I have long held the opinion that Caylee Marie Anthony’s short life was one of a dichotomous existence. While in the care of her grandpa and grandma, George and Cindy, not only do I firmly believe she was loved, cared for and nurtured, but I tend to believe she was spoiled with an abundance of toys and attention. My mother has always stated “there are only two types of grandchildren – spoiled and neglected”, and I think Cindy Anthony probably held that same opinion – and her Caylee was NOT going to be neglected.
That is until she was outside the care of her grandma and grandpa Anthony. For a year and a half now those of us who have followed this case have been left with a couple of very important unanswered questions:
* What was Casey doing everyday, and where?
* And what kind of care and environment was Caylee in during those times?
Cindy Anthony wondered these same things long before we even knew of a Casey or Caylee Anthony. Cindy wrote her “my Caylee is missing” entry on her myspace on July 3rd, 2008, and wondered publicly who was taking care of Caylee.
While we cannot answer the first question yet, I fear we are drawing closer to understanding the answer to the second. Caylee’s life had a dark side. We have seen the numerous pictures of Caylee’s wounded face and the vacant eyes, with the dark circles beneath, that didn’t match the forced smile on Caylee’s face. But there was more. In the fragile scattered bones of Caylee’s completely skeletonized remains lay a secret. While those bones were too weak and weathered to cry out what took their life, they were able to whisper some clues of what that life had been like. Contrary to what Cindy Anthony claims, Caylee appears to have been a neglected, and abused child.
The following article was written with the assistance of Dr. Christopher C. Green MD, PhD. Dr. Green is Assistant Dean, China/Asia-Pacific, for Wayne State School of Medicine. He is a Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging (MRI) at the Detroit Medical Center/Harper University Hospital, Departments of Diagnostic Radiology & Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences for his specialty in Clinical Neuroimaging. And he is a Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Green was instrumental in solving the murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, as covered in the PBS Special Secrets of the Dead.
For his assistance on this matter, I will be eternally grateful.
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The bones whispered on page 19 of Caylee’s autopsy report. More specifically, midway down the eighth page of the Report of Osteological Analysis.
The posterior half of the sagittal suture appears to be in the beginning stages of premature synostosis.
The sagittal suture is one of four sutures in the human skull. These sutures are “junctions, or articulations, between adjacent bones of the skull, which are rigidly held together by fibrous connective tissue.” They are like “expansion joints” for the skull, allowing it to expand as the brain grows in size during prenatal development and childhood development. Eventually they all fuse making the skull a solid bone. But under normal conditions, each of the sutures close after certain periods of human development or aging. For instance, the sagittal suture does not begin to close before about the 20th year of life, and does not complete closure until the 40′s to 50′s, even as late at the 80′s.
Primary craniosynostis is a congenital birth defect in which one or more (possibly even all) of the sutures of the skull prematurely close during prenatal development. The baby is usually born with a malformed head that is apparent either at birth or within weeks after birth. Because the brain continues to grow and the skull has fused closed, the brain’s growth causes a malforming of the skull to try to make room. Surgery is required to fix this birth defect. Blindness, learning disabilities, retardation and death can be caused by untreated primary craniosynostosis.
Caylee was not born with primary craniosynostosis. She was a beautiful, perfectly formed little newborn. Therefore, the premature closure of the sagittal suture as indicated in the autopsy report does not point to a birth defect, but to what is called secondary sagittal synostosis. The identified causes of secondary sagittal synostosis are quite limited. The most prolific external factor for the cause of this abnormality is what is referred to as “flat-headedness”. Flat-headedness, or deformational plagiocephaly, is caused when parents place their infants to sleep in their cribs lying flat on their backs. It is also known to be promoted when babies who are laid to sleep in this way are left in cribs for extended periods of time.
Caylee did not have flat-headedness. Numerous pictures are available of Caylee in all stages of her short life, and all pictures show that she had a well-rounded, normally shaped skull. So what caused the premature closure of Caylee’s sagittal suture? I supplied the information known from discovery to Dr. Green and requested he provide an interpretation of the implications of this statement. Included in the information passed to him were pictures of Caylee, the autopsy report, and a synopsis of the forensics results to date.
Dr. Green responded with the following opinion:
There is evidence that she was forced over some period of time, at least several months or longer, to often be forced to lie on her back, maybe with her head restrained, maybe under sedation, maybe because she was terrorized, and maybe because she was so tired she often fell asleep in an awkward, un-natural, and forced position. This would have been, due to her age and the fact the fusion of the synostosis were not yet mature, to cause chronic osteotic changes, primarily due to replicating osteoblasts (bone-cells that are growing at that age) so as to have caused this non-natural finding…but which finding in and of itself is not pathological [i.e. not related to disease].
In short, Dr. Green felt there was “non-specific but worrisome evidence of chronic child abuse”.
When the skull’s sutures begin to close prematurely they can create long-term problems due to the increased intracranial pressure as the brain continues to grow, but the skull cannot expand. When I approached Dr. Green and requested his assistance in this matter, I asked him if he thought it was possible that this premature closure could have caused the onset of behavioral or learning problems. I was most concerned about this possibility because of two specific pictures. The first was a still frame from the video at the nursing home showing what appears to be a large area of significant hair loss.
The second being a picture that has long disturbed me due to the crooked grin (that by itself could be attributed to Caylee “goofing” for the camera) in combination with detectable and significant differences in the size of her two eyes – as if something neurological was affecting one side of her face.
Dr. Green’s opinion was as follows:
She was a savagely abused child…issues of her mental state become insignificant…of course she was behaviorally challenged. This is why. But she was so bright, she compensated with the smiles that appeared in certain circumstances when she thought she was free.
(It should be noted that Dr. Green’s opinion that Caylee was an abused child is based not only on the finding of premature closure of the sagittal suture, but on the full packet of information including the autopsy report, forensics results to date, and a synopsis of Casey’s behavior.)
Valhall.
A special thank you to contributor William Hill for his assistance in gathering pictures of Caylee.
References:
Baby’s Sleep Position is the Major Factor in ‘Flat-Headedness’
Related posts:
- Casey’s Profile – Part 5: Her Dark Triad
- Caylee Anthony case: Defense wants a take-back and a do-over, and use spin to request
- Caylee Anthony case: a defense pathologist Spitz out a report
- Lee Anthony: ‘He knows what he has done.’
- Caylee Anthony case: Hearing today – 01/05/11
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