Read Mommy's Little Girl Online

Authors: Diane Fanning

Mommy's Little Girl (6 page)

BOOK: Mommy's Little Girl
5.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Melich handed Harry a sheet with twelve photographs, asking if he recognized anyone there. Harry pointed to one of the shots, saying, “She looks familiar to me. I believe she may have been the person who visited the community as a prospect.”

Amanda duplicated the guest card as well as the lease for the previous tenants in the apartment and turned the copies over to Melich.

Next stop for the detective was Universal Studios. There he met with Investigator Leonard Turtora. Once Melich explained the situation, Turtora went into the company's database and mined for information. Yes, Casey had worked for Universal, but she was fired on April 24, 2006, more than two years ago.

Of Casey's two outcry witnesses—the people to whom she claimed to have informed about the situation with her missing daughter—Turtora uncovered still more disturbing information. Jeffrey Hopkins had been an employee, but was fired on May 13, 2002. Juliette Lewis had never worked there. There was no record that Zenaida Gonzalez, whom Casey claimed was a seasonal worker, had ever been employed at Universal.

Yuri Melich pulled out his cell, punched in Casey's
number and turned on the speakerphone, allowing Turtora to hear the call. Casey confirmed that she currently worked for Universal as an event planner. She gave the main phone number, then said, “My office extension is 104.” She added that Tom Manley was her supervisor. Melich asked for the location of her office, but Casey could not recall the building number or its whereabouts. He asked if she had her current work identification card. “I don't know where it is.”

After disconnecting, Turtora said that the extension Casey named was not valid. He called to prove the point. He also told Melich that no one named Tom Manley worked for Universal. Tom Mattson was the head of the events department.

Melich called Sergeant Allen. “Could you go by the Hopespring address [the Anthony home] and see if Casey will agree to come to Universal Studios?”

Allen and Detective Appie Wells picked up Casey at 12:30 that afternoon. While they were en route, Turtora was busy trying to ascertain if it was possible that Casey did work for Universal, but for some reason was not in the computer system.

Turtora and Melich met Casey, Allen and Wells at the employee entrance. Casey spoke to the security officer. “I am a current employee and I've lost my I.D.”

“Who is your supervisor?” he asked.

“Tom Manley.”

The security officer tapped on his keyboard, then looked up. “No Tom Manley works here.”

Casey had no response. Turtora offered to escort her to the location of her office.

Casey strode with a purposeful air. She walked down one block, making a left turn, crossing the street at the next intersection. There, she entered a building with Turtora and the Orange County law enforcement members following in her wake. She strode to the interior hallway.

Halfway down the length of it, Casey stopped and
turned to face them. “I didn't tell you the truth. I am not a current employee.”

No one was surprised.

Turtora secured a small conference room where Allen, Melich and Wells could sit down with Casey and get a second recorded interview. Before turning on the recorder, Melich told Casey that the door was unlocked and that it was closed for privacy only. She had not been arrested and was free to go.

Casey agreed to talk with them and have the conversation recorded. Still, there was no emotion in her face. Melich wondered if she would ever demonstrate any genuine concern for her missing child.

CHAPTER 8

Detective Yuri Melich had talked to a lot of people that morning before walking into the conference room with Casey. Amy Huizenga called to tell him that Casey had borrowed her car while she was out of town and picked her up at the airport the previous afternoon at 2:30. She said Casey had stolen her checkbook and wiped out her bank account. Amy told the detective that she lived with Rico Morales at 232 Glenwood Avenue—a room with the view of the senior citizens' residence pointed out to Melich by Casey earlier that day.

The detective also fielded a call from Tony Lazzaro, who openly discussed his history with Casey and said that he had not seen Caylee since about June 2, when she'd played in the swimming pool at his apartment complex. Since June 9, Tony said, Casey had told him Caylee was at Disney, Universal Studios or the beach with the nanny, but never indicated that her daughter was endangered or missing.

The investigator wanted to bring Casey's lies to an end. Casey and Melich sat around a long table with Sergeant Jones and Detective Wells. Melich began the interview. “Remember how I opened the whole thing this morning?”

“Yeah,” Casey said.

“About saying that you know we need to get complete truth, and the snowball effect, and . . .”

“Absolutely,” Casey agreed.

“. . . how it goes? Okay. We're about halfway down that hill, three-quarters down that hill, and it's a pretty big snowball. Which means that there's a lot of stuff going on right now.”

“Uh huh,” Casey nodded.

“And I can tell you just for certainty, everything you've told me has been a lie. I can tell you with certainty, and let me explain why. Since I left you this morning . . . I've gone to every address that you've told me. I looked up every name, I've talked to every person you wanted me to talk to, or tried to.”

“Uh huh.”

“And found out all these names you're giving me are people that either never worked here or been fired a long time ago. Okay? So, where we are right now is in a position that doesn't look very good for you.”

“Uh huh.”

“I'm just being straight with you,” Melich explained.

“Yeah.”

“ 'Cause obviously I know and you know that everything you've told me is a lie, correct?”

“Not everything that I told you,” Casey contradicted.

“Okay. Ah, pretty much everything that you've told me. Including where Caylee is right now.”

“That I still—I don't know where she is.”

“Sure you do. And here's . . .”

Casey interrupted. “I absolutely do not . . . know where she is.”

“Let me explain something,” Melich continued. “Together, with combined experience in this room, we all have about thirty years of doing this.”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay. Both myself and John Allen worked for Homicide Division for several years. We've dealt with several people; we've conducted thousands of interviews between the three of us . . . And I can tell you for certainty that right now, looking at you, everything that you've told me is a lie. Including the fact that you know your child
was last seen about a month ago. And that you don't know where she is. Yeah, I'm very confident, just by having talked to you the short period of time, that you know where she is.”

“I don't,” Casey objected.

“You do. And here's the thing, we need to get past that, because we could sit here and go back and forth all day long about ‘I don't,' ‘You do,' ‘I don't,' ‘You do.' It's pretty obvious that with everything that you've told us, nothing has been true. You know where she is. Now my question to you is this: We need to find Caylee. I understand that right now, Caylee may not be in very good shape. You understand what I am saying?”

Casey's silence was, in itself, an acknowledgment.

“She may not be the way . . . your family remembers her. We need to find out from you where Caylee is . . . This has gone so far downhill and this has become such a mess.”

“Uh huh.”

“We need to end it. It's very simple. We just need to end it,” Melich urged.

“I agree with you,” Casey said calmly. “I have no clue where she is.”

“Sure you do.”

“If I knew, in any sense, where she was, this wouldn't have happened at all.”

“This stuff about Zenaida, the caretaker, or the nanny, taking care of . . .”

Casey interrupted again. “It's the truth.”

“It's not the truth. Because we went to the apartment complex. There's no person that ever lived there by that name. The apartment's been vacant since March. That same apartment. Now the apartment that you pointed out to me—the two-story apartment? That's an old folks' home. It's right across the street from your ex-boyfriend's house, who you never mentioned. And you said you wrote the address down because it was across the street.
That's a lie, because I've already talked to him and we've already been by the house and we've already, you know, looked at everything we need to look at over there.”

“Uh huh.”

“Everything you told us is a lie. Well, now, there's a couple of ways that this goes . . . I've never met you before, so I can look at you in a couple of ways . . . I can look at you as a person, who's scared—who's concerned and who's kind of afraid what's gonna happen, because of something bad that happened before. Or we can look at you as cold, callous and a monster, who doesn't care—who's just trying to get away with something . . . bad that happened, and trying to cover it up.”

“Uh huh,” Casey said with chilling nonchalance.

“It's going to be one of those two options . . . Now what we would have to do is, we have to determine which way this is gonna go. Are you . . . a person who's scared about the consequences of what happened? Or are you scared about something that happened? Or are you . . . really this cold, callous person, who doesn't care about what happened? It's one of these two options.”

“I'm scared that I don't know where my daughter is . . . I would not have put my entire family . . .”

Sergeant John Allen stepped into the conversation. “Hold on. I want to ask you something.”

“Yes, sir?” Casey said.

“. . . You're here willingly, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“You're here 'cause . . . you're trying to help, right?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Nobody's forced you to talk to us, right?”

“No,” Casey shook her head.

“. . . Now, let me ask you,” John Allen continued. “I want you to put yourself in . . . my shoes for a minute, okay? . . . In an attempt to try and help find your daughter, you've given him bad addresses, okay?” he said pointing at Yuri Melich.

“Uh huh,” Casey acknowledged.

“You drove me all the way out here. We walked from the gate back here all the way to your office, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay. To . . . an office that you don't have. We got all the way to the building into the hallway out here before you finally say, ‘Well, I really don't have an office here.' But . . . we were walking to your office, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay, so, I mean, does any of this make sense to you?”

“I understand how all that sounds. I . . .”

“No. No. No. No. No . . . Here's the problem with that, okay? You can carry the weight of this room for a long time, it's not gonna get any easier, okay? . . . I've learned this: People make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. All—The three of us have all made some . . . mistakes in our lives—we've done some things we're not proud of, okay? But then there comes a point in time you either own up to it, you say you're sorry, you try to get past it—or you lie about it, you bury it . . . and it just never, ever, ever, ever, ever goes away.”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay. That's it, okay? Now you know I want you to stop and think about what's going on here, okay?”

John Allen waited for a response, but Casey did not oblige.

“At this point, we can explain that you're afraid,” Allen continued. “You know that you were ashamed of maybe something bad that happened . . . We're giving you this opportunity, yet you continue to lie and you continue to lie. Then what happens, at some point, it becomes there's no excuse—there's no reason . . . A reasonable person can look at this and go, ‘Wow, this is a person who really just doesn't care,' okay? . . . You called because you want our help. You want us to find your daughter, okay? ‘I am calling you and I'm asking for you to help. I'm asking you to help me find my child.' ”

“Uh huh.”

“That's been going on for a month, okay? ‘And to help you help me find the child, what I've done to this point is, I've given you a bunch of bad addresses to go look at—addresses and people that don't exist.' Okay? ‘Then, I take you to a place where I tell you that I work.' Okay? ‘And I walk past the security gate.' Okay? ‘All the way to an office that I don't have.' ”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay. You sort of get the picture?”

Again, Casey did not respond.

“. . . Do you understand where we're headed here?”

“I understand,” Casey said.

“. . . By burying this . . . you are not going to get yourself to a better place, okay? What you are going to do, you're going to cause everybody else around you to suffer, okay? And at some point, this is going to come out. It always does.”

“Uh huh.”

“It always comes out, okay? Now your best bet is to try to put this behind you as quickly as you can. Go to your parents and tell 'em, you know, some horrible accident—whatever happened—happened. Get it out in the open now, okay? Instead of letting them worry and worry and worry and worry, okay? How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“At some point . . . you're going to want to mend things with your family . . . You let this drag out . . . You make us solve this some other way. We'll solve it, we always do . . . There's no point in coming forward to say, ‘Oh my God, this is what really happened,' once we figured it out, okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“You ever had anybody do anything wrong to you? Did anybody hurt . . .”

“Of course,” Casey snapped.

BOOK: Mommy's Little Girl
5.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Hunted by Dean Murray
A Millionaire for Cinderella by Barbara Wallace
The Hunted by Kristy Berridge
The Princess and the Duke by Allison Leigh
Target Utopia by Dale Brown
False Witness by Patricia Lambert