There’s one group you won’t find joining in the push to redeem alleged child-killer Casey Anthony, following her attempted image rehabilitation in the 2020s: the true crime fan community. As of March 2025, Anthony has joined TikTok in her capacity as a “legal advocate,” and the backlash is strong.

That’s because despite Casey Anthony being found not guilty in 2011 of allegedly murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, conventional wisdom holds that she almost certainly was involved in Caylee’s disappearance and death. While the case against her unfolded as an avaricious media circus that portrayed Casey as a callous Orlando party girl, the actual evidence against her makes a strong argument that, in Casey Anthony’s case, the media got it right.

Casey Anthony did party while Caylee was missing. For 31 days in 2008, she behaved like any other 22-year-old without a care in the world — without telling a single human being that her daughter had vanished. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Casey Anthony’s guilt is essentially settled fact among true crime fans. Her acquittal — and the truly wild case that led up to it, from petty theft and “hot bod” contests to “Zanny the Nanny” — has become firmly fixed in pop culture as an egregious example of the justice system failing.

At least, it was until Casey’s attempt to wrest control of the narrative. This began in 2022, with Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies, a three-part limited series (we’re loath to call it a documentary) released to Peacock, in which Casey blamed her daughter’s murder on her own father, George Anthony, expanding on claims of abuse she made at trial. These are unsubstantiated claims which he has consistently denied.

In her new TikTok video, Anthony tells viewers she has been a “legal advocate” since 2011, and that it’s time “I start to advocate for myself…and for my daughter.” She also directs viewers to her new Substack, where she says they can start conversations with her. (Comments on her TikTok are currently off.) It’s unclear how Anthony intends to carry out legal advocacy work, though her recent Substack posts mention the importance of presumed innocence and not rushing to judgment. She also wishes to discuss the importance of safeguarding her privacy, though it’s unclear how elevating her public profile will do that.

Casey’s behavior, then and now, makes a compelling argument that not every public scandal needs to be relitigated, nor does every headline-grabbing criminal case need to be perpetually thrust again and again into the public eye. Unfortunately, the death of Caylee Anthony is just one of several high-profile true crime cases that have recently been dragged once again into the spotlight, despite being previously considered resolved.

And while some of those cases scream injustice and beg for renewed attention, others — like this one — seem to be less about truth-seeking and more about finding new ways to profit and exploit the popularity of older true crime cases.

Casey Anthony’s behavior was infamously bizarre

Casey Anthony is a proven liar. Her narrative of her own story is untrustworthy. She was found guilty at trial of providing false information to law enforcement.

Casey had a long pattern of lying, beginning with years of constructing elaborate lies about her progress through high school, and later about her nonexistent job and even her pregnancy with Caylee — a backstory she shares with multiple convicted killers who all eventually murdered members of their family. Rather unusually, however, Casey’s parents, according to her brother Lee’s testimony at her trial, had a history of enabling and playing along with their daughter’s lies rather than holding her to account for them.

By 2008, per contemporaneous media reports as well as court documents, 22-year-old Casey was still living on and off with her parents, George and Cindy, in Orlando, while habitually engaging in petty theft from her family and friends. She sought to convince everyone that she had spent the past several years working as an event coordinator for Universal Studios.

In the days after June 16, 2008, 2-year-old Caylee went missing. For the next 31 days, Casey, who was staying with her boyfriend at the time, told no one about her daughter’s disappearance. Instead, she gave conflicting statements about where she was — sometimes saying she was staying with a friend, other times claiming she was staying with a nanny — and took no action to locate her. In early July, she got a back tattoo reading “bella vita,” or “beautiful life.” Multiple friends would later testify at trial that, during that month, Casey seemed “upbeat,” “normal,” and “happy.”

“Oh, my god, I am such a good........

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