Caylee's Skeletal Remains Don't Offer Many Clues to Her Homicide

The skull and bones found last week in a wooded lot outside Orlando, Fla., were identified as Caylee Anthony's on Friday, and Orange County officials declared the little girl was the victim of a homicide.

How the 2-year-old girl was killed remains a mystery. Orange County medical examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia reported that the skeletal remains were Caylee's, but the only clue to her death was that her bones didn't suffer trauma.

"They are not intact. They are all disarticulated. They are completely skeletonized," Dr. Garavaglia said. She said some of the bones were "tiny."

Caylee was two months shy of her third birthday when she vanished in June.

Garavaglia said Caylee's remains, which were found not far from the home where she lived with her mother and maternal grandparents, were identified through nuclear DNA analysis.

The news caps a five-month search for the girl, who was last seen in mid-June but wasn't reported missing by her mother until a month later. The mother, 22-year-old Casey Anthony, is behind bars without bond and charged with her daughter's murder.

The child's next of kin, including her mother; grandparents George and Cindy Anthony; and other relatives were notified of the findings before they were made public, according to Garavaglia.

"The bottom line is, no child should have to go through this," said Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary, his voice breaking. He called it a police chief's "nightmare case."

The case has garnered intense national attention and media scrutiny. Federal authorities have assisted in the investigation.

As to the question of whether someone might have taken Caylee out of the Orlando area where she lived, the FBI said there wasn't any indication that was the case.

"At no time did we find any evidence that this young child left this location," said Tampa FBI Special Agent Steven Ibison.

Casey Anthony's lead attorney Jose Baez said he is "disappointed" with the way the investigation has been handled.

"It’s not a professional way of doing things. I’m extremely disappointed in the way that all this has been carried out," Baez told reporters.

He declined to comment on how his client reacted to the news that her daughter was found dead.

"This is her private moment. This is her life," he said. "It’s not my place as her attorney to disclose her private moments to the public. I’m sure that’s what she would want."

Cindy and George Anthony were "grieving deeply" in private, their attorney Brad Conway said, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

"This is a tragic moment in the lives of good and honorable people," Conway said.

Ahead of the announcement, Florida police released evidence photos from the scene where the remains were found. One showed a book discovered in the woods that the child had been photographed reading before she vanished.

The pictures were among several cops publicized before the afternoon news briefing.

The book is among numerous pieces of evidence Orange County Sheriff's deputies say they found in the wooded area where Caylee's remains turned up.

Also Friday, police re-interviewed a county water meter reader who earlier this month discovered a bag with the child's skull and bones inside.

Detectives said the worker is not a suspect in her death.

The worker who found the bones on Dec. 11 had called in a tip to police on three consecutive days in August, telling them to look in the same area for the remains.

"Back in August of this year, I had previously reported … that I had spotted something suspicious, a bag, in the same area," said the meter reader, Roy Kronk, reading from a prepared statement Friday.

He wouldn't elaborate.

"I will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation," Kronk told reporters. "I respectively decline to get into the details of what I saw at the crime scene."

His attorney, David Evans, called Kronk a "concerned citizen" and lambasted media speculation that suggested otherwise.

"He has no connection whatsoever to this case or to the Anthony family," Evans said.

Orange County Sheriff's officials say they believe he was in the area on Dec. 11 following up on his own lead when he discovered the bones and skull.

Capt. Angelo Nieves said police questioned the worker again, as well as the sheriff's deputy who took the original call. They want to know more about what prompted him to contact authorities and how they handled the tips.

The meter reader first called on Aug. 11 to report a bag by the side of the road, MyFOXOrlando.com reported. A deputy wasn't able to locate Kronk.

On Aug. 12, the meter reader called a crime hotline. The information was passed on to the Orange County Sheriff's criminal investigation division.

And on Aug. 13, the utility worker called cops a third time, MyFOXOrlando.com reported. He met with police, and a deputy went into the wooded area to investigate the Kronk's claims, but didn't find anything, the station said. The scene was then cleared as a possible place of interest in the case.

There is now an internal probe under way within the police department into how the matter was handled.

"There are a lot of questions about the thoroughness of that response," Nieves told MyFOXOrlando.com.

Investigators were at the wooded crime scene all week in an exhaustive dig for evidence. They said late Thursday they found additional bones that also appear to be from a child.

Caylee vanished on or around June 16, less than two months before her third birthday. Her family reported her missing in mid-July. Her mother has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, aggravated manslaughter and other charges.

A spokesman for Baez accused police of lying to the press and suggested they could be tampering with evidence at the site.

"Some of their comments are blatant lies," Todd Black told FOXNews.com. "History has shown that in some cases authorities have been caught tampering with evidence. That is something we hope is not happening. We're not accusing anyone of anything."

Anthony and her defense team have maintained that she last saw Caylee when she left her with a baby sitter named Zenaida Gonzalez in an apartment complex parking lot. Anthony's lawyers say Gonzalez and another woman drove away with the child.

Police claim that story and the sitter are fictitious and Anthony has lied to them repeatedly.

Black suggested last weekend that the defense would argue Caylee was killed by her purported kidnapper if the remains were identified as hers.

[CAYLEE ARTICLE ARCHIVE]

Drive To Crime Scene

'White House Boys' Win Inquiry of Reform School Graves

MARIANNA, Florida (CNN) -- Four men, now in their 60s, met over the Internet, shared stories about the darkest days of their pasts and spurred an investigation into 32 graves at a reform school.

Roger Kiser, Michael McCarthy, Bryant Middleton and Dick Colon talked about whippings and beatings and other boys who disappeared.

They discussed the 32 crosses marking the graves of persons unknown on the grounds of the former Florida Industrial School for Boys.

They called their group the White House Boys, taking the name from the single story concrete building where, they say, boys were beaten and tortured decades ago.

The White House Boys believe that delinquents and orphans sent to the concrete White House were killed and their remains buried to cover up the brutality.

This week, the four called on Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to investigate. Crist agreed and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to search for remains, identify them and determine whether any crimes were committed.

The department agreed to look into the mystery of the 32 crosses on the grounds of what is now known as the Dozier School, in Marianna, just south of the Alabama state line.

Two of the White House Boys, Middleton and Colon, spoke with CNN. The stories they told were chilling.

Middleton said he was "an incorrigible youth of 14 or 15" when he was sent to the reform school for breaking and entering. During a 30-minute phone interview, he recounted story after horrific story about his time there.

Middleton said he took six trips to the concrete White House, where he endured brutal beatings. He says boys were regularly struck with a metal-reinforced double strap with a long wooden handle.

"You could hear it coming through the air, and when it hit your body, the pain was unbelievable," he recalled. "They just beat you to the point of unconsciousness, or you could no longer understand what was happening to you."

He recalled another occasion in which he and another boy decided to get drunk. They mixed orange juice with rubbing alcohol. It make Middleton sick and his friend intoxicated.

A guard confronted the other boy and began to treat him roughly, Middleton said.

"He dragged him to the administration building, and I never saw him again. He never came back to work or to the cottage," Middleton said. "He literally disappeared off the face of the Earth."

Colon is an electrical contractor in Baltimore, Maryland. But in the 1950s, he acknowledged, he was a wayward youth who gritted his teeth through 11 beatings inside the White House.

Colon said he remembers entering the laundry one day, and his life has never been the same.

Inside a large tumble dryer was a black teen.

The White House boys, who are all white, said black kids at the school were beaten even more savagely than white kids.

"I said to myself, 'What's going to happen to me if I take him out?' " Colon said.

He recalled being about 15 feet away from the boy in the dryer. He thought about helping him but was afraid.

"I said to myself, 'I can't do it, 'cause I'm gonna be the next one in the God------ dryer if I take him out,' " he said.

"I turned my back and walked out, and it torments me every day of my life."

So far, all authorities have are allegations and the collective memories of the White House Boys. But they say it's worth looking into the case.

"Questions remain unanswered as to the identity of the deceased and the origin of these graves," Crist wrote in his letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"The main goal is to determine the location of the graves, who owned the property at the time, and determine if any crimes were committed," agency spokeswoman Kristin Perezluha said.

Authorities are only now beginning their investigation, so no one can say for certain who, if anyone, is buried under the 32 white metal crosses.

Middleton learned about the investigation from a CNN producer.

"My God! That's remarkable. My God! That's all I ever wanted," he said. "That will begin a lot of the healing for those that survived that school.

"Some of us will never get over the brutality, the sexual assaults and the fear. But this is a major step in the right direction," he added.

Colon has established an educational trust fund at the same campus, the Dozier School for high academic achievers, today operated by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

At least one former student says the school was strict but fair.

"They were justified in giving me these paddlings, because, hey, I was wrong," Phil Hail of Anniston, Alabama, told The Miami Herald.

Hail told the Herald he remembers going to the white building once for getting low grades in 1957. "Was [the school] run with a very strict hand? Yes, it was ... Were the paddlings very severe? Yes, they were," he told the newspaper.

There are lingering questions no one seems able to answer: Why was there no outcry from the parents of boys who disappeared? Why did no one look for them?

Colon and Middleton say they're valid questions. They firmly believe that bodies will be found and that they will be the bodies of both black and white boys.

"I believe, in my own heart, that there has been a coverup," Middleton said.

Added Colon, "White, African-American, they're all there ... I believe they will find crushed skulls, and broken bones -- and hopefully, one day, the murderers."

Family Finds Letters From 6-Year-Old After Cancer Claims Her

CINCINNATI -- A young girl who lost her battle against cancer is continuing to inspire people well after her death thanks to the letters she left behind.

Six-year-old Elena Desserich’s life was turned upside down when she was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Her family said that at the beginning, they were told to expect that Elena would only have about 135 days to live.

During her final days, the girl began writing letters to her family and hid them all over their home.

“She would tuck them into bookcases, tuck them into dishes, china you don't touch every year and you'd lift it up and there'd be a note in it,” Keith Desserich, Elena’s father, said.

Her father also wrote during their last few months. He kept an online journal of their battle that soon came to have a following.

"Before we knew it, we had 12,000 people a day who were reading this,” Desserich said.

Now he’s turned the collection of memories into a book titled “Notes Left Behind, 135 Days with Elena.”

The Desserich’s said that Elena left behind hundreds of notes all over the house.

The family is hoping to pass on their daughter’s strength and courage.

“They [readers] should take the time to listen and not get caught up in the days rush,” Desserich said. “To this day, I'll never forget that lesson. Wish I would've learned it earlier.”

The book will go on sale this weekend. The Desserich’s will be signing books at the Kenwood Barnes and Noble store starting at 2 p.m.

All the proceeds will go toward cancer research.