“You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion.” Redheaded Riter
“What has become quite clear is that the "Dark Triad"-- which consists of the combination of Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, and subclinical psychopathy-- is an overarching trait that everyone has to some degree. Unfortunately, some people just have a lot more of it than others.”
"You realize there are folks out there who want to do crazy things, like fillet people open, pour salt on them, and feed their legs to the piranhas," Judge Belvin Perry said.Last night at dinner, in a popular, crowded restaurant, I watched a woman look down at the baby carrier she had set next to her on the booth seat. The new mother’s face was blank, an expression that didn’t seem to change from when she was looking at the menu to when she was looking down at her baby. At one point, she reached into the carrier to retrieve a dropped pacifier and reinsert it into her baby’s mouth, then returned to focus on the menu.
It was the blank, neutral expression on this woman’s face that startled me. I remember when I had my son and how difficult it was for me to peel my eyes off of him long enough to do anything. I remember when his eyes met mine how it would warm me from the inside out and how much I smiled into those beautiful blue eyes of his. For me, my son was never excess baggage, a chore, an inconvenience or an afterthought. I know what it feels like, and can recognize a mother/child bond – and when that bond doesn’t exist. As uncomfortable as it was to acknowledge right then and there, I got the distinct feel that the woman in the restaurant lacked in the mother/child bond department. A small smile, a sigh, relaxed shoulders, anything as small as that would’ve waylayed my initial impression, but they never came.
This got me thinking about the Casey Anthony acquittal and the resulting mob uproar at the failing of justice for little Caylee. I got caught up in the daily trail news stories as the trial unfolded 3 years after Caylee’s disappearance, and found what was sorely lacking in the evidence was what happened when. So today, I set out to search through all the history as related by the Orlando Sentinel, and that led me to a blog that was nothing but a collection of stories related to the case, ending with the last story on Nov 3, 2009. Perhaps because I have an outsider’s perspective, so to speak, because I didn’t follow the story from the beginning through the last 3 years, my goal was to assess based on my own observations.
Oy, what a flipping circus! Truth be told, I didn’t find the first ever article that broke the story, but something tells me that a reporter, whoever that was, had red flags going off in his or her head enough to follow along closely as the events of searching for Caylee Anthony unfolded. Right away, it’s clear that how much the media barreled itself into the chain of events had a huge impact in how all the story’s players behaved.
But, what the media could never effect was what happened before Caylee disappeared. The photo above, to me, speaks volumes and it shows that mother/child bond I spoke of. No matter what sort of person Casey Anthony was or is, she bonded with her child, and her child bonded with her. When a mother bonds with her child, that bond is a physical one. It’s instinctual. No matter what the mother is doing at the time, no matter how engrossed, if her child even breathes differently, she will immediately check to see if the child is OK. There isn’t a choice. The guts will tighten and roll and the body will attend to that child. This bond can’t be faked, and it can’t be hidden. And, there it is, captured in that photo. Sorry folks, but that is real evidence.
Now, before you go off and hang me out to dry, hear me out. The burning question remains: What happened to Caylee Anthony? Who did what to her? How did she die? Since investigators could come up with nothing solid, we may never know. But, I suspect that there is a lot more that never made it into news stories throughout this drama.
Photos say more than all the articles combined, mainly because they aren’t interpreted by someone else. The facts left too many huge, gaping holes in the chain of events leading up to Caylee’s disappearance. But, based on the photos that are readily found on a simple Google image search, I can propose an alternate story that just might be more believable than Casey Anthony knocking Caylee out with chloroform and taping her nose and mouth shut to suffocate her.
Since the beginning, the George and Cindy took advantage of the media frenzy and played it up to the hilt. They created a web site, they had tshirts made up to match the posters, and they weren’t just your run-of-the-mill, hand-drawn kind; they were professional jobs. Every photo of the main players showed them wearing a Help Find Caylee tshirt, even court photos. But, in all the photos, George Anthony’s face showed the same expression, or lack of it, no matter if he was grappling with a demonstrator or sitting in court. Cindy’s face was often in an expression of disgust or raw anger, probably the most dramatic one in the bunch. Most of all, the photos of George and Cindy and Casey were everywhere and often. They did nothing to stay out of the shot of photographers.
We used to call it “reverse psychology.” Instead of appealing for privacy, they opened their doors wide as if to say, “See? I have nothing to hide,” thinking that if they acted like that, no one would actually dig deep enough to find what they’ve hidden in plain sight. The glaring clue to this theory is Jose Baez’s assertion that George Anthony was a pedophile, something he inserted into the murder trial but never proved and never pushed to prove. Where did he get that idea? Incarcerated several times during the last 3 years, Casey was rarely visited in jail by George, and only a few times by Cindy. This is not uncommon in families where a father sexually abuses a child, a mother denies the abuse happening right under her nose and shuns the child accusing the father. Only now, George lost interest in Casey years ago but started in on Caylee. That puts Casey in the position of the one doing the denying, but more likely repressing the signs of George starting to explore Caylee the way he had done her when she was little. The mixed, conflicting emotions throw everything into stark relief, and, like Baez said, causes all sorts of bizarre behavior.
I found no indication of guilt or grief in photos of George, typical of a narcissist that has decided that pretty little girls exist to please him. What I think happened is that he took that first step in sexually assaulting Caylee and perhaps confronted by Casey, knocked them both out with chloroform, drowned Caylee, and when Casey came to again, convinced her that she was the one who killed Caylee and they now had to hide her body to hide evidence of his molestation. A narcissist’s fear is being perceived as less than perfect to anyone, and now he had complete control over Casey for his past and present molestations by framing her for Caylee’s death.
Is this possible? Maybe. Is it probable? Maybe. Someone, somewhere knows what happened to Caylee, and maybe some day, Caylee will have justice.
In the mean time, take a good look at what your own reactions are to this horrible case and find out why you feel the way you do. What parts of your own life’s experiences play a part in those feelings? Perhaps your feelings of anger and hatred have a basis that is not Casey Anthony, though her story let you let those feelings loose. That those feelings are flowing at all is a good thing for you. Now, just get them aimed at their true source.
