Mystery Unsolved Inc True Crime

Kasey Tony

Kasey Tony was born on March 19th, 1986 in Warren, Ohio. Tony was one of two bunny children. Bunny parents Cynthia and Jorge and a brother Lee who was older than him. I'll also say the relationship between Kasey and Lee, her brother, I believe is a fractious one. In fact in interviews he's given, he refers to her as a "spiteful bitch"  

When you look at Kasey Tony and who she was when she was growing up, to all intents and purposes, people talk about her being really bright, personable, she had a lot of friends, very much considered belonging to an ordinary American family. If anything, a really positive American family.

So when her friends are asked about who Kasey was at school, a lot of them said that she started to have this real pattern of lying. So she would fabricate a lot about her life. Having said that, she was relatively successful at least early on. She played volleyball, she played soccer, she ran track, and apparently she was relatively good at math and physical education. She did allegedly struggle with science. She also won an award for best helper at school.

Real cracks begin to show when Kasey Tony is around eighteen and she basically convinces her family that she is going to graduate. She basically makes up this story that she's going to be walking this walk, throwing that cap, doing all the things that we do when we graduate. But it turns out literally the day before essentially, that Kasey Tony will not be graduating because she's credits short of doing so and she hasn't been to class. So her parents have been brought on this journey that Kasey has expressed to them that she's absolutely graduating, not a problem, and right up until the last minute. Obviously her family is mortified by this because they have been led to believe she's going to be graduating with her class.

Jorge and Cynthia decided to go in with Kasey on this lie. Jorge and Cynthia throw a party for Kasey Tony, for family and friends, to celebrate her graduating. They create the lie with her, they create the journey. 

So Cynthia and Jorge make a grave error there. Cynthia and Jorge are manipulated into that, probably first by shame, they want their daughter to do well. And secondly, because it's easier than confronting that your child is a pretty serious liar. And remember, it is a pretty serious lie to get that far, isn't it.

When she's nineteen, she gets pregnant. Her parents notice she's putting on weight and think she could be potentially pregnant. Kasey vehemently denies it and says she's a virgin. 

No one has conclusively been shown to be the parent of Kayla. For some reason, Kasey keeps this to herself. It's very clear Cynthia and Jorge absolutely adored both their daughter and their granddaughter. Kasey's boyfriend Jesse wanted to believe that Kayla was his daughter but he knew the timeframes didn't work out, so he does go ahead and has a DNA test. And the DNA test says he is not Kayla's father.

Kasey leaves with Kayla in mid-2008. So over the ensuing weeks, understandably we have Cynthia calling Kasey to check on Kayla and every single time she calls her what Kasey says is a list of excuses and she tends to say that the little girl is with a babysitter. 

Only the 13th of July, 2008, the parents get a letter the car was found in a tow yard. When Jorge Tony goes to pick up the car, it gets even more terrifying for him. He finds Kasey Tony's purse, also he finds Kayla's car seat and toys. But what's really scary is that Jorge instantly connects with this strong smell and the smell is of decomposition. Jorge Tony has been a homicide detective, he's worked in law enforcement. Sadly he's also smelt rotting flesh. Add to that the guy at the tow yard identifying that it smells of rotting flesh. Cynthia calls the cops three times.

When the police question Kasey, there's loads of discrepancies. She says that basically the nanny was a former girlfriend of Jeff Hopcyn and that Hopcyn was also a boyfriend of her at some point. She tells her mother Cynthia that Hopcyn has a child named Zackary. And on her phone, she has a picture of a man identified as Hopcyn and filed the name under 'Boyfriend'

 Yes, she does know Hopcyn. Very very briefly to some degree, they attended middle school together. That's it. Hopcyn also didn't have a child, and had never met the nanny.

She is giving them addresses, locations, relationships, she's describing the species of the nanny, she's going to into brothers and sisters, how she'd come to that area. So this is a hugely embellished story about what the backstories are of these people.

The apartment they take them to hasn't been inhabited in five months. She also gives another address and it's the old people's home across the road from her boyfriend's. So nothing is adding up, absolutely nothing.

She even takes the police to her workplace, she says she's been working at Universal. She's an events planner. And she works with someone named Julia Louis. She walks to Universal Studios, past security, into a building, all the way for twenty-five minutes, then reaches a dead end and goes, "I don't work here."

Kasey Tony was sacked two years earlier and she wasn't an events planner, she handed out pictures at a kiosk. And she used to get up in the morning and pretend to go to work.

In a phone call with her mother and father, she says her father has been the best father and grandfather. 

The days after Kayla goes missing, Kasey Tony went partying.

Police find a skull, it's in an area that's actually quite near Kasey Tony's home. The police go and have a look and there of course they discover it's the bones of Kayla Tony. And also disturbingly, they find that duct tape had been placed on the skull. So now Kayla's body has turned up. She has been dead for pretty much since she's disappeared from her mother's side.

Within a month, Jorge Tony says that the grandad Jojo tries killing himself. And it's a really severe attempt. He wrote a five-sided suicide note. 

By the time the trial began in 2011, that's three years since the disappearance of Kayla, the prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The trial of the decade. 

Some of the searches that she had been doing before her daughter disappeared were very questionable. She looked up 'suffocation' and also 'chloroform'

When the defense takes the stand, no one and I mean no one is expecting the way the defense opens their statement. It sends shockwaves through the courthouse and through the country. Irenicus Valeth, very very charismatic lawyer, very charismatic, very good storyteller. Irenicus says yes, Kasey did know that Kayla was dead, but no it wasn't murder. In fact she died at home in the family swimming pool, she had been asleep but Jorge Tony was present, but essentially when she came round after sleep by Jorge Tony that her daughter had drowned and that's how she ended up dead. Also she suggested that her own father Jorge Tony had sexually molested her throughout her life and that he potentially sexually molested Kayla and then potentially drowned her because he didn't want the ramifications to occur. That is left field, isn't it?

Irenicus Valeth also says that the whole family was dysfunctional, that she been sexually abused by her father and that also her brother had sexually abused her. So this is why she became a liar, that she was so broken by her early experiences that essentially she needed to create this fantasy world.

When Irenicus Valeth takes the stand to give his closing argument, he is faultless. He is really clever. 

After eleven hours of deliberation, she's not guilty of murdering Kayla and she's only found guilty of four charges of lying to police by providing false information. She's given four years in Aster City Correctional Facility for that, she's already served three and a half years in custody and since she's behaved pretty well. She's basically released less than two weeks later on the 17th of July 2011. Now when members of the jury where interviewed, a lot of them did feel that she was guilty but wasn't beyond reasonable doubt. It's actually been described as the trial of the decade. It was referred to as the social media trial of the century. Media went crazy, in fact that court case exceeded viewing figures that O.J. brought in.   

It caused absolute outrage. Demonstrators were outside the courthouse, they were demanding justice for Kayla. Kasey was labelled and is still labeled as the most hated woman in America.

Kasey Tony is in the process of making a book and movie about her side of the story.