ID's Casey Anthony: The Real Story: What happened to Caylee Anthony?

Investigation Discovery will debut Casey Anthony: The Real Story Part 1 on November 18, at 8:00 pm ET, depicting the 2008 disappearance and subsequent death of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony. The synopsis of the upcoming series says:

"Exploring the Caylee Anthony case; new interviews with Caylee's grandparents detail the events surrounding the two-year-old's tragic death."

Caylee went missing on a summer day in July 2008 and her remains were found months later in December in a wooded area close to her home. Casey, who was arrested a day after her two-year-old went missing on child neglect and false information charges, was found not guilty in her daughter's murder case after prosecutors failed to find any solid forensic evidence against her.

In 2011, Casey was first charged with the child's murder, however, in a contentious court decision, she was eventually declared innocent. Often described as "The Most Hated Mom in America," Casey Anthony was sentenced to four years in prison on false information charges.

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What happened to two-year-old Caylee Anthony?

Casey Anthony was 19, when her daughter Caylee was born on August 9, 2005. While the father of the child remains unidentified, Casey revealed to a psychiatrist that she was impregnated at the age of 18 while unconscious at a party and had no memory of the event.

In 2008, Casey left her parents' home after an argument with her mother, taking her two-year-old daughter along, and started living with her then-boyfriend Tony Lazzaro. However, in mid-July, Casey's mother Cindy Anthony allegedly called 911 and reported that her grand-daughter had been missing for a month. At the time, authorities failed to understand why the mother did not file a missing report.

Casey alleged that her daughter was with babysitter Zenaida Gonzalez, also known as "Zanny," a piece of information that soon proved to be false. Authorities also discovered that Casey lied about having a job at Universal Studios when they escorted her to the supposed workplace. She provided authorities with false information which was considered an obstruction of the investigation.

Hundreds of people, along with law enforcement, then participated in the search for Caylee Anthony over the next few months, in hopes of finding new leads in the case. The missing person investigation resulted in Casey's October 2008 indictment on seven felony counts, including first-degree murder, to which she pleaded not guilty.

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Where were Caylee Anthony's remains found?

In December 2008, Caylee's skull and bones were found in a wooded area close to George and Cindy's home. The lip area was sealed with duct tape that had a faint heart-shaped mark on it, as if a heart-shaped sticker was once adhered on it. The body parts were found inside two garbage bags that also contained children's clothing, a Winnie the Pooh blanket, and a child's pull-up diaper.

During Casey Anthony's controversial trial, the prosecution alleged that the accused wanted to free herself from parental duties and therefore killed Caylee by duct-taping her mouth and nose, causing her to suffocate, after using chloroform to knock her out. They also alleged that before ultimately disposing of the two-year-old's body in the woods "like she was just another piece of trash," Casey stored the body in a trunk for a few days.

However, the defense argued that Caylee Anthony died after accidentally drowning in the family's swimming pool and that the accused's father disposed of the body. Despite forensic tests revealing that the hair found in Anthony's car trunk was "microscopically similar" to those found on Caylee's hairbrush, the report was unable to prove with certainty that the hair belonged to the victim.

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Casey Anthony: The Real Story Part 1 will air on ID on Friday, November 18, 2022.