Florida’s Caylee Anthony; Rockford’s Carrie Lynn

December 12th, 2008 at 12:54pm Georgette Braun

By now, you’ve probably heard that the body of a child was found yesterday very near the home of where missing tot Caylee Anthony lived in Florida.

(Caylee Anthony photo provided by Orange County Sheriff’s Police to news organizations)

It’s a big deal, and two national newsmagazines will cover the developments tonight:

“Dateline NBC” is devoting an hour to the story of the disappearance of Caylee, who was 2 years old at the time. Her 22-year-old mother, Casey Anthony, is jailed on a charge that she murdered her daughter. She’s the one who didn’t report her daughter missing for a month and has continually lied to police.

And ABC’s “20/20″ and Elizabeth Vargas also will examine Thursday’s developments. CNN’s Nancy Grace for months has almost exclusively been reporting nightly about the case, and her show saw a huge audience bump last night.

The circumstances surrounding Caylee’s disappearance remind me of Carrie Lynn Gaines’ murder in Rockford in 1990.

Carrie Lynn’s disappearance was explained away by her mother, Sherri Ann Gaines, and her killer, Richard Lee Howard (her mother’s boyfriend), for five years by saying she was living with relatives in Wisconsin. Casey Anthony said she left Caylee with a nanny who must have taken her. The woman she named as a nanny said she didn’t know the Anthonys.

Carrie Lynn’s body was found buried in a neighboring back yard after a tip in an anonymous letter. The body of the child whose remains were found yesterday in a bag in a wooded area near the home where Caylee had lived with her grandparents and mother has yet to be identified. But an EquuSearch investigator believes it is Caylee’s.

Howard is in prison for Carrie Lynn’s death. He beat her. Casey Anthony faces a murder charge.

After Carrie Lynn’s death, a center in Rockford was named after her as the first facility in Illinois and among the first in the nation to coordinate social service and law enforcement agencies’ responses to abuse reports in one plan.

To report any suspected abuse, call the Illinois Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-25ABUSE (1-800-252-2873).

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