Caylee Marie Anthony (born August 9, 2005, in Orlando, Florida, died 2008) was a toddler who attracted international attention regarding the circumstances of her disappearance in June 2008 and subsequently discovered death. Her mother, Casey Anthony (born March 19, 1986), was indicted on October 14, 2008, for her first-degree murder. Police found Anthony's account of Caylee's disappearance suspicious after learning that Casey had not reported her daughter missing for more than a month; the last time Casey Anthony claimed to have seen Caylee was on June 16, 2008, but the child's disappearance was not reported to police until July 15, 2008. On December 11, 2008, the skeletal remains of Caylee Anthony were found near the Anthony home by a meter reader, later confirmed on December 19, 2008 by the Orange County Medical Examiner to be those of the toddler. The cause of the child's death is listed in the autopsy report as "homicide by undetermined means." Casey Anthony is currently in jail, arrested on first-degree murder charges with a trial start date for some time in 2010. Her family maintains that she is innocent of all charges.

Caylee Anthony was first reported missing to authorities on July 15, 2008. Caylee's grandmother, Cindy Anthony, reportedly called 9-1-1 when her daughter Casey Anthony, Caylee's mother, would not tell her where Caylee had been. Cindy had not seen her granddaughter for weeks and became very alarmed when she admitted that she smelled the odor of a "dead body" in the trunk of Casey's car. Cindy later denied what she said and revised her account, stating that the smell was from old, stale pizza.

When Detective Yuri Melich questioned Casey Anthony about the whereabouts of her daughter, she stated the child was with a babysitter. The purported babysitter, Zenaida "Zani" Fernandez-Gonzalez, according to Casey, supposedly had been a caregiver for the child for over two years. When a local woman named Zenaida Gonzalez (not Fernandez-Gonzalez) was questioned by police on July 17, 2008, Gonzalez denied knowing either Casey or Caylee Anthony. When police asked the grandmother Cindy about the babysitter, Cindy said that she had no reason to doubt Casey's account of Fernandez-Gonzalez's caring for Caylee. However, in the nearly three years that Caylee was alive and living at Cindy Anthony's house, neither of Casey's parents nor any of her friends, boyfriends, family, or acquaintances had ever once met the alleged babysitter.