Mommy's Little Girl (7 page)

“. . . When somebody's hurt you in the past, and they've come to you and said, ‘I'm sorry,' okay? ‘I really am, from
the bottom of my heart, sorry for what happened.' Do you forgive 'em?”

“Yes.”

“What about somebody that does something to you and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. You forgive them?”

“It's a lot harder to sometimes.”

“A lot harder to,” John Allen nodded in agreement. “Tell me the last time somebody hurt you over and over and then let you suffer for a period of time. And then lied about it when you caught 'em . . . When you caught 'em, that apology didn't mean a hell of a lot, did it?”

“No.”

“. . . Right now, your best bet is to just get it out in the open, whatever happened, and tell us now, okay? So . . . we can kind of start getting past this . . . There's nothing you're gonna tell any of the three of us that's gonna surprise us, okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“I've had to sit down with . . . mothers who rolled over their babies accidentally. I've had to sit down with mothers whose kids drowned in swimming pools. I've had to sit down with mothers who had boyfriends who beat their kids to death—who felt horrible about what happened. And then . . . I had to . . . help them explain to their families, okay? And, then, I've also had to deal with people who have done horrible, unspeakable things to children. And then lied about it and lied about it and lied about it, okay? And I'll bet you somewhere near, I probably dealt with somebody who, maybe, made a mistake, but continued to lie about it. Maybe they weren't such a bad person. But maybe the whole world didn't see it that way. Maybe their family didn't see it that way 'cause they kept lying, lying, lying and lying about it. . . . Look at this from an outsider's perspective . . . What would you do? How would you see that person? How would you see that person different? You might see somebody, maybe a young mother who made a mistake and, you know, maybe, initially, was afraid to tell the truth. But at some point, she came forward
and said, ‘A horrible thing happened. I'm sorry, I feel terrible about it, but I have to tell you.' ”

After all that talk, Casey still did not give an inch. “The horrible thing that happened is—this is the honest to God's truth—of everything that I've said, I do not know where she is. The last person that I saw her with is Zenaida. She's the last person that I seen my daughter with.”

Yuri Melich grasped the reins of the interview again. “We know that's not the truth.”

“Absolutely is,” Casey insisted.

“Listen. We know that's not true—that can't be the truth. Because if it were the truth, everything you told us would've been on the money. Everything else would have matched. If you had told us the truth, we wouldn't be here at Universal Studios at a place that you've been fired since 2006. With you trying to explain to us, you know, you got an office and all that stuff.”

“Uh huh.”

“We wouldn't be here. So, we know—and this is the part we need to get past—we already know that you're not telling us the truth. That you know what happened to Caylee and you know where Caylee is.”

“No.”

Melich kept at her for a while longer, and then Allen stepped back into the fray. “I want to go through this, and I want you to stop me at the part that isn't the truth, okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“You take your daughter and you drop her off on June the ninth . . .”

“Uh huh.”

“Okay. At . . . the baby-sitter's . . . apartment, okay? That's been vacant . . .”

Casey interrupted. “I dropped her off at that apartment.”

“Okay.”

“At those stairs.”

“Oh, you just walked her—You dropped her off . . .”

“Walked her to the stairs. That's where I've dropped her off a bunch of other times . . .”

“Okay. And when you dropped her off, who took her at that point?”

“Zanny did. She took her at that point.”

“You left her in Zanny's care?”

“Yes.”

“On June the ninth? Okay? So far that's right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You first called the police about this when your mother and father—Ah, you actually, you don't call the police to report your daughter missing. What happens is your parents find their car has been towed . . . from Amscot, and your parents ask you where your daughter is. And you tell . . . your parents that you haven't seen your daughter for over a month, right?”

Allen waited, but Casey made no comment. Then he continued, “So far, I haven't said anything that's not true, okay?”

“That's all true.”

“Okay. . . . When your parents involve the police in an attempt to locate your child because they're worried . . . the first thing you do . . . is . . . lie to the detective whose job it is to try to find your daughter and get her back into safe hands, okay? You give him all kinds of bad addresses to look at, right?”

Again, Casey sits mute.

“So far, I'm on track, right?”

“Uh huh,” Casey conceded.

“Okay. Then you bring us out to Universal, where you say you work in an office . . . to try to help find stuff that will help us find your daughter. I'm on track so far, okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“And we get here. We walk all the way down the hall to . . . where you tell us you don't really work here. You
don't have an office here . . . So far, everything I've said is true, correct?”

“Uh huh.”

“. . . I'm telling you this story. I'm saying to you: ‘Listen. I drop my child off five weeks ago at the baby-sitter's house. And she's just disappeared . . . Now I didn't call the police and tell them. Matter of fact, I made some attempts to locate her on my own. But I didn't really get the police involved or anything like that.' Okay? ‘And, oh by the way, I got my mom and dad's car towed, and when my parents asked me what happened to my daughter, I told 'em I hadn't seen her in five weeks. So, they call the police.' Okay? ‘Now, what I did is, I lied to the police when they got there . . . I told them a whole bunch of crap that isn't true . . . I did all this to try and help find my daughter.' Makes sense to you, right?”

“Uh huh.”

Incredulous, Allen asked again, “That makes sense to you?”

Casey said nothing.

Allen continued to push. “It makes sense to you, that ‘I'm trying to help the police find my daughter by giving 'em a bunch of bad addresses'? That makes sense to you?”

“That's what I said, yes.”

“No, I'm asking you, that makes sense to you?”

“That part of it, no, not at all,” Casey finally admitted.

“. . . We're here 'cause you brought us here. Right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Now, I want you to tell me how that's helping us find your daughter.”

“It's not.”

“But everything we're doing is to find your daughter. That's the most important thing in the world to you right now, right?”

“Caylee's been up here. Maybe we could talk to Security, see if she's come through the front. I know she's come to the park. She's gone to Disney. She's been at SeaWorld.”

“Whoa! Ho—Hold on . . .”

“She's been to other places,” Casey continued.

“Let's go back to—Let's . . .”

“It's . . . a backwards way of . . . looking.”

“Why do you think it's backwards? It's backwards 'cause you haven't been truthful with us, okay?”

“ 'Cause I've been reaching.”

“You've been reaching, huh?” Allen said with a shake of his head.

“I've been reaching to try to figure out a place where she actually is.”

“So—once again, okay? 'Cause you never did answer my question. You're reaching and helping find her by bringing us here to this office that you don't have. It's helping us find her how?”

“It's . . .” Casey began.

Allen cut her off. “Because what you're doing right now, is, you're doing everything you can to find your daughter. You have three experienced detectives right now, whose sole focus is here to help you find your daughter, okay? And we're here 'cause you brought us here, correct?”

“Absolutely.”

“You directed us here because we're going to your office to find evidence . . . that will help us find her, okay? Now that we're here, I want you to tell me how that's helping. What is it we're doing here? What's helping us right now?”

Again, Casey had no answer.

“Well, coming to an office that doesn't exist . . .”

“It's not helping,” Casey agreed.

Melich picked up the thread of the questioning. “So why'd you do it?”

“Honestly, I wanted to come up and try to talk to Security. Maybe pass around a picture of Caylee. I legitimately have not seen my daughter in five weeks. I don't want anything to happen to her. Except I trusted her with somebody—somebody that had been taking care of her—that had been taking good care of her. Someone
that she was comfortable with—that I was comfortable with.”

“What about Jeff?” Melich pressed. “You said Jeff worked here about two months ago?”

“No. He hasn't worked here for quite a while.”

“Ten months? How long?”

“It's been at least ten months,” Casey stalled.

“Okay, he got fired in . . . 2002. He hasn't been employed here since 2002. What about the girl?”

“Juliette?”

“Yeah. What about her?” Melich asked.

“She left two months ago. That's exactly what she told me,” Casey said.

“Juliette Lewis never worked at Universal Studios.”

Detective Appie Wells spoke for the first time in the interview. “Yuri. I'm sorry. Is the baby's daddy actually dead?”

“I still have a copy of the obituary at home,” Casey said.

“Alright. Well, you've told us so many untruths right now, I'm confused . . . Would your parents be upset if you had given the baby back to the daddy to take back for . . . his parents to take care of?”

“He passed away last year. We hadn't even talked much before that,” Casey said.

John Allen asked, “Let me ask you this: Is the obituary in your office?”

“No, I think I have a copy of the obituary at home. There's no office, so there's no anything, anywhere. We've made that clear already,” she snapped.

“Right,” Allen said.

“So if I have a copy of it still, it would be on my computer at home. I'm pretty sure I kept that. I don't think that's something I would've gotten rid of.”

Melich jumped back in, changing the subject. “Zanny's never worked here. How do you explain that?”

“She has an I.D. She has an I.D. with her name on it.”

“Just like you have?”

“I've seen it,” Casey stated, daring him to contradict her.

“Just like you have an I.D.?” Skepticism etched a roughness into the tone of Melich's voice.

“I do have an I.D.—somewhere at my house. Both of my parents have seen it. Both of my parents know . . .”

Melich interrupted. “Just like you have an office.”

“. . . that I worked here. I used to have an office.”

“Now, just like you have an office?”

“No. I don't have an office now.”

Allen spoke up again. “We're here because, why?”

“To try and put things together,” Casey said.

“. . . Our purpose of coming here was to do what? Go where?”

In a surprising moment of honesty, Casey said, “I guess there wasn't a purpose. There wasn't a purpose whatsoever to come up here.”

Casey rambled on again, insisting that her prevarication was all a desperate attempt to reach for alternate solutions. Melich cut her off with a blunt demand: “I want you to tell me how lying to us is going to help us find your daughter.”

“It's not going to,” Casey said.

“Well, then . . . if the main thing you want to do is find your daughter, and you don't think lying to us is gonna help us find her, why would you do that?”

“Because I'm scared, and I know I'm running out of options. It's been a month.”

“What are you scared of?”

“I'm scared of not seeing my daughter ever again.”

John Allen began, “Okay, and if you're scared . . .”

“And I'm honestly petrified . . .” Casey insisted.

“. . . if you're scared of not . . .”

“. . . of not seeing her again,” Casey said, completing Allen's sentence.

“Seeing your daughter again, okay?” Allen echoed. “I want you to tell me how lying is going to solve that problem and help find your daughter quicker.”

“It's not,” Casey said.

“Then why would you do that?”

“See, I don't know,” Casey answered. “I'm telling you that I just dropped her off and that was the last time that I seen her. Even starting with that, everybody else is like, ‘Well, and what happened after that?' ”

Frustration and bafflement grew with each word out of
Casey's mouth. Appie Wells asked, “You remember the phone call you were telling us about?” alluding to her alleged brief phone call with Caylee.

“Uh huh.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“. . . What day was it you talked to her?” Appie asked.

“Yesterday.”

“You remember what time of day?”

“Around noon. It was from a private number.”

“Okay, what did she tell you? What's your daughter say to you?”

“She said, ‘Hi, Mommy.' ”

“And that's it?” Appie asked.

“And she started to tell me a story, talking to me about her shoes and books and . . .”