Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony (8 page)

And then, for the first time, Casey gave an answer that wasn’t either an “uh-hmm” or a lie. She said her mother was having a horrible time with the news.

“My mom,” she began, “told me flat out yesterday that she will never be able to forgive me, and I even told her, I am never going to be able to forgive myself. Every single day I have been beating myself up about this. I’ve been running in circles, it’s all I can do at this point. I learned the biggest lesson from all this. I made the greatest mistake that I ever could have made as a parent.”

It appeared that she was getting more comfortable, but as with everything they’d heard that day, there was a question about honesty. Casey was either opening up with real emotions for the first time in the interview or aping the emotions that she felt the officers expected of someone in her position. Regardless, nothing the officers said convinced Casey to talk or explain where Caylee was. One of the things that struck Detective Melich was that at no time during any of his discussions with Casey did she show any obvious emotions about the loss of her child. She did not cry or give any indication that she was legitimately worried about her child’s safety. In fact, in his official report he noted that Casey remained “stoic and monotone during a majority of our contacts.”

They were trying to get her to confess to what had really happened to Caylee, but she remained emphatic about her original story. Her words were just as resolute as they had been earlier in the morning when she was trying to convince the guard at the security gate that she worked there. It was the same determination, the same steadfast belief she’d displayed then, only this time she was attempting to persuade them that Zanny had taken Caylee. But she didn’t realize how little the words of a liar are worth. The detectives weren’t biting.

“I think you have been in here a long time,” Sergeant Allen said, rising from the chair. “I appreciate you talking to us.”

One thing that is clear from the tape of this encounter is the sense of relief in Casey’s voice when she realized the interview with the detectives was drawing to a close. She was convinced that the officers were on board with her story, and that her biggest failure was not reporting Caylee missing earlier. The fact that she then went on to apologize for giving them the runaround was almost comical. As was the fact that she said she was available to help in any way.

“I just wish I honestly had more things to help with,” she added. “We’ve talked about going through my computer, maybe trying to find past conversations through instant messenger or through e-mails, something. I’ll offer up my computer in a heartbeat, just like with my phone logs and anything else, anything that can possibly help. That’s why we set up websites and have been making phone calls and trying to get ahold of people.

“I had such a limited number of people that I was actually trusting that could help at this point, thinking maybe they had some insight. I didn’t want to involve a bunch of people who maybe didn’t know the situation. The mistake was not calling you guys right off the bat. I understand all of that. It’s the biggest slap in the face to have done that to myself. The worst part is what I’ve done to my daughter by allowing her to still be with someone else.”

Sergeant Allen agreed. “By failing to notify somebody, you put your daughter in greater risk.” He said he was going to return to headquarters and try to track Zenaida down, first by putting her name in the department’s database.

Detective Melich asked Casey to accompany him back to the Central Operations Building to work on missing child fliers. There, Melich and Casey walked into the glassed entrance, past the reception area and a store selling T-shirts, patches, and other law-enforcement-related items. While Casey stayed in the division’s waiting room with Sergeant Wells, Melich went to talk to Sergeant Allen.

Their conversation didn’t last long. Melich believed that Casey had committed the crime of child abuse in leaving Caylee for so long without reporting her missing. Even if the story she’d told had been true, her failure to do anything to find her child would have constituted child abuse. While Caylee’s actual fate was unknown, no matter what had happened to her, Casey was, at the very least, guilty of neglect. She had lied to law enforcement about dropping Caylee at a nanny’s house, about alerting two friends that Caylee had been kidnapped, and about having recently spoken to her daughter. Clearly, leaving her out of jail was not going to get them any closer to finding Caylee. They discussed a concern that, if left on her own, Casey would take her own life, like Melinda Duckett, another Central Florida mother whose toddler had gone missing. After the disappearance, Melinda taped a segment on
Nancy Grace
to help get clues to bring her two-year-old son home. She committed suicide after Nancy pointed out inconsistencies in her story and exposed her embarrassing past as a porn star.

No one wanted that to happen to Casey, so Melich did the logical thing. He decided to arrest Casey Anthony then and there.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

KIDNAPPED OR MURDERED?

F
rom the beginning, there was something about this case that drew people to it, something in the story that simply struck a nerve. While I’ve always understood that fascination, what astounded me was how quickly Caylee’s disappearance affected people. It was literally overnight. As early as the morning after Casey’s arrest, I remember that Caylee was
the
topic of the day at the Orange County State Attorney’s Office—just as she would be almost every day for the next three years.

When I arrived for work on the morning of Thursday, July 17, everybody was commenting on what might have happened to two-year-old Caylee. The story her mother was telling was so far-fetched that any theory we came up with could be entertained. Most of us thought that perhaps Casey had placed the child somewhere to spite her mother. Clearly those close to Casey felt the same way; members of the Anthony family were already on television asking for the public’s help in bringing little Caylee home.

That morning, Casey Anthony appeared before a judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida for the first time. The purpose of the proceeding is to ensure that arrestees know their rights and why they are in custody. The judge’s role is to review the evidence to ensure that it’s sufficiently strong to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed. A defendant’s first appearance is fairly routine, and he appears by video link from the jail three miles away, which was what Casey did that morning.

Appearing by video, Casey was accompanied by her newly acquired counsel, Jose Baez, and his associate, Jose Garcia. Casey, who was shorter in stature than either man, stood silently behind the podium looking pale and tired. Few sleep well on their first night in jail. Casey’s cell mate had recommended Baez, who was a thirty-nine-year-old lawyer from Kissimmee, Florida, and whatever arrangements Casey had made to pay him were unknown, since it appeared that she had so little money that she had been stealing from others. Prior to Baez’s arrival that day, I had never heard of him.

On that first day, Casey’s appearance was brief. In a hearing lasting less than one minute, the judge determined that Casey should initially be held without bond, so she was returned to protective custody at the Orange County Jail, and the search for her daughter continued without her.

Seeing as how Casey had done more to hinder the search than help it, searching without her didn’t seem like it would be a problem. Indeed, on July 16 following her arrest, Casey had three phone conversations—all of which were attempts not to provide new information about Caylee, but to get Tony’s phone number. Taken together they offered a fascinating look at where her thoughts were as her daughter was missing with presumably the entire Orlando area looking for her.

The initial call had been to Cindy Anthony and, like all jailhouse phone calls, it was recorded by the police. Strangely, Casey did not begin the call by expressing concern over her missing daughter, but by referring to the fact that she’d been on TV. From there she proceeded to have a conversation with her mother that overflowed with hostility and put the frustrations of the previous month on display yet again.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
You don’t know what my involvement is in stuff?

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
Casey.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Mom!

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
What?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
No!

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
I don’t know what your involvement is sweetheart.You keep, you’re not telling me where she’s at.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Because I don’t fucking know where she’s at. Are you kidding me?

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
Casey, don’t waste your call screaming and hollering at me.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Waste my call sitting in, oh, the, the jail?

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
Well whose fault is it you’re sitting in the jail? Are you blaming me that you’re sitting in the jail?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Not my fault.

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
Blame yourself for telling lies. What do you mean it’s not your fault? What do you mean it’s not your fault, sweetheart? If you’d have told them the truth and not lied about everything they wouldn’t . . .

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Do me a favor, just tell me what Tony’s number is.  I don’t want to talk to you right now. Forget it.

Cindy passed the phone to Lee. Once again the conversation was an attempt to try and get Tony’s phone number, and once again, Casey’s family member seemed incredulous that at a time like this, Casey was trying to get Tony’s number rather than strategizing a way to find her daughter. The anger that Casey displayed with her mother carried over to her brother, as she appeared adversarial because her family seemed to care more about Caylee than they did about the fact that she was in jail.

L
EE
A
NTHONY:
Hey?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Hey, can you give me Tony’s number.

L
EE
A
NTHONY:
I, huh, I can do that. I don’t know what real good it’s going to do you at this point.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Well, I’d like to talk to him anyway.

L
EE
A
NTHONY:
Okay.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Because I called to talk to my mother and it’s, it’s a fucking waste. Oh, by the way, I don’t want any of you coming up here when I have my, my first hearing for bond and everything else. Like don’t even fucking waste your times coming up here.

L
EE
A
NTHONY:
You know you’re having a real tough, you’re making it real tough for anybody to want to try to, even assist you with giving you somebody’s phone number.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
See, that’s just it.  Every single thing . . .

L
EE
A
NTHONY:
You’re not even letting me finish. Like . . .