The 911 call that started it, and the search that missed Caylee's remains for months

The 911 call came on July 15, 2008.

Cindy Anthony told the dispatcher that her 22-year-old daughter, Casey Anthony, and her 2-year-old granddaughter, Caylee Marie Anthony, were missing.

It was a Tuesday morning in Orlando, Florida.

Casey had told her parents that Caylee was with a babysitter named Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez.

No such person could be found.

The call was the documented starting point of the investigation.

It was also the end of a silence.

Caylee was last seen 31 days before that call, according to later testimony.

What happened in those 31 days is not in the record.

Not in the testimony. Not in the evidence logs. Not in the timeline the state would later build.

The gap sits there, between the last sighting and the first alarm.

A grandmother calling for help. A mother who had said the child was fine. A babysitter who did not exist.

The dispatcher took the report. The sheriff's office opened a missing-persons case. The search for Caylee Marie Anthony began.

It would take months. It would miss the obvious. It would end with a meter reader's discovery in a wooded area near the Anthony home.

But that was later.

On July 15, the only facts were these: a 2-year-old was gone, her mother said she was with a stranger, and 31 days had already passed.

THE CAR'S SMELL

George Anthony said the smell hit him first.

He reported that Casey’s car smelled like a decomposing body.

The car was impounded and tested.

Forensic testing found chloroform and human decomposition odor in the trunk.

The source does not state who performed that testing or when.

The defense argued the odor was from trash.

That was the argument, not the finding.

This was the turning point, the moment the case shifted.

A missing child is one thing.

A car that smells like death is another.

The odor turned a story about a lie into a story about a possible homicide.

It was circumstantial. It was also heavy.

Prosecutors would lean on it. The defense would attack it.

The results were later challenged in court.

Not because the science was clean. Because the chain of custody and the testing methods came under fire.

The car sat in the driveway for days before anyone acted on the smell.

That delay would matter.

It is a fact the car smelled. It is a fact the test found those compounds.

What the odor meant—that was the argument.

The prosecution said it was Caylee. The defense said it was garbage.

The record does not settle which story the smell tells.

Only that George Anthony smelled it, and that the investigation changed because he did.

A meter reader would find the remains months later.