Cindy Anthony's hell

The peach doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Cindy Anthony proved that in court yesterday when she came within a hair’s breath of perjury.

Wonder, can a person inherit the ability to lie?

Or is that always a taught behavior?

Unless you’ve been in the hull of a submarine at the bottom of the deep blue sea as of late you know that Casey Anthony is on trial in Orlando for the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee. Caylee went missing in June, 2008 and her mother didn’t report it until 31 days later — and only then because her mama yanked her by the scruff of her neck and told her to tell her where Caylee was before she called the police on her wild-assed daughter.

Zanny the Nanny stole her, Casey said.

But that was back in 2008, before she apparently remembered that Caylee drowned in the family’s backyard above-ground pool. Why in the world anybody would ever need to hide an accidental drowning stretches the imagination of even the most trusting of souls, but then again, denial is the family trademark.

Casey’s brother testified that he did not attend the birth of his niece because when he asked his mother if his sister was pregnant both his mom and his sister denied it. Up until the week Casey delivered Caylee.

You can tell these people aren’t true southeners. In the south, getting knocked up is a rite-of-passage of sort. It would never occur to us to hide a pregnancy. A baby is a cause for celebration. And everybody knows in the South we are always looking for a reason to kill a pig and drink some beer. Lying-through-your-eye-teeth is definitely a trait the Anthony family carried with them to Florida when they moved off down South.

I was feeling pretty sorry for Cindy Anthony up until yesterday when she got up before that judge and jury and told those people that even though her time card said she was at work, she wasn’t at work. She was at home doing a Google search for the terms Chlorophyll and Chloroform.

The prosecutor liked to have had a stroke. Much of their case is built upon those Google searches, conducted in the months preceding Caylee’s death. Shortly before Casey’s first arrest in July 2008, her cell phone and laptop were handed over to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office computer crime squad. On Casey’s laptop was a cartoon drawing of a little girl starting at a teddy bear hanging from a noose, with the caption:

Why do people kill people, who kill people, to show people that to kill people is bad?

The image was in a folder last saved on July 8, 2008 — one week before her daughter was reported missing.

Did you type in the search bar: How to make Chlorofoam? the prosecutor asked Cindy on redirect.

I don’t remember, Cindy hemmed and hawed.

Did you type in the words: neck-breaking?

No. But there was a pop-up of a skater with the words neck-breaking, Cindy added, unprompted.

Why do people who are lying always do that? Give you more information than you asked for? And rarely, if ever, the information you are seeking?

It may very well be that the prosecution will lose this case. They have not been able to determine how Caylee Anthony died. Her body buried in the heat and humidity of south Florida was too degraded by the time it was recovered that following December.

The only question the jury really needs to consider is why would any mother wait 31 days before reporting her toddler daughter missing, unless she had killed her and knew why she was missing.

That’s the bottom line.

But trials aren’t always about truth, and juries are often denied access to a lot of the truth that would aid them in making reasoned decisions.

So perhaps Casey Anthony will indeed get away with murder.

Maybe she will come home, jubilant.

The Anthony family is caught up in a hell of their own making.

Cindy Anthony knows the depths a mother will go through to protect her children.

She also knows that if only Caylee Anthony had had such a mother, her granddaughter would still be alive.