Casey Anthony stepped out of hiding for the first time today since being acquitted of daughter Caylee Anthony’s murder in 2011 to attend a bankruptcy hearing in Tampa, Florida. The murder trial of her two-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, captivated a nation as Casey became the most likely suspect, and subsequently stunned and outraged a nation when Casey was found not guilty of Caylee’s murder.
Immediately after the acquittal, Casey was forced into hiding, as she was dubbed “the most hated person in America” and her trial brought tons of protesters to her parents’ Florida home as well as outside the courthouse. Casey alleges that she owes over $792,000 and has only $1,000 to her name. She has been unable to work or make a profit at all since the acquittal, so it is unsurprising that she must file bankruptcy.
As Casey entered the hearing this morning, she was photographed with long brown hair, in stark contrast to how she appears in the video diaries that she has released since the acquittal. Her first video diary was made October 13, 2011, three months after she was acquitted for her daughter’s murder. In these homemade videos, she is at an undisclosed location wearing glasses with short blonde hair as she muses to the public about what’s been going in in her life since the trial. In the first video diary, she expresses her excitement over having a computer, phone, and camera, saying, “I am extremely excited that I’ll be able to Skype and obviously keep a video log, take some pictures, and that I have something that I can finally call mine.” She doesn’t mention Caylee once, but does mention that she has a new dog who feels like a family member.
Recently, new evidence was released that detectives neglected to find the term “foolproof suffocation” that had been entered into a Google search on the Anthony family’s home computer. Detectives had only searched on the Anthonys’ Internet Explorer browser, not the Mozilla Firefox browser, which Casey preferred to use. As a result, detectives missed over 1,200 Firefox entries. Casey’s parents, George and Cindy Anthony, had their attorney release the following statement on their behalf:
“Recently a book was written which made libelous statements and raised baseless speculation about who performed computer searches relating to the term ‘fool-proof suffocation.’ This weekend it was discovered that this particular search term was never brought to the attention of the State Attorney’s Office. Further this search was never brought out in the trial and was never discussed or disclosed to the Anthonys. However, while it is clearly more than an oversight, the trial is over and the Anthonys are continuing to move forward with their lives. The only finality that this newest information brings is that once again the evidence clearly vindicates George Anthony from any argument made by any party relating to his involvement with whatever happened to his granddaughter, Caylee Anthony.”
A Lifetime movie entitled Prosecuting Casey Anthony, based on a book by one of the prosecutors on her case, Jeff Ashton, was released this January. The movie tries to answer the question of what went wrong in the Casey Anthony case and why she was acquitted when the entire nation had already convicted her in the media.
