The 31-day gap and the nanny who never existed: Casey Anthony's first lie

She had a name before she had a body.

On July 15, 2008, a two-year-old girl named Caylee Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother, Cindy Anthony, in Orlando, Florida.

The child had not been seen for 31 days.

Her mother, Casey Anthony, initially told police that Caylee had been kidnapped by a nanny.

The nanny had a name: Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez.

That name would become the first crack in the story, the detail that made detectives pause.

It is not established that any person named Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez existed, was a nanny, or had any involvement with the child.

The record establishes a name given to police.

The record does not establish a person behind it.

Who was this nanny who never appeared, never came forward, never had a neighbor or a landlord or a single photograph?

That would require evidence.

The case drew intense national media attention, with a large public following that often vilified Casey Anthony.

Cable news picked up the name and turned it into a question mark.

The public turned the question mark into a punchline.

Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez became shorthand for a lie before the trial even began.

She was a name on a missing person's report.

She was also the reason the investigation started looking at the mother.

31 DAYS OF SILENCE

The call came on July 15, 2008, from the grandmother.

Cindy Anthony told the 911 dispatcher that her granddaughter was missing, that the child had not been seen in 31 days.

That gap was the first thing the detectives could not explain.

A two-year-old does not vanish from a family's life for a month without someone noticing, without someone asking, without someone calling.

The lead detective, Yuri Melich, would later testify about what he found when he started asking.

He testified that Casey Anthony gave contradictory accounts.

She told him the nanny had taken the child, then she could not say where the nanny lived, then she could not say where the nanny worked.

She told him she had been looking for the child for weeks, but she could not name a single hospital, shelter, or police station she had contacted.

Melich testified that Casey appeared unconcerned about her daughter's whereabouts.

What was she doing in those 31 days?

What was she doing in that silence?

What was she doing while no report existed, no search existed, no alarm existed?

That would require evidence, and the record does not establish what Casey Anthony did or where she was during those 31 days before the report.

What the record does establish is the car.

The car Casey had been driving smelled of decomposition.

Forensic testing later found evidence consistent with human decomposition in the trunk.

The smell was enough to make the detectives look at the mother differently.

The nanny story had already made them suspicious.

The car made them certain they were not being told the truth.

Melich kept asking, and Casey kept giving him versions that did not hold.

Each version was a new thread, and each thread led nowhere.

The silence stretched behind them, 31 days long, and nothing in the record fills it.

THE REMAINS AND THE TAPE

On December 11, 2008, a utility worker found skeletal remains in a wooded area near the Anthony family home.

The remains were later identified as Caylee Anthony.