Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods

The Murder Trial of Casey Anthony

Cindy Anthony Changes her Story

 

Casey mother's testimony was even more controversial. In the beginning, she testified that the day she had made the 911 call, on July 16th, George had brought home the car from the tow yard, which had a foul smell. "He opened up the windows and the hood and the trunk of the car."

The car, Cindy recounted, had sat in the garage with the trunk and all the windows and doors flung open, while George had been gone to work. Cindy had removed Casey's work purse and Caylee's backpack from the trunk of the car. She had sprayed an entire bottle's worth of Febreze in the car and had put dryer sheets in the car and trunk in attempt to get the foul odor out.

Cindy Anthony testifies
Cindy Anthony testifies

But, on a cross examination, the prosecution nailed her on inconsistent testimony. During her deposition, she had been asked about the dryer sheets, and had said, "I don't know why a dryer sheet would have been back there. I don't remember doing that." Now, on the stand, she claimed that she had been put on new anti-depressant medication and had not been able to recall all the details. Cindy excused herself,"It was very traumatic to me."

The prosecutor continued, "The reason that you sprayed Febreze was because of the unimaginable stench of that car. It stunk like, 'nothing you'd experienced in my life. Worse thing I had ever smelled in my life,'" they said, quoting her earlier deposition.

Another hole was punched in Cindy Anthony's testimony when she was questioned about the searches for chloroform and chlorophyll found on the family computer a few months before Caylee's disappearance. For the first time, she insisted that it was she who had performed those searches. "I also ran a few other searches, for acetone, hydrogen peroxide," she said.

She said she had also searched for "neckbreaking," because, she testified, she had seen a reference to a skateboarding video regarding a "neckbreaking feat."

The prosecution jabbed at her testimony: The timeframe during which she had been supposedly doing the searches didn't line up, as she had been recorded at work during that time. And, furthermore, they pointed out, the chloroform searches were done back to back with logins to a MySpace page. Cindy Anthony hadn't had a MySpace page and wouldn't for several months, until after Caylee had been pronounced missing.

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