Emergency calls made by the grandmother of a missing 2-year-old Orlando girl revealed a chilling detail: the inside of a car driven by the girl's mother smelled like a body.
The mother, 22-year-old Casey Anthony, remained in jail on child neglect charges Friday after investigators said she lied to them and didn't report her daughter Caylee Marie Anthony missing for more than a month. Prosecutors are calling Casey Anthony a "person of interest" in what is beginning to look like a homicide investigation, though she has not been charged with murder.
Authorities remain tight-lipped about the investigation.
On Thursday, the Orange County Sheriff's Office released 911 calls made last week by Cindy Anthony, Caylee's grandmother. On one 911 tape, Casey Anthony can be heard begging her mother to give her one more day to find her missing daughter before getting the police involved.
Cindy Anthony was driving her 22-year-old daughter to an Orlando police substation on July 15 to have Casey arrested for "grand theft" for stealing a car and money from her, she told a dispatcher.
While a 911 dispatcher was transferring Cindy Anthony to the Orange County Sheriff's Office, a snippet of the mother and daughter's conversation was captured.
Cindy Anthony: " 'Cause my next thing will be down to child (inaudible) thing and we'll have a court order to get her. If that's the way you want to play, we'll do it and you'll never ... ''
Casey Anthony: "That's not the way I want to play ... ''
Cindy Anthony: "Well then you have ... ''
Casey Anthony: "Give me one more day.''
Cindy Anthony: "No, I'm not giving you another day, I've given you a month ... ''
The conversation ended when a sheriff's dispatcher picked up the line.
The Sheriff's Office also released two 911 calls made later that day from the Anthony home, when a distraught and sobbing Cindy Anthony said her 2-year-old granddaughter had been missing for a month and that "it smelled like there's been a dead body" in the car driven by her daughter, Casey.
Cindy Anthony asked for deputies to be sent to her home because "I found out my granddaughter has been taken, she has been missing for a month. Her mother finally admitted that she's been missing."
And, then, the most chilling passage in the recording:
"I told you my daughter was missing for a month. I just found her today, but I can't find my granddaughter ... There's something wrong. I found my daughter's car today and it smelled like there's been a dead body in the damn car."
But Cindy Anthony said in court this week the smell came from a pizza left in Casey's car.
On Friday, Cindy Anthony and her husband George visited Casey in the Orange County Jail, where she's being held on $500,000 bail. After the visit, George Anthony, in good spirits, said the couple would be speaking publicly soon. Asked by reporters if they had good news, he said, "Oh yeah." He also said Caylee is alive.