A popular gossip blogger in the United States has created a fire in the social media sphere with the following statement:

“When Casey Anthony’s probation is finished in September she is planning on moving to Costa Rica. Apparently she has decided that no place in the US is safe for her and feels like she can lose herself in the Central American country.

Apparently she has purchased a house on the beach through a corporation that was set up for her. Kill your kid and get a house on the beach.”

The paragraphs above come from Crazy Days and Nights, a blog by an Internet personality who goes by the online nickname Enty Lawyer, and who does not claim to be an attorney. Aside from the Crazy Days and Nights blog, Enty Lawyer is also very active in different online social networks.

Casey Anthony is a young American woman who captured headlines all over the U.S. after her two-year old daughter Caylee Marie Anthony went missing in 2008. Ms. Anthony was charged with first degree murder and acquitted in 2011. The media focus on the Caylee Anthony disappearance and subsequent trial of her mother turned into a spectacle, not only due to the tragedy but also because of the sordid details of Ms. Anthony’s tawdry life. She managed to strike a chord in mainstream American consciousness for different reasons, one of them being her photogenic appeal, and her trial unfolded at the same time social media came of age and gossip reporters seized this advantage.

Gossip media is often dismissed as several levels below yellow journalism, but the claim posited by Enty Lawyer is not baseless. Ms. Anthony has expressed her desire to move to Costa Rica on more than one occasion. A set of letters written by Ms. Anthony to a fellow inmate in a Florida prison while she awaited trial indicated that she considered Costa Rica in her future:

“Costa Rica it is! Pina Coladas , fresh fruit & massages. I could use a bit of each.”

Ms. Anthony’s private correspondence was intercepted and her letters were dissected by the American media. In an article by news media network MSNBC, journalists obtained letters written by inmates from prison officials and carefully analyzed them. Here’s an excerpt of a letter by an inmate who complained to another inmate about Ms. Anthony’s behavior in jail:

“She’s not really all together up there. I cry every single day for my children and she’s inviting me to Costa Rica???”

Once details of Ms. Anthony’s personal correspondence were made public, the social media sphere used her writings against her. Upon Ms. Anthony’s acquittal and release from custody, one blogger in Miami wrote:

“Casey Anthony’s reality may prove to be very different from her fantasy of laying on the beach sipping margaritas in Costa Rica.”

One cannot blame Ms. Anthony for thinking about a life in Costa Rica when she was confined to a cell in an American prison. Many people think about our country in terms of the ultimate getaway destination, a place where troublesome pasts can be buried. Even the stately New York Times once dedicated a Sunday Review article about Ms. Anthony and what she could theoretically do to disappear from public scrutiny once released. On that article NY Times quoted an expert skip tracer who mentioned that individuals evading law enforcement could mention living in Costa Rica on a social network in order to throw law enforcement agents and bounty hunters off their trail.

Should Ms. Anthony decide to move to Costa Rica, she would have to ferry back and forth to Florida. According to MSNBC, she is headed back to court on a civil defamation case whereby she modeled a fictitious persona on Zenaida Gonzalez, a real-life nanny who was blamed for Caylee Anthony’s disappearance. That fabrication has forever tarnished the reputation of Ms. Gonzalez, who is now seeking retribution.