*resp snipped. my bold.
none of us seem to know enough about how fabrics deteriorate in the presence of swamp water, insects, small animals and a decomposing body to say anything definitive but i would hazard a guess that it's possible the top was, in the main, reduced to the very threads that the garment was woven from and they could easily have been dispersed over a far greater area than caylee's bones were. As i said, that's just a guess, but to me it's a more plausible idea than the notion that it was taken by a serial killer as a momento.
the only thing on my mind at all, and it's not weighing heavily on it, is casey supposedly having said, 'they haven't even found the clothes yet', but why would she cut around the collar and the letters leaving them behind? it doesn't seem like a believable scenario to me.
the fact is we just don't have enough information or the resources to obtain that information in order to make a determination on this, but the FBI do and i believe they'll know the answer to this and if their answer is that the rest of the T-shirt just didn't survive it's enviroment then there is no evidence and it isn't 'key'. if i'm wrong though i still don't believe that finding it would be a priority for them. it's not something i think the case will be won or lost over. The very fact that the neck and letters, likely the strongest parts of the garment, are still there makes me feel that the rest disappeared as a matter of erosion and were not cut away by the killer. it's likely that the shorts were not made of exactly the same material and they could simply have been stronger than the T-shirt. different materials react differently in the same circumstances.
I don't see anything particularly suspicious in the lettering either. When my youngest was about 3 he had a T-shirt that said, 'blame the parents'. that would send an even more accurate and chilling message imo, but sometimes a phrase is just a phrase.