Imperfect Justice

by Jeff Ashton

  George talked about Caylee’s third birthday coming up in a week. He wanted the little girl back to have a big party for her.

  “I want to be out so that I can be there,” Casey sighed.

  “Your little girl, my granddaughter, has captivated the world.” George recounted the calls he had received from people as far away as Washington State.

  “All I want is Caylee home, but I want to be there when she comes home,” Casey said, breaking into tears. She listened as her father, his voice cracking, described going outside every evening to talk to Caylee. “The moon, the stars, and the sky, sweetheart. Mommy loves you, Jo Jo and CC love you, Uncle E loves you,” he told her. “I wish there was more I could do. I would give my life right now for you and for her. This is destroying your mother. She hurts so much.” Casey seemed nonchalant.

  George again tried to apologize for not being a better father and for not listening more. “You were a great dad and grandpa, and Caylee was lucky,” Casey responded with apparent sincerity.

  George told Casey to forget about Baez; he’d arrange the meeting with the FBI. Casey agreed, but started manipulating the terms of her talking to law enforcement. She wanted to get out of jail more than anything, so she made it seem as if she could speak more freely if she were bonded out and at home. As George explained, financially they just couldn’t do it. He wept frequently during the visit, and begged for anything Casey could do to help get Caylee back.

  Casey ended the conversation by repeating her desire to be home when Caylee finally returned. George agreed, saying he wanted to do all the things he used to do with Caylee before she went missing.

  THE LAST RECORDED JAILHOUSE VISIT between Casey and her parents took place on August 14. Her brother Lee had already visited earlier in the day. Cindy was already crying when Casey entered the visitation area that day. After a month of searching for her granddaughter, Cindy was pale and drawn, exhausted and emotionally distraught. She had been the one to say it smelled “like a dead body in the damn car”; she had called 911 to turn her daughter in; she was holding on to both the hope and the fear that Caylee was being held hostage.

  Meanwhile, Casey, who had yet to give anyone a useful piece of information, sat smiling widely as usual, in stark contrast to her disheveled mother. Casey, George, and Cindy had been together only a few minutes when Cindy blurted out her biggest fear. “Someone just said that Caylee was dead this morning. She drowned in the pool. That’s the newest story out there.”

  Casey barely reacted, shaking her head from side to side as one would upon hearing something that sounds utterly ridiculous. “Surprise, surprise,” was her sarcastic reply.

  “We need something to go on,” said Cindy plaintively, her tone indicating she’d reached the end of her rope.

  Casey responded in kind, snapping back, “Mom, I don’t have anything! I’m sorry. I’ve been here a month, a month today. Do you understand how I feel? I mean, do you really understand how I feel in this?”

  The loving air that had marked their first meeting was disintegrating under the weight of Casey’s tone. Whatever emotional closeness remained was further decimated as Casey began to discuss a plan in the works that would permit her a private contact visit with one member of her family. She attempted to explain to Cindy that she had chosen to see her father and hoped that her feelings would not be hurt.

  George quickly took the phone, hoping to diffuse the blow to his wife. He changed the subject and explained to his daughter that she was the boss, and not Jose Baez, when it came to decisions. He wanted her to know that whoever she spoke to was her choice. It seemed clear, though unspoken, that George saw Jose’s concern for protecting Casey’s legal rights and shielding her from possible prosecution as an impediment to finding Caylee. He apparently wanted Casey to bypass Jose and speak directly to the police.

  “The police are not helping us,” Casey moaned. She complained that the cops hadn’t even given her twenty-four hours to help find Caylee. She also pointed out that Jose was focused on her and Caylee and the family was focused simply on Caylee. While she would mouth a concern for Caylee, statements like this, combined with her actions, showed that the most important thing to Casey was Casey.

  As George returned the phone to Cindy, his daughter grew angry, clenching her fists and taking on an aggravated tone: “No one is letting me talk. I am not in control. Everybody wants to know things, but I have nothing to tell.”

  George tried to reassure her, telling her that she was in charge, but his words only infuriated her further. Casey accused her father of suggesting that she had the power to give the police more information about Caylee’s whereabouts.

  “There is nothing more I can do till I am home, and even then I don’t know what I can do from that point. But I can, at least, do something other than sit on my butt.” Considering that Casey had supposedly been looking for Caylee for a month on her own and had yet to give anything useful to investigators or her parents, it was strange that she seemed to believe that the only way she could help was if she was free. Watching the tapes, it seems clear that this was just another example of Casey trying to move the story forward without providing anything new. Casey meant to give her parents more of an incentive to get her out of jail and, at the same time, lower their expectations of her actually giving them anything more to help find Caylee.

  In her anger, Casey briefly showed her hand, announcing that her focus had to be on her own case, but she quickly corrected herself, saying that her focus was on Caylee. She insisted that she had told the police everything.

  “I am getting truly angry about all this,” she fumed. She complained that she had no one to comfort her. “What’s keeping me here is you’re not helping me to help myself.”

  Cindy responded by telling her daughter that she and George did not have the financial means to get her out. By now Cindy was bent over with her head lying on the counter, obviously in great emotional pain. But Casey was not fazed by her parents’ anguish and persisted with her rant.

  “This is the most angry I have been since this started,” she retorted. “People expect me, having been in jail for a month, to be able to give helpful information.”

  George chimed in, encouraging his daughter to speak to law enforcement and to go around Jose. He suggested that she send a letter to the sheriff requesting a personal contact visit. But Casey seemed to be ignoring any and all suggestions as she focused on herself and her own misery. “Everything is out of my control,” she whined.

  By now, Cindy was all but collapsed on her husband’s shoulder. She didn’t bother to lift her head as Casey once again bemoaned her powerlessness. “I wish there was something I could do to make things easier on the family. I am just as much a victim as the rest of you.”

  The Anthony family didn’t know it, but Corporal Melich had been watching their visit from an adjoining room. Casey became frustrated with her mother for dominating the conversation. When Casey was talking to George, he mentioned that she could write a letter to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and request to speak to someone in law enforcement. Casey had made earlier indications to her parents that she was willing to do so, but had never officially asked to speak with anyone in there.

  So Melich was surprised when later that day he received word that Casey had sent a note to Sheriff Kevin Beary. She wanted to speak privately with someone—not to law enforcement, but to her dad. The note said, “Is there any way that I can have a meeting set up with my father George Anthony? I would in every way appreciate it. I know it is an unusual request, but it is important nonetheless.”

  The investigators were encouraged, thinking George would be able to convince her to share clues that she hadn’t revealed before. They arranged to pick up George and bring him to the jail.

  The conversation in the police car, which was surreptitiously recorded by law enforcement, captured George confirming that the meeting with hi
s daughter had not been the idea of law enforcement, that police were not asking him to feed his daughter specific questions, and that he was not acting as an agent of the state. George told the officers he hoped this opportunity would help bring “closure” and some answers.

  The group arrived at the jail at 7:30 that evening. They found Casey meeting with an attorney named Adam Gabriel, who at the time was associated with Jose Baez’s office. He was trying to convince her not to speak with anyone. The officers told Gabriel they were just escorting George Anthony to the jail at Casey’s request. If she wished to speak to George privately, they would facilitate that. They also told the attorney that he was allowed to sit in on the conversation if Casey wanted him to. Ultimately, it was Casey’s decision whether she wished to see her father and on what terms.

  After waiting for ninety minutes, the investigators learned that Casey had changed her mind. She no longer wished to speak with her father, and George was returned home.

  This was the last of the jailhouse visits. The family was sick and tired of having their private time with Casey all over everyone’s evening news. All four of them—George, Cindy, Lee, and Casey—decided that future communication would be through Jose Baez only. With that decision, the hope of either the family or the police getting any new information from Casey all but vanished, forcing everyone to hope that some truth about Caylee’s whereabouts could be extracted from Casey’s earlier statements.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THIRTY-ONE DAYS

  While Casey’s family tried and failed to get new information from Casey in person following her arrest, the police continued to try and track down the leads she’d given them in any way they could.

  In the weeks before Linda asked me to join the case, investigators had started piecing together a timeline of Casey’s actions beginning when she and Caylee left Hopespring Drive with their backpacks, on June 16, until thirty days later, when Cindy Anthony called the police, on July 15. (Casey called this period of time “thirty-one days” from her own recollection, so there’s a discrepancy with the actual number of days. Despite being incorrect, that number “thirty-one” became part of the case’s vocabulary, so we will refer to this time period of June 16 to July 15 as thirty-one days.) Not surprisingly, Casey’s version and witnesses’ stories did not add up. Deciphering fact from fiction and cross-referencing phone records with statements from the people involved, the investigators began the painstaking job of establishing a real day-by-day account of events. Casey’s deliberate deceptions had led them to believe they were almost certainly dealing with a homicide, although they still didn’t know the how, why, when, or where.

  Caylee had last been seen on a Monday, June 16, 2008. Initially, on Cindy’s 911 phone call and for a few days after, there had been some honest confusion about that date, with Casey and Cindy saying that it was June 9 when she was last seen. Finally it was determined that Cindy had taken the toddler to visit her grandfather, Caylee’s great-grandfather, at an assisted-living facility on Father’s Day, Sunday, June 15. The following day, Cindy had left for work before Caylee was awake, but George and Casey each claimed to have seen Caylee alive for the final time.

  On that Monday, June 16, George saw Casey and Caylee leaving the house at around 12:50 in the afternoon. She told her dad as they were on their way out that she was going to work and Caylee was going to the nanny’s. Casey was wearing dressy charcoal-gray pinstriped slacks and a beige blouse, while Caylee was dressed in a blue jean skirt, pink top, white tennis shoes, and white-rimmed sunglasses, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Both Casey and Caylee were wearing backpacks; Caylee’s was white and decorated with little monkeys. As Casey explained to her father, she and Caylee would be spending the night at the nanny’s house, and she had already told Cindy. Shortly afterward, at around 2 P.M., George left for his job as a security guard. Later on, Casey told her mother the same story about spending the night at Zanny’s; however, cell phone records showed that Casey was still in the vicinity of the Anthony home until 4 P.M. Whether or not she returned there after George left that afternoon has never been established.

  By 7 P.M. that evening, Casey was in the area around the home of her boyfriend, Tony Lazzaro, and at 7:45 P.M., Casey and Tony were captured on video at a Blockbuster renting a movie, strolling with their arms around each other. There was no sign of Caylee on the camera footage. When Tony later recalled that evening, he said that the two watched a video, went to bed, and—wink-wink—didn’t leave the bedroom until late the next day. According to Tony, he did not see Caylee that day. In fact, he hadn’t seen the little girl since June 2, which was when she had come to his complex to swim in the pool.

  The next thing the phone records confirmed was that Casey left Tony’s place around 2 P.M. the following day, Tuesday, June 17, and drove back home. This was supported by a neighbor, Brian Burner, who saw the Pontiac Casey had been driving parked at the Anthony’s house and backed into the garage. At that point George would have just left or would just be leaving the house for work, and Cindy, a nurse, was working until five. No one knows what Casey did there that afternoon.

  What we do know is that Casey called Cindy later that day to tell her mom that she and Caylee were going to spend another night at Zanny’s, even though cell phone records indicated that she was already back at Tony’s when the call was made. Cindy wasn’t the only recipient of a lie from Casey on June 17. Casey also sent a text message to her best friend and confidante, Amy Huizenga, saying that she couldn’t wait to get Amy moved into the Anthony family home. Casey had previously told her friend that her parents were moving out and giving the house to her, and that Amy was welcome after that occurred.

  All of that, it turned out, was a lie; Casey’s parents had no such plans to vacate the house.

  At 12:30 the next afternoon, June 18, Casey called her parents’ house from Tony’s. The length of the call indicated that no one answered the phone, leading investigators to speculate that Casey was calling to confirm that the house was empty. An hour later, the same neighbor noticed Casey’s Pontiac again backed into the garage. Sometime between 1:30 P.M. and 2:30 P.M., Casey borrowed the neighbor’s shovel, saying that she needed it to dig up some bamboo in her backyard. Less than an hour later she returned the shovel, but it did not appear to have been used. After she was done at her parent’s house, Casey went back to Tony’s, where she spent her third consecutive night, once again confirmed by phone records.

  That evening Casey began spinning bigger and more elaborate lies. She called Cindy to tell her that she had to attend a work-related conference at Busch Gardens Theme Park in Tampa. Since Casey had been leading her parents to believe that she was an event planner at Universal Studios for some time, the trip made sense to them. As Casey explained it, she was taking Zanny, Zanny’s friend Juliette Lewis, Juliette’s daughter, Annabelle, and Caylee to Tampa with her. Annabelle was Caylee’s age, and would therefore be a perfect playmate for her. She told her mother that the group would be there until Friday, June 20.

  Putting aside the scene with the detectives at Universal Studios, it was clear from these early stories alone that Casey was a skilled, habitual liar. Whatever her audience, she would pad the lie with elements that would appeal to that person. In telling Cindy that Caylee would have a playmate in Tampa, she knew her mother would be much more amenable to the idea. In adding Juliette, she would eliminate questions about why Zanny would want to travel all the way to Tampa. As I would come to see, most of Casey’s lies were packed with these kinds of specific details, which made her stories more believable but also demonstrated that she was always plotting them with her audience in mind.

  Any con man will tell you that the true skill in crafting a great lie is finding what the mark wants to believe and giving it to him. Her fabrications centered on promoting herself as a responsible working mother, dedicated to both her job and Caylee. Whether the lie involved adding another day of work to he
r job, or making Zanny the Mary Poppins of Orlando, one lie seemed to flow effortlessly into the next. Casey could explain a discrepancy in a series of lies with a small, convincing tweak that would satisfy the most doubtful audience.

  Since her mother had been falling for the Zanny lie for over a year, Casey knew that Cindy would follow along in this instance, too, so she made Zanny a crucial part of the story. Zanny seemed like such a too-good-to-be-true, warm, generous babysitter that anyone who would complain about her had to be nasty, no good, jealous, and selfish. At the same time, what mother wouldn’t want to see her daughter advancing at work? At Cindy’s removed distance, her daughter appeared so vital to the company that her employer was paying to send her out of town to a conference. It was enough to make a mother proud or, in this case, keep her from getting suspicious.

  While Cindy believed that Casey was in Tampa, phone records indicated that Casey spent the next day, Thursday, June 19, in Tony’s neighborhood, where the two of them hunted for an apartment. At the time, Tony had been sharing an apartment with a bunch of roommates, and he wanted to get his own place. By 9:20 P.M., they were back at Tony’s. Throughout this time, whenever Tony asked about Caylee, Casey lied to him. As far as Tony knew, Caylee was either home with Cindy and George or with the babysitter.

  In their discussions with the police, the friends in Casey’s gang said that she was enjoying her stay at Tony’s. She was the model housemother to Tony and his roommates, cooking all the meals, cleaning, doing laundry, and sleeping with Tony, while telling different people different stories about where Caylee was if the question arose. When Casey called her mother that night, she continued her lie, telling Cindy that she and Caylee were still at the conference at Busch Gardens. Even though Casey was lying constantly to her mom, she was also checking in with Cindy every day like clockwork so as not to arouse suspicion.