Dozens attended a vigil for missing Florida toddler Caylee Marie Anthony Sunday as the child's grandfather said his jailed daughter told him the girl would be home by her third birthday later this week.
"Dad, she's close," George Anthony said his 22-year-old daughter, Casey, told him during a jailhouse visit on Sunday, according to MyFOXOrlando.com. "Dad, she's close."
Anthony said he's convinced Caylee is still alive and indicated that his daughter sobbed during their visit, saying that she wants to be there for the girl's birthday on Aug. 9, MyFOXOrlando.com said.
At the Sunday night candlelight vigil, Casey's brother, Lee, said the young mother would be out searching for her little girl were it not for her incarceration.
"Here are the facts: Caylee is missing; Casey hasn't been charged for anything," Lee Anthony said Sunday. "She'd be standing right here with all of us, searching with all of us, if she were not being bonded by the judicial system right now."
On Wednesday, a judge denied a petition to lower Anthony's $500,000 bond. Her attorney, Jose Baez, will file another appeal to the state Supreme Court, according to MyFOXOrlando.com.
Anthony is a person of interest in her daughter's disappearance but has been charged only with child neglect, false statements to police and obstructing an investigation.
When Anthony and her family first reported Caylee missing on July 15, she told police the girl had already been gone for a month. She also claimed that Caylee had been taken by a babysitter, who also vanished.
Since that time, police have expressed doubt in many of the details of Anthony’s story. They also have testified that they found hair samples and detected an odor of human decomposition in the trunk of a car Anthony had been driving.
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