(CNN) -- One year ago, a sheriff's dispatcher in Orange County, near Orlando, Florida, received a strange 911 call. A small child was missing -- and had been for a month.



Casey Anthony didn't tell anyone for 30 days that her daughter, Caylee, was missing.



The child's grandmother was frantic, talking a mile a minute. But her mother seemed unemotional, disconnected from the drama around her.



So began the Caylee Anthony case, a mystery that became a nightly fixture on cable television and captivated true-crime buffs across the country.



Today, the tot's 23-year-old mother, Casey Anthony, is in jail, charged with first-degree murder, and faces the death penalty if convicted. She denies harming her daughter or having anything to do with her disappearance.



Her attorney, Jose Baez, has said that once all the facts are known, it will become clear that his client is innocent.



While reports of missing children are not unusual -- a Haleigh and a Haylee are two recent examples  -- several elements came together in the Caylee case to make it a high-profile news story, said Robert Thompson, who heads the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.



"The fact that it's a toddler had that really dramatic, 'this is our worst nightmare' thing. It doesn't get any more dramatic than that," he said. "Then, of course, there's Casey herself."



The 30-day delay in reporting Caylee's disappearance, along with the frequent release of police documents containing the personal details of the family's life, whetted the public's appetite.  See how the case unfolded »



"By that time, it becomes self-fulfilling," Thompson said. "Once the story gets into the inbox of places that cover this thing -- Dateline, America's Most Wanted, Greta van Susteren, Nancy Grace, Geraldo -- it becomes a packaged drama. We want to know how it turns out."



Caylee's body was found December 11, six months after she disappeared and just a few blocks from her grandparents' house. The remains were bagged and partially buried in a swampy, vacant lot.



Duct tape covered the child's mouth. But the cause of Caylee's death is just one of many questions that remain unanswered a year later. And the answers are not likely to come soon, if at all. Casey Anthony's trial, originally scheduled to begin October 12, has been pushed back until some time next year.



Thousands of pages of court files have been made public. Police questioned Anthony's friends and boyfriends, pored through her cell phone records, went through her computer, and seized her digital photo albums. They even analyzed her sleep patterns. But the picture that emerges is far from clear.



The story begins at about 9:40 p.m. on the evening of July 15, 2008, with Cindy Anthony's call to 911. The call capped a day in which she and her husband, George, a retired police officer from Ohio, received an impound notice and tracked down their daughter's abandoned white 1998 Pontiac Sunbird -- and then their daughter, Caylee's mother, who was staying with a boyfriend.



"I found out my granddaughter has been taken," Cindy Anthony told the 911 dispatcher. "She has been missing for a month. Her mother finally admitted that she's been missing. ... We're talking about a 3-year-old little girl!"



"I need to find her," Cindy Anthony continued. "I told you my daughter was missing for a month. I just found her today, but I can't find my granddaughter. She just admitted to me that she's been trying to find her herself. There's something wrong. I found my daughter's car today, and it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car."



George Anthony told police later that the car gave him "a bad vibe."



"I got within three feet of it. I could smell
Who had been missing for a month? Where was Caylee's skeleton found? When did she go missing? Who was charged with murder in October? Who called 911 when Caylee went missing? Who called the number 911?
Caylee Anthony a few blocks from her grandparents' house. evening of July 15, 2008, Casey Anthony, Cindy Anthony's Casey Anthony
question: Who had been missing for a month?, answer: Caylee Anthony | question: Where was Caylee's skeleton found?, answer: a few blocks from her grandparents' house. | question: When did she go missing?, answer: evening of July 15, 2008, | question: Who was charged with murder in October?, answer: Casey Anthony, | question: Who called 911 when Caylee went missing?, answer: Cindy Anthony's | question: Who called the number 911?, answer: Casey Anthony