“Obviously I didn’t kill my daughter,” Anthony said to CNN’s Piers Morgan, on an interview he later related second hand. “If anything, there’s nothing in the world I’ve ever been more proud of, and there’s no one I loved more than my daughter. She’s my greatest accomplishment.”
Though acquitted of her murder charges, Anthony was convicted of four counts of lying to investigators, rendering a sentence that was already paid for by the time she had already spent in jail. As of July 17, she was a free woman, leaving the jail amidst a crowd crying out that she was a “baby-killer,” to later slip into seclusion for, as she says, concern for her personal safety.
“I’m 26 now, and I’ve gone through hell,” she said, also saying, “The caricature of me that is out there, it couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Looking back on her life before the incident, she said, “I’m ashamed in many ways of the person that I was. Even then, that wasn’t who I am.”
As for the heavily publicized images of her partying recklessly, the defense made a claim that this was her way of handling her feelings, after having been sexually abused by her father — charges that were also vehemently denied, this time by her father, George Anthony.
She is also serving a year of probation related to a check fraud conviction in 2010 — but otherwise intends to stay in her seclusion.