Zanny the Nanny
New evidence as of 2023 in the Casey Anthony trial
Critical Thinking “Don’t Overlook the Obvious and Listen to What Isn’t Being Said” © Zanny the Nanny
This chapter is later in the book when much of the story has been told.
Someone in a family kills their child. Her killer lies to the police and tells them the child was last seen with her caregiver, Zanny. The entire family knows Zanny is a name that was made up to protect the killer.
Zanny doesn’t exist. Zanny never was real. Zanny is a killer’s alibi.
In what became the most bizarre hoax in American criminal history, the whole family protects their child’s killer. They each have reasons and give statements to the police falsely claiming Zanny was a trusted family member. The police search for the caregiver who does not exist. The child’s murder is unsolved more than a decade later because her family lied to the police. The truth will come out in this book.
The family used Zanny to hide their child’s murderer. The police are good at investigating and they discover more crimes.
To tell this story, the author makes Zanny his primary narrator. Who is better to confront the family’s lies? The final chapter reveals the killer’s name and the other family crimes that “Zanny” hides from the police.
The author adds a second narrator, a working reporter who researches the facts. He gives Zanny, who is now the narrator, stacks of evidence from law enforcement’s court files. Everything in this book is fact-based directly from court records.
The family’s two-year-old child was “missing” for 31 days, and the two narrators tell readers what happened day by day. In this chapter, on July 3, the child’s grandmother publishes a social media post to bring suspicion down on the child’s mother and to keep suspicion away from the killer. The grandmother knows who the child’s killer is and lies to protect him.
They all lie.
Someone who knew the family said simply, “This family is fucked up.”
Chapter 26
The Wizard of Oz Finds
Alice in Wonderland
&
We All Meet the Wicked Witch of the West
Zanny the Narrator
My reporter was growing nervous again. He got anxious whenever he sensed readers were impatient to learn everything that went on during the critical 31-day block of time Caylee was “missing.” I said to him, “Well, the detectives never imagined they would investigate a family like this.”
The idea that a family conspired together to cover up their two-year-old child’s homicide was not something I considered either. I didn’t openly agree with my reporter who wasn’t trusting anything Cindy said. But privately I was accumulating doubts. I began to see things I had missed before. An image of my “eyes” introduces every chapter for a reason. It’s my role to see and know everything, and unlike the family, I reveal everything I know.
I could see the Anthonys were engulfed in existential battles and hiding their crimes from the police. Law enforcement didn’t have a clue about the infighting among the family factions. As a result, what we learned from the media left us passive consumers of the family’s coverup of Caylee’s homicide.
Cindy had a narrative to sell, and she used law enforcement and the media to get her message across. News consumers following the case were captured by the Anthonys’ hoax and were transported into the family’s parallel universe — the one Cindy created in Hopespring Drive. In Cindy’s universe, her fake Zanny protected George. That was her endgame — to protect George.
My reporter helped “sus out” the false narrative he found throughout the investigative records. His memos compared the Anthony family’s world to characters we recalled from the stories in the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. Those stories were wonderful metaphors. I agreed with him that we were chronicling a bizarre and tragic family history that indeed moved between two parallel universes. My endgame as the narrator was to find justice for a silent, forgotten victim of the family’s fiction — — their child, Caylee.
Cindy choreographed her story with Zanny the nanny on centerstage by insisting to detectives the fake caregiver was a real person. She described Zanny as a trusted part of the family. It was true Zanny was special. But Cindy didn’t tell investigators that Zanny was important because she provided an alibi the family needed to protect Caylee’s killer. That was Zanny’s importance to Cindy — as an alibi. The family knew she was not real. They knew Casey’s job was not real. They knew Casey didn’t have a job and George was not a normal father to Casey. The family was hiding everything that law enforcement needed to find out who killed Caylee and why.
I asked my reporter to help stitch together an evidentiary narrative that made this family’s bizarre world transparent for readers. I was often diplomatically silent during our conversations because I disagreed with many of the perspectives he put forward from time to time. I wanted readers to see for themselves the motives and relationships that made Caylee a casualty of this family’s internal wars.
The media was all too eager to hear Cindy’s narrative and write whatever she told them. The public accepted whatever the media published. The reporter and I understood the media reporting was clickbait for a business model they used to attract viewers. We agreed it was time for readers to see a narrative not written by the Nancy Grace school of journalism. I asked to see my reporter’s Chapter 26 memo so I could get to work.
The Reporter’s Memo
I am presenting evidence so readers can see the dynamic in their family relationships. Inside the home, they lived in a reimagined reality. The Anthonys organized their lives around their child’s caregiver who didn’t exist. That fantasy world was very much like the stories from the Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland. Cindy’s worldview was predatory. Casey’s worldview was about how to find a safe space. In those parallel worlds, Caylee’s homicide was inevitable, and when it happened, it took over Casey like the tornado that swept Dorothy out of Kansas and into the unreal land of Oz.
The family scene set was their home in Orlando and appropriately it seemed, their reality became a Disneyesque version of Oz’s Emerald City, complete with a mythical Zanny character the family wrote into the script.
Readers thought the Anthonys were a normal family living a normal life before Caylee went missing. No one expected there would be someone in the family committing homicide against the young child Caylee. Beyond a family child killer, no one could fathom the entire family covering up for and protecting the child killer. But this family was not normal. Readers were swept into the parallel universes inside Hopespring Drive.
As I researched the evidence files, I could see the genesis of Cindy’s antagonism toward Caylee. It began while Caylee was in utero. Casey announced to her family when she was pregnant that she was treating George as the baby’s biological father. It is not hard to imagine why George freaked out when Caylee was born. His first reaction was to tell Cindy he was leaving her and getting a divorce. Cindy knew Casey’s baby was a threat to destroy her marriage and her world. Cindy went to work on a plan to kick Casey and Caylee out of the family. Her reason? She wanted to stay married to George.
I was captivated by the dominant role that the alpha Cindy played in creating these parallel universes inside Hopespring Drive. I saw this family as like characters from the Oz story. In Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West hated the innocence of Dorothy’s character which in the family analogy was Caylee. Cindy couldn’t tolerate Caylee living in Hopespring Drive because of the child’s possible paternity connection to George. Cindy was the alpha. It was her family. She was the breadwinner, and she made the rules. George was not going to have a paternity DNA test done on his sample. That would be admitting guilt for the sexual assault Casey accused him of, even if there was no biological connection to Caylee.
The magical ruby red slippers in the Oz story were Dorothy’s ticket home to the only reality she had, her home in Kansas. Casey didn’t have magical slippers. She was stuck in her family’s parallel universe inside Hopespring Drive. She found a way to use the family’s magical Zanny to make a safe zone for Caylee.
Alice in Wonderland was another fantasy to emerge as an analogy from my research. The teen mom felt isolated by the family’s Wonderland on Hopespring Drive. The Hopespring Drive home functioned like the rabbit hole in Alice’s story. Cindy and George couldn’t live with their fear that Caylee’s unknown paternity led directly to George. Cindy hatched a plan to remove their shared pain point — Caylee. They ultimately succeeded with Caylee’s unplanned homicide.
The drama on Hopespring Drive seemed more and more like a story torn from the pages of a crime novel, rather than the harmless characters of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.
The family’s home address was on the improbably named street, Hopespring Drive. Hopespring Drive could easily have been a stage set on the lot where Oz and Alice’s Wonderland productions were filmed.
Casey seemed a living model for the roles of Dorothy and Alice. I caught myself imagining Caylee’s killer as a living incarnation of the Mad Hatter. I knew for sure, the young mother’s psyche was disoriented from living in that world on Hopespring Drive.
**************
Thursday, July 3 (Day 18 of 31 days Caylee is “missing.”}
My journalist’s metaphor-laden memo was at first a provocation to me. I had to tell him that metaphors have limits. I resisted his perspective of this family because of my commitment to withholding any final judgments until all the evidence was in front of me and my readers. I admonished my reporter against going too far with his description of Cindy and George as evil parents. Then I had to bite my tongue and I was immediately tested by having to read the mind-blowing message Cindy dropped into her first social media account posted on July 3. It was two weeks after Caylee’s voice was silenced in her home on Hopespring Drive.
I absorbed her social media comments in the context of the case history our team compiled. Cindy’s message and its context were truly an Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz moment for Cindy, the Anthony family, and now myself and my readers. I had to admit Cindy confirmed my reporter’s belief that she was alpha — the person leading the family in her universe.
I remembered a note I made in my diary that Cindy and George’s reaction to Caylee’s birth seemed to trap Casey in the eye of an Oz-like tornado. In Oz, Dorothy finds herself transported by a tornado into a parallel universe. When she awoke it was to find a reimagined reality. I had to admit that now it seemed like the comparisons my reporter made between Hopespring Drive and Oz’s Emerald City were not so far off. They seemed incredibly right on. The Anthony home was for sure, a parallel universe.
Without wanting to, I was transported by Cindy’s social media post of July 3 into the family’s land of Oz, and I was carried along by alpha’s words. It was the Hopespring Drive express. Before I could finish reading, I expected to see Dorothy’s dog, Toto, jump into Cindy’s arms.
I re-read her social media post several times before finally realizing how the obvious becomes easy to overlook in a parallel universe, especially with this family.
I had to get my head around the obvious. Cindy’s post was not messaging Casey. The undisputed family alpha was shaming her daughter on social media, and her target audience was law enforcement, and the public in that order, with a nod to the national media who were always interested in what she had to say.
It is hard to interpret the words in her post as anything but a full-on smackdown and frontal attack against her daughter. Perhaps, I thought to myself, Cindy already knew Caylee was killed by a family member in her home on June 16. Perhaps, she decided, now had to be the time for Casey to be arrested for that crime. Perhaps Cindy was setting Casey up. My reporter had been insisting Cindy was Hopespring Drive’s incarnation of the dark characters in Oz and Wonderland.
My reporter said having Casey arrested for Caylee’s homicide gave Cindy a twofer. She intended for Caylee and Casey to be gone from her universe. Was this social media post the ultimate narrative that finally would succeed in getting Casey out of George and Cindy’s lives? She was telling her mother, Shirley, that is what she wanted, since the day Caylee was born.
Her post spelled out what Cindy planned to say to a family court judge for years. Alpha was well-traveled down the path toward defining Casey as unfit to be a mother. I asked my reporter to add his perspective to the meaning behind Cindy’s messaging. He sent me a summary memo with a full evaluation of Cindy’s stream-of-consciousness post.
Cindy’s Social Media Posts on My Space
Writer’s Current Mood: “Distraught”
Text excerpts are from Cindy’s Social Media Post (italicized).
Thursday, July 03, 2008
My Caylee is Missing — Posted by Cindy Anthony
Cindy’s social media post: “She came into my life unexpectedly, just as she has left me. This precious little angel from above gave me strength and unconditional love. Now she is gone, and I don’t know why. All I am guilty of is loving her and providing her a safe home.”
Reporter’s Memo: Cindy had her brain picked by the lead prosecutor, Linda Drane-Burdick, who tried to understand what was behind her phrasing in the title of the post: “My Caylee is Missing.” Cindy was telling everyone, including prosecutors, that until she called the police on July 15, she never worried about Caylee’s safety. She said she never thought that Caylee was “missing.” Why was she writing this post and then waiting for weeks before calling the police? The prosecutor asked Cindy that very question, upfront. This reporter never believed Cindy was being truthful with law enforcement.
Lead Prosecutor Linda Drane-Burdick: “But were you very worried about the whereabouts of your granddaughter, Caylee? Because Casey wasn’t letting you see Caylee, right?”
Cindy: “No I wasn’t worried about where Caylee was, except on July 15th …” (Flag #36)
Lying was never a problem for anyone in the Anthony family. But what Cindy knew and when she knew it, was critical for detectives to nail down whether they had any chance of convicting Caylee’s killer in a trial. Why? Cindy knew everything but said nothing. That was her model in these interviews.
Cindy titled her post “My Caylee is Missing.” Right away, the significance of her possessive pronoun “My Caylee” was apparent. “My” was saying to the world that the story of what happened to Caylee belonged to Cindy, she was alpha. Being alpha and controlling the narrative of what happened to Caylee was important to Cindy and so she had to take the risk by making a public admission that she knew Caylee was “missing.” This reporter wondered, what was Cindy up to?
Months after Caylee’s body was found. she was subpoenaed to give a deposition to a private attorney from the John Morgan Law firm in Orlando. She was tense throughout her videotaped interview. [1]
Mitnick (Morgan’s private attorney). “So, during the 31 days when Caylee in your mind was missing ….”
Cindy: “…in that 31-day period, Caylee was not missing in my mind.”
Mitnick: “Okay, there came a point by July 3 at least that you thought she was missing.”
Cindy: “No, I did not believe Caylee was missing until July 15. If I thought Caylee was missing before July 15, I would have called 911 before July 15.”
Attorney Mitnick: “You had a Myspace account did you not?”
Cindy: “Yes I did.”
Attorney Mitnick: ”And (on July 3) you posted something on My Space.”
Cindy: “I posted it for Casey’s benefit only because I was trying to get her to be my friend and read it.”
Cindy often found herself lying under oath. This time, she claimed her post was the only way she had to tell Casey about her concerns for Caylee. But Casey called her multiple times every day during the 31 days Caylee was “missing.” Cindy never mentioned any of those concerns in her post to Casey during their daily phone calls.
It is impossible to believe Cindy told the truth about her role in the coverup of Caylee’s homicide. She hid what she knew about Caylee’s homicide in the final weeks and months of the greatest hoax in American criminal history. It was apparent Cindy trashed her daughter publicly for law enforcement’s consumption. Could she be setting up her daughter, Casey, to be arrested, charged, convicted, and executed — if that is what prosecutors and the jury wanted? What Cindy wanted was to protect Caylee’s killer, and it seems the killer and her husband had the same name — George.
Linda Drane-Burdick: “On July 3rd. Yesterday when we were speaking, you referenced going onto Myspace.”
Cindy: “Correct.”
Linda Drane-Burdick: “Did you create your Myspace page or profile and then immediately start writing?”
Cindy: “Yeah. I did it all in one night. And then I believe I only went back to it, like, the next day or the following day to see if I had an answer. I don’t even think I referenced that to her when I spoke to her on the phone, about My Space.”
Linda Drane-Burdick: “And you believed Caylee was with Casey this entire time? Okay.“
Cindy was getting close to the end of her rope. It was obvious to detectives Caylee was killed by someone in her family, and they were now beginning to suspect Cindy was part of the coverup. She essentially admitted that in her social media post.
Attorney Mitnick: “And what was the date of that posting?”
Cindy: “July 3.”
Attorney Mitnick: “What is the title of the posting?”
Cindy: “My Caylee is Missing.”
Attorney Mitnick: “Okay, is it fair to say that in your mind when you wrote this, ‘Caylee was missing …’”
Cindy: “ …No.”
Attorney Mitnick: “Okay, ‘My Caylee is Missing’ doesn’t mean what it says.”
Cindy: “ …No.”
Cindy’s Myspace post was a smoking gun that reveals the tension she was under psychologically. During the time Caylee was missing, Cindy’s concern was not for Caylee’s whereabouts, it was to find and arrest Casey who was hiding out someplace with her new boyfriend, Tony. Cindy’s anger toward Casey is key for understanding her motives as she went about tracking Casey down to have her arrested for Caylee’s “disappearance.” Her endgame was not to find a “missing” Caylee or have a talk with her daughter. Casey was calling her every day for a month. Cindy had bigger fish to fry. Cindy became the alpha predator, and the prey was the daughter who was hiding and running away from her.
Cindy used her post to remove any remaining credibility Casey needed to call upon when she brought her claims of George’s abuse to law enforcement. The police were not going to want to investigate their chief witness (George) based on claims from the person they were charging for Caylee’s murder. Detectives were confident of a conviction — with a death penalty. Casey was a low-hanging fruit for prosecutors to harvest.
(Next paragraph) Cindy’s social media post: “Jealousy has taken her away. However, there are limits when one is betrayed by the one who she loved and trusted the most.” Jealousy from the one person that should be thankful for the love and support I gave to her. A mother’s love is deep, however, there are limits when one is betrayed by the one who she loved and trusted the most.”
Reporter’s Memo: “Cindy melodramatically repeated how deeply she felt Casey betrayed her. The lead prosecutor had a hard time reconciling Cindy’s narrative with the investigation. Detectives knew Cindy was non-supportive of Casey’s pregnancy and made persistent attempts to give Caylee away to anonymous foster parents throughout the two years Caylee was alive.”
For any investigator, there is an obvious question. What made Cindy think Casey was jealous of her? Because Casey announced to the family George was her baby’s father. That threatened Cindy’s marriage. In Cindy’s world, a child threatening her marriage was a betrayal. Cindy’s marriage to George was everything to her.
In a home where parental sexual abuse occurs, and the abuser’s spouse functions as an enabler for her husband, jealousy issues between mother and daughter are common. I believe what Cindy called betrayal was really “her” jealousy of Casey. An abuser’s spouse will become jealous of her daughter for being the object of her husband’s attraction.
That explained Cindy’s festering hostility towards Casey. And it began when she first learned Casey was pregnant. I was not unmindful of Cindy’s physical attack on her daughter hours before Caylee’s death. Psychologists would consider whether Cindy’s hostile feelings toward Casey may have been acted out against Caylee. Their term for that is “transference.”
(Next paragraph) Cindy’s social media post: “A daughter comes to her mother for support when she is pregnant, the mother says without hesitation it will be ok. And it was. But then the lies and betrayal began. First, it seemed harmless, ah, love is blind. A mother will look for the good in her child and give them a chance to change. This mother gave chance after chance for her daughter to change, but instead more lies more betrayal. What does the mother get for giving her daughter all these chances? A broken heart. The daughter who stole money, lots of money, leaves without warning and does not let her mother now speak to the baby that her mother raised, fed, clothed, sheltered, paid her medical bills, etc. Instead tells her friends that her mother is controlling her life and she needs her own space. No money, no future. Where did she (Caylee) go? Who is now watching out for the little angel?”
Reporter’s Memo: Cindy swoons into the melodramatic again by calling up how deeply she feels the unfairness her child visited upon her. How? By getting pregnant with George’s baby? Perhaps.
Cindy packed a lot into this third paragraph of her post. She felt betrayed for sure. She lays out everything negative she can think of about Casey and says it all publicly. Cindy paid Casey’s expenses for two years to buy her daughter’s silence about George. Put another way, Cindy earned protection for George by investing in Casey to keep quiet after she threatened George with going public with her accusations that he was Caylee’s biological father. Whenever Cindy was faced with a choice to protect Casey or George, she chose George.
In terms that a detective would understand, Cindy spills her guts. Then for good measure, she publicly demeaned her daughter for having no money and no future.
Cindy pens the rhetorical question, “Where did she go, who is watching out for her?” That worry about Caylee’s safety and well-being was something Cindy was denying she felt to the lead prosecutor under oath.
Her post was written in a literary moment when she was not feeling pressured by a prosecutor’s questions. Her professed worry about Caylee’s safety in the post is informative. I can’t get past the training I have in critical thinking — don’t overlook the obvious. If Cindy didn’t know Caylee was dead when she wrote this post, then why didn’t she first reach out to the ever-present Zanny anytime during the 31 days Caylee was “missing.” Cindy said it never occurred to her to call Zanny. Why? Because Cindy knew Zanny wasn’t real. Nobody would pick up the phone.
Cindy pretty much lays an ass-whipping on her daughter in the only social media blog she ever posted mentioning Caylee or Casey. I found it odd that Cindy wondered who was watching Caylee. She asked, “Where is she?” These are the questions any family except the Anthonys would ask the police 24 hours after not seeing their infant granddaughter. Waiting 31 days and not seeing or hearing the voice of their two-year-old raises serious suspicions about Cindy.
She had a temper, a violent temper, and it boiled over on several occasions as the family’s parallel universes collapsed in on her. She assaulted and choked Casey just hours before Caylee’s homicide. Someone with Cindy’s keystroke profile was home within minutes of Caylee’s homicide. If that was Cindy, she was searching for ways to kill someone with “foolproof suffocation.”
Thinking about Cindy’s resentment of Caylee made me shudder when I asked if Cindy was home when Caylee was killed and if was it Cindy searching for “foolproof suffocation” on the family computer when Caylee was killed. It’s hard not to conclude that Caylee became collateral damage long before she died. One question suddenly seemed relevant. Did Cindy know everything about how Caylee was killed on June 16? When, and by whom? And did Cindy say nothing?
A defense attorney would challenge claims Cindy made in her post that she never hesitated to support her daughter’s pregnancy. That would be easily refuted by asking Cindy’s brother Rick to be a witness under oath. Cindy didn’t support or even recognize Casey’s pregnancy until the baby was about to be delivered with no prior doctor’s care. It is easy to overlook and almost forget that Cindy was a working RN. She was trained in pediatrics. She knew more than she told detectives. How much more?
Author’s note
I am the reporter for the Casey Anthony story. I teach in the capacity of a Florida Bar-certified instructor to explain this case and the accused’s subsequent acquittal. My students are criminal defense lawyers and state prosecutors, This narrative nonfiction book has two narrators, one is a character found in the files of law enforcement. But that character was a fake person used by the family as an alibi to kill a child.
I made this family’s (non-existent character) Zanny, my primary narrator. To be clear, the primary narrator, Zanny the nanny, is found throughout family interviews with detectives. Those interviews describe Zanny as a member of their family. But she never existed, except as a convenient alibi for this family who had to hide their crimes, including their two-year-old child’s homicide. The family never told the truth to law enforcement.
As a result, their alibi becomes the perfect person to reveal the family’s coverup and the killer’s name. At the end of the story, in the final chapter, Caylee’s memory may find justice.
