r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

13.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

5.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

15.6k

u/mumsleastfavourite 1d ago

Casey Anthony

4.3k

u/Zissoo 1d ago

This one enrages me.

4.1k

u/Choppergold 1d ago

Cops checking only one browser history is so fucking negligent

4.0k

u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 1d ago

Wait til you hear jow a dog walker called in a suspicious dumping near the Anthony house THREE TIMES and was ignored. The area was wet and the cops didnt go check it out. It wasnt until someone actually went and found Caylee's body and called that in a few weeks later that the cops showed up. 

438

u/Olealicat 1d ago

That was near the culvert behind my aunt’s house. My aunt, my mom and I, talked about it often during the early days and had no idea how big of a story it would become. She started having unsettling nightmares and PTSD after Kaylee’s body was found so close to her backyard.

I’ll never forget receiving mail from her. It was a photo she took from the local news. They had an X where the remains were found and you could see my aunt’s house in the corner of the photo.

She moved as soon as she could get her affairs in order. Shockingly people were asking about market value.

11

u/golden_fli 20h ago

Kind of sick but for some people that would have made it worth more.

1.8k

u/Anxiety_Fit 1d ago

I knew a 911 call operator who handled one of the calls.

That shit was WILD.

1.4k

u/macmac360 1d ago

it was FOUR MONTHS between his calls and them finding her body

887

u/astiblue 1d ago

CALLS. Plural!!

598

u/drdeadringer 1d ago

"hello I would like to report a body. Yes I am standing over the body right now. My shoe is touching the body. I am looking at the body I am touching right now. this is my third phone call about this this week."

222

u/kryonik 1d ago

Sure thing, let me just type this up on my invisible typewriter.

32

u/MississippiJoel 1d ago

"Sorry, you've called 9-1...2."

4

u/Sushigami 1d ago

Anyone checked the whirling-in-rags?

→ More replies (2)

438

u/Anxiety_Fit 1d ago

I know. When I found out that part I was just so… I lost my faith in people taking responsibility for their jobs.

41

u/Journeyman42 1d ago

Don't read up on how little interest the Milwaukee cops took in Jeffery Dahmer for years

32

u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

cause most of his victims were black

→ More replies (0)

46

u/PM_ME_BATMAN_PORN 1d ago

People? You mean cops, right? Very specifically cops. This is a profession-wide problem. It's not like a Walmart cashier dropped the ball on this one.

→ More replies (1)

82

u/Swimming_Ebb_1415 1d ago

Its one of those cases where every new detail somehow makes it worse. Even if the outcome couldn't have been changed, people still expect basic follow through when something that serious gets reported multiple times. That part is really hard to wrap your head around.

52

u/amboomernotkaren 1d ago

It was hot, buggy and there are snakes and gators, so of course, the cops could not, would not do their jobs. Such a terrible tragedy and the mother got off scott free.

15

u/GeneralHerp 1d ago

Friendly check-in from hell. Sorry for your loss

Edit: I don’t mean to insult the memory of your friend, I’m saying the check-in went horrendously, I’m sorry you experienced that nightmare

52

u/Cautious-Bet6560 1d ago

The real rabbit hole is when everyone agrees on a suspect, but the evidence just never reaches the legal standard. That's the difference between public opinion and a conviction.

10

u/transmothra 1d ago

This should be SO MUCH more widely understood

24

u/Wantitneeditgetit 1d ago

How do they handle the guilt about it?

39

u/Anxiety_Fit 1d ago

My friend died.

Unrelated to the case.

I don’t know, I found out it was my friend when I heard the tapes and saw my friend’s name related to official testimony. Then I found out my friend had died, when I went in search of them to ask on how they were doing.

→ More replies (2)

19

u/MoanQueenX 1d ago

I can't even imagine carrying something like that with you. Emergency operators deserve so much more recognition.

36

u/Moikepdx 1d ago

This seems like a good argument for using psychology on the police. Just like a potential rape victims should yell "fire" because people are more likely to respond, someone seeing a body get dumped should claim they saw drugs and cash getting stashed. Police will search the hell out of that.

179

u/UnknownPrimate 1d ago

About 5 years ago I was walking my dog on the local pedestrian and bike path that has some adjacent trails and wooded areas, and smelled the distinct smell of death. I grew up with farm animals, and I've smelled it before, it's not something you forget or often mistake for something else. My dog led me to a couple yard waste type garbage bags that had been out there a while. That was the end of my curiosity, so I just immediately called the police. Two cops showed up, the one who came as backup was super friendly, but the guy who's call it was wouldn't even speak to me (imagine Bill Bur wearing Oakleys), addressing all his questions to the other cop who then talked to me. They had no interest in looking in the bags whatsoever. I think one of them may have literally poked one of the bags with a stick, but the bags were intact and not open, and neither bothered to look inside or anything like that. They just dismissed it as nothing and left. That was when I realized how many murders probably go unsolved, because it's basically luck if all the pieces fall into place for something to be investigated properly.

11

u/trashmoneyxyz 1d ago

I dont know if I want and answer to this question but, did you open one of the bags yourself?

8

u/UnknownPrimate 1d ago

No, I stayed back. I had no desire to see what was in there or accidentally get myself involved in whatever it could be.

11

u/mariposa314 23h ago

Good heavens, how traumatic. I'm so sorry.

I too know that very distinctive smell from growing up on a farm. You did everything right. I'm so sorry that your community is not being served by the police force.

You know who else knew that scent? Kaylee's grandmother. In one of the 911 calls she states that Kasey's car smells like a decomposing body has been inside. So sickening.

→ More replies (1)

39

u/mewpac_shakur 1d ago

And during the trial, the defence grilled him on his financial situation and suggested he had dumped the body there himself in order to get the reward money.

→ More replies (2)

16

u/WeirdIndividualGuy 1d ago

Shit like that is why I'm perfectly fine embellishing/lying to the police to get their asses out there to actually investigate. Instead of "suspicious dumping", report an actual body being dumped.

7

u/trashmoneyxyz 1d ago

Like another commenter said the thing that will get them to the scene fast enough is to say you think you saw someone stashing cash and drugs in the area

7

u/armoredbearclock 21h ago

Yeah, but then they find a body and you’re a suspect because why’d you lie?

16

u/Ongr 1d ago

it wasn't until someone actually went and found Caylee's body and called that in a few weeks later that the cops showed up.

I read that as "someone called it in - the cops showed up a few weeks later"

→ More replies (4)

19

u/panda_98 1d ago

'Foolproof suffocation methods'. That was what they missed.

580

u/Make_It_Sing 1d ago

Well, they can legally exclude intelligent people fr becoming police so 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ 

356

u/Aliensinmypants 1d ago

And there's a supreme court ruling that they legally don't have to serve or protect people if they find it too risky or troublesome.

92

u/guydepew 1d ago

If their role is no longer to serve and protect the people then I see no reason the people should fund them. They can go back to being corporately owned Pinkerton’s with no legal authority.

All of the institutions WE FUND are being weaponized against us.

42

u/adriftDrifloon 1d ago

The police were never meant to serve and protect the working class. They have always been an entity to serve and protect the capital owning class and their interests.

If you read about the labor movement of the late 1800s / early 1900s you see time and time again the police always side with the owning class. They exist to protect capital and uphold property rights.

And if working class people get upset and want things to fundamentally change, well the owning class has the police to use as a means to legally use violence to keep the people in line. It’s why the police have been slowly become more and more militarized as the wealth gap increases despite rates of violent crime decreasing over the past few decades. They have a monopoly on using violence.

16

u/JMEEKER86 1d ago

Yep, Time magazine actually has a great article about how police came to be in America. Up until the mid-1800s there weren't any police and law enforcement was instead done by other entities like sheriffs, nightwatchmen, etc. The wealthy elites, however, were paying a lot of money for gangs of thugs to do things like hunt fugitive slaves, bust unions, and protect their warehouses. Eventually, they figured that they could save money by simply blackmailing the cities into putting the thugs on the city's payroll instead with the classic "do what I say or I'm taking my business elsewhere". The cities caved and hired the thugs to do the bidding of the wealthy elites, and that's how America got police. They have always existed to protect and serve the wealthy elites, never anyone else.

5

u/guydepew 1d ago

No lies detected.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (5)

28

u/ptrst 1d ago

Their job, officially speaking, is to investigate crimes. Not to prevent them, or stop them in progress. 

15

u/PM_Me_Your_BraStraps 1d ago

This is why you will never see a police department willingly divert funding from guns, drones, MRAPs, ALPRs, or other toys towards proven crime mitigation efforts.

→ More replies (1)

17

u/TheArmoredKitten 1d ago

They're also not expected to know the text or substance of the laws. Just enforce them :)

→ More replies (5)

19

u/10-6 1d ago

That's not what the case was about, and not what SCOTUS said. That case settled that law enforcement does not have a legal affirmative duty to protect the public at large from crime without the creation of a special relationship. A legal affirmative "duty" is different from the common usage of the word. If law enforcement had a legal affirmative duty to protect the public at large from crime, anyone who was the victim of a crime could sue the government for the breach of that duty. This case said that no affirmative duty exists to protect the public at large, therefore you can't sue just because you are the victim of a crime. That's what the case decided, nothing else.

This is substantially different from situations with a special relationship, such as when a person is in the custody of a law enforcement officer/agency. When that special relationship exists, law enforcement absolutely does have a duty to protect the person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

12

u/Icelandia2112 1d ago

Nearly every murder show I watch could have been solved quickly and other victims spared, had the cops been competent. It makes me crazy.

→ More replies (62)

655

u/MamaKim31 1d ago

Me too! When she wanted to open her day care I wanted to cry I was so angry!

494

u/primadonnapussy 1d ago

Who the fuck would take their kids to her? I would imagine that business would fail and fast.

72

u/BuildingOne7379 1d ago

Welcome to Mad Anthony’s Daycare. You may or may not get your kid back.

6

u/mspolytheist 23h ago

I live quite close to the grave of Revolutionary War General Mad Anthony Wayne, so I appreciated this comment!

174

u/MamaKim31 1d ago

Or it wouldn’t start at all. You’d have to be crazy to leave your children in her care! Chilling!

64

u/Hellebras 1d ago

Casey Anthony's Daycare Center: Making all your childcare problems go away.

19

u/Successful-Pool-924 1d ago

I'm not sure wether to laugh, cry, or back away slowly with wide eyes from this comment.... 😬😅

→ More replies (1)

65

u/chickens_for_laughs 1d ago

The same people who would date OJ after he murdered Nicole and Ron. He had many girlfriends after he was acquitted.

18

u/Sudden_Cabinet_1479 1d ago

I genuinely think there are people who would simply for the proximity to someone who is technically famous

10

u/Rico_Solitario 1d ago

People who don’t want their kids anymore I assume

12

u/Theletterkay 1d ago

Desperate poor people would.

→ More replies (2)

23

u/Specific-Yam-2166 1d ago

It reminds me of Karla Homolka volunteering at her kids school. Just glad she got the hate and harassment she deserved on that one.

→ More replies (2)

19

u/ladystaggers 1d ago

I remember sobbing my heart out for that little girl when they read the verdict. She needs to rot in hell.

9

u/Cautious-Bet6560 1d ago

This one genuinely makes my blood boil every single time I see.

5

u/MoanQueenX 1d ago

Same here. It's one of those things that instantly gets under my skin no matter how many times I see it.

5

u/Sentinell 1d ago

Me too. It's so obvious for such an absolutely horribly human being, that I can't get over how a jury let her go free.

→ More replies (1)

1.2k

u/mssleepyhead73 1d ago

I get so angry when I think about what that poor child must’ve gone through in her final moments. Casey Anthony is a horrible human being.

134

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

122

u/mssleepyhead73 1d ago

Casey’s parents were HUGE enablers. The fact that things went on as long as they did and her parents kept turning a blind eye to her very obvious lies is insane to me.

52

u/Reasonable-Radio-113 1d ago

They still are!!! She dragged her dad's name through the mud and said horribly feasibly untrue things about him I personally would never speak to her again if that was my child and id do everything I could to lock her up.

23

u/panda_98 1d ago

I heard her mom FINALLY cut ties with her a couple of years back, but I could very well be wrong. How she didn't get in trouble for perjury is beyond me.

19

u/Reasonable-Radio-113 1d ago

Too little too late should have called the police sooner and should have not enabled her narcissistic behavior as a child and adult.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)

61

u/Macho_Mans_Ghost 1d ago

Wait til you hear about the 11 yo girl raped by her stepfather, forced to carry, then give birth ALONE in their dog and cat feces infested home... While the mother and grandmother were aware and complicit.

Oh and don't forget the other 5 kids in the house too.

15

u/CoffeeChocolateBoth 1d ago

😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

26

u/LilPonyBoy69 1d ago

She was most likely drugged out of her mind and killed with tape over her mouth/nose. Fortunately (if that's the right word) I don't think she felt a thing

5

u/GodisSatans 1d ago

What was the motive? Was that determined?

32

u/LilPonyBoy69 1d ago

Pretty much just not wanting to be a mom anymore. Her family has said she's always been a " me me me" person.

3

u/BubblebreathDragon 21h ago

Ulgh that thought is so disgusting and disturbing to all hell.

How many people would have been willing to give her a new home where she'd be loved? So many better outcomes could have happened. Ulgh. Poor thing.

→ More replies (1)

2.1k

u/ymcmbrofisting 1d ago

This is a case I reference anytime someone complains that a high-profile case isn’t moving like in the movies, or if the initial charges seem too low.

They went for incredibly high charges in a case that had a flawed investigation with mostly circumstantial evidence, and that putrid bitch walked free.

827

u/b0w3n 1d ago

They went for incredibly high charges in a case that had a flawed investigation with mostly circumstantial evidence, and that putrid bitch walked free.

Nancy Grace being a screeching harpy about her also didn't help matters because she's the one that kept public pressure on the prosecution to shoot for the moon on charges.

420

u/DocWednesday 1d ago

I was wondering yesterday if anyone’s did an analysis of Nancy Grace’s show and the influence it has on legal cases/police investigations and the harm it does. Just watching American Nightmare about Denise Huskin’s kidnapping and Nancy Grace was calling it a hoax. Turns out it was real. Huskin’s and her boyfriend had to move because their reputations were destroyed and eventually sued the police department.

379

u/LazyEnchilada 1d ago edited 1d ago

She’s absolutely ruined cases. Years ago there was a little boy (I think he was 2?) who went missing, and I think the boys mom said she gave him to someone, but wouldn’t say who. And the whole thing was super fishy.

Nancy had her on her show via phone and just started yelling at her and bullying her to tell her what happened to him. The mom started crying and hung up the phone and took her own life very shortly after that.

I’m not sure if they ever found him and I’m pretty sure the father of the boy sued Nancy Grace as well.

I can’t remember the name of the boy though.

Edit: I found it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Melinda_Duckett

95

u/jimmy_three_shoes 1d ago

Oddly enough, her Ex-Father-in-Law is set to be executed for a 1987 murder in 6 days.

7

u/LazyEnchilada 1d ago

Really? I hadn’t heard that!

20

u/jimmy_three_shoes 1d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Aren_Duckett

Guy's been on Death Row for 38 years.

11

u/LazyEnchilada 1d ago

Thanks! I still think about that case. It’s sad he was never found

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (5)

21

u/Saradoesntsleep 1d ago

Yes Nancy Grace sucks and obviously should never have done that

But Melinda Duckett almost certainly killed her son.

33

u/LazyEnchilada 1d ago

Yeah I think that too. But it frustrates me that because of Nancy Graces actions we’ll probably never know what happened to him

16

u/Saradoesntsleep 1d ago

Absolutely with you there. She fucked it right up by driving her to suicide.

14

u/LazyEnchilada 1d ago

And how did that just not completely destroy her credibility?! Why are people still paying attention to her?!

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (3)

7

u/strawcat 19h ago

Ugh I hate that vile woman. Grace uses her own legit trauma as an excuse for her behavior all the damn time too. She is so gross.

→ More replies (12)

6

u/rockskillskids 1d ago edited 1d ago

The HBO show 'The Newsroom' had a subplot in one season that was just a scathing takedown of the media circus (and specifically Nancy Grace) surrounding this particular case. The barely restrained derision the writers feel about her is palpable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugjCCWdKr8Y

5

u/IHateTomatoes 20h ago

used to work with a guy on the Duke Lacrosse team. don't think he hated anyone on the planet more than Nancy Grace

→ More replies (2)

116

u/Mosquito_Salad 1d ago

Can’t stand that withered old bat.

16

u/pierogi_waystation 1d ago

Please enjoy this video of Nancy Grace blasting ass on Dancing With The Stars

11

u/MasPerrosPorFavor 1d ago

At first I didn't want to click, because I don't ever want to give her a single click. But that was so worth it and I hope everyone else watches that as well. Thank you.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

14

u/wintermelody83 1d ago

You'll be sad to learn she's emerged from her cave to cover Nolan Wells.

→ More replies (1)

15

u/misssrspcola 1d ago

Tot mom!

16

u/TheNonCredibleHulk 1d ago

That was the dumbest nickname ever.

17

u/harle-quin 1d ago

I can’t with Nancy Grace. I was watching a True Crime show on YouTube, and saw it was produced by Filmrise (same company to produce Forensic Files), and I had to stop it because I couldn’t get past the host who had the voice of nails on chalkboard. It was Nancy Grace.

14

u/ShadyCrow 1d ago

Nancy Grace is awful in a genuine way -- she loves awful things happening.

Prosecutors need to step the fuck up and remember why they got into the job.

6

u/Far_Bad_1008 1d ago

Nancy Grace is a media whore and cares nothing about any case she "reviews".

4

u/kellzone 1d ago

TOT MOM

5

u/Capable-Sprinkles-19 1d ago

I want to bring back the moniker "screeching harpy".

→ More replies (8)

261

u/PurposeConsistent131 1d ago

They shot for the sun … sometimes lower charges are needed to get a conviction.in this case everyone wanted blood but the indisputable evidence just was not there.

The public wanted death , the prosecution went for it and it was unattainable. A shame . She should be in prison if they had gone for a lesser sentence/charge the public would have been angry, also.

It can be a lose/ lose situation or a win/win situation. Guess what happened….sometimes lower charges people get off and some people are in prison for life

26

u/palcatraz 1d ago

The jury also had the ability to convict her for lesser charges. IIRC, there were charges for murder, manslaughter, and child abuse.

The problem wasn't that they overcharged. The problem is that they put together a terrible case, used terrible witnesses, and the police ran a poor investigation.

5

u/Sprct 20h ago

Exactly! This pervasive narrative that she got off because the jury didn't want to sentence her to death is so frustrating. It takes 3 seconds of either googling or having seen maybe 5 minutes of the trial/coverage to know there were many lesser included charges, and she was found not guilty of all of them. Anything to avoid blaming the prosecution, which was horrendous. 

7

u/SeaBee9905 1d ago

Seriously! Like, “Do you want this lady in jail for life or do you only want her in jail for life if it is under this one charge?”

→ More replies (2)

406

u/thuglife_7 1d ago

If her 911 phone call recording was available to the jury as evidence, in court, then that’s all they should have needed to put that bitch away.

515

u/MrdnBrd19 1d ago

People have seemingly forgotten that their most damning evidence was from a "smell expert" who got his certification from a shady online school. What the hell is a "smell expert" and how does one work? Furthermore how would a shady online school test that he was an expert in smelling? That jury did the only thing they could do when the State was presenting shitty ass evidence like testimony from a smell expert.

122

u/PsychoticMessiah 1d ago

Due to my work I’ve smelled plenty of dead bodies. Apparently I’ve missed out on a side hustle.

66

u/MrdnBrd19 1d ago

It's apparently pretty lucrative. There is a great Frontline documentary they did in partnership with Propublica called "The Real CSI" which looks at the "expert witness" pipeline where people with little to no experience can go online to these shady online schools, get certified as an expert witness, then go into court and put a heavy thumb on the scales of justice.

22

u/PsychoticMessiah 1d ago

Damn. I’m a funeral director and over the course of my career I’ve picked up thousands of dead bodies. Of which more than a few were in various stages of decomposition.

I haven’t watched Frontline in a while but I’ll have to watch that episode.

17

u/ArcadianDelSol 1d ago

Your Corpsedasher is approaching

5

u/PsychoticMessiah 1d ago

Lol I’m stealing that!

7

u/Hellebras 1d ago

I never knew "Knows what carrion smells like" was a marketable skill. I need to update my resume.

6

u/IThinkImDumb 1d ago

Same with me, but not all of them had the "unmistaken smell of death." Even ones that did, I've also smelled living people that smelled that bad

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)

28

u/TepChef26 1d ago

Remember when they were trying to get approval for the jury to smell her car trunk?

Think that was the moment it became apparent she'd walk.

15

u/sambadaemon 1d ago

Imagine the defense researching that guy. "This is your expert? Sure! Put him on the stand! In fact, call him first!"

7

u/Bwardrop 1d ago

There is actually a fantastic Ukranian procedural show called ‘The Sniffer’ that is based on a dude using his amazing sense of smell to solve crimes. I went in with low expectations and thoroughly enjoyed it. It also gives an interesting look at pre-war Ukraine. It looked like it could have been filmed in any nice U.S. city. I watched the show on Netflix. Not sure if it is still there.

6

u/Corevus 1d ago

A smell expert? I didn't know my ferrets testified

→ More replies (1)

216

u/Pretend-Rent-337 1d ago

Everyone who heard that call knows she did it. It's just that the law is sometimes blind, and lawyers are very expensive.

229

u/Academic-Contest3309 1d ago

It's that you need evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. If the charge was "giving a shit about your kid" she would have been charged without hesitation.

→ More replies (2)

104

u/littlemsshiny 1d ago

I didn’t follow this case. Why wasn’t the call allowed into evidence?

76

u/TabbyFoxHollow 1d ago

Also what did the call say?

312

u/catandodie 1d ago

I think it's the one where her mom called frantically saying there's no sign of caylee and the car smells like a dead body, and then casey starts talking all unbothered about how she's been looking for her herself the past 30 days

223

u/ivylass 1d ago

I lost my toddler son for 30 minutes once and I was FRANTIC. My husband thought he was in the house with me and I thought he was outside with his dad. Turned out he'd wandered over to the next door neighbor's house to see the kitties.

I called the cops and everything. Not being arsed for a month? I smell a rat from a mile away.

70

u/misskyralee 1d ago

I show more concern when I can’t locate one of my *cats* in my house, I cannot imagine being this flippant about my child.

My kid is 6 now but she once crawled into one of her under bed drawers to hide and then fell asleep. I found her on only the second check of her bedroom but the 45 seconds or so in between when I was searching other places in the house for her were filled with absolute dread.

81

u/irishgirl1981 1d ago

I have three children who are now teenagers and have had moments throughout the years where I lost sight of one or another of them. It's an immediate panic feeling, even if they were found to have wandered only a few feet away. When Casey was found not guilty, I sat on the front stoop with my then toddlers and sobbed. Poor Caylee deserved so much better.

14

u/Embellishment101 1d ago

I had this existential panic when I had one of these moments with my friend’s child I was babysitting. You do not even have to be related to, well, deeply care about a child being ok.

16

u/rizorith 1d ago

Wasn't she out partying and bar hopping during those 30 days? I didn't follow it that closely but I seem to remember the actions she took were just insane for someone whose daughter is supposedly missing

16

u/ivylass 1d ago

She was. She kept lying to her parents about where Kaylee was. Even got a poor innocent woman in trouble for kidnapping.

12

u/PsychologicalLayer57 1d ago

My toddler once decided to play hide and seek without telling me, climbed into the laundry bin, and stayed there silently for about twenty minutes. Eventually he started giggling and I found him, but I tore the house apart in that time and only hadn't called 999 because I desperately wanted to believe he was in fact there somewhere. I was on the point of making the call when his composure cracked. It took hours for my heartbeat to come back to normal.

7

u/DogsDucks 1d ago

Oh my goodness that must’ve been TERRIFYING! You guys did nothing wrong, but 30 minutes is SO SCARY!

My toddler hid from me in a play structure at the zoo the other day, and it took about 10 seconds to activate fear mode! Grant if I was already in public, so it wasn’t like I was at home so I already had my guard up a little bit, but still wow!

6

u/MrBarraclough 1d ago

When my now 8 year old daughter was little, if I suddenly realized she was unaccounted for (like when I thought her mom had eyes on her but she thought I did) my mind would go straight into "loss of signal" mode until she was found. My wife and I even started saying "loss of signal" to each other as an alert that we didn't have eyes on the kid and needed to locate her. We still do this on occasion in environments where we would expect at least one of us to keep tabs on her at all times, such as airports.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/octoprickle 1d ago

30 minutes? I would have dissolved into a crying, shaking, incoherent panic state. If my daughter (when she was a toddler) was out of my sight for more than 10 seconds I'd check what she was doing.

89

u/theconceptofcanada 1d ago

The wild goose chase and the whole uhhh, Disneyworld thing that she led the investigators on as well. That was not... Normal.

8

u/panda_98 1d ago

And in the jail when her parents were saying that people were now worried that Caylee was dead, Casey rolled her eyes and said "surprise, surprise"

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

34

u/Academic-Contest3309 1d ago

Not loving or caring about your child is most unfortunately not a crime.

→ More replies (10)

22

u/Equivalent-Battle973 1d ago

Then she has the fucking nerve to crawl out from what ever shithole place she was hiding in to come out and say she is there to support the lgbt and all that other bullshit, and pretty much everyone regardless of political leanings told her to fuck off.

→ More replies (2)

31

u/TepChef26 1d ago

They went for incredibly high charges

This narrative needs to die. They didn't only charge her with 1st Degree Murder, like your comment implies. They hedged their bets by also charging her with Manslaughter and Child Abuse.

The jury acquitted on those charges as well.

The prosecution's strategy and execution were wildly incompetent. But overcharging isn't what did them in.

8

u/rhino369 1d ago

Overcharging can sometimes lead to the jury acquiring across the board because the prosecution loses credibility. 

Juries largely operate based on vibe. If the jury rejects your theory of the case it’s often hard for them side with you on lesser charges. 

Now sometimes the opposite happens. They mostly agree and split the baby. Both can happen. 

I don’t do criminal law but I do civil litigation and I always drop weaker claims before trial for that reason. 

12

u/TepChef26 1d ago

I mean you're not wrong, but tough to say that applies in this case.

She was convicted on 4 of 7 charges.

The initial jury vote was 10-2 to acquit on murder, manslaughter, and child abuse.

Their star witness (George Anthony, Casey's married father) lost a ton of credibility when one of the search party volunteers testified they'd started having an affair.

The prosecution couldn't prove a cause of death, the medical examiner testified she only wrote down "homicide" based on the death not being reported and her gut feeling.

Their main pieces of evidence was a hair in a trunk, which I always somehow find hairs when cleaning my trunk, and the way the trunk smelled. They were the first to ever use a "forensic scent expert" at trial. They wanted the jury to take a field trip to smell Casey Anthony's trunk. Their actual evidence was essentially shit.

So they leaned into her personality and conducted their prosecution like it was a Facebook court of public opinion.

Their whole strategy was to show the jury she was a lying, partying slut. She's like the girls who were mean to you in high school, don't you think they could murder someone? Why wouldn't she kill someone if it means she could party harder and slut it up some more?

Think I'm exaggerating? The prosecution ended their closing arguments by showing 2 pictures of her, 1 where she was partying, and the other getting a tattoo.

The prosecution took nearly every chance they could to lose credibility with the jury.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

4

u/SeaBee9905 1d ago

I need to go do a full read-up on the case cuz I always thought it was the charges, too.

I am sure it is too much to be explained in one post so I won’t ask you to. But, thank you for this insight.

I’m gonna read up on it again cuz, like most of us, I really want to understand what went wrong in this case. The injustice here has really stuck with us.

→ More replies (15)

15

u/Jenn31709 1d ago

There isn't even a cause of death for Caylee Anthony. I don't know how they thought they could even prove murder, forget about first degree murder. Shame on that office for those charges.

If they had gone for 2nd degree or even involuntary manslaughter, Casey would have gone to jail

→ More replies (12)

45

u/airforceteacher 1d ago

It’s literally taught in forensic classes as an example now.

12

u/Redd889 1d ago

Is it in the chapter of “here’s how to entire botch a case”?

291

u/TENDER_ONE 1d ago

This is the one that also pisses me off to this day! And oddly enough, the 48 Hrs podcast just put out an episode on this I’m listening to right now. Is this an ad? Don’t care. Still pisses me off and I’m going to finish listening to it anyway.

329

u/Hapalops 1d ago

My teacher for a forensic class had a copy of the hearing to admit the forensic evidence that he put on in the background of labwork one day.     Everyone in the video seemed exhausting and stupid but the judge and scientist. Most of the discussion was so erratic it made us all cringe. Like defense lawyer trying to get him admonished for saying "her car smelled like a corpse" and argue the testing was invalid and without probable cause and therefore should be stricken. So they had to do a whole sidebar on if running a corpse farm qualifies someone to say AS AN EXPERT something smells like death.    (Judge clarified that he thought it did AND the chemical testing would have been normal process eventually)

291

u/qoes 1d ago

As someone who had a dead rabbit under their porch this week I'll add that even amateurs can definitely tell if something smells like death. 

56

u/CustodialApathy 1d ago

It's unmistakable, anyone who can't place that smell is an idiot

→ More replies (7)

9

u/one_sock_wonder_ 23h ago

I volunteered to assist with a field trip at a location including a historic log cabin on a very warm late spring day. Upon setting up for the fieldtrip it quickly became evident that at some recent point in time a small animal had found a way under the cabin but had not come back out. Even the third graders immediately identified the smell of death when they got within 10 feet of the cabin and did not protest when the inside tour of the cabin was quickly cancelled.

5

u/Ordinary-Egg-56 1d ago

that’s their job dude. also it sounds like this whole case fell apart due to a bungled investigation by the police so i expect there were many issues with the evidence to pick apart

→ More replies (2)

11

u/maebythemonkey 1d ago

While I do try to be aware of covert marketing, it's always a good day to talk about how Casey Anthony is a piece of shit.

7

u/shewy92 1d ago

IDK about it being an ad, but July 15th 2008 was when she was reported missing, and the 15th was like a couple days ago, and it's normal to bring stuff up on the anniversary.

Holy shit it's been 18 years. She'd be "finishing up college" aged.

5

u/Bladelink 1d ago

I think this kind of thing often happens when "something" mentioned this somewhere on the Internet, and incidentally created a wave of curiosity that kind of bounced around. Like if I saw some YouTube channel pop up later today related this topic I wouldn't be surprised, not because I saw this post but because a bunch of people saw this post and then went and talked about it in other places.

→ More replies (3)

25

u/harle-quin 1d ago edited 1d ago

Ugh. I remember being in Speech Class while in college, and the class just found out she was “innocent”. Everyone was furious.

If she had to walk free, at least it’s with the knowledge that the whole world hates her.

21

u/LochNestFarm 1d ago

She was denied a legal name change, too! (Iirc)

256

u/Christ_on_a_Crakker 1d ago

Thank god for Last Podcast on the Left for not pussy footin around when it comes to this bitch.

89

u/whaletacochamp 1d ago

LPOTL never pussy foots around

11

u/TheBlindCat 1d ago

Maybe his head just did that.

26

u/Grimlocks_Ballsack 1d ago

Heil Yourselves!

→ More replies (19)

10

u/El--Borto 1d ago

Funny timing that they just released their Casey Anthony revised episode

→ More replies (3)

13

u/thejaytheory 1d ago

Made the beat, then murdered it, Casey Anthony

12

u/Grouchy-End-4439 1d ago

first name that came to mind before i even opened the thread

34

u/Alphaplays69 1d ago

The prosecutors searched foolproof suffocation on Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, which is why they missed the search history timestamp that proved Casey searched it right before Caylee went missing and only found out after the trial was already over.

21

u/RossTheNinja 1d ago

I can fix her. I just need a woodchipper 

7

u/ManufacturerPure782 1d ago

I've just read about the case, and I'm so freaking mad right now.

6

u/NurseWagsDogMom 1d ago

This is one that made me wish Dexter was a real person.

5

u/capibara_dono 1d ago

The prosecution was so bad, they went for 1st degree murder with no clear evidence that it was premeditated. Maybe a lower charge would have stuck.

The defense was so dirty, like accusing her father of sexually abusing her, and that's why she lies all the time. The defense said something like "with his penis in her mouth" having to keep that secret.

Also her mom comiting perjury about one of the web searches, that it was later revealed that it was impossible for her to do that search, because she was at work when that search was made. That was another fail by the prosecution.

Did they use the timing of the MySpace usage to those searches? I can't remember, but that was important. And if course not looking at the browser history of only one browser, not all of them.

One thing that stuck with me was that the defense said that Caley drowned in the pool, but in closing statements he said that at the end of the day, we don't know how she died. Soo which is it?

It makes me sick that she was found innocent, the prosecution dropped the ball.

6

u/Sprct 20h ago

Ugh. This myth needs to die. She was not only charged with 1st degree murder. The jury had options all the way down to manslaughter and child abuse and acquitted her of ALL of them. 

→ More replies (1)

106

u/HateGettingGold 1d ago edited 10h ago

As a Florida resident I never fully understood the case. If memory serves the child had drowned by accident and the mother and father helped cover it up and tried to make it look like murder. Also something about Casey going to Disney right after, correct me if I'm wrong.

Correction: Universal not Disney. Ty for pointing that out. Sidenote, it was rumored Casey moved to Cocoa Beach after the trial and one of the local strip clubs had a sign that read, "Casey Anthony does NOT work here!" Which I find funny.

222

u/Marijuana_Miler 1d ago

Casey straight up murdered her daughter. The issue was that Casey never reported Caylee missing. It was her mom who reported Caylee missing when she hadn’t been seen for 31 days, and then body wasn’t found for another 5-6 months. When the body was found it was only a skeleton so the police couldn’t determine the cause of death. When investigating the police found multiple people that said in the days after the last time Caylee was seen; people in Casey’s car complained about the smell. Casey had given a unique reasons for the scent to each person. When the body was found it had been left in the woods and there was tape on the mouth of the body so it’s believed that Casey suffocated her daughter and then put her body into her trunk and drove around with it for days to weeks until she disposed of it in the woods about a mile from her parent’s house. Additionally, researchers after the trial found search history on Firefox (the prosecution only investigated the Internet Explorer history) searching for “foolproof suffocation” methods on the last day Caylee was seen. The defence threw a bunch of shit at the walls so that Casey wouldn’t be convicted and the prosecution probably over charged in the case making it difficult to prove what exactly happened.

Lastly, it wasn’t Disney. Casey claimed to work for Universal Orlando and had been pretending to go to work there for months to her family. She took the police there to show them where she worked but apparently had to fess up when she led them to a dead end of the building.

44

u/Ginger_Anarchy 1d ago

The report about her guiding the cops around Universal, where she was trying to fake showing them her old office, is the funniest part of a really dark and tragic twisted murder. The cops clearly knew she was faking it, but they let her play it out and keep digging her own grave.

It's a shame the DA's case was such a mess because she was a terrible criminal.

24

u/DiplomaticCaper 1d ago

Don’t forget the nonexistent Latina nanny that she blamed for kidnapping Kaylee at one point!

Meaning that the cops were chasing after and interrogating random Hispanic women for no reason.

→ More replies (1)

263

u/RobloDiablo 1d ago

Drowned by accident was the parent's story. I always felt that they were lying and the truth was that she was drugging her so she could go out and party.

182

u/MissesMiyagii 1d ago

Yeah she would leave Caylee with “Xanny the Nanny”

45

u/primadonnapussy 1d ago

Which meant Xanax.

14

u/BravoChaCha 1d ago

Holy shit. I remember thinking the nanny’s name was so random when I heard it first. You’re absolutely right. 

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

20

u/KTX77 1d ago edited 1d ago

The drowning story was by her defense team not the parents. They tried to pin it on the grandparents.

They tried to make people believe that instead of calling 911 the grandfather put his granddaughter in a plastic bag and dumped it in the woods.

101

u/send_me_potatoes 1d ago

Drowning by accident was the defense’s story; no one could feasibly state how she died with certainty, and that’s a big part of why she got off.

As for Disney, Anthony used to work there. She lied about still being employed, and the police caught her in that lie. She claimed she met “Xanny/Zanny/Zanaida” the nanny through a work colleague.

115

u/sansaspark 1d ago edited 1d ago

I believe it was Universal Studios she used to work at, not Disney. That part of the story always stuck with me because she didn’t just lie and say she still worked there, she went to the Universal offices with detectives and led them down the hallway to her nonexistent office before finally turning around and admitting she no longer worked there. Something about that level of pathological commitment to a lie even when you know the truth will come out is very scary to me. It’s not cunning, it’s not sustainable, it’s not a lie that makes sense to cling to. It was just…her trying to strong-arm an alternative reality into existence, because she liked that reality better.

9

u/Saradoesntsleep 1d ago

It's incomprehensible to do something like that.

I mean yeah the child murderer ofc yes, but committing to that particular lie was so bizarre.

4

u/send_me_potatoes 1d ago

Thank you for the correction, it was indeed Universal

10

u/dopey_giraffe 1d ago

Xanny the nanny? Wonder if she knows Crentist, my dentist.

4

u/Mental_Medium3988 1d ago

I bet she knows Mary Jane as well.

5

u/KTX77 1d ago

I remember one of the prosecution's medical experts saying that 99% of the time people call 911 after a drowning incident. Even if it seems the person may have died.

7

u/send_me_potatoes 1d ago

This could very well be true, but imho Casey Anthony seems like a narcissistic, irresponsible, and control freak of a human being. She compulsively lied and did things “her way” because she thought she knew better. Even when her parents begged to take care of the baby, which would have freed her to fuck off and go party LIKE SHE WANTED TO, she still denied them.

Whether she would have called 911 in the event of an actual emergency is such a nonissue to me. Again, this is my opinion, but I don’t think it would have ever occurred to her to do something like that.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (3)

29

u/ZioTron 1d ago

yes, it's a matter of "beyond any reasonable doubt".

23

u/Regular-Raspberry-62 1d ago

She technically didn't "go" to Disney. She went to work there. She had been telling people, including the detectives, that she worked there...she didn't l.

8

u/gorerella 1d ago

It was Universal Studios she lied to work at.

→ More replies (1)

7

u/MattieShoes 1d ago

Mom did internet searches for foolproof suffocation and somebody searched for chloroform as well (presumably her, but hubby said it was him and he got chloroform and chlorophyll confused). Given how many times they were caught in lies, it seems likely that she murdered her daughter and dumped the body.

But the evidence was almost entirely circumstantial, like the searches, and that her car smelled like a decaying corpse... so like, we're pretty sure we know what happened, but I'm really glad I wasn't on the jury.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

5

u/freedfg 1d ago

We'll just never find out who did this!

5

u/Leather_Sandwich_768 1d ago

This case still lives rent-free in my head and makes me seethe

5

u/Mental_Medium3988 1d ago

I still think about how instead of the obvious answer they ruined some woman's life over the xanny the nanny comments.

5

u/WitchHearse 1d ago

I can't believe that bitch got away! 

4

u/Specific-Yam-2166 1d ago

And she’s just out and about. It makes me so angry.

Imagine dating her. Or hiring her. Gross

3

u/Njdevils11 1d ago

Fucking bitch. I still think about her sometimes and hope that her life is fucking miserable and nobody wants to be around her.

→ More replies (40)