FWIW (which is less than :twocents
I've always been hung up on the theory that a combination of extremely "frushtrating" situations occurred simultaneously sometime between June 15 - 17, which caused Casey's volatile narcissistic temper to explode into murderous rage. Here they are as told from Casey's view:
#1: She'd met Tony and wanted to live with him...to be carefree and single, but two insurmountable obstacles were blocking her way: Cindy and Caylee.
#2: Cindy was not merely an obstacle to Casey's desire to be with Tony; Cindy was an unloving,
undefeatable opponent with an ugly temper who intended to force Casey to stay chained to her forever -- while Cindy doted on Caylee, constantly lavishing her with all the unconditional motherly love and attention that should have belonged to Casey, but never had. On top of that, Cindy had been usurping Casey's rights as a mother and stealing so much of Caylee's love that Caylee often preferred to be with Cindy instead of Casey. Cindy had been stealing everything that mattered from Casey for 2 1/2 years--and yet, Cindy had flown into a crazed rage last night (or the night before last?) and tried to strangle Casey for stealing a few lousy dollars!
#3: Little Caylee was the reason Casey was being forced to sacrifice her own right to happiness, but Caylee certainly wasn't showing any gratitute for Casey's great sacrifices. On the contrary, Caylee had grown from a sweet, complaisant, smiling, drowsy baby into a demanding, spoiled, tantrum-throwing brat who wouldn't even go to sleep at night without an argument. The ungrateful,
disloyal snot-head not only preferred Cindy to Casey, she'd started threatening to tell on Casey if Casey tried to discipline her, or put her to sleep in the car...trunk?
In my scenario, all of the above had combined and festered inside of Casey into an ugly mass by June 17 (or whatever day the pool ladder was left up). She spent the night of the 16th with Tony, and I assume she'd drugged Caylee and left her wherever she usually left her--probably in the car with her mouth and hands duct taped so that if she woke up, she couldn't cause a commotion that passersby would hear.
On the day of the 17th, with Caylee with her, Casey went home to get more clothes, filch groceries, and steal money, whatever. I think that Caylee announced she wanted to stay there, go swimming, and spend the night with grandma, and that when Casey told her no...or to get in the car...or to get her toys together, Caylee then had an (understandable) screaming fit, calling for her Grandma, running away from KC or throwing herself on the ground. And all that sent KC completely over the edge.
I think Casey grabbed the duct tape and slapped a piece over Caylee's mouth to shut her up, and that when Caylee struggled and kicked at her (and clawed at her?) Casey taped her ankles, and her wrists, and added more and more tape around her face to cover it up.
And then I think Casey picked Caylee up, carried her swiftly to the pool, and as she dumped her over the side, she might have said something like, "You said you wanted to go swimming--"
Or would she have leaned over the side and called, "How's the water, Caylee?"
I think Casey then went in the house and did whatever she needed to do. Later, she put the ladder on the pool and fished a dead Caylee out of it and added a heart sticker over the tape. She had more important things on her mind at that point than taking the pool ladder down or remembering to close the gate
The above scenario assumes Casey could have lifted Caylee high enough to dump her into the pool without needing to climb the ladder. If, however, she would have needed to take the time to put the ladder up before she could have dumped Caylee into the pool, then I think it would make more sense that the above events happened in reverse order---i.e, Caylee and Casey went swimming and when they got out of the pool, that's when Casey told Caylee she couldn't stay home that night with grandma. Caylee naturally put up a huge fight as described earlier....and the duct tape came out, causing Caylee's death. She was not thrown into the pool in this scenario
if I'm wrong about the date the pool ladder was supposedly left up and the gate was left open, or there's some other reason events couldn't possibly have enfolded as I described above, I apologize for wasting everyone's time. I should know better than to try to post intelligently at 2:00 AM.