Investigative Analysis of the Death of Caylee Anthony

Crime Scene Behavioral Analysis

Victimology:

Caylee Anthony was a 2 year old brunette with brown eyes. She was able to walk, she could speak a limited amount, and she had a beautiful smile. She was at the age where personality begins to develop and children begin to become their own person. The age where their eyes are still innocent and their hearts sweet and caring, never hardened by experience or hardships of life. The time where you can sit with the child and be uplifted by her jubilance.

She lived with her mother, Casey, and grandparents, Cindy and George. Her grandparents played a fairly active role in her upbringing. They lived with her, supported her, and loved her. The identity of her father is unknown. The obvious corollary to that is her mother got around. She even told her friends and family that the guy died in a 2007 car crash. That means that she had enough new lovers at any given time for her family and friends to not be surprised to know them. Given the age and the essentially single parent status of Casey it was probably a burden on her mother to raise her child.

With the presence of the histrionic personality disorder established in the Differential Diagnosis portion, this burden was met with the thrill of being able to show off her new baby to anyone and everyone. This gave her the attention she so heavily craved. The problem with this, the problem in so many cases like this, is that the attention is short lived and thus brought her to need more. It was like an addiction for her. The attention was beginning to veer away from her and starting to turn towards Caylee. This made her sweet, innocent, daughter, no longer just a burden, now, but an obstacle as well. She began longing for public focus, feeling invisible. Her parents were also interested in Caylee’s best interests at an increasing rate. She no longer felt like “Daddy’s little girl.” The amount of stress was building, and something had to be done.

The Woods:

In the woods they found Caylee’s body in a Whitney Design laundry bag inside of multiple garbage bags. There was duct tape as well in the bag. Not too much, but enough to cover the mouth and nose of a two year old girl. An FBI technician also claimed that he saw evidence of a heart sticker on the duct tape before swabbing the duct tape, which disintegrated the sticker’s residue. This claim is very trustworthy in my opinion, as the FBI is more selective than Harvard and has one of the best forensics labs in the world. Those technicians don’t claim anything unless they actually saw it. The location is also highly relevant to any type of analysis of the scene. This body was not found for almost 3 years. To be able to hide a body that well a person must be a local resident.

The Duct Tape:

The first and most obvious conclusion one can deduce from the duct tape is that the killer is a female. Not to be sexist, but no man that I know would have duct tape with heart stickers on it. While hearts do make a person feel more pretty, they are generally not associated with masculinity. The other thing that this tells is a bit more subtle. The fact that her murder weapon was not knife or gun, but a bit of duct tape (and chloroform as it was later discovered) tells me that the UNSUB had an emotional connection with the victim. This further tells two things. First, it tells us that the killer is no psychopathic due to the fact that they know they wouldn’t have the heart to draw blood from the child. Second, it narrows down the suspect pool to a very small amount of people allowed to interact with Caylee. Nowadays, 2 year old children are well protected from people outside the family meaning that it is highly likely that a family member was the one to commit the murder. I want to make one thing clear. This does not mean she killed Caylee in a more “humane” way. Caylee could have woken up in that garbage bag wondering why she couldn’t breath, why she couldn’t see, why her mother wasn’t there to protect her when she needed protection the most. Her last moments were moments of suffering.

The Location:

This narrows down the geographical area in which the offender might reside. The killer was local to the area. She knew where people never go and where to dump the body so it wouldn’t be found. The murder was premeditated, as the body was relocated to an area with little foot traffic in a short enough time that nobody noticed.

The Garbage Bags:

This seems like the most interesting piece of the puzzle at first. Then upon thinking of it, it doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t know. The only reason to use so many garbage bags is wanting to be as far away from the body as possible. This tells us that the person felt remorse and empathy enough to realize they had killed an actual human being and to feel bad for it. This means the killer is, again, not psychopathic. It also speaks to that connection that has already been established. Killing a person is always rough, but killing a person you know tends to set people over the edge with remorse.