Cheney Mason steers Casey Anthony to the goal line: the Federal Courthouse in Tampa. Photo credit: Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel
NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” showed the frenzied atmosphere when Anthony attended a bankruptcy hearing in Tampa.
“As she walked to court, one of her six lawyers tried to protect her from the media crush,” NBC’s Kerry Sanders said. That lawyer was Cheney Mason, who shouted, “Get out of the way.”
“GMA” replayed WFTV-Channel 9’s Kathi Belich asking Anthony, “Did you get away with murder?” (WFTV is an ABC affiliate.) George Stephanopoulos of “GMA” introduced the story by saying Anthony is “living a narrow life deep in debt with no job, no home of her own, almost no cash.”
“Today” moved the Anthony story into the 7 a.m. half-hour; “GMA” kept her in the 7:30 half-hour where her story usually aired during her 2011 trial. In July of that year, she was acquitted of murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee.
Sanders noted that Casey Anthony has nearly $800,000 in debts but lists just $1,084 in assets. She told the court Monday that she doesn’t pay rent or utilities and exists off the kindness of others. She sounds like Blanche DuBois, doesn’t she? (There won’t be “A Streetcar Named Casey”; she revealed in court that she has no car and takes buses.)
ABC’s Matt Guttman said, “As for the mountain of money she and many others thought might follow her acquittal, those book deals, the movies … never materialized.”
Prosecutor Jeff Ashton’s book became a Lifetime movie. Otherwise, who needs to make a Casey Anthony movie after her story plays so frequently on the news? And it doesn’t sound as if a lot happens in her life these days.
Former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, serving as a legal analyst for NBC, said: “The biggest potential source of income is a book deal and a movie deal someday, and that’s why it would be vitally important from her standpoint to keep that asset away from the creditors that she owes money to.”
What happens next?