Casey Anthony Resurfaces Online As A ‘Legal Advocate’ And Her Reposts Aren’t Doing Her Any Favors
The gall is shocking enough, but the lack of self-awareness takes it to a whole new level.
Photo: Orange County Police Department | Design: YourTango Casey Anthony, the infamous woman accused and ultimately acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008, has resurfaced on TikTok, and to say the reception has not been warm would be a wild understatement. As viral fame once again revisits her, it's shone an uncomfortable spotlight on not just how bizarrely oblivious she seems to be, but how deranged our culture has become.
Casey Anthony has resurfaced online, positioning herself as a 'legal advocate.'
Appearing out of nowhere on TikTok on March 3, 2025, Anthony shared a three-minute video filmed in her car in which she announced her new intended career as a "legal advocate." By launching a monetized Substack, she said she will provide perspective into the legal system. (The video below is a repost of her video by an account posing as Anthony.)
"I’ve been in the legal field since 2011," she said in her video in a statement that likely has every lawyer on Earth banging their head against the nearest wall, "and in this capacity I feel that it’s necessary, if I’m going to continue to operate appropriately as a legal advocate, that I start to advocate for myself and also advocate for my daughter."
Anthony has no legal qualifications to speak of besides having been on trial for the murder of that aforementioned daughter, whom Anthony did not report missing for over a month. Caylee was then found after more than six months when Anthony's mother reported her missing upon finding Anthony's car in a junkyard smelling of decomposing flesh. Caylee's skeletal remains were discovered soon after in a laundry bag in the woods near Anthony's home.
Anthony had told police the girl was kidnapped by a nanny, and was convicted of lying to law enforcement, for which she served prison time. She was acquitted of Caylee's murder, however, because the jury felt neither legal team had adequately proved their case. Now, she appears to be going on some kind of image rehab odyssey, and to some extent at least, it seems to be working.
The response to Anthony's announcement has mostly been outrage. But not entirely.
There's no such thing as bad publicity, as the old saying goes, and on that front alone Anthony's gambit has worked. Her first TikTok has more than 3 million views as of this writing and has been widely covered in the international press. Her Substack currently has more than 2,000 subscribers.
But given the response to her posts, all manifestly geared toward burnishing her claims that she has been unfairly painted as a murderer, it seems most of that following is gawking rather than supporting her. Comments on her TikToks and Substack posts are full of outraged vitriol.
But those angry responses are far from the only ones she's gotten. Speaking to NewsNation, Anthony's parents' attorney theorized that Anthony's plan is to leverage and monetize a whole generation of adults too young to know much about her case, in hopes they'll give her the benefit of the doubt.
Many seem to have done just that, especially on Substack, where many commenters are vociferously defending her against criticism, while others have been commiserating about their own experiences of what they say are miscarriages of justice. Much of Anthony's own online presence, however, tells precisely the story she's trying to refute.
Anthony's social media reposts play directly into the allegations against her.
If Anthony wishes to characterize herself as an unfairly maligned victim of a broken criminal justice system, she has a strange way of going about it — any of her shares on TikTok feed right into the supposed misjudgments of her character.
During her trial, it was alleged, including by Anthony's own parents, that she murdered her daughter to get her out of the way of the life she preferred to lead. Just 22 at the time, Anthony was spotted partying in local bars during the month between Caylee's death and when she finally reported her missing to police. The optics were terrible, and they've always stuck.
Which makes her choice in TikTok reposts frankly shocking. Among them are videos in which women wax philosophical about the invigorating freedom of a life with no partner or kids — a life Anthony only leads because her daughter was brutally murdered.
Then there's the clip Anthony reposted of singer Alicia Keys talking about how "getting rid of a bunch of negative [people] that needed to be out of my life" is one of the linchpins of her success — which is the exact proposed motive for the murder of which Anthony was accused.
It's hard not to feel like the whole thing is wildly tone deaf and bizarrely oblivious, and harder still not to feel like Anthony has now become an avatar of the world we've allowed to be created since she rose to infamy — one where there are no limits to the kind of depravity and nonsense that can be monetized online, and no shortage of rubes willing to pay for it.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.