He never knew Caylee Anthony personally, but the 2-year-old is seared into North Carolina State Representative Kelly Hastings’ memory.
“There’s one picture of Caylee … where she is innocently looking up toward the sky. I’ve never able get that photo out of my mind,” Hastings tells A&E True Crime.
Caylee Anthony had been missing for months when her remains were discovered on December 11, 2008, near the Orlando home where she lived with her mother, Casey, and grandparents, George and Cindy.
Casey Anthony, who did not notify police about her daughter’s absence, was charged with her murder.
When a jury acquitted Anthony of killing Caylee in 2011 after a highly publicized trial, outrage erupted. Hastings and lawmakers in other states introduced eponymous legislation making it a felony to fail to report that a child is missing or deceased in a timely manner.
“Every once in a while, an incident sparks an overwhelming number of calls and comments—this was one of those,” Hastings says. “It was worldwide, the impact of this case.”
‘My Granddaughter Has Been Taken’
On June 16, 2008, Casey Anthony, then 22, left home with Caylee, telling her family she was on a business trip.
After her daughter’s abandoned car was found in July 2008 with a strong odor of decomposition inside, Cindy Anthony located Casey but not Caylee. The distraught grandmother called 911 on July 15, 2008.
“I’ve found out that my granddaughter has been taken. She has been missing for a month,” she said.
Casey Anthony blamed Caylee’s nanny for her disappearance, but police arrested her for making false statements and child neglect on July 16, 2008.
Searches for Caylee were fruitless, and on October 14, 2008, Anthony was indicted on first-degree murder charges. Two months later, the child’s skeletal remains were uncovered in a swampy area.
Prosecutors argued that Casey Anthony resented having to care for Caylee and smothered her daughter with duct tape found on the toddler’s skull.
“There is no good reason to put duct tape over the face of a child,” prosecutor Jeff Ashton said during the 2011 trial.
Defense attorneys contended that Caylee died from accidental drowning and the traumatized family covered it up. They also alleged George Anthony abused Casey, which he denied.
“This is not a murder case. This is a sad, tragic accident that snowballed out of control,” defense attorney Jose Baez told jurors.
Ultimately, jurors acquitted Anthony of murder on July 5, 2011, but found her guilty of lying to police. She was sentenced to four years, but received credit for time served in jail while awaiting trial and was released just a few days after she was sentenced. Without DNA linking Anthony to Caylee’s remains and an inconclusive autopsy, one juror said the circumstantial evidence wasn’t enough to convict.
Closing a Loophole
“One of the big drivers of Caylee’s Law is that this trial was so public,” legal expert Kelly Socia tells A&E True Crime.
Cable news livestreaming the trial, haunting images of the wide-eyed toddler, and accounts of Anthony partying while Caylee was missing riveted Americans.
Also impactful “was all of those circumstances surrounding the evidence indicating that, if she was not responsible for it, she at least was somewhat involved,” notes Socia, a criminology and justice professor at University of Massachusetts Lowell.
“It really had all of the elements to make it one of those cases that the public would find outrageous.”
On the day of the acquittal, an online petition making it a felony to fail to report a missing child went live. It drew over 1.3 million supporters.
As calls and emails from constituents poured in to lawmakers, 35 states proposed some version of Caylee’s Law and 10 enacted legislation, Socia says.
Hastings recalls asking himself, “‘What if this happened in North Carolina?'” His staff researched and found state law did not include a time frame for when a missing child should be reported.
“We needed to close that loophole and we did,” Hastings says. “We created a felony if a parent or other person providing care or supervision knowingly failed to report the disappearance of a child within a 24-hour period.”
Adding an ‘Arrow in Their Quiver’
“For a legislator, it was an easy political win. Nobody is going to be standing up … and arguing against something called Caylee’s Law,” says Socia, who co-authored an article on the subject in 2016.
Critics have cited concerns that the policy violates the Fifth Amendment, could penalize innocent parents and drain police resources.
Socia notes the law could be considered ineffective because the vast majority of parents won’t hesitate to call police if a child is missing. Those who wait are likely either in shock after an accidental fatality—or are responsible.
“If you’re a parent that just murdered your kid, and you’re facing potentially a murder charge, or a relatively low-level felony for not reporting your child … a reasonable individual would likely decide they’ll roll the dice and not report their child missing because they might be able to get away with the actual murder.”
“Personally, I don’t see this law as actually saving any children,” Socia says. “But it does give prosecutors another arrow in their quiver.”
A Missing 11-Year-Old
That happened in the disappearance of Madalina Cojocari. The girl was last publicly seen at age 11, getting off a Cornelius, North Carolina school bus on November 21, 2022.
In mid-December 2022, a school resource officer contacted police and informed them Madalina had not been seen for weeks, Cornelius Police Chief David Baucom tells A&E True Crime.
Detectives were stymied when they asked the girl’s mother, Diana Cojocari, and stepfather, Christopher Palmiter, about Madalina’s whereabouts. Cojocari “basically said, ‘I don’t know where she’s at, but I hope she’s safe,'” Baucom recalls, adding, “Palmiter said, ‘I didn’t have anything to do with the child. I don’t know where the child is at.’
“It was very frustrating.”
Local, state and federal authorities set up a command post, scoured the area for Madalina and scrutinized phone and bank records.
“We still haven’t found Madalina,” Baucom says. “That’s when Caylee’s Law really came into effect.”
Police charged the parents with failure to notify law enforcement that a child was missing in late 2022.
The law was very helpful to make the initial arrests, Baucom says. “We did continue to investigate while both of them were in jail awaiting trial.”
Cojocari pleaded guilty in May 2024, but was released shortly after because she had served the maximum sentence, and returned to her native Moldova. Palmiter was convicted the same month and received supervised probation.
Cornelius police are asking anyone with information on Madalina to contact their department.
“No law is ever perfect,” Hastings says. “People will always ignore the law or get around the law. But it absolutely gives [authorities] more tools in their toolbox to pursue when trying to prosecute someone who might be involved in the disappearance of a child.”
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