Imperfect Justice

by Jeff Ashton

  The night of Friday, June 20, was originally the night when Casey had told her mother she would return home with Caylee, but instead, Casey was partying with many of her friends at Fusian, the club where Tony worked. Fridays at the club were geared toward college kids, and Tony was trying to do business as a club promoter, getting people in the door through social media and using “shot girls” to sell booze. That Friday night, Fusian hosted a “hot body” contest, and Casey spent the evening showing off her body and managing the shot girls. Photos of the event show Casey in pure delight, wearing a short blue dress and high black boots, grinding and dancing with others on the dance floor.

  Needless to say, this was not the story she’d given Cindy. In Casey’s nightly phone call to Cindy, Casey was all work, explaining that she was still in Tampa because her conference had gone an extra day, but it would be over on Saturday. That same night, however, Casey told a friend, Maria Kissh, that Caylee and the nanny were at the beach. And all the while she continued to shack up with Tony.

  By Sunday, June 22, her story for Cindy changed again. This time Casey said they were staying another night at Busch Gardens because she had been so busy with work that none of them had even gone to the amusement park to enjoy the rides. Of course, as Casey told Cindy, that hadn’t stopped Caylee and Annabelle from having a great time.

  The next day, Casey was at Tony’s until 1:41 P.M., when she left in the Pontiac. She soon called him to say that she had run out of gas and asked him to come get her. Rather than buy gas, she directed him to the Anthony home, where Tony broke the lock on her father’s shed so that Casey could take two red portable gas cans. They took the gas cans back to her car, poured their contents into the tank, started the car, and drove back to Tony’s in their separate vehicles.

  Casey’s call to Cindy that night contained bad news: on the way back from Tampa, she had been in a car accident. Zanny was hurt and had been taken to the hospital. She, Caylee, Juliette, and Annabelle would stay in Tampa so Casey could tend to Zanny in the hospital.

  In reality, a week had passed since anyone had laid eyes on little Caylee Marie Anthony.

  ON THE MORNING OF TUESDAY, June 24, George Anthony had been planning to mow his lawn when he discovered the broken lock on his shed and two missing gas cans. Casey had stolen his gas cans before, and though he suspected her in this instance as well, he called the police because he didn’t know for sure. He reported two stolen gas cans holding fifty dollars’ worth of gas, and fifty dollars in damages from the broken lock.

  That afternoon, Casey returned to the house to find George still at home. It was the first time either of her parents had seen her in more than a week, and her reaction made it look as though she had not been expecting him to be there. According to George, his daughter rushed past him to her bedroom, claiming that she needed to retrieve some insurance papers because of the accident.

  As I was reading this account from George to the police, I was amazed how effortlessly Casey was able to adjust her lie to accommodate the situation. In an instant, she had built on her original lie in a way that was both plausible and fitting. Her mental agility was incredibly impressive. Nevertheless, George’s suspicions were far from allayed.

  Still suspecting that Casey had stolen the gas cans, George pretended to need something from the trunk of the Pontiac. As he was heading for the car, Casey beat him to it, grabbed the two containers from the trunk, shouted, “Here are your fucking gas cans!” shoved them at his chest, and drove off. Because of the way she was standing, he didn’t get a good look inside the Pontiac’s trunk, and at that point had no reason to try.

  Records showed that not twenty minutes had gone by when Casey started calling her mother. She called five times with medical updates on Zanny, telling Cindy that there were complications with Zanny’s injuries and the nanny would have to stay in the hospital for a few more days. She also told her mother about going home to get the insurance papers, making sure to repeat the story she had told her father.

  The deceptions seemed to move fluidly from one day to the next, evolving and compounding each other. On Wednesday, June 25, Casey called Amy. During the conversation, she mentioned a smell in her car, which she said was the result of her running over a squirrel. Casey again spent the day at Tony’s, but told Cindy in her nightly contact that they were still in Tampa. The next day, Casey told her mother that Zanny had been released from the hospital, but it was so late that they would spend one more night in the Tampa area. In reality, she was again at Tony’s.

  Phone records from the following day, Friday, June 27, indicated that Casey traveled from Tony’s apartment to the vicinity of the Anthony house. At 11:30 A.M., she texted Amy about the smell in her car, saying that a dead animal was “plastered to the frame.” Seventeen minutes later, she called Tony to pick her up at the Amscot check cashing store at the intersection of East Colonial and Goldenrod in Orlando, because she had run out of gas again. When Tony got there, he offered to put gas in the car, but Casey said her father would take care of it. Even though two gas stations were immediately adjacent to the Amscot store, they left the Pontiac in the parking lot next to a Dumpster and went back to Tony’s. As it was a Friday night, they again spent the evening partying at Fusian.

  That weekend, Casey’s nightly calls to Cindy took her lies in a strikingly new direction. Knowing that she had reached the end of the story with Zanny, her story now contained the deception that Casey was back in town but wouldn’t be home because she was staying at Universal’s Hard Rock Hotel with a friend. The version she gave her mom was that her friend, Jeff Hopkins from Jacksonville, was visiting. He had a son, Zack, the same age as Caylee, and he had invited Casey and Caylee to stay with them at the hotel. In Casey’s telling, Jeff was wealthy and had a trust fund. Furthermore, he was a single dad, his wife having passed away, and he was interested in her. This story resonated in part because Cindy had heard the name Jeff Hopkins before. A year or so earlier, Casey had told Cindy that Jeff was the person who had introduced her to Zanny. Building on that older lie had made Jeff seem like a recurring, and therefore more plausible, character.

  Yet for all that her mother seemed to be taking Casey at her word, some of the lies were beginning to crumble. By Sunday, the Pontiac had been at the Amscot parking lot for two days. Casey had told Tony that her father was going to pick it up, so Tony didn’t think too much about it. In the meantime, however, the owner of the lot had taken note of the abandoned vehicle. The next day the car was towed, putting into motion the events that would lead to Cindy’s 911 phone call.

  Of all the lies that Casey had been telling, I found myself most drawn to her decision to abandon the car. If ever something was bound to reveal her bizarre behavior, it was the car. Nothing seemed to add up about it. This move demonstrated such an apparent lack of planning, such an absence of consideration for the consequences, that it seemed like a spur-of-the-moment decision. Was that the case with all these lies? Was she really just making them up as she went along, elaborating on older lies and dusting them off to suit her ends? Did she have a long-term strategy? Abandoning the car at the Amscot lot was playing with fire. And yet she had enough forethought to park the car next to a Dumpster, an act that could have been designed to hide the odor that George Anthony would discover a few days later. One possibility was that she was hoping to leave it there to air out without drawing attention. That way she could return to it in the future, gas it up, and drive away. Hopefully by then the smell would be gone. The fact that George missed the notice of a certified letter on his door certainly was a lucky break for Casey, since her next big lie a few days later—that she and Caylee were headed for Jacksonville—depended on her car not being discovered in Orlando.

  The day the Pontiac was being towed from the parking lot, Monday, June 30, was a busy one for Casey. She went shopping with Amy, then drove Tony to the airport in his Jeep for a flight he was taking home to New York. She was supposed to
return the vehicle to his apartment, but she continued to use it while he was gone. With Tony away, she started staying with Amy and Amy’s roommate, Ricardo Morales, who was an old boyfriend of Casey’s. As Casey transitioned from Tony’s place to Amy’s, her lies transitioned as well. Cindy was informed that Jeff Hopkins wanted Casey and the gang to stay at the hotel until July 3. No one had seen Caylee for two weeks.

  Shortly thereafter, Casey stopped calling her mother nightly, which in turn only frustrated Cindy more. For weeks, Cindy had been planning on taking a vacation around the Fourth of July holiday and hoping to spend time with Caylee. As Cindy’s vacation began, Caylee was nowhere to be found. Though Cindy was desperately trying to reach her daughter, Casey continually ignored her calls. When Casey finally replied to a text from her mother, she said that Caylee was at Universal Studios with Jennifer Rosa, Zanny’s roommate.

  On Wednesday, July 2, Casey made an appointment to get a tattoo the next day. She ate lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, shopped, and went out clubbing in the evening. She decided to spend the night at Amy and Ricardo’s. When Amy asked where Caylee was, Casey said she was with the nanny. By midnight, Cindy was becoming frustrated and infuriated. She called Casey eight times in the twenty-four minutes between 12:13 A.M. and 12:37 A.M., but nobody answered.

  In an odd twist of fate, Casey coincidentally ran into Jeff Hopkins that night at Waterford Lake Alehouse in Orlando. As investigators later learned from Jeff, he and Casey had been acquaintances in middle school and high school, but since then the two hadn’t remained in contact. At the Alehouse, they’d exchanged phone numbers, but except for an e-mail blast about a gathering at Fusian Ultra Lounge, Jeff hadn’t heard from her again. Not only were they not in contact, but Jeff, it turned out, had no children, no trust fund, no dead wife, didn’t live in Jacksonville, wasn’t interested in her, had never meet Caylee Anthony, and couldn’t provide any information about Caylee’s supposed babysitter, Zenaida.

  On Thursday, July 3, Casey got her tattoo, the words “Bella Vita,” Italian for “beautiful life,” inked on her left shoulder. The tattoo artist told the police that the wording was popular among other younger customers he’d seen, as it was an expression of the desire to live the good life. Her choice had made sense to him. Since she seemed happy when he met her, he assumed she was living a bella vita. She made an appointment to return for another tattoo and even told the tattoo artist about her daughter, who was with her nanny, saying she would bring her along the next time.

  Meanwhile, Cindy’s anger was growing. She was on a singular mission to see her granddaughter, trying Casey’s phone seven times that night and the next morning, without getting an answer. Eventually, Casey took a call and told her mother that Caylee was at Universal Studios, enjoying a day of fun at an event designed for the children of employees. Casey would have loved to invite Cindy, but unfortunately it was for employees only. Cindy drove there anyway, and called Casey from the parking lot, assuming that Caylee and Casey would have to come out sooner or later. Casey had been giving her the runaround about where she was for too long, and Cindy didn’t trust her anymore. Before Casey had left with Caylee in June, Cindy and she had been arguing about Casey’s lifestyle. Now Cindy felt she finally had Casey cornered.

  Or so she thought. When Casey answered her mother’s call and learned that she was in the Universal parking lot, she realized she was trapped, and altered the story again—this time putting enough physical distance in the lie so that her mother couldn’t stake her out. Telling Cindy there had been a change of plans, Casey explained that Jeff Hopkins had invited her and Caylee to go to Jacksonville with him and his son. They were already en route.

  After Casey hung up, George tried to call her, but he got no answer. Completely frustrated, Cindy recruited Lee to look for his sister at the clubs downtown. First, he attempted to locate Casey through the places mentioned on MySpace postings by friends. He went to one spot, but missed her by minutes. She had gotten word that he was coming and left before he arrived. He tried calling her cell phone, but she didn’t answer. He then enlisted his girlfriend to call, thinking Casey would pick up for her. They spoke briefly before the girlfriend passed the phone to Lee. Casey was nasty to her brother, blew him off, and hung up.

  When Cindy heard this, she had her son create a MySpace page for her so that she could post a lengthy paragraph about hurt and betrayal for Casey to discover. Her subject line was “My Caylee is missing,” and she posted her mood as “distraught.” The seventeen-line entry was filled with sadness and anger: “What does the mother get for giving her daughter all of these chances? A broken heart. . . .” Cindy ended her indirect message to Casey with thoughts about Caylee. “Who is now watching out for the little angel?”

  CASEY SPENT THE FOURTH OF July holiday shopping and celebrating. When she finally responded to Cindy’s MySpace post, Casey told her mother to leave her alone. Elaborating further on her lie about Jeff Hopkins, Casey claimed that she was trying to pursue a long-term relationship with him. She told Cindy to accept that she was now an adult and that she and Caylee would someday move out for good. Apparently, Casey’s response had the desired effect. Cindy agreed to give her daughter some space.

  On Saturday, July 5, Tony returned from New York. Casey met him at the airport, and they picked up where they left off, with Casey playing housemother for Tony and his mates. That day, Casey told her mother that her car was being fixed in Jacksonville, that she and Caylee were staying with Jeff Hopkins’s mother, Jules, and that they would be returning to Orlando on July 12.

  Looking at all this together, I couldn’t help but wonder what Casey had planned for her end game. Since mid-June, her lies had taken so many different shapes that it was hard to believe they had gone on for so long. She seemed to move deftly from one deception to another, and yet couldn’t see that it was all going to fall apart. While it didn’t seem as if she had any way out, one thought that occurred to me was that, on some level, the Jeff Hopkins story was meant to be the end of it all, the culmination of the lie. Perhaps a sudden elopement with the wealthy young friend who was also the perfect family man—“Mom, it just happened so suddenly, sure I would have loved to have you and Dad there, but it was just so perfect”—followed by the impetuous honeymoon abroad—“Jeff is such a wonderful man, he insisted we bring the kids.” It’s hard to say what she was setting the narrative up for, but as her lies seemed only to be building in size and scope, it wasn’t hard to imagine her creating some kind of an escape scenario. It was easy for me to see that Casey’s explanation to her mother was her setup for the long-term solution, that Casey was maneuvering to set it up that she and Caylee had moved out for good. If only my talent for fiction were one-tenth of hers, I could have seen it, the ultimate storybook ending. But all I, or any of us on the prosecution, could do was speculate.

  Surely, though, something was going to force her hand, whether it was the demands from Cindy, the interference from George, the discovery of the Pontiac, or simply fate. Until then, her lies would simply get bolder and more reckless, generating a momentum that could lead only to a dead end.

  On July 8, Casey drove Amy and Ricardo to the airport in Amy’s car. Amy and Ricardo were headed to Puerto Rico. Somehow Casey also got hold of Amy’s wallet and checkbook, and within an hour of dropping off her friends at the airport, she was at Target, where she enjoyed a two-hour shopping spree. At 9:48 A.M., surveillance cameras captured her entering the store, where she shopped until 11:55 A.M., at which point she took her purchases to the checkout counter. She paid the $111.01 for the purchases with one of Amy’s checks.

  Casey continued to forge checks on Amy’s account for the next five days, knowing that her friend was out of the country. During that time, she made two more visits to Target and a trip to a Winn-Dixie grocery store. Her purchases during this time included the light blue hoodie she was wearing when she was arrested, lingerie, oversize white sunglasses, toilet paper, cherries,
orange juice, and a six-pack of Bud Light. At no time did she buy anything for her toddler, and Caylee is not seen on any of the stores’ video surveillance tapes.

  Stealing from Amy seemed a natural progression for Casey. After all, Cindy and George had discovered the forgeries and thefts from their accounts, not to mention the more recent discovery that Casey was stealing from her grandmother as well. As a result, all the family accounts were under a watchful eye, so those avenues were now closed. Once Tony was out of town, Casey needed money again. Amy was so trusting it was like she was asking to be taken advantage of. If Casey was caught, she’d probably just plead desperation and promise to pay her back. After all, it had worked with Cindy, surely it would work again. Live for today, and deal with the consequences when and if they arise. In her experience, she could talk her way out of anything.

  As it turned out, though, the law wasn’t far behind her. On Sunday, July 13, George Anthony found the notice of a certified letter from Johnson’s Wrecker Service stuck in his front door, which marked the end for Casey and the beginning of the mystery about Caylee. Having no idea what the notice was about, and scheduled to start a new job on Monday, George decided that the earliest he could make it to the post office was Tuesday, July 15. Casey, meanwhile, was still staying at Tony’s, though she told Cindy that she and Caylee had been invited at the last minute to Jeff Hopkins’s mom’s wedding ceremony in Jacksonville.

  On the afternoon of July 15, Casey cashed a forged check for $250, written to her, by her, on Amy’s account. She then drove to the airport in Amy’s car to pick up her two friends, back from vacation. During the ride to Amy’s, Casey said that she had spoken to her daughter earlier that day. It was a lie that capped off nearly a month of lies, but it was all about to come to an abrupt end, as George and Cindy barreled toward the tow yard.

  In my years as a prosecutor, I have seen my share of liars—but never one quite like this. If it was just the lies to her mother, we might be able to understand that. After all, kids lie to their parents from time to time, mostly because they’re young and immature. Still, if that was all it was—simply a lie taken to an irrational extreme—you’d expect to find Caylee stashed away with some friend, happy and healthy, while Casey laughed to herself about how she’d showed Cindy who the real boss was in the relationship.