Archive for the ‘Casey Anthony Trial’ Category

The Defense has rested, and by the time this blog is posted, chances are, the Casey Anthony murder case will have gone to the jury. It’s been some time since a trial has created such intense public interest—maybe not since OJ Simpson. There are allegations of murder, sexual abuse, illicit romance; a veritable soap opera. In fact, it’s been said that if an enterprising author came up with a similar story it would never sell—it’s just too over the top to believe.

At the center of the circus is Casey Anthony, now 25, a young woman who has been proven to be an inveterate liar, accused of the most heinous crime—overdosing her 2 year old daughter with chloroform and leaving her body to rot in a wooded area where men go to relieve themselves and dump garbage.

Part of Casey’s defense has been that she was the victim of childhood sexual abuse by her father George and her brother Lee, which, her attorney claims, was covered up and taught her to live a lie. As a forensic handwriting examiner, I was interested to analyze samples of the major players in this drama, to see what could be revealed about their personalities.

Handwriting is not a crystal ball. It cannot determine whether Casey killed her young daughter, nor whether her father and/or her brother molested her. However, it does reveal a lot about behavior and motivations. If I had been unaware of the accusations, the signs of early sexual abuse were evident in her handwriting. That is, Casey’s handwriting is similar in many ways to the handwritings of other women who were the victims of childhood abuse.

The excessively large, overly rounded, crowded style are signs of a weak ego in someone who grew up believing that the world revolved around her. Never learning how to set proper boundaries gave her an unrealistic view of the way things work. There isn’t enough “air” in the writing, words are crammed up against each other, allowing for zero objectivity. There’s an inability to set boundaries between herself and others. As someone who sees only how things affect her, she fails to look at the big picture.

The lack of lower loops are an indicator for secrecy and denial, in that her desire and ability to look back at the past and learn from it are cut off. Her personal pronoun “I” is made like a stick figure, which is interesting in that the PPI represents the writer’s feelings about their parents. Generally speaking, we’re taught in school to make the I with an upper loop (feelings about mother) and a lower loop (feelings about father). When a writer cuts off the loops and makes a straight stroke, a bid for independence, pushing away the parents.

Casey’s handwriting has a very slight leftward slant and is “print-script,” a combination of printing and cursive. There’s a big conflict between her big emotions and her cool-heatedness, so she can be both highly impulsive and premeditated, depending on her mood of the moment—and because she doesn’t plan ahead, her life is lived in the moment.

Her signature is illegible, another form of covering up. She crosses through her last name—her father’s name—which is a way of denying him.

Turning to George Anthony’s handwriting, he has two styles (only the cursive is shown here). As a former police officer, he sometimes uses block printing, but he also writes in cursive.

His cursive style has a rather feminine appearance (gender is not conclusively revealed in handwriting), and the writing is very regular, with strong rhythm. Handwriting analysts look at contraction and release, which indicates how balanced the writer is in the way they express emotion and control emotion. George’s writing is strongly contracted, meaning that he holds everything inside, where it builds up until it explodes (which we have seen on the witness stand). This type of writing also say that image is extremely important to him. For anyone to see him as less than perfect and totally competent produces feelings of intense humiliation. People with this type of handwriting are usually willing to go to some lengths to keep up appearances.

Casey’s brother, Lee Anthony’s, handwriting slants in a variety of directions. The baseline, even though he’s writing on lined paper, bounces up and down, too. And the size of writing fluctuates.

All this variability points to tremendous inner conflict, emotional torment—and of course, with good reason in this case. It’s more than that, though. People who write like Lee tend to feel as if they didn’t get the nurturing they needed early in life. He’s very sensitive, quite different from his sister, who is about as sensitive as a rock. He may feel as if he never quite fit in, that he’s missing something that everyone else seems to have. He’s also impatient and can be quite critical and sharp-tongued—notice the i dots that look like dashes. Because he feels emotionally isolated, it’s probably hard for him to relate to others on their level, but of these three people, I would tend to believe what Lee says more than any of the others.

What about Jesse Grund, a former boyfriend of Casey’s? Surprisingly, perhaps, Jesse’s handwriting shows a reasonable overall balance.

There are no big red flags that stand out—maybe that’s why they broke up. He looks like a nice guy, and she needed someone who would feed her insatiable need for approval and attention that bordered on worship, but also someone who would abuse her, speaking to her inner fear that she’s not loveable.

Finally, let’s take a peek at Casey’s mother, Cindy Anthony.

Cindy’s handwriting says she’s what we might call a “good girl.” She wants to do the right thing, to keep things orderly and take care of the people she loves. After all, she’s the one who got this ball rolling by calling 911 and reporting little Caylee missing. Underneath the good girl, though, is a rebel that defiantly pops out every now and then—we see this in letters that suddenly grow large, such as the “k” in “know,” and the “s” at the end of “always.” Her signature is particularly interesting, with its little bow tie on the top of the “o” in “Mom.” Because of the area in which it appears, it could be interpreted as symbolically locking her lips and keeping her own secrets. And keeping secrets is something this family seems to be very good at.

Sheila Lowe is a forensic handwriting examiner who testifies in cases involving handwriting. She is the author of the Forensic Handwriting Mysteries (www.claudiaroseseries.com) and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Handwriting Analysis. Sheila also helped to produce the Handwriting Analyzer software—try it out free at www.writinganalysis.com For more information about handwriting analysis, visit her website: www.sheilalowe.com

Defense Attorney Jose Baez went for the gold yesterday, asking George Anthony if he’d ever molested his daughter Casey. Of course, Mr. Anthony denied the allegation. Then Baez asked if he’d admit to the horrible act if he did indeed commit it, and he added the fact that life in prison would be motivation for not admitting to the unspeakable act. Again, Anthony denied the allegation.

During this line of questioning, Casey Anthony’s image was also displayed onscreen. When Baez asked Casey’s father the question regarding molesting her, and he denied it, Casey shook her head slowly from side to side and tears filled her eyes. Now, it’s unusual to see Casey Anthony display her emotions. So this, to me as a former police investigator who relied heavily on reading body language, was important. George Anthony’s denial clearly struck a nerve with his daughter.

Obviously, I’m can’t and won’t say this event(s) occurred during Casey’s childhood, but Mr. Anthony clearly displays signs of guilt about something. What that guilt is about we may never know.

So what do we know about the father of accused murderer Casey Anthony?

1. The defense has accused him of discovering his granddaughter’s lifeless body in a swimming pool and then covering up that death. To do so, he’d have had to physically place the child’s body inside three bags and coldly discard her in the woods like yesterday’s garbage. Keep in mind, though, that someone, if not Mr. Anthony, actually was heartless enough to do just that.

2. George Anthony is a former police officer, someone trained to recognize details of crimes and crime scenes. He’s also testified that he knows the smell of death from his experience as a police officer. If the defense’s drowning theory is true, why would Mr. Anthony not attempt to revive his granddaughter? After all, police officers are trained as first responders and they’re all certified in CPR.

3. The accusations are out there that Mr. Anthony had an affair with River Cruz/Krystal Holloway. In fact, Jose Baez asked Mr. Anthony if he’s ever been intimate with Cruz. Anthony’s response was no, and that he thought the notion was funny. But, Mr. Anthony doesn’t deny, well, he can’t deny that he’d been to Cruz’s home on several occasions to “console” her. And these visits were without the presence of Mrs. Anthony. All during the time the family should have been focusing on locating their granddaughter. Mr. Anthony was a trained police officer, right? Perhaps he should have put those skills to work instead of “consoling” Cruz behind his wife’s back.

Also, Cruz says that Mr. Anthony told her that Caylee’s death was an accident that snowballed out of control. Normally, this would be a very damaging statement when introduced. However, Ms. Cruz seems to have quite the reputation as someone who’s less than truthful.

4. Anthony purchased some beer and went to a hotel room. He says it was his intent to commit suicide by drinking the beer and taking some prescription medication. Prior to doing whatever it was he maybe intended to do, Anthony called several members of his family and texted others of his intention. Soon after, police found Anthony at the Hawaii Motel in Daytona Beach. They knocked on the door, which Mr. Anthony opened, and, after speaking with the officers, he walked with them to their police cars. An officer then drove Anthony to the hospital where he was admitted for mandatory observation. Almost immediately after his release from the hospital, Mr. Anthony and his wife flew to California to appear on several TV shows. Upon their return, they were booked into the Ritz Carlton hotel, a stay paid for by media.

5. When Casey Anthony was first allowed out of jail on bond corrections officials met with the family to instruct them on the rules of house arrest, and there are several. For example, there can be no alcohol in the house, including shaving lotion and mouthwash, no drugs, and no weapons. And no weapons means NO GUNS. Any violation of the rules could send Casey back to jail. So what does dear old dad do? Well, he immediately goes out and buys a gun. He claims he was going to use the firearm to threaten people into telling him what happened to his granddaughter. Oddly, the corrections officials show up at the Anthony home a couple of hours after dad bought the gun. And they were there BECAUSE he’d bought the weapon. Pretty fast and coincidental timing, huh? How’d they know so quickly? It’s almost if dad himself tipped them off so they could remove Casey from the home. Not saying that’s what happened, but it’s an extremely bizarre coincidence. But bizarre is a word that goes hand-in-hand with this family.

Well, the defense is about to wrap up their case. Will Casey testify that her father helped dispose of Caylee’s tiny body? I suppose we’ll never know the truth surrounding this family. How could we? Their stories are as squiggly as a bucket of worms.

So what do you think? Is George Anthony a loving grandfather. Or, is he a lying, cheating, child molester?

Caylee Anthony