Caylee Anthony – killed for child pornography?

Child advocate Wendy Murphy has a compelling piece about the Casey Anthony acquittal entitled “Not Guilty Verdict is the Right Result – But We’re Not Done Yet.”

Murphy argues that “Justice for Caylee is still possible, notwithstanding the acquittal, if people call for full disclosure of the entire investigative file – including an unsealing of the evidence thus far hidden from public view. Release of the photographs of Caylee that were seized from the Anthony home and placed “under seal” by the court would be a good place to start.”

Law enforcement may have discovered “sexualized” images of Caylee on the Anthony family computers which were placed under seal to avoid prejudicing the jury. Murphy believes that “The style of Caylee’s death was more mob hit than parental homicide.”

Murphy’s most powerful argument for the Caylee Anthony child-sex-ring-victim theory is:

In fact, while a child might die after having her mouth taped shut, the most rational view of the duct tape evidence suggests the child died before the duct tape was applied and that the tape was meant only to hold in decomposition fluids. When a dead body beings to decompose, fluids emanate from places like the nose and mouth, and they emit putrid odors. The best way for a killer to delay detection is to seal the nose and mouth.

It’s certainly possible that at age 19, a high school dropout like Casey with no experience as a killer, nonetheless knew how to seal a dead body like a master murderer. And it’s true that her failure to report Caylee missing for more than a month is powerful evidence of her consciousness of guilt. The question is – guilt about what? It’s just as possible Casey did not kill her child; that she was afraid to call the cops – and that her fear was related to those sealed photographs.

As Casey’s brother Lee testified at trial, Casey was told that Caylee was taken from Casey to “teach her a lesson”. If, as I wrote in an earlier column, Casey knew the people who had Caylee, and stayed quiet in the hope they would give her child back, her failure to report Caylee missing makes sense.

Child pornography can be a big business which is much cheaper and safer than drug smuggling or human trafficking. A vulnerable mother with a drug debt and a small child is the perfect target for child pornography producers. There are hundreds of cases in which parents “sell” their children for drugs or cash. The children of prostitutes often end up involved in prostitution and child pornography. It’s tragically easy to dispose of the “evidence” in a country where hundreds of thousands of children go missing each year.

Murphy has surprisingly taken some heat for her theory, but anyone who knows the reality behind the sordid world of child pornography and exploitation will find her analysis neither far-fetched nor hyperbolic.

In an interesting aside, the prosecutor in the Anthony case is also the prosecutor who vowed to send Masha Allen’s rapist, Matthew Mancuso, to the Florida death chamber. Mancuso initially faced eight counts of capital sexual battery which could have made him eligible for the death penalty. Despite the fact that there were pictures of him raping his 10 year old adopted daughter at Disney World, Mancuso was allowed to plead guilty to attempted sexual battery. According to Florida law, “criminal attempt” means a person who attempts to commit an offense but fails in the perpetration of that offense. Inexplicably, Mancuso was allowed to plead down from a death sentence to just 14 years in prison.

The Mancuso case also contained controversial sealed evidence in the form of two highly unusual video-taped depositions of Faith and Masha Allen. Shortly after the depositions, the Florida state’s attorney agreed to the lowest possible plea. Maybe having pictures as evidence doesn’t matter after all.

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