(CNN) -- The mother of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony has pleaded not guilty to killing the 3-year-old, who has been missing since June. (Did anyone expect her to do anything else. She won't even admit that there isn't a babysitter, so why she admit that she killed her daughter.)
Casey Anthony was named in a seven-count indictment on Tuesday. The 22-year-old was arrested later that day.
The arrest was made after officers saw Anthony switch cars on a highway and pulled her over, an Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman said.
Anthony's written plea was entered Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.
The indictment charged Anthony with seven counts, including capital murder, in the toddler's disappearance.
"She's not running from this," attorney Jose Baez said Tuesday as his client wiped tears from her eyes during an impromptu media briefing before the charges against her were announced. "She's doing her best to stand strong, to stand up to the powers that are working against her. And they threw the kitchen sink at her a long time ago."
After the indictment, undercover officers followed Anthony as she traveled in her mother's SUV. The officers saw the SUV stop under a highway overpass, at which point Anthony got into another vehicle and drove off. Officers made the traffic stop after she entered the second vehicle, the spokesman said.(That's running away if I ever saw it. Where did she think she was going to go. Someone would have called the police, or press, and promptly told them where she was at.)
Prosecutors are asking Anthony be held without bond. (Her little SUV switch proved that she couldn't follow the most basic of her home confinement rules. Why would they grant her bond?And where would the money have come from for another bond? How does that family keep suckering bond companies into posting bond, and providing security. Is the free press really worth all the trouble.)
Anthony is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child and four counts of providing false information to police.
Lawson Lamar, the state attorney for Orange County, Florida, said the first count is a capital charge -- which could carry a penalty of life in prison or death.
The 19 grand jurors -- 10 women and nine men -- deliberated for about half an hour after hearing from police, a cadaver dog handler, an FBI agent and the missing child's grandfather. (That half an hour of deliberation does not bode well for her chances at trial. That idiot lawyer of hers better ask for a change of venue, it he hopes to save her from a date with the executioner.)
Authorities were quick to remind the public that, despite the indictment, Caylee's whereabouts remain a mystery.
"Despite the charges against Ms. Anthony we have not achieved our objective," he said. "We have not found little Caylee Anthony."
Before her arrest, Anthony's lawyer continued to maintain her innocence.
"She has been living a nightmare," the attorney added. "She has a missing child. She's also a child." (Casey Anthony is not a child. She may behave like a child, but last time checked she was an adult and a mother. And if her daughter was really missing she should have acted like an adult the moment she knew something was wrong and called police. Heck, a twelve year old mother even would have done that.)
Caylee Anthony disappeared in mid-June, but Casey Anthony waited about a month before telling her family the child was gone. Cindy Anthony -- Caylee's grandmother -- called the Orange County sheriff July 15 after her daughter wouldn't tell her where Caylee was.
Casey's brother, Lee Anthony, also pleaded with his sister to tell him where Caylee was. According to police documents, she replied that she hadn't seen Caylee in "31 days."
Investigators say that since that first 911 call, evidence has mounted that leads police to believe that Caylee is dead. They first labeled Casey Anthony a person of interest, and later, a suspect.
The story of Anthony and her missing daughter garnered national headlines, provided nightly fodder for cable TV crime shows and brought a stampede of reporters to stake out the home of Anthony's parents.
Tempers have flared and fists have flown outside the house tucked away in a subdivision in Orlando, Florida. One protester had George Anthony arrested, alleging that he had pushed her.
Police and prosecutors have said little, instead letting hundreds of pages of documents and investigative reports do the talking for them.
Casey Anthony behaved like a carefree party girl, going to nightclubs, entering "hot-body" contests and incessantly sending text messages to her friends while her daughter was missing, according to cell phone and text transcripts and investigative reports released by police.
Copies of her phone and text records obtained by police and released to the public show she hardly ever mentioned her missing daughter during the time just before and after the child was reported missing. The young mother referred to Caylee as "the little snot head" in May, about a month before the child disappeared. (I didn't know that jokingly calling your child a name was a crime. I call my youngest the wee tyrant, and refer to the pair of them as plague and pestilence.)
Anthony gave conflicting statements during the investigation and provided police with information that later was disproved. For example, she said she had dropped the child off with a baby sitter. Yet when police checked out her story, they learned that the address that Anthony supplied belonged to an apartment that had been vacant for weeks. The woman Anthony named as the baby sitter said she did not know Anthony.
As Anthony was arrested on child neglect charges, bonded out of jail, was rearrested on bad check and theft charges and bonded out again, investigators disclosed some of the forensic evidence they uncovered.
Cadaver dogs picked up the scent of death in the trunk of a car Anthony drove and in her parents' backyard. A neighbor told police Anthony had asked to borrow a shovel.
Authorities said that in the car Anthony drove, they found traces of chloroform, which can cause loss of consciousness. And they said that on her computer, they found Internet searches of missing children and chloroform Web sites.
Investigators said air quality tests conducted by the FBI found evidence of human decomposition in the trunk of Anthony's car. Law enforcement sources also suggested that a strand of hair found in the trunk of the car was probably Caylee's. (I really hope they have something more than a single strand of hair to build a case around.)
Also of Interest:
Caylee Anthony Update 17 October
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