The Basic Facts
A toddler disappears, but no one informs the police, least of all her attractive 22-year-old mother. One month later, the toddler’s grandmother, Cindy Anthony, calls 911 in a series of strange, then frantic calls. Cindy first accuses her daughter, Casey, of theft and wants to bring her in. (This apparently was a threat to try to get Casey to give information about what happened to the child. Although Casey did embezzle money from the grandfather’s trust account, no action seems to have been taken to arrest her for that deed.) A later call finally gets the police out to the home—the toddler has been kidnapped by a baby sitter! Only this story falls apart pretty quickly as soon as the police try to pin down the facts. The babysitter’s address is phony, the mother, Casey, doesn’t work at Universal Studios the place she told police (and her boyfriend) she did and none of her stories make any sense.

Police immediately suspect Casey as the perpetrator of the disappearance. But police always suspect family members. Sometimes they are right—many times they are wrong. However, in this case the main suspect, Casey, is so lacking in any motherly concern about her toddler that everyone immediately jumps to one conclusion—that she is the one who either murdered or kidnapped the child.

However, after Casey is finally jailed for a minor charge and the police declare her the main target, the grandmother, Cindy, suddenly changes direction. She now believes Casey is innocent and that someone else snatched the child. Her husband backs her up in this assertion. Did the husband pressure Cindy into supporting Casey’s ridiculous story? By this time, lawyers, bail bondsmen and hundreds of reporters are coming out of the woodwork. Where is the Anthony family getting the money to pay all these lawyers? A book or movie deal is rumored to be in the offing.

The story already has the elements of a best-selling mystery. Add to that these ingredients:

• Caylee was bright, pretty and personable. The videos of her playacting at reading a book or the stills of her at various ages, shows a happy, well-adjusted child.

• She came from a white, middle-class family. Her grandparents, at least, look like ordinary working people, neither trailer-trash poor nor overly wealthy. In short, they could be your neighbors down the street.

• There was the absolute mystery of why she was reported missing a full month after she disappeared. In fact, the kidnapping tale mirrors the convoluted story line of the recent movie, Gone, Baby, Gone. The mother, in that movie, was a self-absorbed slut who neglected her child while other family members were the only ones who were concerned about the tot’s whereabouts.

Reality crime has become an addiction on television. Witness Dateline and the CBS 48 Hour Mysteries which recreate interesting crimes. But there are other sociological and psychological features that make this story fascinating. Here’s my opinion about these “back stories.”

1. The Abortion/Adoption Factor. The toddler, Caylee, was what they called in the old days an illegitimate or an out-of-wedlock child. In modern parlance, one simply refers to the euphemism of a single mom bringing up the kid (although single moms can also be divorced or widowed).

What this means in reality, is that a 19-year-old girl showed up pregnant one day at her parents’ house. Not such an unusual occurrence nowadays. Since Casey did not admit that she was pregnant until she was seven months gone, there was no question of abortion. However, according to one of Casey’s friends, she did want to give the baby up for adoption. It was the grandmother, Cindy, who insisted that she keep the child and that the grandparents would take care of both of them.

Considering Casey’s complete lack of empathy when it came to her daughter’s whereabouts, the public was shocked and outraged by her attitude. I’m sure many a viewer had the thought: “If only she had let the child be adopted, some loving family would have brought her up!” We all know couples who have gone to Russia or China to adopt children because there are so few healthy children available in the U.S. This is one reason there is such public rage against Casey Anthony.

2. The Spoiled Brat Factor. When one hears the recordings of Casey talking to her mother, you hear the ever-present sound of irritation in Casey’s voice. No matter that she is in jail and that her own daughter is “missing”---what is bothering Casey is that her mother turned her in. And that people are more concerned with Caylee than with her.

It has also leaked out that Casey caused disappointment for her family before—she stole money, slept around very casually and probably caused her parents lots of grief before this tragedy ever occurred. Let’s face it, if Cindy Anthony had not sounded the alarm, everyone would have assumed that Casey took her toddler and lit out for parts unknown. Thousands of kids leave home each year, and if they are over eighteen, no police agency will search for them unless there is clear proof of foul play. Homeless shelters across the country are filled with young women who have left home while dragging a young child along. And thousands of grandparents take care of youngsters who have been unofficially left in their care while the kid’s mothers live their own version of “Girls Gone Wild.”

So there is this nagging fear in every mother of a 16 to 26-year-old that perhaps they were too slack in bringing the child up. Has 25 years of making self-esteem the most important factor in a child’s life resulted in a narcissistic, irresponsible generation? Which leads us to:

3. The “I’d Love You Even if You Were Jeffrey Dahmer” factor. Believe it or not, there was a time when children were banished from the family if they broke society’s norms. Back in the 19th century, a girl who came home with an illegitimate baby was sent out into the snow with the admonition, “Go, and never darken my doorstep again!” Those days are long gone, and society seems to have made a 180-degree turnaround. Nowadays, a parent is expected to support their offspring no matter how heinous the crime their child committed. I’m talking about America of course; in many other parts of the world family honor comes first.

But here we expect support from the family—to a degree. Did the Anthony family go so far as to hinder the police investigation once they decided to back Casey’s ridiculous story rather than follow their own gut feelings? We don’t know as of now. We only know that the pain of losing their granddaughter, who they obviously loved, will now be balanced against the shame they feel for having nurtured such a seeming monster of a daughter in their own household. So they may have to show family unity, whether they want to or not. And then there are all those lawyers who routinely expect supportive family members to sit behind the accused in the courtroom throughout a trial now matter what they really feel. In other words, the family has now become supporting cast members in the courtroom drama the American public has come to expect from every high-profile murder case.

With the discovery of a body, the case against Casey Anthony grows stronger. If there is a trial it may engender as much coverage as the O.J. Simpson case which has become the benchmark of reality courtroom drama. I suspect there will be no trial, but a plea bargain. But the public will still be engaged in arguments as to who is at fault in this whole story. And thousands of other missing child stories will be ignored because they do not contain those particular elements that make this one so compelling.