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Lynsey Eidell is a contributing writer at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2022. Her work has previously appeared in GLAMOUR, Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue, Allure and more.
Maggie Kreienberg is a senior editor at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2022. Previously, she was an editor at Brides.
Published on January 5, 2024 04:07PM EST
The story of Casey Anthony and her daughter Caylee has captivated the country ever since the toddler was first reported missing in July 2008.
The saga began on July 15, 2008, when Cindy Anthony, Casey’s mother, phoned police to report that her 2-year-old granddaughter, Caylee, had been missing for a month.
With the world watching, that phone call set off a painstaking search for the missing toddler — and an intense investigation into her then-22-year-old mother, Casey. Probes into Casey’s cell phone, computer and vehicle resulted in several damaging findings, including internet searches for chloroform and neck-breaking, as well as traces of chloroform and human decomposition in the trunk of her car. As a result, Casey was charged with first degree murder in October 2008. Two months later, Caylee’s skeletal remains were found in a wooded area less than one-third of a mile from the Anthony family home in Florida.
Throughout her 2011 trial and in the years since her controversial acquittal, Casey has maintained that she had nothing to do with Caylee’s death — but her explanation of what really happened has been inconsistent from the start. Casey initially told police investigators that Caylee was taken by a babysitter; then, during her trial, she claimed that Caylee accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool. Later, in the 2022 Peacock documentary Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies, she placed the blame squarely on her father, George Anthony — accusing him of staging Caylee’s drowning to cover up his alleged sexual abuse of his granddaughter.
Now, George Anthony is speaking out against his daughter’s allegations — and putting his story to the test. On the new A&E true crime reality show Casey Anthony’s Parents: The Lie Detector Test (which premiered on Jan. 4), George and Cindy take lie detector tests on camera — while recounting their version of events surrounding Caylee’s disappearance and death.
Though Casey and her parents have opposing narratives of what happened to 2-year-old Caylee, one thing is for certain: The Anthony family has been irreparably broken by the tragic event and its fallout.
From the disappearance of Caylee to Casey's controversial acquittal, here's a timeline of Casey Anthony's case, murder trial and life today.
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Casey's case began in June 2008, when she left the Anthony family home in Florida with her then 2-year-old daughter Caylee. She didn't return for 31 days.
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fielding calls since news broke of the toddler's disappearance earlier this week. " width="1500" height="1000" />
30 days after Casey and Caylee left the family home, Casey's mother, Cindy reported Caylee missing to police.
“I’ve found out that my granddaughter has been taken,” Cindy frantically told the dispatcher. “She has been missing for a month. Her mother had finally admitted that she had been missing.”
“There is something wrong,” she continued. “I found my daughter’s car today and it smells like there’s been a dead body in the damn car.”
At the time, Casey claimed she hadn't seen her daughter for a month, and her babysitter, Zenaida "Zanny" Fernandez-Gonzalez, kidnapped Caylee.
Casey was first arrested on July 16, 2008, one day after her mother reported Caylee missing to the police. She was charged with child neglect, giving false statements and obstruction. The charges resulted after Casey claimed to police she had left Caylee at the apartment of her babysitter, Zanny, and that she worked at Universal Studios — both statements that turned out to be false.
Later that month, police named Casey as a "person of interest" in the investigation surrounding her daughter's disappearance.
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Orange County Courthouse on Thursday, June 9, 2011, in Orlando, Florida." width="1500" height="1000" />
On Oct. 14, 2008, a Florida grand jury indicted Casey on first-degree murder charges in connection with Caylee’s death (though her body had yet to be found) — charges that carried a potential death sentence.
Over five months after Caylee was reported missing, her remains were uncovered by Orange County meter reader Roy Kronk in a wooded area less than a mile away from the Anthonys' home in Florida.
Kronk later testified during Casey's murder trial and said he had seen a white object in the same location that he was “99.99 percent sure” was a human skull in August 2008 — four months before Caylee's remains were found. After calling the police the next day and meeting the deputy at the scene, Kronk testified, “The officer looked one way and then the other. Then he berated me for a half hour for wasting his time.”
When Kronk was in the same area in December 2008, he stumbled on Caylee's remains, recalling on the stand, “I did not know what it was. I never lifted it off the ground. That was a very horrific thing for me to find, obviously.”
His testimony differed from previous depositions where he claimed the skull had fallen out of a bag he lifted four feet above the ground.
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Casey's murder trial began on May 24, 2011, in Orlando, Florida, and lasted over six weeks. The defense, led by Jose Baez, claimed that Caylee accidentally drowned in the family’s pool and George helped Casey cover up the accidental death by burying the toddler in their backyard. Baez and Casey also made several bombshell allegations, including that Casey was sexually abused and molested by her father George since she was a child — claims George vehemently denied on the stand.
The prosecution, meanwhile, focused on Casey’s various lies to both her parents and police, as well as mounting circumstantial evidence — including incriminating Google searches for terms like “how to make chloroform” on the family’s computer.
“No one makes an accident look like murder,” Jeff Ashton, then the state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties in Florida, said to the jury.
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Orange County Courthouse on July 5, 2011 in Orlando, Florida. At left is her attorney Jose Baez. " width="1500" height="1000" />
On July 5, 2011, the 12-person jury found Casey not guilty on all serious charges, including first-degree murder, manslaughter and child abuse. She was convicted, however, on four counts of lying to the police.
Two days after the judge delivered the verdict, Casey was sentenced to four years in prison and a $4,000 fine.
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10 days after her sentencing, Casey was released from Florida's Orange County jail. She was greeted by hundreds of protestors who were outraged over her acquittal waiting outside.
In 2016, she launched her own photography business, Case Photography, but had “done very few projects,” a source told PEOPLE at the time.
PEOPLE's sources also claimed Casey still resided in Florida at the time and received financial support from some members of the legal team.
“She’s got enough money to live, but not enough to really do anything,” a source said. “She sort of lives like an old person, on a fixed income without much going on in her life. She’s bored, and she complains about boredom all the time.”
The following year, Casey broke her silence for the first time since her acquittal with a series of interviews given to the Associated Press. She continued to assert that she did not know what happened to Caylee in the final moments of her life.
“I don’t give a s--- about what anyone thinks about me, I never will,” Casey told the outlet. “I’m okay with myself, I sleep pretty good at night.”
She added, “I understand the reasons people feel about me. I understand why people have the opinions that they do. I’m still not even certain as I stand here today about what happened.”
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Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Florida, Monday, March 2, 2009." width="1500" height="1000" />
The Anthony family was left fractured from Caylee’s tragic death and Casey’s subsequent murder trial. In 2018 — 10 years after Caylee’s disappearance — Casey was no longer speaking to either of her parents and had limited contact with her brother, Lee. At the time, George revealed in an appearance on Dr. Oz that his relationship with his daughter was irreparably broken.
“We’re not connected anymore,” he said on the show. “And that hurts. I wish I could be part of her life, but I would never feel comfortable around her. I can’t trust her.”
However, in 2019, George appeared to soften his stance towards Casey. In another appearance on Dr. Oz in October 2019, he revealed he was “ready to forgive” his daughter.
In December 2020, she filed paperwork to start her own private investigation business called Case Research & Consulting Services LLC. However, state records revealed that she does not have a Florida private investigator's license — and as a convicted felon, she will not be able to obtain one.
That wasn't deterring Casey, though, a source told PEOPLE at the time. Though the company was in the “very early stages,” Casey had “big plans” to help other people facing serious legal charges.
“She knows what it’s like to be accused of something that she didn’t do,” the insider explained. “She wants to help other wrongfully accused people, especially women, and help them get justice.”
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Casey’s statements about what happened to Caylee have been inconsistent since the first days of the investigation in 2008 — but she has always maintained that she had nothing to do with her daughter’s disappearance.
Casey originally told police that Caylee was taken by a nanny; then, during her trial, she alleged that her daughter died in an accidental drowning and she and her father covered up the death. But following her acquittal in 2011, Casey kept a low profile — leaving the public to wonder what had really happened to 2-year-old Caylee.
But then, in the 2022 Peacock docuseries Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies, Casey provided a detailed account of what she alleges happened when Caylee died. In her first on-camera interviews, Casey placed the blame solely on her father, George.
Casey claimed that she hadn’t been feeling well on June 16, 2008 — the last day Caylee was seen alive — and went to lie down with Caylee. The next thing she remembered was being woken up by her father, who was asking her where Caylee was. The two went looking for the toddler, and it was George who found her, according to Casey’s account.
“He was standing there with her,” she said in the docuseries. “She was soaking wet. He handed her to me. Said it was my fault. That I caused it. But he didn't rush to call 911 and he wasn’t trying to resuscitate her. I collapsed with her in my arms. She was heavy, and she was cold.”
Casey added, “He takes her from me and he immediately softens his tone and says ‘It’s going to be ok.’ I wanted to believe him. He took her from me and he went away.”
According to Casey’s 2022 account, she believed Caylee was alive over the next 31 days and was following her father’s instructions to behave as normally as possible. She also speculated in the interview that George may have staged Caylee’s drowning in order to cover up that he had been abusing his granddaughter — but admitted that she didn’t know for sure. (George, who denied Casey’s claims of abuse in court and was never charged, was “outraged and appalled” at his daughter’s latest allegations.)
The only wrongdoing Casey admitted to in the documentary was being dishonest to investigators.
“I lied,” she said. “My lies always have a kernel of truth in them. But I lied, because that's what I was told to do.”
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Casey’s claims about George in the 2022 docuseries Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies left him “outraged and appalled," according to a source close to the Anthony family.
“George is keeping a pretty strong exterior, but this tears him up,” the source said. “He still loves his daughter, and he loved his granddaughter. So this is beyond difficult for him.”
In 2022, Alexandra Dean, the producer of Where the Truth Lies, revealed to Buzzfeed News that while Casey still does not speak to her father, she does have limited contact with her mother Cindy and brother Lee.
“Casey does talk to her mom and her brother,” Dean said. “She doesn’t talk to them often, and I wouldn’t call their relationship close, but they do communicate.”
Over a year after Casey's bombshell allegations in the Peacock docuseries, her parents, George and Cindy, put their answers regarding their granddaughter's disappearance and death to the test.
The couple participated in the A&E series Casey Anthony’s Parents: The Lie Detector Test, which premiered on Jan. 4, 2024, where they took polygraph tests on camera.
In one clip, Cindy said she believes her daughter "100%" knows what happened to Caylee. "Yes I believe, 100%. And I kept hoping upon hope that she would confess," Cindy revealed in the special. "And that's the only reason I put myself through all of her drama and everything."
