Casey Anthony’s Friend Will Provide $25K Settlement
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Red Huber-Pool/Getty Images(ORLANDO, Fla.) — Casey Anthony has agreed to pay $25,000 to settle a dispute over the rights to her life story, and an attorney involved in the case said Anthony is borrowing the money from a friend.
The $25,000 payment will settle $800,000 worth of debts Anthony owes to lawyers and other creditors since she was acquitted of killing her daughter Caylee in 2011.
When asked how Anthony — who has been unemployed for four years and in hiding since 2011– plans on paying the $25,000, attorney Allan Watkins told ABC News, “I understand she’s borrowing it from a friend.”
Watkins represents trustee Stephen Meininger whose job is to liquidate any of Anthony’s potential assets to help pay off her debts.
“We went through in some detail how she’s being supported and it’s pretty much through friends and people who sympathize with her and her situation,” Watkins said.
In March, Watkins filed a motion asking for a Florida judge’s permission to sell “the exclusive worldwide rights in perpetuity to the commercialization of Anthony’s life story.”
The “life story” includes her version and thoughts on her “childhood, the disappearance and death of her daughter, Caylee Anthony, her subsequent arrest, incarceration, trial, acquittal and withdrawal from society.”
The rights would have included those to movies, documentaries, live stage performances, Internet articles, merchandise and social media including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
The sale could have been made without Anthony’s consent since she filed for bankruptcy.
Anthony opposed the sale, but Watkins said the offers weren’t very lucrative.
“The offers that we had coming in to buy the book rights were…I think the highest offer I has was in the $12,000 range,” he said. “It might have gone higher, but we’d still have to fight the legal battle and it would probably end up” in court.
“Rather than trying to do that, Ms. Anthony’s attorneys and I compromised the battle of what we had to sell by her agreeing to pay $25,000,” Watkins said.
Despite the public interest and media scrutiny, Anthony has not told her story since being acquitted in the murder of her daughter Caylee.
“Despite all the hype and tragedy involved in this case, this is a 26-year-old woman that has a high school education, no major assets other than maybe this story and her parents don’t have anything,” Watkins said.
Anthony’s creditors are dozens of people to whom she owes money, including her parents and former attorney Jose Baez.
Watkins said that the $25,000 will be distributed according to bankruptcy code and the first tiers are the attorneys and administrators in the bankruptcy case.
“There’s some people out there that are trying to help her along and there’s some people out there that are very vindictive,” he said. “She gets acquitted and she’s never going to be able to walk into a restaurant without people pointing at her and there’s a good deal of hatred towards her.”
Anthony has been in hiding since 2011 when she was acquitted of murder. She was the victim of a barrage of threats and was dubbed the most hated woman in America. Aside from a few stray photos, Anthony has succeeded in staying out of sight.
Anthony’s bankruptcy attorneys did not respond to request for comment and attorney Charles Greene was not immediately available for comment, but has previously told ABC News that Anthony has a story to tell, but that telling it right now is “not even under consideration except to say no.”
“There will be no tell-all book, there is no tell-all movie,” he said. “Her ability to progress and to grow up and to even be at her normal age was thwarted by what’s happened to her in the last few years and what we believe happened to her in her earlier life, but that’s her story to tell one day.”
Anthony was forced to come out of seclusion and publicly answer questions for the first time on March 4 when she appeared in Florida bankruptcy court.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio