Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony (11 page)

“No one can imagine why you wouldn’t go to the police. Well, I can imagine a reason,” Cindy Anthony later said to the press. She said that Casey’s lack of emotion and odd, conflicting stories only supported the idea that Casey was doing everything she could to protect Caylee and her family from danger. It was a strained logic that neither the court nor the media seemed eager to embrace.

The difficulty for Linda at the hearing was that since Casey was only arrested for child abuse, she was entitled to bond. Under Florida law, generally only persons charged with offenses punishable by life imprisonment or death can be held without bond, and while this was trending toward becoming a murder case, it wasn’t there yet. Linda argued that Casey’s knowledge that this might someday be a murder charge gave her a reason to flee, and thus argued for an extremely high bond.

At the end of the three-hour hearing, Judge Strickland set bond at $500,000 on the felony child neglect count. He also ordered that Casey be placed on home confinement with electronic monitoring, be evaluated by two psychiatrists, Jeffrey Danzinger and Allen Burns, and that she surrender her passport upon her release from jail. Casey’s attorney called the half-million-dollar bond “outrageous,” saying it was more than the Anthony family could afford. That afternoon, Casey was returned to the Orange County Jail, where she remained. No one had $500,000.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

JAILHOUSE CONVERSATIONS

I
n the days following Casey’s arrest, the split personality that the Anthonys had displayed at the bond hearing continued. They wanted to believe Casey, as she held the only clues to finding Caylee, but no one—not George, Cindy, or Lee—seemed convinced that she could be trusted.

Between Casey’s lies and the groundless theories sprouting up around Orlando, the only certain thing about the case was that it was exploding in the media. From the local papers to the national news, everyone, it seemed, had taken up the cause of finding Caylee. It put additional strain on Cindy and George, and as the fervor built around them, made it harder and harder for them to deal with the twenty-four-hour news circus outside their front door. The strange disappearance of Caylee had become a story around the country, and as Caylee’s most public and determined advocates, Cindy and George became the face of the campaign to find her—a role that, understandably, neither of them took to well. Every few days it seemed as if they floated a new possibility about where Caylee was, which would send the media into a frenzy, but they never offered any possibilities of real substance. In truth, they were as clueless as the rest of us. Casey wasn’t giving them much to go on either.

But their difficulties in managing the media did little to discourage their search for their granddaughter. Cindy, more than anyone, was desperate to believe that Caylee was alive, and she thought Casey was only lying and holding back to protect Caylee’s life. Having my own six children, some about Casey’s age, I no doubt have engaged in my share of denial. But to hypothetically put myself in Cindy’s shoes, to determine how many fabrications I would believe in such an unbelievably horrific scenario, is absolutely impossible for me.

Still, in spite of all the evidence that Casey was lying, Cindy continued to believe her. When Cindy would speak to law enforcement about the events of the month before her 911 calls and leads in finding Caylee, she was unreceptive to either the possibility of Caylee being dead or her daughter having any role in the matter.

George, however, was a different story. Early on, he was willing to speak more frankly with law enforcement about the possibility of Casey’s involvement. On July 24, he reached out to investigators and asked for a meeting outside the presence of his wife. He agreed to come to police headquarters and sit down with Corporal Melich and Sergeant Allen. Their ensuing conversation was surreptitiously recorded.

“Well, I need to set the record straight between you guys and me,” George began. “You guys are doing what you can. I know that. Deep in my heart and my gut and my brain, I know it. I know how you guys, at least I have a rough idea of how everything’s put together. Granted, it’s been years since I’ve done my stuff, but I know the basic techniques . . . are still there. I understand all that good stuff. 

“Where this is leading I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about that, but I had bad vibes the very first day when I got that car,” George said, referring to the day he retrieved the Pontiac from the tow yard. “I can be straight with you guys and I hope it stays in the confines of us three. I don’t want to believe that I have raised someone, brought someone into this world that [sic] could do something to another person. I don’t want to believe that. And if it happens, all I can do is ask that you guys can please call me, so I can prepare my wife, because it’s going to kill her.” 

George acknowledged that if they had lost their granddaughter, they had also lost their daughter. “But I guess the reason why I’m here today is I, I’m just having a hard time grasping what my wife is doing to you guys and I apologize.” Shifting direction, George then admitted that he had issues with Casey’s defense attorney Jose Baez.

“I don’t like this freaking attorney that she has. I can tell you that right now from personal experience, I don’t like the guy.” According to George, Casey had told him that she supposedly had at least $1,400 of Baez’s $5,000 retainer. The fact that there was money changing hands, along with the fact that she’d only heard about Baez because of a fellow inmate, both seemed to make George all the more skeptical.

“We did not contact this man,” George explained, speaking for himself and his wife. “When he came to our, called us, we thought he was a court-appointed attorney. Because my daughter does not, I don’t think she has any money. If she does . . . Well, besides stealing from me, my wife . . . other people . . .”

Changing the subject away from Baez, Melich reminded George of the smell in the Pontiac he had mentioned during their first conversation at Anthony house after Cindy had called 911. “Do you remember what you told me?”

“I believe that there’s something dead back there,” George replied without hesitation. “And I hate to say the word human. I hate to say that . . . I’ve been around that. I mean the law enforcement stuff that I did, we caught people out in the woods, in a house, in a car. So I know what it smells like.  It’s a smell that you never get rid of. 

“When I first went there to pick up that vehicle, I got within three feet of it I could smell something. You look up and you say, please don’t let this be. Please don’t let this be. Because I’m thinking of my daughter and my granddaughter first. I glance in the car on the passenger side, I see [Caylee’s] seat’s there and I see some other stuff around in it. And as I walk around to the driver’s side and put the key in it, I said, ‘Please don’t let this be what I think it is.’

“The wrecker, I don’t know what the gentleman’s name [is]. I still don’t know. But he and I opened up the door and he said, ‘Whoa, does that stink.’ I sat in the car for a second. I opened up the passenger door because I was trying to vent that thing.

“You know and I smell and I’m like, ‘Oh, God.’ I tried to start the car for a second and I said, ‘No, George, if there’s something wrong. You got to find out now. You can’t take it away.’ I told the guy, I said, ‘Will you please walk around to the back of this car and look inside this with me?’ As I walked around, I don’t believe I said to him, you know, aloud, and I think I whispered out to myself, ‘Please don’t let this be my Caylee.’ That’s what I thought. That’s what my heart was saying. I opened it up and that’s when I seen that bag. I did see a stain. I think it’s right about where the spare tire was at.”

“The guy said, ‘Sir, I’ll take care of it. I’ll get rid of it.’ But the smell never went away. When I drove around I told my wife, I said, ‘This car stinks so bad I can’t, I don’t know how I can drive it home.’ It’s raining outside. Oh, well, I have the windows down in the car probably about this much,” he explained, gesturing about halfway. “I couldn’t freaking breathe.  The air conditioning and stuff . . .”

Melich asked if Cindy had noticed the smell.

“Oh, after we pulled inside the garage she said, her exact words were, ‘Jesus Christ, what died?’  That’s exactly what she said. But then she said it in a way, she says, ‘George, it was the pizza, right?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it was the pizza.’ And I let it go at that, but I’m sitting here, as the grandfather, as the father, as George Anthony, and as a guy who smelled the smell before years ago, and you just never forget it. I even stuck my nose down on it and I’m concerned.” 

Melich let that thought sink in before continuing, “Do you think the reason your daughter doesn’t want to tell us what happened is for fear of what her mom might do? Might say I told you so, or something along that?  Do you think that it would be so disappointing to mom and that’s why [Casey’s] taking this to the bitter end?”

“Now, my daughter lives on the edge. You know that from all the lies.  All the contradictions. And like my daughter takes things as far as she can take them. And then she piles on some other stuff. This is going to sound really crazy at the point, but my wife and I still believe that Casey still resents my wife [from] the day that our granddaughter was born.”

George next described the tension between Cindy and Casey. “A lot of times they’ve gotten into it because of Casey not being where she’s supposed to have been. The lying about working . . .”

George told the investigators that when it came to Casey, he had played the role of detective himself. A while back, he’d suspected she was lying about a supposed job at a local Sports Authority, so he had gone to the store and confronted the manager. He asked if Casey worked there, and was told she did not.

Bringing the conversation back to Caylee, Sergeant Allen asked George if he thought that his daughter “believes that nobody would forgive her if something happened, if some accident happened, some bad thing?”

“I’m not able to answer.” George responded. “I’m going to have to think about that . . .” It seemed at this point that George wasn’t sure about many things about his daughter. He brought up the money she’d stolen, catching her in lies. There was a whole backstory of Casey’s lies that the investigators were just learning. Before long Allen steered him back to the search for Caylee.

“Well, you understand we keep looking for Zenaida but if she doesn’t exist, we’re going to continue looking in the wrong places. And you know what? It isn’t the manpower. It isn’t our time. It’s that if we continue with all these resources. If we focus all these resources in the wrong area . . .”

“She gets further and further away,” George completed Allen’s thought. “And that’s if she’s still with us.”

When asked what he thought may have happened, George mentioned that Cindy had found the side gate open and the pool ladder up, meaning it straddled the pool, allowing someone access to the water. It was up some- time around the time Caylee was last seen. He wasn’t sure of the date. In his notes, Melich pointed out that when at Universal Studios with Casey on July 16, Cindy had called him mentioning this same incident and the fact that she thought it odd. Both George and Cindy say they keep the side gate closed and the pool ladder down, meaning the ladder was closed up and away from the pool.

The investigators asked George if he wanted to listen to the 911 calls made by Cindy. The media had made a public records request for them earlier that day, and it appeared likely the judge was going to agree to their release. George said he wanted to hear them and he wanted his son, Lee, to also be present. George didn’t want Lee to know he was speaking with the investigators, so Melich called and asked if he wanted to come listen to the tapes. Lee agreed. While waiting for Lee to arrive, George began feeling nauseous and officers took him outside for some fresh air. Once outside, George began shaking and vomiting, but refused medical attention, saying it was his nerves. When Lee arrived, George went to the bathroom and Lee listened to the 911 tapes. After that, Lee drove his father home.

A
FTER
C
ASEY’S BAIL HAD BEEN
set, the judge had ordered her to meet with two psychiatrists for evaluation. On July 24, Casey had an interview with the second of those psychiatrists, and the initial reports from both doctors stated that she was perfectly normal, that there was no indication of any mental illness. Casey reported that she had never had any mental health treatment and that she did not have a drug or alcohol problem. She also stated unequivocally that she had never been physically or sexually abused. The only item of note was an observation made by one of the psychiatrists, Dr. Jeffrey Danziger, who reported that Casey was “unusually happy considering her circumstances.”

Casey’s brother, Lee, was the first to visit Casey in jail. This was the first of the so-called jailhouse conversations. The policy of the local jail is that all visits are on video and are subject to monitoring and recording, but they are not recorded as a matter of course. Casey’s visits were by video link, with Casey communicating remotely with her visitors, who remained in a separate location nearby. Because Casey was being held in protective custody, she was not permitted to have contact visits, not even with her closest family members.

The conversations were extraordinary in capturing the family dynamic. When I reviewed them, I was impressed by everyone’s initial cooperation, George and Cindy assuring Casey that they would follow any clue she could give them, and Lee methodically evaluating people they should trust or suspect. In the early visits, no one in her family accused Casey of having a hand in her daughter’s disappearance, even as evidence mounted that she was lying. They seemed to be walking on eggshells in her presence, trying to get valuable information without provoking her anger or frustration. By mid-August, all that would change dramatically, and these cordial family dialogues would devolve into something else entirely. But even their videotaped unraveling offered clues to the family’s inner workings.