[John Kass] Sickening story sure to provide ‘Bella Vita’

Just when you think Casey Anthony can’t possibly nauseate you anymore than she has already, try this:

She wants more children.

“I had a dream not too long ago that I was pregnant,” she wrote in a letter to another prison inmate a few years ago.

“It was like having Cays all over again,” Anthony continued, referring to her little girl, Caylee. “I’ve thought about adopting, which even sounds weird to me saying it, but there are so many children that deserve to be loved.”

And who would dare tell her not to have any more kids? Not the judge who sentenced her Thursday for lying to authorities in the death of her 2-year-old daughter.

The jury acquitted Casey Anthony of murder, yes. But somehow duct tape was pressed against the little girl’s mouth. And someone dumped Caylee’s body and left it to rot in that Florida swamp.

And for 31 days, Casey Anthony did not report her daughter missing, and testimony showed she lied about it. That’s 31 days. For all of Casey Anthony’s tears and twitches, what frightens most parents is how cold she was.

Now that she’s been acquitted, she’ll need money to live. Will she sell her interview? Will she get a book contract chronicling the dark carnival of her life? And will Lindsay Lohan play Casey Anthony in the Lifetime movie?

In the meantime, if she needs extra cash, Casey’s criminal defense lawyers might consider giving her part-time work babysitting their children and grandchildren. After all, she does have experience.

Aside from the death of the child, what’s monstrous are the 31 days of lies. According to testimony, Casey lied about Caylee being with some nanny named Zanny. Casey lied about how she and Caylee spent quality time with a wealthy boyfriend. The nanny and the boyfriend were fictitious.

As Casey lied, she partied. She got herself a tattoo ― “Bella Vita,” meaning “Beautiful Life” in Italian. She went dancing. The lying went on for weeks as the body was in the swamp.

And that’s what bothers so many parents I know. When a child goes missing, even for a minute, wordless horrors press down on a parent’s heart. You tell yourself you’ll never lose them, but it happens sometimes. They’re little and wriggly and stubborn and often quite devious. And then they’re not there.

A friend told me about losing his son for a few minutes at a water park. Another told me of his 4-year-old daughter trotting through the door of a store, to cross a fairly busy street.

The children were quickly returned to their parents. They weren’t harmed. But the parents? The incident at the water park and the street crossing happened years ago. And I could see the pain as they told it, a pain that was alive and running under their skins.

It happened to my wife, Betty, when our boys were little. She was at Marshall Field’s. The twins were about 4 back then and their strategy was to divide and conquer. One shrieked and had a fit. The other squirmed quietly, scheming. It was the schemer who escaped.

If you’re a parent you know how quick they can be. She’d turned to comfort the one who was crying and the other ran off. He hid inside a circular rack of men’s coats. He crouched down there and froze, like a rabbit.

Betty shouted his name. Nothing. She then ran to a security guard, and within seconds, they began a lockdown of the store. Just then, the escape artist stepped out from his hiding place among the coats and ran to his mother.

If you’re a parent and have been there, then you know. In those few terrible minutes, there were many things going through my wife’s mind. But getting a Bella Vita tattoo wasn’t one of them. And dancing wasn’t on her mind, either.

“Responses to grief are as varied as the day is long, but responses to guilt are oh, so predictable,” said prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick in closing arguments. “What do guilty people do? They lie. They avoid. They run. They mislead. ... They divert attention away from themselves and they act like nothing is wrong.”

The jury didn’t buy it, though, and after the acquittal, the defense lawyers made beautiful speeches about justice. Soon, everyone involved will have their say, except Caylee.

“I was angry and shocked by the verdict,” said Casey Anthony’s former fiance, Jesse Grund, on the “Today” show. “It’s obvious from the evidence that was presented that Casey was the last person to see Caylee alive. And her body was dumped in the woods. ...

”Right now, she has everything she ever wanted. She’s going to have money. She’s going to have people at her doorstep, asking for her, wanting her. She’s going to have that partying lifestyle she so craved.“

So no matter what happens to Casey Anthony in court Thursday, we’ve got to assume she’ll have plenty of money.

A nice house with a picket fence? More kids?
And a decent new car with a trunk that doesn’t smell of death?

By John Kass, Chicago Tribune

John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. ― Ed.

(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services)