Caylee Anthony

Late on the night of July 15, five weeks after the alleged kidnapping, Casey Anthony finally gave investigators a written statement describing the events surrounding her daughter's disappearance.

In her statement, Casey said that on June 12 three days after Caylee disappeared the primary suspect, Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, called her, yet in her written statement to police Casey didn't provide any details. "I received a quick call from Zenaida," was all she wrote about that conversation.

Also in her statement, Casey admitted to police that she had been lying to her friends and family and stealing from some of them for the last four weeks in an effort, she claimed, to find Caylee. Casey explained that she had spent the last month cruising malls and parks, "any place I could remember Zenaida taking Caylee." Casey also said she went to popular bars and restaurants "and tried to find any information about Caylee or Zenaida."

When asked if she had told anyone about her daughter's abduction, Casey said she had told two former co-workers at Universal Studios, Jeff Hopkins and Juliette Lewis, both of whom had worked in the event planning department with her. She said she had talked to Jeff several times on the phone in the last few weeks to try to learn more about Zenaida.

That very day, she said, she had gotten a phone call from Caylee. The call had been short and had come from a blocked number.

Casey's story seemed implausible, but not impossible. Perhaps in a state of desperation and panic, she had tried to find her daughter herself. Perhaps, as she said, she was afraid something even more terrible would happen to Caylee if Zenaida found out Casey had called the police or the media.

Soon, however, detectives would learn that everything Casey had told them was a lie everything.