Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony (10 page)

T
ONY:
I don’t know what to say . . . I just hope your daughter is OK and I’m going to do whatever i can to help your family and the cops.

C
ASEY:
I was put in handcuffs for almost ten minutes and sat in the back of a cop car the best thing and the most important person in my life is missing and god only knows if I’m ever going to see her again.

C
ASEY:
I am the dumbest person and the worst mother I honestly hate myself.

C
ASEY:
The most important thing is getting Caylee back I truly hope that you can forgive me granted I will never be able to forgive myself nor will my family.

T
ONY:
Who is this Zanny nanny person?

C
ASEY:
Someone I had meet thru a personal friend almost four years ago she used to be my buddy Jeff’s nanny before she became mine.

C
ASEY:
I’m scared.

T
ONY:
Are you home?

C
ASEY:
Yeah almost twelve hours of stuff finally getting a shower I feel like hell.

T
ONY:
Where did you dropoff Caylee last time you saw her?

C
ASEY:
At her apartment at the bottom of the stairs

T
ONY:
Specifically where?

C
ASEY:
Sawgrass Apartments

C
ASEY:
Have told and showed the police the apartment

C
ASEY:
told them and drove out there with two different officers I just got back from the second drive.

C
ASEY:
If they don’t find her guess who gets blamed and spends an eternity in jail.

T
ONY:
Yea no shit, this is serious why would U say something sooner about this? To anyone?

T
ONY:
Oh and why are you texting me and not calling?

C
ASEY:
I talked to two people that have been directly connected to Zannie how can I sit there and be so blind and stupid it’s all my fault.

C
ASEY:
I was scared to admit it I was scared something was going to happen to my baby.

The deeper Melich dug into Casey’s past, the more other stories arose. Casey’s former fiancé, Jesse Grund, also reached out to the police. He and Casey had met three years earlier, when they were both nineteen. She’d been a seasonal worker at Universal Studios, where he was a security guard. They had dated for a while and he had strong feelings for her. Then Jesse had moved to Tampa for a time and they drifted apart. When he received a call from Casey that she was pregnant and that he was going to be a dad, they rekindled the relationship. They were engaged at the time Caylee was born. After she was born, a paternity test determined that Caylee was not his child, but by that time he was hooked on Caylee’s adorable smile and agreed to raise her as his own.

However, Jesse noted a change in Casey after Caylee was born. The sweet young woman he’d fallen hard for had turned selfish and untrustworthy. He’d ended the relationship, but they maintained a friendship. Supporting Amy’s characterization, Jesse also said that Casey had been a frequent liar during the time he’d known her. When they were engaged, she had stolen $250 from him with every excuse in the book why she couldn’t pay him back. He told Melich about a phone call he’d received from Casey on June 25, when she’d called him in an attempt to cheer him up over a recent job loss. She said that if he wanted to get together, she was free that weekend because Caylee and her nanny had gone to the beach.

A
S
M
ELICH WAS COMING TO
understand just how unreliable and suspect Casey was, a different part of the investigation was taking place at the Forensics Garage on Colonial Drive, part of the Orange County Sheriff’s Central Operations Building. The facility housed the department’s administrative offices, investigative units, and a state-of-the-art forensics section where the Pontiac that Casey had been driving when Caylee went missing was being examined.

George had given the police permission to process the vehicle, so they didn’t need a search warrant to proceed. The car had been brought into the garage by Johnson’s Wrecker Service, the same tow company that had removed it from the Amscot check-cashing lot on June 30. Crime Scene Investigator Gerardo Bloise was there to receive the car, along with a black plastic bag containing items that Cindy had removed from the car when it was at the house.

Bloise inventoried the contents: a doll, a backpack, a child’s toothbrush, a black leather bag, various papers, a dinner knife, a blue plastic crate, and plastic clothes hangers. The contents of a white plastic garbage bag were also inventoried. When George had picked up the car, the bag was in the car’s trunk, and the tow yard manager had removed it and hurled it into the Dumpster exactly as he had found it. Police had gone back to the Johnson’s Wrecker Service yard, and the bag had been recovered in its entirety from a Dumpster there. Inside the bag were a can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco; an empty bottle of Arm & Hammer laundry detergent; aluminum foil; part of a plastic hanger; a big pile of paper products; empty Sprite, Cherry Cola, Dr Pepper, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew soda cans; an empty Milwaukee’s Best Light beer can; one hairpin; three plastic tie wraps; an empty Oscar Meyer plastic container; several dryer sheets; empty containers of Crystal Light; a cut-up pizza box; a receipt from the Fusian Ultra Lounge; a document from Full Sail University; an empty plastic bottle of Coke; a Crystal Light plastic bottle containing brown liquid; a cherry Coke carton; and a cardboard Velveeta container, among other things. There were maggots crawling on a plastic dinner tray.

Next, Bloise moved on to the car itself, photographing the exterior of the Pontiac, which was clean but not remarkably so. He then opened the sealed driver’s-side door and was immediately blasted by a smell he described as the “odor of decomposition,” quite startling in light of the physically well-maintained vehicle. The interior was tidy and vacuumed, although a few personal items were found on the seats. The right rear passenger seat had a car seat buckled in. The left rear passenger seat contained two pairs of black women’s shoes. On the front passenger seat were a brown belt, sunglasses, and a black case containing CDs.

Bad as the smell in the car was, the absolute worst of the odor was in the trunk. A dryer sheet found inside was not disguising the stench. The truck had been vacuumed but still had some type of dirt residue. Noting a stain on the right side of the trunk, Bloise cut two pieces from the D-shaped particleboard spare tire cover, surfaced with the same carpet as the trunk. He also collected a hair from that area, a hair from the middle area of the trunk liner, four hairs from the left side of the trunk area, and another from the directional light wire of the vehicle.

With a smell as potent as this, it was decided that a K-9 unit should be brought in, and so Detective Jason Forgey and his cadaver dog, Gerus, came for an inspection. Law enforcement has long recognized the superior olfactory abilities of canines, and they use different dogs for different purposes. Some are trained to separate the subtle differences between the body odors of individual humans and track those scents through the air. Others are trained to detect the presence of certain drugs or the chemical components of explosives. Still others are trained to detect the distinct odor of a decomposing human body: Gerus was such a dog. Normally Human Remains Detection Canines, or cadaver dogs as they are commonly referred to, are called in to find human remains; this call was a little different.

After circling the car just once, Gerus started showing interest by sniffing aggressively at it. Forgey opened the car door, and Gerus tried to get into the trunk from the backseat. Gerus then exited the car and ran another pass around it and alerted on the trunk for a second time. When the trunk was opened, Gerus tried to climb in, indicating to Forgey that the source of the odor was in the trunk.

The K-9 team then went to the Anthony residence on Hopespring Drive to continue working. George had discovered a newly dug shallow hole near the shed, five inches deep and about twelve inches long, that concerned him. Gerus didn’t care about that, but showed special interest in the playground and playhouse areas. A second K-9 unit was brought in from neighboring Osceola County to confirm Gerus’s findings. The second cadaver dog was interested in three areas of the backyard, the same ones Gerus had alerted us to, plus the ground near the patio porch. Investigators checked all three locations for human remains but found nothing.

The house next door to the Anthonys’ on’ the left was 4929 Hopespring Drive. It belonged to Brian Burner, and was where investigators headed next. They had been made aware of a potential piece of evidence there. The owner had a shovel in his garage that Casey Anthony had borrowed on June 17, the day after Caylee was last seen alive. Burner said that Casey had told him she wanted dig up some bamboo in her yard, although an hour later, when she returned the shovel, it did not appear to have been used much, if at all.

W
ITH
M
ELICH SIFTING THROUGH
C
ASEY’S
lies and the crime scene investigators taking apart the car, the case began to take shape. For most of the next week, investigators continued to piece together what they knew and the story of how Casey had spent the thirty-one days that she did not report Caylee missing. Meanwhile, everyone in Orlando seemed to be on the hunt for little Caylee. Nothing brings a community together like a missing child, and though confidence still seemed high that they would be able to find her, the results from the cadaver dogs were concerning.

The investigation had a bit of a split personality. On the one hand the sheriff’s office was aggressively following every possible lead in an attempt to find Caylee alive, but at the same time they were investigating what was coming to look like a homicide. While the Anthonys were eager to do whatever they could to assist in the missing child investigation, they were less thrilled when the investigation turned to murder and their daughter’s possible involvement in it.

Such was the state of affairs for Casey’s bond hearing on July 22. Jose Baez was in court representing Casey before Judge Stan Strickland, while Linda was on the other side representing the state of Florida. I had worked with Judge Strickland in 2001 as the lead prosecutor assigned to his division, and during that time I’d found him very easy to work with. He was one of those judges who encouraged lawyers to work out cases rather than take them to trial; we all liked him, but he didn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of attorneys who appeared before him. On the bench, he was pleasant and usually made the correct ruling, but he didn’t have much experience with big cases or with capital homicides. To my recollection, he had handled only one other high-profile case before Casey stepped into his courtroom.

At the hearing, Detective Melich and canine handler Jason Forgey were called to testify about their findings. Melich explained the circumstances that had led law enforcement to be called to the Anthony home on July 15, 2008, the tale Casey had woven that night, the trip to Universal Studios, the lies she told, and the attempts made thus far to confirm any of the details Casey had given. Forgey testified as to the background and qualifications of Gerus, his examination of the car, and the significance of Gerus’s alerts on the trunk and in the backyard.

Cindy, George, and Lee all took the stand to testify about Casey’s life history. They all testified that she was a good mother to Caylee. If she couldn’t post bond, they would do it for her. Cindy broke down in tears when she saw her daughter for the first time since her arrest. During her testimony, Cindy defended her daughter: “I know Casey as a person. I know what she is as a mother. I know there is only one or two reasons why Casey would be withholding something about Caylee, and I believe it’s something someone is holding over her and threatening her in some way.”

These words were a surprising turnaround for a woman who less than ten days earlier had seemed ready to have her daughter declared an unfit mother. In truth, it was during this time that Cindy Anthony seemed the most ambivalent in her feelings about Casey’s behavior. There had certainly been enough to justify her original feelings. As Cindy had alluded to in her 911 call, Casey had been stealing from her parents for months in amounts totaling several thousand dollars, but more recently they’d learned that she’d been stealing from Cindy’s mother as well. The theft was uncovered before Casey had left with Caylee. Combine this with Casey’s lies over the thirty-one days, and Cindy’s anger on July 15 was understandable. That resentment had probably spilled over into that 911 phone call. A couple of days after Casey’s arrest, however, Cindy was far more protective and defensive of Casey’s actions. She had changed course. No longer did she suspect that Casey had been involved in something nefarious. Instead, she justified Casey’s not coming forward. According to Cindy, Casey’s behavior made sense.