(CNN) -- The alleged mistress of Casey Anthony's father took the stand Thursday in Casey Anthony's capital murder trial, testifying that George Anthony once told her the death of his 2-year-old granddaughter Caylee was "an accident that snowballed out of control."
"I was in shock," Krystal Holloway told jurors. "By the time I looked up, his eyes were filled with tears. I didn't elaborate. I didn't ask anything further."
As she testified, George and Cindy Anthony, Casey Anthony's parents, sat stoically in the gallery.
Holloway said she met the Anthonys at their tent -- headquarters in the search for Caylee -- in July or August 2008. She said her relationship with George Anthony lasted for months, but she was also in a relationship at the time with someone else.
George Anthony has denied having an affair with Holloway. He did testify that he visited her, but said that she had told him and his wife that she had a brain tumor and was dying, and since she had donated her time to help his family find Caylee, he felt comforting her was "the least I could do."
Casey Anthony, 25, is charged with seven counts, including first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and misleading police, in Caylee's 2008 death. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against her. She has pleaded not guilty.
Anthony's defense team is trying to discredit the prosecution theory that the Orlando woman rendered Caylee unconscious with chloroform, duct-taped her mouth and nose, and stored the child's body in her car trunk for a few days before dumping it in the woods.
The defense says Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool and that Anthony and her father panicked and covered it up. George Anthony has denied those claims.
Caylee was last seen June 16, 2008, although she was not reported missing until 31 days later, on July 15. The little girl's skeletal remains were found in December of the same year near the Anthony home, with duct tape still attached to the mouth portion.
Defense attorney Jose Baez introduced into evidence a text message sent by George Anthony to Holloway on December 16, 2008, which said, "Just thinking about you. I need you in my life."
Holloway, who also uses the name River Cruz, testified that after the relationship ended, she had to instruct the guard at her apartment complex not to let George Anthony in anymore.
She said she kept quiet about the relationship for years, and when police first approached her and confronted her with text messages, she denied the relationship at first but later set the record straight.
On cross-examination, she acknowledged to prosecutor Jeff Ashton that she was paid $4,000 for an interview with the National Enquirer about the time she admitted the alleged affair to police. Holloway grew defensive after Ashton asked how the interview related to the change in her story, saying, "I had no choice but to tell the truth."
She said she was being "trashed" in the media and wanted to speak to the Enquirer because she felt other media would selectively edit her story.
She also acknowledged that, in another part of her statement to police, she said that George Anthony told her, "I really believe that it was an accident that just went wrong and (Casey Anthony) tried to cover it up."
Holloway hotly maintained that George Anthony did not actually say that, but Ashton pointed it out in her statement.
"He didn't tell you that he was present when this occurred, did he?" Ashton asked. "No," Holloway said.
"He never told you that he knew it himself, that he knew it to be the case?" the prosecutor questioned her.
"I just told you what he said," she replied.
Ashton asked her to read her statement, and asked her if it wasn't true that George Anthony made it clear he had no firsthand knowledge of what happened to Caylee. She admitted that was true.
Ashton also pointed out that in a letter to Holloway from George Anthony, he writes that he has been trying to send messages to her through her daughter, the security guard and her husband. Holloway said she was not married and did not believe George Anthony thought she was. George Anthony said in the letter how much Holloway's friendship meant to him and his wife, she admitted, and signed the letter with both of their names.
She also acknowledged George Anthony sent the text message five days after Caylee's remains were found.
Holloway is one of the defense's final witnesses as they present their case. The defense may rest as early as Thursday.
After Holloway's testimony, Orange County Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr. told jurors her testimony may be used to impeach George Anthony's credibility, but told them that her testimony is not proof of how Caylee died and is not evidence of Casey Anthony's guilt or innocence.
George Anthony, who offered some of the trial's most dramatic testimony on Wednesday, was recalled to the stand along with his wife and son Thursday to answer questions about the manner in which various pets of the family were buried over the years.
Some of them, they testified, were buried with blankets in a black plastic bag and secured with tape. Cindy Anthony noted that some of the pets were secured that way by the veterinarian after they died. She said she didn't think it was duct tape, but Lee Anthony recalled using duct tape to secure a plastic bag on one occasion.
"I take it that you did not euthanize your own pets with chloroform?" prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick asked Cindy Anthony. She also asked whether duct tape was put on the animals' faces and Cindy Anthony said no.
"Have you ever taken a dead pet and thrown it in a swamp?" Ashton asked George Anthony, who said no.
Private investigator Dominic Casey was also recalled to the stand to answer brief questions about where he searched for Caylee in the same area where her remains later were found in November 2008.
On Wednesday, George Anthony bristled at Baez's questions and at one point broke down and sobbed on the stand as he was questioned about his granddaughter and his suicide attempt that followed the discovery of her remains.
On January 22, 2009, the date of his attempt at suicide by drinking and taking pills, "It just felt like the right time to go and be with Caylee," George Anthony told prosecutor Jeff Ashton, his voice breaking. "... I just decided it was time for me to get away from all this, to spend time with Caylee."
Under Baez's questioning, George Anthony agreed that he told police in a July 24, 2008 statement that his daughter's trunk smelled like human decomposition -- a smell he was familiar with from his own law enforcement experience in Ohio. He testified Wednesday he was 100% sure he had recognized that smell.
"I could smell it 3 feet away on the passenger side," he told Baez about the odor from his daughter's car. "When I opened up that door, it smelled like decomposition. Human decomposition ... not the garbage that was in it."
The defense has suggested a bag of garbage left in Casey Anthony's trunk for weeks during a hot Florida summer may have been the source of the odor, although a cadaver dog alerted to it and several witnesses have identified it as the odor of human decomposition.
Numerous prosecution witnesses, including Casey Anthony's former boyfriend, acquaintances and friends, testified that during the month her daughter was missing, she was attending parties, nightclubs and shopping, but never mentioned her missing daughter, and they noticed nothing different in her demeanor.
Baez said in his opening statement that Casey Anthony behaved as she did because years of sexual abuse by her father had conditioned her to conceal the truth and hide her pain.
George Anthony has denied abusing his daughter, and did so again Wednesday. "I would never do anything like that to my daughter," he said. "... I would never do anything to harm my daughter in that way."
Later in the day, Casey Anthony wiped away tears as a grief expert testified that the reactions to grief vary widely, and that sometimes young mothers who lose their children engage in "risky behavior."
Young people, in particular, are "reluctant grievers," Sally Karioth said. Their risky behavior in response to grief could include visiting bars or getting a tattoo, as Casey Anthony did. "They might say nothing has happened," she said.
Denial is one type of coping mechanism, she said, and people can develop "magical thinking" and convince themselves of something else.
Karioth, who never interviewed Casey Anthony, testified over prosecutors' objections. Under questioning by Ashton, she acknowledged, "I have to say anything could happen when someone has a great grief."
Asked by Ashton if it would be unusual for a mother to tell no one her child has died and tell different stories about the child's whereabouts for a month -- including telling her parents that she is in another city with the child -- Karioth said, "I would agree that's a young woman in crisis who is unable to figure out how to make things better." Casey Anthony nodded.
Baez also asked George Anthony about his suicide attempt, suggesting that he had left a note that "expressed some guilt." Ashton objected, saying the document itself should be entered into evidence, but instead Baez withdrew the question.
As her father testified, Casey Anthony scribbled notes and occasionally shook her head angrily or whispered to her attorneys. No expression was visible on her face as she watched her father cry on the witness stand.
After lunch, Baez asked George Anthony whether the suicide attempt came because "the pressure was getting to you ... you knew you were being investigated." George Anthony answered that a lot of people were investigated in connection with the case, not just him, and maintained it was a "tumultuous time in my life," along with that of his wife, son and others.
This is the sixth week of testimony in the trial. Opening statements began on May 24. Perry originally told jurors, who are being housed in an Orlando hotel shielded from media coverage of the trial, that it could last six to eight weeks.var cnnOmniPartner="TV-Nancy Grace"Watch Nancy Grace Monday through Sunday starting at 8 p.m. ET on HLN. For the latest from Nancy Grace click here.
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