Ill be honest, I tried sympathy and empathy for KC.
I live in Florida and I followed this case pretty closely. Not as closely as some on here, but I read the police documents and watched the trial when I could. I believed that the jury would return a guilty verdict on murder charges, condemning KC to live the rest of her days in prison, or maybe even send her to her death.
Then, not guilty, even of manslaughter. Like a slap in the face.
Confronted with the reality that KC would soon be leaving jail, I examined my feelings. I didnt want to simply join a lynch mob or further the irrational hatred of a person. So I tried to sympathize with her, to see how that felt. I really did. At some point, she too was a little girl like Caylee. She played with her friends and had crushes on boys and dreamed of a life of her own. She definitely made her parents smile when she was little, brought joy to her grandparents, was liked by people, and so on. There are no indications her childhood was, say, Dahmer-esque.
I tried. But sympathy was nowhere to be seen. I thought of all those searchers, wasting their time. I thought of all those people sending money or even just prayers. And KC sitting there, knowing her daughter was dead the whole time. Although those lies are cruel, they are not pure evil, they are not worthy of declaring someone unforgiveable. (That threshold is an individual decision, of course). No, a pile of lies is not murder. A pile of lies is demolished by a single utterance of truth, and the damage of those lies undone if the liar embraces the truth, permanently.
So I wasnt ready to write her off as truly irredeemable. Forever is a long time, and some power far greater than I decided to give her a life outside of prison. I read her jailhouse letters. I looked for a flicker of something with some tiny little inkling of humanity, of truth, of love. Was the innocent little girl, the girl that KC surely once was, still alive? Could the adult KC reconnect with her?