A young Florida woman accused of murdering her own child wants to start a ministry in a recreational vehicle and thinks the end of days is at hand. She also accuses her brother and father of molesting her as a child.
These are among the many topics 24-year-old Casey Anthony discussed in handwritten letters she sent to a fellow inmate in the Orange County Jail in Orlando, where she is being held while awaiting trial. Anthony is accused of the 2008 killing of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, who went missing in June of that year. Caylee’s skeletal remains were found on Dec. 11, 2008, near Anthony’s home. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Jail officials who released the neatly printed letters said that Anthony, who is being kept segregated from other inmates, is no longer allowed to exchange letters with other inmate. She was able to befriend and communicate with Robyn Adams by hiding the letters in a book that was passed back and forth.
‘In God’s loving arms’
In a story filed for TODAY Thursday, NBC News’ Michelle Kosinski reported that Anthony called Adams, a convicted drug dealer with two children of her own, “Cookie” and “Sister.” She referred to herself as “Muffin.”
Anthony writes frequently of God and her newfound religious faith. At one point, she suggested that Caylee was better off dead.
“I’ve had to forgive what happened to my Caylee, but I’m still angry,” she wrote. “She’s safe. She’s in God’s loving arms. In a lot of ways, I’m content by the fact that she will never have to have her heart broken or see the constant negativity that our society breeds, nor will she ever be abused or taken advantage of. The clock is ticking and the end of days is near. I can feel it.”
Pat Brown, a criminal profiler, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira that in her opinion, Anthony is a psychopath who is trying to get potential jurors to feel sorry for her. The letters are the way she does it, Brown said.
“This will prove she’s a new woman. After all, she’s found God,” Brown said, adding that juries will frequently sympathize with a woman who claims she was abused and mistreated but now has found the light.
“A lot of time women go to court, juries start feeling sorry for them,” Brown said. “It’s manipulation.”
Brown called the letters “a wonderful window into how a psychopath thinks.”
Allegations of abuse
In her letters, while talking about her own faith, Anthony wonders about the state of her family’s souls.
“It’s difficult enough trying to make sure that my brother and father are both saved,” Anthony writes. “My mom is on the right path. Glory to God!”
Yet she also alleges that her brother, Lee, molested her when she was a teenager and suggests her father did, too, when she was much younger.
“My own brother walking into my room at night and feeling my breasts while I slept,” she wrote. Police allege that she told another inmate they had “sexual intercourse” for three years, until she was 15.