The public has a chance today to say goodbye to little Caylee Anthony, the Florida toddler allegedly murdered by her mother:

The funeral will be held in Orlando at 10 a.m. EST for the 2-year-old, whose remains were found in the woods near her home in December.

Thousands of mourners were expected to pack into the First Baptist Church of Orlando Tuesday morning for the service, which is open to the public and will be broadcast live on local television.

Many gathered outside the church more than an hour before the funeral was expected to begin.

And Casey Anthony is none too pleased about the public memorial service:

Caylee’s mother, Casey Anthony, will remain at the Orange County Jail. A jail spokesman said Anthony has not asked to watch the service on television.

Anthony said Monday she didn’t approve of the service, which was planned by her parents, George and Cindy Anthony.

“I still don’t want the public with cameras and everyone around for Caylee’s funeral service,” Anthony said in a prepared statement read by her attorney. “I can’t stop my parents from doing what they want. I truly hope it will help them.”

Oh hooray.  Yet more manipulation and mudslinging between the two primary women in this case.  Quite frankly, I find it amazing that Casey has managed to keep up appearances for so long now.  I’m also curious as to what Cindy will have to say at the service, if anything.  Perhaps she and George will decide it is better for everyone if they just keep their mouths closed…but I doubt it.

There are also some basic rules to follow if you are going to the service:

Q. Where is the First Baptist Church of Orlando?

A. 3000 S. John Young Parkway , which is at the intersection with Interstate-4.

Q. Who is allowed to attend?

A. The service is open to the public, but the Anthony family is reserving the right to refuse entry to certain people. California bounty hunter Leonard Padilla, who once helped bond Casey Anthony out of jail, is one of those not welcome.

Q. When will seating for the memorial open?

A. 9. a.m.

Q. What if the church’s worship center gets full?

A. Additional overflow seating may be available. If that’s the case, the attendees would watch the memorial service on a video feed, which will be available at OrlandoSentinel.com.

Q. Are still or video cameras allowed inside?

A. No. The use of cell phones, still or video cameras will not be permitted inside the building.

Q. What else is prohibited?

A. No purses, backpacks or bags will be allowed inside.

Q. Can Casey Anthony watch the memorial service on television?

A. It’s possible. She can request to watch television during the one hour per day she is allowed out of her cell, but as of Monday afternoon, she did not make a request to do so. Anthony does have a transistor radio, so she could listen to broadcasts of the service.

Oh, and to add to the mix, those wonderful people from Westboro Baptist Cult Church in Kansas are planning to show up:

Members of a controversial Kansas church known for protesting military funerals plan to picket Caylee Marie Anthony’s memorial Tuesday.

Westboro Baptist Church detailed its plans in a recent news statement, which concludes with the phrase “GOD HATES AMERICA.”

The Topeka church claims that U.S. troops killed in combat are God’s punishment for a nation harboring homosexuals.

Westboro Baptist Church is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

What are those lunatics going to try and accomplish?  There will be no deceased American soldiers for them to mock.  Oh wait, perhaps God hates little innocent toddlers too.  Do not get me started on these people.  Fred Phelps can no longer beat his own kids, so he sends people to beat up on everybody else’s.

All in all, it should be both an interesting and sad day.

The sorry, sordid mess that has become the Caylee Anthony murder investigation almost claimed another life.  George Anthony, grandfather of Caylee and father of murder suspect Casey, was found in a Daytona Beach hotel after texting suicidal messages to his family:

Law-enforcement’s rapid response and search for a despondent George Anthony early this morning saved his life, his lawyer just told the Orlando Sentinel.

Anthony, who reportedly sent several text messages to relatives suggesting that he wanted to end his life, was found alive in a Daytona Beach motel with what appeared to be a suicide note after his family reported him missing late Thursday.

“Had it not been for (law-enforcement), this might have been a different outcome,” lawyer Brad Conway said. “They deserve a huge thank you.”

It seems that George was reported missing after he didn’t show up for a scheduled meeting with his wife and lawyer, and everyone immediately became concerned:

Daytona Beach police took Anthony into custody under the Baker Act after finding him in a motel on South Ridgewood Avenue. The Baker Act allows authorities to hold someone at a mental-health facility for up to 72 hours while they are evaluated by physicians.

Anthony, 57, was taken to the Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach where he is being evaluated. A hospital spokeswoman said this morning Anthony was in stable condition and would be receiving a physical evaluation before being admitted to the hospital.

Anthony left his home on Hopespring Drive in east Orange County Thursday morning and failed to show up for a 4 p.m. meeting with his wife, Cindy, and Conway.

Beginning at about 11:30 p.m., Anthony began to send his family text messages. Conway wouldn’t disclose exactly what the messages stated, but said they “caused us great concern.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office was notified last night and the felony squad immediately began its search for George Anthony. Allen drove to the Anthony home to meet with Cindy Anthony. He left after George Anthony was located.

Orange County detectives were able to use pings from George Anthony’s cell phone to track him to Daytona Beach near Bethune Point, according to Daytona Beach police. Officers began searching for George Anthony’s black vehicle and spotted it at the Hawaii Motel in the 1300 block of South Ridgewood Avenue.

Chitwood, Daytona Beach’s police chief, spoke with George Anthony and convinced him to seek medical attention.

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel this morning, Chitwood said he and several officers had to knock on the motel room door several times before Anthony answered.

Anthony was well dressed, laid back and low-key. Chitwood introduced himself, shook Anthony’s hand and explained why he was there.

“(Anthony) basically said to us, you know, I just need to get away. I need to think things through. That’s why he was there,” Chitwood said.

Anthony was not agitated, but he did want the chief and other officers to leave.

“He just wanted to be alone,” Chitwood said.

But the chief explained to Anthony that because of the situation, they could not leave. Chitwood offered to drive Anthony in his unmarked car to the hospital. Anthony agreed.

On the way to the hospital, Chitwood said, Anthony commented to him, “You don’t understand, do you? You just don’t understand what this is like.”

In that sense, I agree with George.  It must be horrific to know that not only has your beloved granddaughter has been murdered, but that your own daughter, whom you have loved as any parent would, is accused of the crime.

One thing that has stuck out to me was the comment made by George to police when they found Casey’s car, which had been abandoned…George, as a former police officer, recognized the distinct smell of death which fouled the air around the car and that you could apparently smell from quite a distance away:

“I had bad vibes the very first day when I got that car,” the little girl’s grandfather George Anthony told investigators on July 24, adding: “I don’t want to believe that I have, have raised someone, and brought someone in this world that could do something to another person. I don’t want to believe that.”

The former cop told police that he was concerned about a familiar odor wafting from the trunk of his daughter’s Pontiac Sunfire. As a former investigator, he said, he recognized the smell of death.

George Anthony’s wife Cindy, who told the media the smell was that of decomposing pizza, noticed the odor in their daughter’s car too, he said in interviews with detectives.

“After we pulled inside the garage … her exact words were, ‘Jesus Christ what died?’” George Anthony told police. “That’s exactly what she said. But then she said it in a way, she says, ‘George, it was the pizza right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it was the pizza.’

“And that’s what I left it go at that, but, I’m sitting here as the grandfather, as the father, as George Anthony and as a guy who smelled the smell before years ago, and you just never forget it. I even stuck my nose down on it and I’m, I’m concerned.”

I realize that I’ve been as hard as anyone on the parents of Casey Anthony, and with good reason.  But I believe that of the two, George is the one who has not only harbored doubts about the authenticity of his daughter’s story, but who has publicly stated those doubts…unlike Cindy, who went from thinking the car smelled like a dead body to convincing herself it was just a rotted pizza, and then attempting to convince the rest of us as well.  While Cindy’s actions are still suspect to me, I’m thinking I was too hard on George.

I understand, as a parent, that you don’t ever want to believe that a child you raised could ever be accused of such a vicious crime, much less be guilty of it.  But while Cindy continued to delude herself, George seemed to waver between wanting to believe his daughter and admitting to himself the truth he had apparently figured out on his own.  He’s stated on various occasions that Casey is innocent, then he has shared with police his private fear that perhaps everything is not as it seems.

He’s had to deal with the conflicting feelings within himself, the enormous stress that has come with the global coverage of this case, the knuckle-dragging monosyllabic troglodytes which have showed up in the middle of the night to “protest”, the continual reminders of Caylee in his own home, the emotional machinations of Casey and her twisted tales, and undoubtedly many other things which we have no idea of.  It all seems to have come together and created a situation which George apparently found unbearable.  He’s lost his daughter, granddaughter, and any semblance of normality in his life…can you blame the guy for feeling as he has?

And in the middle of this whole manipulative spiderweb is Casey herself…

The Aug. 14 jailhouse visit between Anthony and her parents, George and Cindy Anthony, goes quickly from a pleasant exchange to tension once the subject of Caylee Anthony is raised.

• Cindy:We need to have something to go on.
• Casey:Mom, I don’t have anything. I’m sorry. I’ve been here a month. I’ve been here a month today. Do you understand how I feel? I mean do you really understand how I feel in this? I’m completely, completely out of the loop with everything.

Casey Anthony said she needs to get out to be able to help.

• Casey:There is nothing more that I can say or do until I’m home, and even then, I don’t know what I can do from that point, but I can at least do something other than sit on my butt all day and read or look up stuff for my case because that has to be my focus right now. That has to be my focus because it’s the only thing I can focus on.

Cindy Anthony then asked a more pointed question.

• Cindy:I was in Lake County two days ago.
• Casey:OK.
• Cindy:Is there anything there?
• Casey:Mom. Geez! I’m sorry. I love you guys. I miss you.
• Cindy:Alright sweetheart. Here’s dad. Hold on.
• Casey:No. I’m going to hang up, and just walk away right now because …
• Cindy:Please don’t.
• Casey:I’m frustrated. I’m angry, and I don’t want to be angry. This is the first time I’ve truly been angry this entire time, but I’m so beyond frustrated with all of this. I can’t even swallow right now. It hurts.
• Cindy:Just understand we’re all going in so many directions. We just want to go in the right one.
• Casey:W ell, I can’t point you in that direction when I’m literally at a standstill.

At one point in the conversation, Casey Anthony did express a desire to have Caylee back.

The conversation came on the very same week that meter reader Roy Kronk reported three times his suspicions about a bag along Suburban Drive near the Anthony home to law enforcement.

…who wants to be seen as a victim in her little manipulative play:

George Anthony tried to tell his daughter that she is in control and that her defense attorney works for her.

“I’m not in control over any of this,” Casey Anthony said. She complained about not knowing what’s going on.

“My entire life has been taken from me. Everything has been taken from me. You don’t understand.”

Anthony complained about not getting to talk to anyone except her attorney.

“I have no one to comfort me but myself,” she said.

Anthony told her mother that she wanted investigators’ help, but that the detectives needed to help her, too.

“I need to be looked at as a victim because . . . I’m just as much of a victim as the rest of you. And it hasn’t been portrayed that way.”

No, Casey.  You are not the victim.  Your innocent little daughter Caylee, however, was.  And your father almost was as well.  But hey, anything to get your manipulative little kicks, huh?  Wonder which man you’re going to pick from to “comfort” you this time?

We are a blog, not hard-hitting news. These are our opinions. GlossLip has continuing coverage of the disappearance of Caylee Anthony here.

Breaking news in the case of missing toddler Caylee Anthony…authorities have confirmed that the remains are hers:

“It is with regret that I’m here to inform you that the skeletal remains found December 11 are those of the missing toddler,” said Dr. Jan Garavaglia, the Orange County medical examiner.

The remains were confirmed to be Caylee’s through a DNA match, authorities said.

Garavaglia said the cause of death was homicide, but she could not determine how Caylee was killed.

Casey Anthony, 22, faces charges including first-degree murder in the June disappearance of her daughter.

Authorities said they called the jail where Anthony is being held to let her know about the discovery.

Caylee’s remains were found last week a half-mile from Casey Anthony’s parents’ home, in the area where a meter reader first directed police.

At the news conference, Garavaglia said that the remains were completely skeletonized and that no tissue was present. She said there was no trauma to the bones before Caylee’s death.

There is to be another news conference where the meter reader is expected to be identified:

At a separate news conference Friday, police are expected to identify the meter reader who, they said Thursday, called the department four months ago, directing them to the site of the remains three times.

At a Thursday news conference, Capt. Angelo Nieves, a Sheriff’s Department commander, said investigators were looking into whether the tips, called in August 11, 12 and 13, were properly followed up.

In one of those phone calls, the meter reader reported seeing a gray bag on the side of the road, Nieves said. On August 13, a deputy responded to the site and did a “cursory search” but found nothing, Nieves said.

Nieves said police were getting more information from the tipster and the deputy who responded to the tips. He said the department was investigating the “thoroughness” of the deputy’s response but would not identify the deputy.

The meter reader “is not a suspect,” Nieves said. “He is a credible witness.”

Nieves’ latest announcement is raising questions about whether police missed several chances to find Caylee’s remains.

The meter reader is not the only one, or the first, to have pointed police toward the site containing the remains.

KioMarie Cruz, Casey Anthony’s childhood friend, also told police to investigate the same wooded area near Hidden Oaks Elementary School a month before the meter reader, according to CNN affiliate WFTV.

In an interview with detectives, according to WFTV, Cruz said that she and Anthony “pretty much used to hang out there most of our time,” would “snack on food for hours” and went there to “get away from our parents.”

The Sheriff’s Department followed up on that tip, but the wooded area was covered in floodwaters, preventing a search. Nieves said the water may have been present at the time of the meter reader’s tips as well.

Nieves also said Thursday that searchers combing the site after the skull’s discovery had found “significant skeletal remains” consistent with those of a small child on the outer perimeter of the search area.

The area will be enlarged, and processing and searching of the site will continue, probably into the weekend, he said.

Hopefully now this poor child can have a decent burial and justice can move forward to put away the only person suspected in her death; and no matter what we might think about George and Cindy, they have now definitely lost their granddaughter.  They have my prayers as they grieve.

In what could turn out to be a total blunder by law enforcement, the meter reader who found a bag containing a human child’s skull in an area near the Anthony home tried three times in August to report the suspicious bag:

An Orange County utilities worker tried three times in August to alert law enforcement of a strange gray bag on the side of Suburban Drive near the home of missing Caylee Marie Anthony, a sheriff’s official said Thursday.

Three times, deputy sheriffs checked the tips with no results. When curiosity led the same utility worker back to the same spot last week, he found the remains of a small child.

Now, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office is trying to figure out what happened four months ago and how its deputies handled the calls. The tipster, who has not been publicly identified, is not considered a suspect and has been cooperating with deputies, officials said.

“We are attempting to be as thorough, as clear and as concise as possible with the information that we received. There was a window of opportunity, possibly …” Capt. Angelo Nieves said. “We had a deputy respond to this location.”

The meter reader “provided several phone calls to our Crimeline as well as our communications center,” the captain added during a late afternoon press conference. “We are currently following up on that sequence to determine the thoroughness of the response here to the scene.”

Over a three-day period in August, this meter reader attempted three different times to report what he felt was a suspicious-looking bag:

A sheriff’s official offered this outline of the three tips by the utility worker in August:

– On Aug. 11, the meter reader called the sheriff’s office communication center to report a bag on the “right side” of the road near the intersection of Suburban and Hopespring drives. The meter reader was not there when a deputy arrived. The officer cleared the scene.

– On Aug. 12, the worker called Crimeline, which collect tips on unsolved crimes. That information was documented and sent to a detective, who made a note that the area had been searched by a cadaver dog and the tip was closed out.

– On Aug. 13, after the worker called the communication center again, two deputies responded to the area — each arriving separately — and they met with the meter reader. At least one deputy checked the woods and cleared the scene for a second time.

“We will conduct an administrative follow-up to try to determine what occurred with the deputy when he responded out to the scene, why he handled himself how he did,” Nieves said.

I’d certainly hope so, although I have a feeling they will decide that the policeman did nothing wrong.  After all, a bag found in a wooded area in the relative vicinity of a missing child’s home couldn’t possibly warrant further investigation.  I mean, didn’t this deputy even poke the bag, or open it to look inside?  Even if it was just trash that someone had thrown out, at least it would have been a definitive conclusion.

At first glance, it seems that this guy has been cleared of any wrongdoing and is just a concerned citizen who followed this on the news, like the rest of us, and remained doggedly determined:

VAN SUSTEREN: FOX’s Phil Keating is live at the scene in Florida. Phil, this is a very strange coincidence, that this man — the meter reader who found the skull on December 11 also saw a bag in August. If it’s the same color bag, it’s less weird to me, I guess. But what can you tell me about this?

PHIL KEATING, FOX CORRESPONDENT: There are a lot of bags that were in those woods at the time when Caylee Anthony was reported missing. We even sent our own photographer in those woods, roughly 30 to 40 feet away from the present crime scene. You could see in that videotape there was a lot of litter, bags, trash, debris. This is an area which is known in the neighborhood as a place for teenagers to go get away from adults. An din fact, back in July, we spoke with one of Casey’s friends who told us when she was a kid, she would go back there.

So this gentleman, the county water meter reader, is one of so many in the Orlando area that are absolutely consumed with everything about this story about a missing child named Caylee Anthony. It has been on the news day in and day out here, not just the first month, but basically, until last Thursday. And it continues to be in the paper and broadcast nightly on the news. This is one of those many people who’s following every inch of the investigation. He looks at maps at home, I presume, sees this wooded area right near the house and suggests in three phone calls in August, You should go check this out. Next day, You should go check it out. Next day, You should go check it out.

According to the sheriff’s department, four months go by. No one’s ever found Caylee Anthony’s remains. The guy happens to be reading meters in the Anthony neighborhood. According to the investigators, last Thursday, gets to the corner, sees the woods down the street and decides, You know what? I’m going to go ahead and take a little break and take a walk through those woods and just whatever became of my tip, was there anything actually back there. And then in what has got to be the most shocking coincidence of the year, he actually discovers the remains he suggested police may find or deputies may find.

Of course, everything here is pertinent, whether or not these remains have been here five or six months and whether they ultimately will be identified as Caylee’s. If both of those come true, then there’s going to be serious questions raised (INAUDIBLE) Orange County sheriff’s department as to why it wasn’t until August 13…

VAN SUSTEREN: But that…

KEATING: … Following the third tip from this guy, that they finally went thoroughly into those woods and not so thoroughly at all.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Well, that’s a whole different issue. That’s whether the police have done their job effectively, the way they’re supposed to according to procedure. The more bizarre thing to me is why this guy in August is the one who gives the tip, and he’s the one who actually finds it in December. And quite reasonably, I’m curious about that because the whole idea of the defense is whether or not somebody’s moved it, move it, if, indeed, that is Caylee, and whether or not somebody else did something. So I mean, it’s, like — it’s more than just whether the police have followed up on a tip. There’s a lot more to this.

The site was flooded in September when Texas EquuSearch was there, and when they came back in November the site had a fence around it.  A volunteer said that searchers had attempted to canvass the area, a secluded place where Casey and her friends used to party, but the terrain was steep and full of snakes.  The meter reader initially said that he found the bag when he went into the woods to relieve himself, but now it seems that he was possibly following up on what the police didn’t seem to be able to.  This time, instead of calling a tipline, he went straight to 911.

It is kind of weird, though, that he is the one who found the remains, seemingly by accident, after the area had already been searched, and after he had been there three times already.  But, Florida has had so much rain and flooding that I’m sure trash and debris has moved from one spot to another.  It’s hard to say at this point and only time will tell if he is truly an innocent citizen or if there’s something more to this story.

Another interesting thing about the site is that there appears to be what might be a hardcover book in the underbrush, and it is believed that it could be similar to one that we’ve seen Caylee reading while sitting at her kitchen table.  If you look at this photo gallery, you can see what they are talking about (I put an arrow in the photo above).  Caylee was last seen leaving her house with a backpack.  When my kids were little, they took their favorite toys with them in their little backpacks, and often took books in them to look at.

I don’t mean to come down too hard on the police, because this sounds like an isolated case of incompetence and not indicative of the department as a whole.  In their defense, they  have received many, many tips on where Caylee might be, from neighbors and psychics and people all over the country.  They may have thought this guy was just another crackpot and there may in fact be more to his story that it appears.  But then again, if you’re faced with a bag in a wooded area in fairly close proximity to where a missing child was last seen, wouldn’t you at least open it to see what was inside?

We are a blog, not hard-hitting news. These are our opinions. GlossLip has continuing coverage of the disappearance of Caylee Anthony here.

As we reported earlier, today began the extensive search for missing toddler Caylee Anthony, orchestrated by Tim Miller of EquuSearch. Orlando’s WESH is reporting that at least 1300 people showed up from all over the country to assist in searching areas in and around Orlando for the 3-year old Caylee, who’s big brown eyes have both haunted and captured a nation. This number is significantly higher than the initial estimates of 500, but still lower than Mr. Miller had hoped for set at 5000. Maybe tomorrow will bring even great numbers.

Caylee, who was first reported missing in July, actually was missing sometime in June. Her mother, Casey Anthony, waited 31 days to report her daughter missing, and only did so after her parents became involved with the case. Casey Anthony has since been charged with several felonies in the case, number one being first degree murder.

Here’s more on today’s search from WESH.

A total of about 1,300 volunteers came out to help today in the search for Caylee Anthony and Jennifer Kesse.

There have been some discoveries of what appear to be animal bones at Blanchard Park and a few other locations.

An Equusearch representative said as far as she knew, sheriff’s investigators had not been called in to look at any evidence. The volunteers have come from as far away as Canada and plan to search until dusk tonight.

They will resume searching tomorrow morning and Equusearch says, on Monday, it will reassess its plan.

In addition to the volunteers, dozens of bounty hunters have come in from all over the country at the request of bounty hunter Leonard Padilla.

Glosslip commenter Jeff was there, and has posted some pictures of today’s search on his MySpace page. Thank you Jeff for taking the time and effort to be a part of this important search. We are all praying for some news and closure to this heartbreaking story.

For more on Glosslip’s coverage of this story, click here.

More details are emerging on the case of missing Orlando tot, 3-year old Caylee Anthony.

Tim Miller, founder and leader of EquuSearch, has organized another effort to search for the presumed deceased body of Caylee. Previous efforts have been hampered by weather and Miller is hoping that with the right conditions they will have luck in location the child’s body. Here’s some info from WFTV.com:

Officials of the Texas-based search group EquuSearch estimated earlier in the week they would draw as many as 5,000 volunteers to comb through woods and swampland to look for skeletal remains of the child. However, as of the 8:00 a.m. start time, only about 500 had showed up.

Much speculation has been made about where the body might be located and the police have some clues based on cell phone records. We do the specifics where EquuSearch will focus their attention:

Search teams will focus on four places in east Orange County: Jay Blanchard Park, Moss Park, the woods near the home of Casey’s parents, George and Cindy, and an area of land near the Orlando International Airport. They’re searching those spots based on eyewitness reports and cell tower triangulations that show where Casey Anthony was around the time Caylee disappeared.

For those interested in helping with the search, here are the details about where searchers are meeting:

The command post is near the corner of Judge Road and Shadowridge Drive (see map), almost directly north of Orlando International Airport. The search is set to begin at 8:00am Saturday and they are expecting as many as 5,000 people. If you want to be one of them, you can show up Saturday morning at the command post.

George Anthony admits car smelled like “death” to investigators. I highly recommend those interested in the case listen to this interview with George Anthony, it’s extremely revealing into the mindset of George, who so far, is the only reasonable member of the entire Anthony family. Either George is a smooth talker, or he is a true victim in all of this, from start to finish. While Cindy and brother Lee have certainly lost precious Caylee, their behavior in this case has been more than sketchy, not necessarily “criminal” but definitely “off” from normal reactions to the loss of a loved one.

If you listen to the whole thing, it’s apparent George and Cindy initially suspected the smell from the car was from a dead body. George said his first reaction upon retrieving the vehicle was that he was afraid he’d find his daughter and his granddaughter dead in the car and asked the tow yard employee to accompany him in opening the trunk. He admits to seeing the pizza box, a bag with “insects on it” (later confirmed to be maggots) and a stain by the spare tire. George admits that smell in the car was so bad he didn’t think he could drive the car home.

On a side note, I recently had the misfortune of dealing with a dead animal and the smell from this deceased animal (only 3 days old) was the foulest, strongest, most distinctively awful smell in my entire life. These people know that something is not right and that the bottom line is this: a dead body was in that car.

Casey Anthony, mother of Caylee has been charged with murder and her trial is set to begin in February January. We will keep you posted on any additional details.

There’s been a ton of news in the case of missing little girl Caylee Anthony.

But wait, there’s more…

According to CNN, which stated in an earlier report that Casey Anthony, mother of missing toddler Caylee Anthony, would surrender to police if indicted by a grand jury today. It seems as though that indictment has come to pass. Here are more details from CNN:

Casey Anthony was taken to jail after officers observed her switch cars on a highway and pulled her over, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

Earlier Tuesday, Anthony’s lawyer said his client would turn herself in if the grand jury returned an indictment against her.

“She’s not running from this,” attorney Jose Baez said as his 22-year-old client wiped tears from her eyes during an impromptu media briefing before the charges against her were announced. “She’s doing her best to stand strong, to stand up to the powers that are working against her. And they threw the kitchen sink at her a long time ago.”

After the indictment, undercover officers followed Anthony as she traveled in her mother’s SUV. The officers saw the SUV stop under a highway overpass, at which point Anthony got into another vehicle and drove off. Officers made the traffic stop after she entered the second vehicle, the spokesman said.

Prosecutors are asking Anthony be held without bond.

Anthony is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child and four counts of providing false information to police.

Lawson Lamar, the state attorney for Orange County, Florida, said the first count is a capital charge — which could carry a penalty of life in prison or death.

The 19 grand jurors — 10 women and nine men — deliberated for about half an hour after hearing from police, a cadaver dog handler, an FBI agent and the missing child’s grandfather.

The article also pointed out, that despite efforts to recover the missing child, 3-year old Caylee whereabouts remain unknown. As the article stated, George Anthony, father to Casey and Caylee’s grandfather, testified before the grand jury. Mr. Anthony made a statement before stepping before the court:

“This is going to be very hard for me to do. The focus has always been on my granddaughter and always will be. I love my daughter, I love my wife, I love my son,” Anthony said.

He asked for the public to keep his family, especially Caylee, in their prayers. “If someone could take a moment out at 11 o’clock this morning and 11 o’clock tonight and just pray for her. That’s all I’m asking for. That’s all I can say.”

Prayers are something we can all afford to give for little Caylee.

For Glosslip’s extensive coverage of the Caylee Anthony case, please click here.

Just a quick update on the continuing case of missing toddler Caylee Anthony, and her mother Casey, who continues to maintain her innocence in the face of ever-mounting evidence against her.

But wait, there’s more…

While long having been a “person of interest” in the disappearance of her daughter, Caylee, Casey Anthony has now officially been named a suspect:

Orange County deputies are now calling the mother of missing 3-year-old Caylee Marie Anthony a suspect in the girl’s disappearance.

Casey Anthony, 22, was first called a ‘person of interest’ by investigators in mid-July , but only recently did they begin to refer to her as a suspect.

Sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Angelo Nieves said there was no new evidence to prompt the change.

“Her information has been suspect since we began this investigation,” Nieves said. “This is a person who has been uncooperative since the first day.”

A person of interest is someone law enforcement wants to speak to in order to provide information about a case, Nieves said. A suspect, on the other hand, is someone who is believed to have been involved in crime.

Anthony has been charged with child neglect and filing a false statement to law enforcement. She faces several check fraud charges in unrelated cases.

“Over the past two and half months we have been diligently working to resolve the case of the missing child,” Nieves said. “The information she has provided has proven to be false.”

And it has been learned that investigators are now searching in a couple of new areas:

Both wooded areas they’re searching are not far from where Casey Anthony lives with her parents. One is near the Amscot at Goldenrod and Highway 50 where Casey abandoned her car in late June. Investigators have searched the area more than once with cadaver dogs.

The other area is closer to Orlando International Airport, where a driver told investigators she saw a car like Casey’s white Pontiac Sunfire parked in the median days after Caylee disappeared and she saw someone slight of build wearing a baseball cap and what looked like athletic wear walk out of the woods, someone she believes could have been Casey. It was odd to her because it’s not a popular spot for joggers.

We’ve been following this case for a while now and have read many documents and seen many interviews with people connected with it.  I happened to catch this interview, and I thought it was one of the better ones I’ve seen.  On the Today show Thursday morning, ex-fiance Jesse Grund (who came across as very well-spoken) urged Casey to tell the truth and stop paying games:

“Casey, tell the truth. This isn’t about you anymore. This is about Caylee,” Jesse Grund said at the end of an interview with TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday in New York. “Stop dragging people’s lives through this. Stop destroying people’s lives and tell the truth. What happened to Caylee?” [...]

It is said again that Cindy Anthony believed, possibly still does, that Jesse is the one who knows where Caylee is:

“My number one suspect has been Jesse all along,” Cindy Anthony tells a detective, who replies: “We know that Jesse doesn’t have Caylee.” Grund confirmed that he has taken a polygraph test to clear his name, and told Lauer he’s been cooperating in the investigation into the disappearance of the little girl.

He says that while he felt it was impossible that he was Caylee’s father (later proven by a paternity test), he treated the little girl like she was his own:

When Casey Anthony became pregnant with Caylee, she initially told Grund that he was the father. Even though he didn’t think it was possible — they had broken up before she became pregnant — he involved himself with Caylee and treated her like a daughter.

“I petitioned for a paternity test, and there was zero percent probability” that he was the father, he told Lauer. He also explained why he took a paternal interest in Caylee when she was born: “My attitude was, until the paternity test comes out, I’m not going waste time or miss out if this really is my child.”

He reveals that even though he caught her in lies and stealing from him, he never thought that she was a bad mom:

Since the disappearance, Casey Anthony has been portrayed as almost a pathological liar. Police interview tapes show detectives telling her that everything she told them about the disappearance had proved to be lies. Lauer asked Grund if he saw evidence of that.

“At the very end of our relationship, absolutely,” Grund replied. “At the very end, she started to lie about things. I was one of the ones she stole money from. She stole $250 from me, and then made up an excuse why she couldn’t pay me back, or made up excuses why she couldn’t be places with me. I found out she was actually seeing someone else at the end of our relationship.”

It was a radical change from the young woman he had been briefly engaged to.

“She was a very good mother, Matt,” Grund said. “She was very doting. She was devoted. Caylee was the center of her universe.”

Lauer asked if he saw any indication that Casey Anthony was having trouble coping with being a single mother.

“Absolutely not. No, not at the beginning,” Grund said, “Not when Caylee was a baby. There was no indication she was having any problems being a mother.”

Casey Anthony has been portrayed as a woman more interested in partying than in being a mother, but Grund repeated that in the beginning, she wasn’t like that at all.

“She was very much into being a homebody and loyal, and she was wanting to spend the rest of our lives together,” he said. He traced the transformation in Casey Anthony to when she formed a closer relationship with her mother, from whom she had previously distanced herself.

“She started to pull away, and it started to become about her,” Grund said. “She started to party and drink — this lifestyle that now we’ve seen pictures of out there. And then the lying started to come … [When] she started becoming close with her mother, it started a transformation.”

But could she have harmed her child?

“The Casey that I knew, no,” he said. “But … who knows the real Casey? I think only she does. I think her personality has been so changed and molded over the years, I don’t even know if she knows who she is.”

His final words to Casey?

Addressing his ex-fiancé directly, Grund said: “We’re all done with having to listen to your lies and your stories that make no sense over and over and over again. So tell the truth about what happened.”

Yes, absolutely.  We are all tired of the lies.  The stories go round and round and they don’t make any sense.  Casey, for once in your life, do the right thing.  This isn’t about you any longer.  You can only attempt to twist the police around for so much longer before they drop the hammer on you.  Everyone is tired of your games, Casey.  Caylee deserves more respect than that.  If there was ever any tiny bit of love for your daughter, please…tell the truth.

Just tell the truth.