Casey Anthony returns to her partying ways as she tries to put her notorious past behind her
Casey Anthony is trying to put her notorious past as "one of the most hated women in America" behind her and has reportedly started going out more.
The Florida woman has lived a low-profile life in the South Florida home of one of the private investigators involved in her case after she was famously acquitted of murder in the 2011 death of her two-year-old daughter Caylee, People reports.
However, the 33-year-old now doesn't care what people say about her and is resuming a busy social life. “She believes she has done her penance,” a source close to Anthony told the outlet. “And now she’s partying. She’s dating around, meeting new people, and finally creating a social life.”
“She describes her old life as a ‘nightmare.'” the source continued. “All of it: Caylee’s disappearance, the trial, her relationship with her parents. She lives in denial a lot of the time, pretending that everything that happened, didn’t happen.”
While Anthony was dating a man last year, the relationship has since cooled off. “She wasn’t ready to settle down,” according to the source. “That’s not what she’s looking for now.”
Back in 2008, Caylee was missing for 31 days before Anthony filed a missing person's report at the insistence of her mother. The toddler's remains were eventually found in a woody lot nearby Anthony's family residence.
At least 40 million people tuned in to watch her testimony during the widely discussed trial in 2011, per Nielsen Research. While she was convicted of four counts of lying to cops, she was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges on July 5, 2011.
Following her acquittal, many thought she was "one of the most hated women in America", as described by a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections.
According to the unnamed source, Anthony now finds it easier to respond to those who confront her about her notorious past. "She’s fighting back,” they said. “She used to avoid people, but now she calls them ‘psycho haters’ and is defiant about them. She says things like ‘ugh, they just need to get over me.'”
Anthony told the Associated Press during a 2017 interview she was unlikely to have more children. “If I am blessed enough to have another child — if I’d be dumb enough to bring another kid into this world knowing that there’d be a potential that some little snot-nosed kid would then say something mean to my kid — I don’t think I could live with that,” she said.
However, 18 months after the ordeal, she hasn't completely discounted the possibilty. “For a long time she was like ‘no way,'” an insider told the outlet in October. “But time has changed that and she’s now open to it in a way she hasn’t been before.”
Having said that, Anthony continues to distance herself from her infamous past as she works as a researcher for her private investigator.