During her cross examination Tuesday, defense attorney Jose Baez asked Cindy Anthony about her daughter Casey's "imaginary friends"–as he called them–including the supposed father of her daughter Caylee and the babysitter who she frequently claimed was watching her for two years.

First, though, as he has with most of the witnesses so far, Baez asked her what kind of mother Casey Anthony was. Cindy said Casey was very loving, with a quick maternal instinct that reminded her of herself. Caylee adored her mother, Cindy testified, and her eyes would light up when she saw her.

Baez then questioned how Cindy and George Anthony did not know their daughter was pregnant until June 30, 2005. She said they had thought Casey's weight gain at the time was due to her “sedentary” lifestyle. Baez then had Cindy stand up and look at her daughter across the courtroom to assess whether she put on weight during her nearly-three years in jail. Though she said Casey did not appear to have a protruding belly right now, she did later testify on re-direct that she has seen Casey's weight fluctuate since her arrest.

The first “imaginary friend” Baez brought up was Caylee's father. Cindy said she was initially led to believe Jesse Grund was the father, but Casey later claimed it was a man named Eric Baker, who was two years younger than her and lived in Kentucky or North Carolina. He had been in town one night while he was having problems with his girlfriend back home and he and Casey got together. Later, after Caylee's second birthday, Casey called Cindy at work crying to tell her that Baker died in a car accident and that Caylee had a half-brother. Cindy said she never met Baker or talked to him, and Baez suggested there was no evidence he ever existed at all.

Cindy testified at length about Jeffrey Hopkins, the former co-worker who Casey claimed had introduced her to Caylee's babysitter, Zanny. According to Cindy, Casey had befriended and began confiding in him when she and Grund were having problems, and he also had a toddler named Zachary. She said she even saw what she believed was a photo of Jeff and Zachary on Casey's phone in late 2006.

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Prosecutors played three 911 calls grandmother Cindy Anthony made about Caylee Anthony’s disappearance in court on Tuesday morning as she wept on the witness stand.

Cindy’s emotional direct testimony, which began on Saturday, continued on the sixth day of Casey Anthony’s murder trial after a brief hearing on a motion to allow brother Lee Anthony to sit in the courtroom during the trial. Defense attorneys opposed the request by Mark Lippman, the attorney for Cindy, George and Lee Anthony, but Judge Belvin Perry ruled that he would be excluded from the rules of sequestration like his parents have been.

Before getting to the 911 calls made on July 15, 2008, prosecutor Linda Drane-Burdick asked Cindy Anthony about the events that occurred in the weeks leading up to that point. Cindy explained that, when she wrote in a MySpace post on July 3, 2008 that “Caylee is missing,” it was just an expression and she did not actually know the girl was not with Casey Anthony.

Cindy testified that she eventually made contact with Casey, at which point Casey claimed she needed some time away to sort things out and she was not trying to punish her mother by keeping Caylee from her. Still, she warned Cindy that she was eventually going to move out and be her own person.

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Cindy Anthony began emotional testimony Saturday in the murder trial of her daughter, Casey Anthony.

In a new prison interview with First Coast News, Misty Croslin denied any involvement in Haleigh Cummings’ disappearance and, despite being called “key” to the investigation by the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, she insisted that she has never changed her story about what happened the night the 5-year-old went missing.

“I’ve always said the same thing,” Croslin, 19, said in the 20-minute interview posted on the station’s website last week. “I never said anything different…People don’t understand that it kills me every day to know that I was asleep, I woke up and she was gone.”

She criticized investigators for focusing so much on her and not following up on possible new leads and sightings. She also claimed that if she knew anything, she would have told them by now, especially with the 25-year prison sentence she’s currently serving for drug trafficking.

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Casey Anthony’s ex-boyfriend Anthony Lazzaro returned to the witness stand Saturday morning to recount text messages he exchanged with her on July 16, 2008 after he found out her daughter Caylee had been missing for a month.

“I am the dumbest person and the worst mother,” Casey texted him after he angrily asked how she could not know where Caylee was. “I honestly hate myself.”

In the texts, she wrote that she had lied to everyone because she had trusted “some psycho” to care for her child and now “the best thing and the most important person in my life is missing.”

Her texts to him maintain some of the same alleged lies she told her parents and law enforcement—that she met Zanny, the babysitter she supposedly left Caylee with, through Jeff Hopkins and that she last saw Caylee dropping her off at the Sawgrass Apartments.

“Guess who gets blamed and spends eternity in jail” if Caylee is not found, she wrote, saying she would never forgive herself and her parents would never forgive her either. On cross examination, Lazzaro said that Casey was acting like her daughter was still alive, that she blamed herself and that she seemed to feel bad about hurting him and her family.

The rest of the day Saturday was taken up by often emotional testimony by Cindy Anthony, Casey’s mother and Caylee’s grandmother. She broke down in tears several times as she described Caylee’s childhood and recalled the events of June and July 2008. Casey Anthony cried at the defense table several times during the morning as well.

Cindy testified about Casey’s pregnancy and about when she learned she was being “blessed” with a grandchild in June 2005. She broke down for the first time as she identified photos of Caylee’s bed and nursery, pointing out her Winnie the Pooh sheets and blankets. She cried again trying to talk about Caylee’s playhouse and sandbox in their backyard, leading Judge Belvin Perry to call for a recess while she composed herself. Casey Anthony also became very emotional during that break.

After the recess, prosecutor Linda Drane-Burdick focused her questioning on June 15, 2008, the last day Cindy saw Caylee alive. Cindy talked about swimming in their pool that afternoon, describing in detail the exterior ladder they used to climb in, which she said they always detached once Caylee became a toddler. She specifically recalled taking the removable part of the ladder off the pool when they got out that afternoon, something that defense attorney Jose Baez had suggested in his opening statement she may not have done.

Cindy Anthony’s testimony then moved on to the lies her daughter allegedly told her. She said she believed Casey was working at the time, having seen her nametag and work-related emails. She also said Casey met Zanny through co-worker Jeff Hopkins and that she first heard about her as a possible babysitter for Caylee in Spring 2006, though she never met or saw a photo of her.

Cindy said she searched for Zanny from the day she learned Caylee was missing, July 15, 2008, until about six weeks ago. At one point during her testimony, she asked to have a picture of Caylee taken down from the monitor in the courtroom so she would not cry.

She then talked about the 31 days after June 16, 2008 when she did not see her daughter or granddaughter, reflecting a timeline of lies and excuses that prosecutor Burdick had told the jury of in her opening statement. She said she talked to Casey every day but there was always some reason why Caylee could not come to the phone, like she was sleeping or she was out with Zanny.

Cindy recounted the gas can theft incident from June 24, 2008, saying she could not remember Casey’s response when she told her someone broke into their shed and took them. She did question Casey, however, about why she was at the house later that day when she had claimed she was in Tampa helping Zanny recover from a car accident.

She testified that Casey’s explanation was that she volunteered to drive back to Orlando to Zanny’s apartment to pick up her insurance information, then stopped at home. She asked Casey why she did not bring Caylee back with her and she said it did not occur to her. Casey told her she had to stay with Zanny in Tampa because Zanny’s mother was sick, her brother was caring for her mother and her roommate was also injured in the accident.

The day ended with Cindy’s testimony about the events around the week of July 4, 2008, when she was off from work and expected to watch Caylee, but Casey never let her. One day, Casey claimed there was a pool party event at Universal Studios so she was taking Caylee to that.

Cindy testified that on July 3 she drove to Universal to confront Casey about money issues and found out she was not there. When she called Casey that day, she said she was in Jacksonville trying to rekindle her relationship with Jeff Hopkins. At that point, Cindy had no idea if Casey was telling her the truth and she asked her son Lee to help find her. She also created a MySpace account and posted a message about her missing granddaughter but never got a response.

Cindy Anthony is expected to continue direct testimony when court resumes Tuesday morning. First, though, the attorneys will meet at 8:30 am for arguments over motions.

Tony Lazarro, Casey Anthony's former lover, says Casey told him her father hit her, and her brother tried to molest her.

George Anthony and tow truck manager Simon Birch testify Casey Anthony's car smelled of human decomposition.

Casey Anthony’s car smelled like a human corpse, said her father George Anthony who took the witness stand today for the third time in the course of his daughter’s Florida murder trial.

“Please God, don’t let this be my Casey or my Caylee,” George Anthony said softly to himself as he opened the stench-filled trunk of his daughter’s abandoned Pontiac Sunfire.

It’s a smell Anthony had become familiar with in his former career as a detective and one he said could never forget. Anthony testified today that he was overcome with relief when he opened the trunk to find neither his daughter’s nor his granddaughter’s remains inside.

Anthony’s impressions of the odor were corroborated by witness, Simon Burch, a manager from Johnson’s Wrecking who helped George and Cindy Anthony retrieve the car from the company’s tow yard after Caylee Anthony went missing and after the vehicle had been towed from the parking lot of an Orlando Amscot.

Burch testified that over the course of his career he had become familiar with the smell of human decomposition and could distinguish it from the smell of household trash. Burch said he had towed hundreds of garbage trucks and on numerous occasions had picked up vehicles in which a dead body had been left inside.

The smell was “eye opening” explained Burch, recalling how he and George Anthony opened the car’s trunk standing side-by-side. Inside, the two found a white garbage bag containing what Burch described as typical household trash, along with a pizza box, flies and maggots. Burch removed the bag and tossed it over a fence towards the company’s dumpster.

But the smell of human decay, Burch said, did not follow the discarded trash. Instead, Anthony’s vehicle continued to smell so repugnant that George Anthony claimed he could drive the car home only with all of the windows down.

Once home with the car, Anthony said he noticed a subtle stain in the trunk’s spare tire area. He testified the stain was circular, measuring about the size of a basket ball.

On cross examination the defense attacked Anthony, claiming that the only reason he drove his daughter’s vehicle home from the tow yard was so that he could distance himself from potential evidence. In opening statements, the defense claimed Caylee accidentally drowned in the family’s backyard swimming pool while George Anthony was home and that he had been involved in covering up the death.

“The reason you drove that car home and didn’t call police and went to work is because you knew Caylee was dead already,” Jose Baez alleged.

“No. I did not,” Anthony said, visibly choked up over the allegation.

Casey Anthony’s trial continues tomorrow beginning at 9:00am EST.

Before the jury arrived for the fourth day of testimony at Casey Anthony’s murder trial Friday, defense attorney Jose Baez moved to have Judge Belvin Perry declare a mistrial.

Baez’s request came after Perry granted a prosecution motion that will require him to proffer testimony from witnesses about things the defendant said to them before the jury is allowed to hear it. Baez had argued that would give the prosecutors an unfair advantage after they have had so many witnesses testify about Casey’s behavior and sexual partners and it prevent him from countering those questions.

Arguing for a mistrial, Baez said that such testimony should be inadmissible because it deals with remorse and bad character, calling the prosecution’s case so far “an attempted character assassination” that had nothing to do with the alleged crime. Perry denied the motion, stating that there is a certain line of questioning about character evidence that is admissible and the testimony so far has fallen within that.

Friday morning’s most emotional testimony came from Mallory Parker, the fiancée of Casey’s brother Lee Anthony. She testified on direct about going with Lee one night in early July 2008 searching for Casey and some text messages she exchanged with Casey where she did not mention Caylee. Under cross examination, though, she broke into tears while describing Casey and Caylee’s relationship, which she called “amazing.”

“Casey and Caylee had a very special bond,” Parker said.

The most important information for the prosecution’s case that came out of the morning’s testimony was from Simon Birch, the manager of the wrecking yard where Casey Anthony’s car was towed. He testified that there was a very strong odor coming from the vehicle when he did an external inspection a few days after it arrived. He stated that the smell was consistent with human decomposition he had encountered at least seven or eight times before in his nearly-30-year career in towing and wreckage. He said that he had experience with the odor of rotting food too and he knows the difference.

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Tot Mom's ex-boyfriend Anthony Lazzaro says he spent the day in bed with Casey Anthony after Caylee vanished.