ORLANDO --
Caylee Anthony drowned in a pool on June 16, 2008, defense attorneys said, and was not killed by her mother Casey.
In their opening statement, defense attorney Jose Baez said the Orlando mother was living a lie and that her father began abusing Casey Anthony when she was a few months old then continued.
Although the Anthony household appeared normal from the outside, it was dysfunctional and held dark secrets, the attorney said.
Casey Anthony began crying in court as her attorney gave details of the alleged sexual abuse.
The defense started its opening statements after jurors broke for lunch after prosecutors spent the morning outlining their case, telling jurors they'll find it is not a case of murder or manslaughter.
This morning, prosecutors portrayed Casey Anthony as a lying, selfish woman who gallivanted around Orlando for weeks while her 2-year-old daughter's body was in a trash-filled swamp within walking distance of her home.
As Anthony's the first-degree trial got under way after nearly three years, the prosecution's opening statement outlined the state's evidence to the jury selected last week in Pinellas County.
The judge broke for lunch shortly before noon with the defense scheduled to present its opening arguments after the recess.
Anthony broke down briefly during the state's preview of its case, then showed little emotion through most of the opening statement.
The trial broke for lunch about 11:40 a.m., minutes after a prosecutor told jurors the evidence would point to no other conclusion than Anthony was guilty of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
Earlier, Anthony wiped away tears as prosecutor Linda Drane-Burdick began describing the last day Caylee was seen by her grandparents.
Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in Caylee's 2008 slaying and faces the death penalty if convicted.
Burdick offered a timeline of Casey Anthony's whereabouts based on cell phone records. The timeline stretched from when Caylee was last seen by her grandparents on in June 2008 to when she was reported missing a month later to when her remains were discovered by a meter reader in woods near her home in December 2008.
Jurors were shown images on a screen of a photo of Caylee taken on Father's Day alongside an image of the little girl's skeletal remains.
"It is time to tell the story of a little girl named Caylee," Burdick said.
The prosecutor described Anthony's appearance as a hardworking single mother as an illusion.
Caylee was described as a happy child with doting grandparents who showered the girl with stuffed toys, took numerous photos and built a backyard playhouse — the picture of a girl with an apparently ideal life who watched "SpongeBob SquarePants" and wore a Spider-Man costume.
"Caylee lived nearly every day of her live on a quite residential street in Orlando," Burdick said.
The last time Cindy and George Anthony saw their granddaughter alive was when Anthony took her daughter and left for work June 16, Burdick said.
"In fact, no one besides Casey Anthony ever saw Caylee Anthony alive again," she said.
That's when Casey Anthony, who repeatedly shook her head during the first few minutes of the opening statement, started crying and dabbed her cheeks with a tissue.
The prosecutor continued to detail how Casey Anthony kept telling her parents that Caylee was with a babysitter who investigators have said didn't exist.
The opening statement took the jury through the 30 days after Anthony took her daughter and the increasingly frantic efforts of Anthony's parents to learn where their granddaughter was.
"You will hear during the testimony of this case that no one had any idea that anything had befallen Caylee Marie Anthony until July 15, 2008. How can that be? What happened between June 16th and July 15th?" Burdick told the jurors.
She said that three days after Caylee was last seen, Casey Anthony stopped at her parent's house, backed her car into the garage and asked a neighbor to borrow a shovel.
"He will testify that she had the shovel for maybe an hour or so and then returned it. He didn't notice anything unusual about its condition," Burdick said.
Through the first half of the opening arguments, Burdick kept repeating: "Where is Caylee Anthony?"
Burdick's systematic statements brought the jury to when grandmother Cindy Anthony, who had spent days trying to find Caylee and speak face-to-face with her daughter, was finally able to confront Casey Anthony and called police
It was when police were on the way to question Casey Anthony about the location of her child that she first mentioned Caylee was kidnapped by a babysitter, Burdick said when the case resumed after the recess.
The trial started about 9 a.m. with Perry asking the jurors whether they had abided by his orders not to discuss or explore the case in any way. He also gave some basic explanations about how the trial will proceed.
Because of extensive publicity, jury selection was moved to Pinellas County, where two weeks of jury selection wrapped up Friday.
People started lining up outside the Orange County Courthouse for one of the 50 spaces available to the public.
George and Cindy Anthony were in attendance. Television personalities Geraldo Rivera and Nancy Grace also sat in the courtroom gallery.
Brett Schulman, a 51-year-old professional poker player, arrived at the courthouse at 4 a.m. to snag the first spectator seat.
"It's the largest case in Central Florida history," Schulman said. "And it's in my backyard."
The trial is expected to last from six to eight weeks. Jurors were picked from Pinellas County and transported to Orlando, where they are being sequestered during the trial.
