Caylee's mom named in murder indictment

* Story Highlights
* NEW: Mother arrested in traffic stop after swapping cars on highway
* Casey Anthony faces seven-count indictment that includes capital murder charge
* Grand jury heard from police, dog handler, FBI agent, missing child's grandfather
* Caylee Anthony reported missing in July, about a month after last known sighting

From Natisha Lance
Nancy Grace Producer

ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) -- The mother of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony was arrested Tuesday in a traffic stop, shortly after a grand jury indicted her on seven counts, including capital murder, for the disappearance of her 3-year-old daughter.

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. VideoWatch Nancy Grace: Did mom try to flee arrest? »

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.

Authorities were quick to remind the public that, despite the indictment, Caylee's whereabouts remain a mystery.

"Despite the charges against Ms. Anthony we have not achieved our objective," he said. "We have not found little Caylee Anthony."

Before her arrest, Anthony's lawyer continued to maintain her innocence.

"She has been living a nightmare," the attorney added. "She has a missing child. She's also a child." VideoWatch Anthony's lawyer address the media »

Earlier in the day, Casey Anthony's father -- Caylee's grandfather -- testified before the grand jury. The panel was convened to look into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the child's disappearance.

George Anthony was prepared to do the "unthinkable" -- testify against his own daughter, lawyer Mark Nejame told a clutch of reporters gathered on the courthouse steps Tuesday morning.

Struggling with his emotions, George Anthony clutched a "find Caylee" binder in his folded arms.

"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."

Anthony and his lawyer left the courthouse about an hour later without commenting.

Caylee Anthony disappeared in mid-June, but Casey Anthony waited about a month before telling her family the child was gone. Cindy Anthony -- Caylee's grandmother -- called the Orange County sheriff July 15 after her daughter wouldn't tell her where Caylee was. VideoWatch the latest twist: a child's dress is found »

Casey's brother, Lee Anthony, also pleaded with his sister to tell him where Caylee was. According to police documents, she replied that she hadn't seen Caylee in "31 days."

Investigators say that since that first 911 call, evidence has mounted that leads police to believe that Caylee is dead. They first labeled Casey Anthony a person of interest, and later, a suspect.

The story of Anthony and her missing daughter garnered national headlines, provided nightly fodder for cable TV crime shows and brought a stampede of reporters to stake out the home of Anthony's parents. See a timeline of key events »

Tempers have flared and fists have flown outside the house tucked away in a subdivision in Orlando, Florida. One protester had George Anthony arrested, alleging that he had pushed her.

Police and prosecutors have said little, instead letting hundreds of pages of documents and investigative reports do the talking for them.

Casey Anthony behaved like a carefree party girl, going to nightclubs, entering "hot-body" contests and incessantly sending text messages to her friends while her daughter was missing, according to cell phone and text transcripts and investigative reports released by police.

Copies of her phone and text records obtained by police and released to the public show she hardly ever mentioned her missing daughter during the time just before and after the child was reported missing. The young mother referred to Caylee as "the little snot head" in May, about a month before the child disappeared.

Anthony gave conflicting statements during the investigation and provided police with information that later was disproved. For example, she said she had dropped the child off with a baby sitter. Yet when police checked out her story, they learned that the address that Anthony supplied belonged to an apartment that had been vacant for weeks. The woman Anthony named as the baby sitter said she did not know Anthony.

As Anthony was arrested on child neglect charges, bonded out of jail, was rearrested on bad check and theft charges and bonded out again, investigators disclosed some of the forensic evidence they uncovered.

Cadaver dogs picked up the scent of death in the trunk of a car Anthony drove and in her parents' backyard. A neighbor told police Anthony had asked to borrow a shovel.

Authorities said that in the car Anthony drove, they found traces of chloroform, which can cause loss of consciousness. And they said that on her computer, they found Internet searches of missing children and chloroform Web sites.

Investigators said air quality tests conducted by the FBI found evidence of human decomposition in the trunk of Anthony's car. Law enforcement sources also suggested that a strand of hair found in the trunk of the car was probably Caylee's.

I don't think it is always the case. I had an interesting date on Friday. I emailed and said thank you to the man because I felt like I should, I don't always feel a need to, but in this case I said thank you. Short and sweet, but got an email back that seems he really wants to do it again. I now have to nicely tell him no thank you. Perhaps I shouldn't have said thank you and that is my error, I don't know, he still may have emailed.

As a professional masochist I require either a verbal or typewritten dismissal.

I'm waiiiitiiiing.....

There are sex offenders in abundance who have never been arrested or caught. These kind offend again and again and no one is the wiser. This must be considered, especially for women who have children and grandchildren in their lives. The only thing that can be done to protect kids in this regard, is to regularly communicate with your children in an in depth manner about good touch/bad touch, etc. and to ask them regularly what they feel and think about the person you are seeing. One should never automatically trust people around your children. NEVER.

Now the 36-year-old, who is too afraid to have her name published, says she is glad she listened to her instincts when Tippett urged her to get together for a face-to-face meeting.

"Thank God I didn't meet with him," the woman said yesterday.

Tippett, 32, has a lengthy history of stalking and harassing young women.

Also, it is illegal for a sex offender to be on online dating sites. Basically all of them (PoF included) require you agree to terms of use when registering. One of them is that you cannot be a convicted sex offender. It's a breach of contract if they do. Beyond that, of sex offenders who used the computer in their crime, generally are banned from any "dangerous" sites like dating sites. Some have, as a term of their release, restrictions as strict as no computers at all.

But then maybe admin deleted the profiles.

Truly we have seen the death of common sense .

However, I still can't see making it onto a bus with a weapon, so I assume that it remains moot.

So you are saying that mine and the majority of other ppls opinions are invalid unless we are experts?

lets ponder this scenerio: Li is your son. He has had a history of mental illness that, since being recognized, you have had to fight the government to step in and help this man (your son) be institutionalized... however; because of rights and freedoms, and the fact that he has never harmed himself or anyone else, they will not lock him away. He ends up committing a hienous crime and the police kill him with the intent to only would him.... all along, they could have ultimately arrested him without harming him in any way. ... Your son is now dead. What would your thoughts be on shooting him and taking him out of your life forever be then?

Maybe the killing could not have been stopped but I feel certain that the indignity that was inflicted afterwards on McLean could have been prevented .In full public view and its on the net . That family has to live with the brutal murder of their son and brother and the agony of knowing the humiliation he was subjected to.

Let that sink in if you can

can you imagine being incarcerated in the same cell block or even the same cell with the alledged attacker in this case?

Jeffrey Dahmer I think was in the general population of prison.

the victim was already dead at this point and the other passengers were now not in any danger. If you were the family of this victim.. would you not want to find out why this man did what he did... Certainly if the attacker was dead.. you would never get any closure as to the why of it all.

The authorities did not "just watch while he hacked away at his victim" They were negotiating an unviolent surrender.. He will be punished accordingly.. and Mark's parents and family will at least have some comfort of knowing the whys and how comes of this tragedy.

I'm surprised why some of you can't understand this.

To find this out from the media and not the authorities puts the suffering of the poor man's family beyond my comprehension.

I'm horrified by that - what the HELL were the authorities playing at? Haven't the relatives got enough pain to endure at hearing news that bad without having to "check" and "chase" the authorities themselves? Seriously someone, somewhere needs to be sacked and a public apology issued to the man's family from the highest level possible for such a crass error of judgement.

I'm also unimpressed by the fact there was a stand off between the authorities and the man defiling his victim. If a dog is mad and dangerous you put it down! Watching while he hacked away at his victim was just stoopid.

I find it interesting that the very vast majority of people judging the actions of the passengers are Americans. Interesting indeed.

"We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times," Caton said from a hotel in Brandon, Manitoba, where he and other horrified passengers were taken.

Caton said the driver stopped the bus when he became aware of the attack and passengers raced off. A short while later, Caton said he re-boarded along with the bus driver and a trucker who had stopped to see what was happening.

He said the suspect had the victim on the floor of the bus and "was cutting his head off" with a large hunting knife.

Van Buren wrote:




It must be very easy to sit there behind the comfort and safety of your computer and critique the actions (or alleged lack thereof) of others, particularly when you weren't even there and you don't even know all of the details (none of us really do - we only know what we do based on what the media discloses). The killer wasn't using a plastic butter knife; he was using a large hunting knife. Some of the passengers said they heard the commotion, saw arms flailing and thought they were fighting (no weapons)....by the time those closeby realized a knife was involved and that this SOB was repeatedly stabbing this poor young guy, logic would dictate that it would have been far too late to do ANYTHING to save him. He'd have been bleeding to death instantly and nothing short of it happening in an operating room with a team of trauma / vascular surgeons standing by would have saved him (and even then it would have likely been far too late -- once an artery is severed, it takes seconds to exsanguinate and once you lose all that blood, even in a hospital setting where blood is available for transfusion, it's almost always too late).

It's appalling to me that someone would sit in judgement like this. I'm sure it was utter chaos.......people waking suddenly from their sleep, being dazed, hearing a commotion, the bus moving at 60 miles/hr down the highway -- the driver trying to bring the bus to as quick of a stop as possible......there were several elderly folks and children on that bus, along with a group of tourists from France. Someone shouted for them to get off the bus...........so they went barrelling down the narrow aisle and off the bus............most probably not even knowing what was going on, just that it was something bad............

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…pontificate to the extreme…

Seems like the people in America are a bunch of cowards when someone needs help eh? Oddly enough you do all carry guns!! What's your excuse?

To the ones that are saying that people are cowards for not stepping in and helping the poor victim, shame on you. As if you would approach someone that has a rambo knife and is stabbing someone to death, you would be as crazy as the psycho doing it if you did.

Multiple witnesses at the scene this morning recounted a brutal attack that began in a first floor apartment at the complex. They outlined the attack as follows:

After an argument inside the apartment, the boy and mother ran out the door into an apartment courtyard followed by the attacker, who was wielding a foot-long meat cleaver.

The boy apparently tried to protect his mother, and the attacker began hacking at the child's head with the meat cleaver, hitting him multiple times.

Witnesses reported the attacker yelled at the child about video games while swinging the meat cleaver.

The attacker also began swinging the cleaver at the boy's mother, hitting her multiple times and nearly severing her hand and arm, witnesses said.

Another woman tried to stop the attack and she was hit in the face with the meat cleaver. Ultimately, witnesses said, she managed to get the meat cleaver out of the attackers hands. Her injury was not serious and she was treated at the hospital and released.

When police arrived, the attacker was still at the scene. Witnesses described the attacker as extremely agitated and "amped up" and was spitting at officers as they tried to arrest him.

Witnesses said the police had to use tasers multiple times to subdue him and taking him into custody.

Investigators were also trying to determine a motive for the attack, Hernandez said.

Thanks warrior.

I just spoke to her. She is not actually sleeping with anyone. ( i will get someone looking into this for me anyway)

She has been hanging around a new female friend, and yes is confused about things
and needs some time to work them out. (I have met her new friend and talked to her)

I will be hanging in there for a while as she may not actually go independant, and just wants freedom to see friends. We will be attending counselling in the next week. See what comes out of that.

We dont actually need a divorce lawyer, we are too people who still love each other and are capable of working things out or at the end of the day able to divide up assests.

She is still very much a loving women.

Dan