And what’s worse…it now appears that she could have been found in August. Read on for details.
Caylee Marie Anthony ~ August 9, 2005 – June 2008
Orlando, FL – Wow. Hell of a news day, huh? First, the DNA is back, and the tiny remains found in a trash bag last Thursday are, in fact, those of Caylee Marie Anthony. No real surprise, I suppose. I think we all knew when the body was found that it was hers. Who else would it be? No other tiny little girls with longish brown hair were even missing in Florida last week.
To add insult to murder, it now appears that Roy Kronk, the utility worker who found Caylee’s body, tried to notify authorities in August about the suspicious trash bag in the woods. Yes, the very same trash bag that turned out to hold the toddler’s remains. Three times on three different days, Mr. Kronk says, he called authorities. Yet it was not until the December 11 911 call (when Kronk reported that the bag had opened and a child’s skull had fallen out) that the remains were finally recovered – four months after Kronk made the first call to police.
Dr. Jan Garavaglia, Chief Medical Examiner of Orange County, held a press conference today in which she said that Caylee’s remains were primarily bone, and that in fact the entire skeleton was not present in the bag, which was damaged when recovered. Some of Caylee’s tinier bones had been found in a one-acre area around the dump site, and Dr. G. said that some of those bones were pebble-sized. She ruled Caylee’s death as “homicide by unknown means”, which basically means that babies don’t get taped up in trash bags by themselves.
For his part, utility worker and unsung hero Roy Kronk issued a prepared statement in which he said that he had spoken with law enforcement, but would not reveal any details about Caylee’s body. He did say that he’d tried on three occasions in August to alert authorities to the trash bag, which he thought looked suspiciously like it might contain a body.
Mr. Kronk first called on August 11 to report the bag, which he had described as not far off the road. But a sheriff’s deputy who responded to the call couldn’t locate Kronk, and left. So the next day, August 12, Kronk called a crime tip line. The tip was sent to the Orange County Sheriff’s criminal investigation division, but no real action appears to have taken place. One report says that a notation was made that the area had already been cleared by cadaver dogs.
Then, on August 13, Kronk called police the third time. He met with police, and a deputy went into the wooded area to investigate his claims, but didn’t find anything – although the report from that visit seems to indicate that the officer left before going deeply into the woods due to a “large snake” in the area. The scene was then cleared as a possible place of interest in the case. Oh, oops.
There is now an internal probe under way within the police department into how the matter was handled. Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary said he’s not ready to “throw anyone under the bus” just yet, but it seems likely that the four month time lapse could have resulted in a lot of lost evidence. Without much, if any, soft tissue remaining, a cause of death for Caylee is going to be much more difficult, if not impossible, to determine.
I’ve heard rumors that the defense is trying to paint Roy Kronk as a suspect, but Sheriff Beary squelched that this afternoon, saying that Mr. Kronk is not a suspect and is, rather, a concerned citizen who was following up his own investigation last week when he saw that the bag had been opened and the remains scattered.
In a sad little end note, the department released a photo – of what appears to be the book Caylee was reading in the last known video of her, taken within a day of her disappearance. The large yellow hardboard book was on the ground near the dump site, covered with leaves – just like the tiny body of Caylee Anthony.
What may be Caylee’s book is at the bottom of the picture toward the left.
Tags: body found, Casey Marie Anthony, Caylee Anthony, Caylee Marie Anthony, Child Murder, Cindy Anthony, George Anthony, Missing child, Orange County, Orlando
I think the tape was a key factor in determining it was a homicide, but whether it was placed before or after doesn’t give a cause of death. She may have been smothered, poisoned, mortally cut somewhere, overdosed, drowned, strangled…and I’m sure more possibilities exist. None of those necessarily would have left evidence on the bones, and several could have been done in a way that left little or no trace in any tissue that was recovered.
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