio to Orlando, Florida, where George took on a series of different security jobs to keep the family afloat. They bought a house on a street called Hope Spring Drive in a quiet middle class neighborhood, and that's where the Anthony's raised their family over the next few years. But behind closed doors, things weren't always smooth. People who knew the family described some of their dynamics as unusual. George and Cindy didn't always get along, and the household had attention to it that neighbors and acquaintances picked up on. One of the things that will become important to this story is some of the ways in which some Cindy and George would bend over backwards for their daughter Casey. Her senior year in high school, Casey started skipping classes and did not have enough credits to graduate but she didn't tell her parents or anyone else the truth. It wasn't until the day before she was supposed to graduate that the school called and informed Cindy that Casey would not be graduating. However, they decided to not tell anyone and still had the family attend the ceremony. And when people asked why she was not in a cap and gown and walking across the stage, they said there had been a mistake. Another, smaller example is when Casey got her license. George would keep gas cans in the house because she would run out of gas so often that he had to drive out to wherever she was stranded to help her refuel. And even when she was working and could afford to fill it up herself, she refused to do it. It's a small thing, but it does give us some insights into the dynamics in that family about how much George and Cindy were propping Casey up even when she was a grown woman. In 2005, the family grew in size because their now 19 year old daughter had a baby. We can't tell this story without talking about Casey Anthony in more detail because there is a lot to unpack about the woman at the center of this case. According to a friend, when Casey first learned she was pregnant, she considered giving the baby up for adoption. But George and Cindy insisted she keep the baby and they promised they'd help raise the child. So Casey went through with the pregnancy. And on August 9, 2005, Casey gave birth to a baby girl she named Kaylee. After giving birth, she kept living at her parents house on Hope Spring Drive. She was a young single mom and having that extra help around probably made a big difference. Casey was supposedly working at Universal Studios at the time as an event planner, but she was still trying to figure out what she wanted to do. She had never actually graduated from high school, so college was off the table for the time being. And Casey loved to party. That part of her life comes up again and again in the accounts from people who knew her. Now the reports on Casey as a mother during this period are mixed. Some people said she took Kaylee with her to parties and was careless about it. Others said she was actually an incredibly good mom who loved her daughter deeply and that Kali was the center of her entire world, no matter what. Most people agree that Casey and Kaylee were pretty much inseparable. They went everywhere together, including the home of Casey's new boyfriend in 2008, a 21 year old named Anthony Lazzaro, who went by Tony. He was a student at Full Sail University and also worked as a club promoter. According to Tony, the Early weeks of their relationship were intense. He said he spent most of his time skipping classes just to stay in bed with Casey. But here's the thing. Tony wasn't Kaylee's dad. He and Casey had only recently started dating in the early summer of 2008. And actually nobody knows who Kaylee's dad really is. Even to this day, that's a lingering piece of the mystery. Kaysi told different people different things about the father's identity and and none of the stories really lined up. She started dating a guy named Jesse Grund in 2004 before she got pregnant and he stepped into a father figure role at first, for a while, Casey let Jesse believe he was Kaylee's biological dad. But a DNA test proved he wasn't. Casey reportedly told another friend that Kaylee's father was in the army. She later told that same friend he died in a car accident. She repeated the car accident story to yet another friend, this time saying she'd met the guy while working at Universal Studios and that it was only a one night stand. In her documentary on Peacock, she says that she was actually raped. That she doesn't remember anything except waking up knowing something had happened. So she doesn't know who the real father is. She was a joyful, playful little girl. Her grandfather George described her as, quote, a comedian to me and her grandmother. Cindy's words are even more heartbreaking in hindsight. Cindy said, quote, from the moment I first saw Kaylee Marie, from the instant she was placed into my arms, she stole my heart forever. She would wake up crying, she would wake up laughing, she would wake up just smiling. She was always a happy child. She loved her family very much. Let that sit for a second because what happened next makes those words almost unbearable to hear. As much as the Anthony's looked like your average family with their normal ups and downs, there were definitely tensions building up inside of the house on Hope spring Drive. Around June 16, 2008, 22 year old Casey apparently hit a breaking point. She took Kali, who was almost three, and left her parents house, allegedly after a big disagreement. She told her mother Cindy that she was bringing Kaylee to stay with a nanny for the day. A woman named Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez, who Casey sometimes referred to as Zanny. But the next day Casey didn't come back and neither did Kaylee, which was a big deal because they technically still lived with her parents. Instead, Casey called Cindy and said she, Zanny and Kaylee were all headed to Tampa for a work trip. Remember, Casey was supposedly an event planner at Universal Studios. So this would make sense. But after that phone call, Cindy and George didn't see Casey or Kaylee for the next month. Now, according to Casey's boyfriend Tony, there was no work trip during that time. Casey bounced between Tony's apartment and another friend's place, a woman named Amy Huizenga. Amy actually later told investigators that Casey said she was trying to keep Kaylee away from the, quote, negativity at her home caused by her parents arguments and, and potential separation. But here's where things get really suspicious. On the evening of July 15, a full month later, Casey came back to her parents house. Except Kaylee wasn't with her. And when Casey's brother Lee asked where Kaylee was, Casey told him the nanny stole her and Zanny was refusing to give her back. Now I need to stop here for a second because we need to understand the real reason Casey came home that day. It wasn't because she finally decided to tell her family that Kaylee was missing. Something else forced her hand. Earlier that afternoon on July 15, George and Cindy had gotten a call that one of their cars, a white Pontiac Sunfire, the one Casey usually drove, had been abandoned in a parking lot and taken to a tow yard. At that point, they hadn't seen Casey in a month. So they went to pick up the car. And when they opened the doors, they noticed something that stopped them cold. Introducing Taco Bell's new Jalapeno citrus salsa. With bright citrus, real red jalapenos, guajillo chiles. Usually you add sauce to the food, but when the sauce is this good, the food is just there to get the sauce to your mouth. That rolled quesadilla. Not a rolled quesadilla anymore. Now it's a sauce shovel. Taco Bell's Jalapeno citrus salsa. Get it with any item on the Cantina chicken menu while it's here. The participating U.S. taco Bell locations for a limited time only while supplies last contact store for availability.
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I'm Carter Roy, host of Murder True Crime Stories. If you listen to true crime because you want more than just what happened, this show is for you. On Murder True Crime Stories, we take deep dives into history's most notorious murders. But we don't stop at the crime scene. We look beyond the headlines to understand the real story and the people who are impacted the most. Because these cases aren't just mysteries. They're lives, families, communities that were changed forever. Whether a case is solved or unsolved, my goal is for you to walk away understanding why these stories still matter and why they deserve to be told with care. Each episode explores the darkest corners of true crime while keeping the focus where it belongs on the human cost. New episodes drop every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Follow Murder True Crime Stories on Apple, podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen.
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Think about some of the cases that defined true crime in America. Ted Bundy Jeffrey Dahmer the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smith Smart the Karen Retrial Some crime cases are so shocking they don't just make headlines, they forever change a country. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases, whether it's unfolding now or etched into American history, revealing not just what happened, but how it forever changed our society. Serial killers who terrorized cities, unsolved mysteries that kept detectives up at night, and investigations that change the way we think about justice. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. These are the stories behind the headlines. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes available now wherever you get your podcasts. When George and Cindy opened the door to the car that Casey drove, it smelled horrific. Not just bad. Multiple people who encountered it used the same word. It smelled like human decomposition. That included George. Remember, he'd worked in law enforcement for years. He'd been around dead bodies before, and the first thing that came to his mind when he opened those car doors was that it smelled like decomposition. The supervisor at the tow truck company said the same thing, but there wasn't a body in the car, although there was a big bag of trash in the trunk and a stain where it had been sitting. Casey later claimed she'd just forgotten to take out the garbage, and her friend Amy said Casey had texted her about the smell at some point, blaming it on hitting a dead animal. But the fact remains, George Anthony was a former cop. He knew his granddaughter had been gone for a month, and when his daughter's car smelled like death, he didn't call anyone. He didn't pick up the phone and report it. He told himself maybe the smell was from the garbage in the trunk and he and Cindy just took the car home. After they drove the car home, George left for work, and it was up to Cindy to track down Casey. She eventually called Casey's friend Amy, who told Cindy that Casey was staying at her boyfriend Tony's apartment. Amy actually met up with Cindy that afternoon and the two of them drove to Tony's place together where they found Casey. But Kaylee wasn't there. Whatever Casey told her mom in that moment, it wasn't enough to calm Cindy down. Cindy forced Casey to leave the apartment with her. She later said, quote, I wouldn't let her get anything except her shoes. After that, Cindy and Casey drove around town trying to find Kaylee. And when that didn't work, Cindy did something that would change everything. She called 911. I have a 22 year old person that has grand theft sitting in my auto with me. So the 22 year old person stole something? Yes. Is this a relative? Yes. Where did they steal it? From my car and also money. But what she said on that first call was a little odd for the circumstances. She didn't mention her missing granddaughter right away. Instead, she told the dispatcher that her daughter had stolen her car and money and asked where she could bring Casey to have her arrested for grand theft. Even though Cindy had actually given Casey permission to use the car in the first place. Some have speculated that Cindy was trying to get Casey in trouble as a way to force the situation into the open. After that call, Cindy and Casey drove back to the house. George still wasn't home from work, but Casey's brother Lee was there. And that's when Lee and Cindy both pressed Casey about where Kaylee was. Casey insisted that she was with the nanny. So Lee and Cindy said they wanted to go to Zanny's apartment to pick her up, but Casey told them that wasn't a good idea. That led to a second 911 call around 8:40pm My daughter's been missing for the last 31 days. And you know who has her? I know who has her. I've tried to contact her. I actually received a phone call today now from a number that is no longer in service. I did get to speak to my daughter for about a moment, about a minute. Who has her on this call? Cindy told the dispatcher she needed, quote, someone to be arrested in my home. She also mentioned a, quote, possible missing child, a three year old that's been missing for a month. After this call, the family kept arguing. Cindy was getting more and more frustrated that the police still hadn't arrived. And it was around this point that she overheard Casey telling Lee that Kaylee had actually been gone for a month and that the nanny had taken her. Cindy called 911 again at around 9:40pm and on this third call she was emotional. She said, quote, I found out my granddaughter has been taken. She has been missing for a month. Her mother finally admitted that she's been missing up until this point, George and Cindy said seemed to believe that Kaylee had been with Casey safe and sound somewhere. But now Casey was saying she'd spent the last month trying to find Kaylee on her own and she didn't seem all that concerned about it. The 911 dispatcher actually asked to speak to Casey directly. Casey confirmed what her mom had said, that Kaylee had been missing for a month. But she also said, quote, I know who has her. I have tried to contact her. And went on to talk about the nanny again. Late that night, law enforcement arrived at the Anthony's home. And when they questioned Casey in person, she repeated her story. From everything I've read, Casey didn't seem especially frantic or distraught when police spoke to her. Which is a strange way to come across when your three year old daughter has supposedly been missing for a month. Everyone does respond to trauma differently, but this was just weird. Regardless, the police took Casey at her word for the moment. They asked her to take them to the nanny's apartment so they could try and find Kaylee. And Casey did. She went with a deputy to a complex called the Sawgrass Apartments and pointed out the specific unit where she said she'd last left Kaylee with Zanny. The officer walked up to the door and knocked, but no one answered. The apartment was vacant and an employee at the complex confirmed no one by the name of Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez lived there. No one by that name had ever lived there. So the officer brought Casey back to her parents house. That's when she gave police a written statement. And in that statement she doubled down on the nanny story hard. Casey said she'd met Zinaida through a mutual friend back in 2004 and that Zinaida had been watching Kaylee as her nanny for about a year and a half to two years. She even got a physical description. Zinaida is 25 years old and is from New York. She is roughly 5 foot 7 inches tall, 140 pounds. She has dark brown curly hair and brown eyes. Zinaida's birthday is in September. Casey also described Kaylee in her statement saying Kaylee will be 3 years old on August 9, 2008. She was born on August 9, 2005. Kaylee is about 3ft tall, white female with shoulder length light brown hair. She has dark hazel eyes and a small birthmark on her left shoulder. On the day of her disappearance, Kaylee was wearing a pink shirt with jean shorts, white sneakers, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. The level of detail in that statement is a bit unsettling because as police would soon discover, almost none of what Casey told told them was true. You thought this was your run Club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about Run Club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying to Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop. Where taste recognizes taste. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case. We're gonna crack this case and prove we're the greatest partners of all time. New friends, you are Gary Desnake. And your last name Desnake. Dream Team Hidden New habitats Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working it. Zootopia 2 now available on Disney Plus. Rated PG. In the suburbs of D.C. a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. 911 which emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. On July 16, 2008, the day after Casey came home without Kaylee, an officer named Detective Yuri Melish started digging into Casey's story. Whatever he was looking into, whether it was the nanny, Casey's employment history, or something else, he very quickly realized that nothing held up. That afternoon, Detective Melish asked Casey to come with him to Universal Studios because remember in her written statement, that's where she claimed she had been working for the last four years. Casey agreed. And when they got to the park, she tried to get in through the employee security gate, but she didn't have an ID card and her supposed manager wasn't listed in the company database. But shockingly, the security let her in anyway. Casey walked the officers through the park into an employee only building and walked into an office. She started waving and saying hi to people and some people waved back. She then started heading down a hallway and the officers followed. But once they turned the corner, they hit a dead end. And that's when Casey turned around and told them she didn't actually work there. Anymore. She hadn't. Since she went on maternity leave three years earlier, she'd been lying about still having a job at Universal to her friends, her family, and now to law enforcement this entire time. Detective Melish had seen enough. He brought Casey to a conference room at Universal where he confronted her about the lies. And that's when Casey also admitted she'd lied about where the nanny lived. But she insisted she was still telling the truth about one Zanny had kidnapped Kali. In her written statement, Casey had said something else worth noting. She claimed that on the day Kali disappeared, which she originally put as Monday, June 9, between 9am and 1pm she dropped Kali off at the Sawgrass Apartments to spend the day with Zanny. Then she went to work at Universal. But when she left around 5pm and went back to pick Kaylee up, she said no one was there, Zanny was gone, and the phone number Casey had been calling all morning was suddenly out of service. Casey said she waited outside the apartment for a while, tried calling Zanny, and then spent the next couple of hours searching Kaylee's favorite places, including a nearby park. When she couldn't find them, she went back to her boyfriend Tony's apartment to find, figure out her next move. But she didn't call the police about Kaylee, she didn't tell Tony, and she didn't alert her family. In her statement, Casey explained this by saying, quote, I have avoided calling the police or even notifying my own family out of fear. I have been and still am afraid of what has or may happen to Kaylee. She also said she had never been able to check on Kaylee's well being and that Zanny never made any attempt to explain why Kaylee was no longer in Orlando. And then Casey dropped something that raised a lot of eyebrows. She said that earlier on July 15, before talking to the police and finally reporting her daughter missing, she'd gotten a phone call from Kaylee. She claimed it was the first time she'd heard her daughter's voice in weeks. She said Kali was excited to speak with her. And Casey told investigators she was convinced it would only be a man matter of time before her daughter was back in her arms. Now, here's something important about the timeline. Casey told police the last time she saw Kaylee was June 9. But her mother, Cindy, initially told police during those 911 calls that the last time she'd personally seen Kaylee was June 7th. Later, however, Cindy changed that date to June 15th. That's the date generally considered to be when Kaylee really disappeared. But Cindy's story would shift a lot throughout this case, and Casey's was full of holes from the start. None of that mattered to the police at the moment, though. By the end of that day on July 16, they had everything they needed. Casey Anthony was arrested and charged with child neglect, providing false information to law enforcement and obstructing an investigation. A few days later, on July 22, she was identified as a person of interest in her daughter's disappearance. Her bail was set at $500,000. And the public was watching because by now this story was everywhere. A young mother who didn't report her toddler missing for a month, A nanny who didn't exist, A car that smelled like death, A job that was a total fabrication, and at the center of it all, a two year old girl who still hadn't been found. The question was no longer just where is Caylee Anthony? It was becoming something much darker. What happened to Kaylee Anthony and did her own mother have something to do with it? Those answers would take months to surface, and when they did, they would split the country in two. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts. So make sure to comment below. What stands out to you most about how this case was handled in those first few weeks, both by the family and by police? I think the thing that gets me the Most is the 31 days. That's the number that defines this case for a lot of people and I think for a good reason. Because no matter what you believe happened to Kaylee, whether it was an accident, whether it was intentional, whatever your theory is, the fact that nobody reported this child missing for 31 days is not only incomprehensible to pretty much everyone, it is also devastating to think about as a mother. How could you not report your daughter missing or taken for 31 days? Most wouldn't even wait 30 minutes. Regarding her parents, I know that they didn't have control over Casey in that she is clearly a pathological liar. But how could you not question where your granddaughter is for 31 days either? In an interview, Cindy said that she called Casey every day in those 31 days. She said she called mostly to talk to Kaylee and she wasn't clear about whether they ever spoke on the phone. But if they did, how did she not ask to speak to Kaylee that entire time or be suspicious that Casey wouldn't put Kaylee on the phone? On the other hand, if Casey wasn't answering the phone. I would report my adult child missing if I called them and didn't hear from them for 31 days. No one is gone on a work trip for that long. I get that you have an instinct to protect your child, but personally, the whole family's response to this situation was just a little strange. It makes you wonder what was going on in that house long before Kaylee disappeared. The lies are just on another level. The fake job, the fake nanny walking police through Universal Studios knowing she didn't work there. Who does that? I seriously wonder what was going on in Casey's head when she was not only telling those lies, but then taking them to the actual locations where she knows she will be called out on those lies. The audacity of walking into an office to try and pretend you work there when you know that's something the police will find out so quickly you are lying about. And the fact that she was cool as a cucumber the whole time is chilling. It's not an example of someone just panicking and telling one bad lie to cover something else. It was more of a sustained, detailed, confident performance that went on for weeks and then months. She lied to her parents, she lied to her friends. She lied to law enforcement while they were trying to help her find her daughter. She fabricated entire people and I think she even started to believe her own lies. That level of deception isn't something most people are capable of and I think it's one of the reasons this case still haunts people. Because you're left wondering if she was willing to lie about literally everything else, what was she lying about when it came to what happened to Kaylee? Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. Make sure to rate, review and follow America's most infamous crimes so we can keep building this community together and to get all episodes at once. Ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on the murder of Kaylee Anthony. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha chings from every channel right in one spot and turn real time reporting into big time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. Looking for your next listen. Check out hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhatti every Monday Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies and events that science still can't fully explain. Follow Hidden History now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.