Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Defense Team for Caylee Anthony’s Mother Says Skeletal Remains Found Are Missing Girl’s

(FOX)

The defense team for the mother of missing Florida girl Caylee Anthony said the sheriff’s office is confident that skeletal remains found are those of the child.

Linda Kenney Baden, part of 22-year-old Casey Anthony’s defense team, said the Orange County Sheriff’s Office called them to say they believe the bones discovered in a wooded area near the Anthony home belong to Caylee because of the color of the hair and the appearance of the skull.

But police declined to confirm Baden’s statements, saying only that the remains are consistent with those of a young child and there isn’t enough information yet to positively identify the body as Caylee’s.

“The remains are consistent with those of a 2- to 3-year-old child,” Orange County Capt. Angelo Nieves told FOXNews.com. “We have not provided any confirmation that it is the Caylee child. … We’re not going to go and jump the gun, if you will, rush in order to make an identification without the medical examiner’s office.”

The state attorney’s office also wouldn’t confirm that the remains belong to Caylee. Calls to Casey Anthony’s lead attorney Jose Baez weren’t immediately returned.

Earlier Friday, the sheriff said that a medical examiner found a connection between the skeletal remains of a child and the house where Caylee and her family lived.

Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary said the Anthonys’ home was searched early Friday after the medical examiner found “some clues that came out of the remains” that “linked (them) to the house.”

Beary declined to elaborate on what clues were discovered. The property was also searched Thursday night.

“We took some things out of the house that the forensic people are very interested in,” he said.

Asked if he believed the remains were Caylee’s, Beary told NBC’s “Today” show: “My gut says yes, but I have to wait seven to 14 days for the DNA analysis to absolutely make sure.”

There are also no other similar missing-child cases in the area.

Meanwhile, a judge denied defense attorneys’ request Friday to have their own experts present during testing of the remains and the autopsy.

Circuit Judge Stan Strickland said he believed defense representatives would interfere with medical examiners if they were in the room during the identification of the body and the determination of a cause of death.

Lawyers also were in court in an effort to preserve the evidence collected Thursday.

Investigators were hurrying to identify the skeletal remains of the small child, found in a wooded area near the Anthony family home.

A team of medical examiners and detectives hoped the bones, discovered by a water meter reader, would help them solve the 6-month-old mystery of the child’s whereabouts.

Caylee, who would have turned 3 in August, was last seen in June but wasn’t reported missing for more than a month. Her 22-year-old mother is behind bars and charged with her murder.

Beary said his detectives and the FBI would work around the clock and through the weekend to identify the child.

“Now the investigation continues,” Beary said. “There is a lot of lab work to do. There is a lot of DNA work to do. There is a lot of crime scene work to do.”

The worker stumbled upon the bones in a bag bound with duct tape less than a half-mile from where Caylee lived with her mother and grandparents in Orange County, Fla., near Orlando.

There were reports that a skull with duct tape around the mouth area rolled out of the bag when the utility worker picked it up. He had apparently gone into the woods to relieve himself.

Casey Anthony was indicted in October on first-degree murder and other charges, even without a body. She has insisted that she left the girl with a baby sitter in June, but she didn’t report her missing until July.

For the past several months, Anthony’s family, police and volunteers from around the country have searched for the little girl. They had overlooked the wooded lot where the skull was found first because it was flooded after heavy rains and later because it was fenced off.

Allen Moore, a spokesman for the Orange County jail, said Casey Anthony was told about the discovery. She was placed under psychological observation, not suicide watch, and remains under protective custody.

Sheriff’s spokesman Angelo Nieves said officials told Caylee’s grandparents about the find.

A spokeswoman with the state attorney’s office said it would reserve comment until the investigation was complete.

The child’s grandmother first called authorities in July to say she hadn’t seen Caylee for a month and her daughter’s car smelled like death.

Police interviewed Anthony and said everything she told them about her daughter’s whereabouts was false. The baby sitter was nonexistent and the apartment where Anthony said she had last seen Caylee had been empty for months.

Last week, prosecutors announced they would not pursue the death penalty for Anthony. Earlier Thursday, before the remains were discovered, a judge had delayed her trial from January to March.