Presumed Guilty

by Jose Baez

Melich then had her raise her right hand and swear that everything she had told him was the truth.

  After taking down her statement, Melich said, “Okay, take me to where you showed the police officers.” They went back to the same apartment complex. Then he asked, “Do you know any other places where Zenaida lived before she lived here?”

  “I know where her mother Gloria used to live,” she said, and she took Melich to another apartment complex, which turned out to be a home for the elderly.

  Melich checked. The people at the home had never heard of Gloria Gonzalez. Later police would discover that the complex was across the street from one of Casey’s former boyfriends, Ricardo Morales. And the Sawgrass Apartments, where Zenaida supposedly lived, was the home of Dante, the boyfriend of her best friend, Annie Downing.

  After driving Casey around until three in the morning, Melich drove her back to her home.

  “Okay,” he said, “we’ll talk tomorrow. We’re going to keep investigating.”

  Before Melich left, George pulled him aside.

  “My daughter has been lying to you,” he said. “Something’s very suspicious. I don’t think she’s being truthful. You need to look into this a little bit more.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Melich. “We will.”

  George then told him about finding the car at the impound lot and again mentioned the smell in Casey’s car.

  The car was in the garage of the Anthony home with the trunk open. As the police were coming in and out of the house that night, they entered through the garage. Any of them could have smelled that car, and not one said a word about it. Even though George had told him, “The car smells of death,” the detective was either grossly incompetent or believed the smell from the car came from the trash that had been in the car, as apparently did all the police on the scene. In Melich’s five-page, detail-rich initial report, not a word was said about any smell in the car. If the car smelled uniquely of human decomposition, none of the officers noticed it. As I will show later, decomposition is decomposition and no one can uniquely detect human decomposition.

  Melich drove back to his precinct and met with Sergeant John Allen around seven in the morning. During breakfast Melich briefed Allen about the case.

  As they discussed it, the new strategy was to see how far Casey would go with her lies.

  Casey had told the police she didn’t have Zenaida’s cell phone number because she had left the cell phone in her office at Universal Studios.

  “The number of everyone who knows about Caylee being missing is on that SIM card on the cell phone in the office,” said Casey.

  “Let’s go to Universal and get it,” said Melich. “We’ll get your cell phone out of your office, and you can get the numbers.”

  She quickly changed her story.

  “My phone was stolen,” she said. “I reported it to loss prevention, and they’re looking for it.”

  Melich, sensing another lie, decided to drive over to Universal Studios and see what Casey’s coworkers could tell him about this strange tale-spinning woman whose child was missing.

  It was July 16, 2008, and in speaking with Universal’s head of security, Leonard Tutura, Melich learned that Casey was fired from her job at Universal Studios on April 24, 2006, after not showing up for work one day. Melich asked about Casey’s coworkers, including Hopkins and Lewis. When Melich checked, he found that Hopkins had once worked at Universal but was fired in 2002, so he couldn’t have known about Caylee’s disappearance during the thirty days when she was missing. And Lewis wasn’t found in the company’s database.

  Melich called Casey from Universal and asked for the name of her supervisor.

  “Tom Frank,” she told him.

  He also asked for Casey’s number at work and her extension.

  Melich checked the database. No supervisor by the name of Tom Frank existed, and though she knew the main number for the Universal Studios switchboard, extension 104 didn’t exist. Melich asked for the building number. Casey said she couldn’t remember it.

  Melich told her, “I’ll have an officer pick you up, and you can meet me here at Universal. We’ll go find your office and we’ll talk to some people here to see if we can find Jeff Hopkins or Juliet Lewis.”

  She cheerfully agreed.

  Around noon Allen drove over and picked her up with Officer Appling “Appie” Wells. Casey had not slept all night. During the early morning, Casey and Cindy had been building Facebook and Myspace pages in their attempt to spread the word about Caylee’s disappearance. They were texting hundreds of people trying to organize a search for Caylee.

  Casey and the two cops arrived at Universal. When they arrived at the gate, the security officer asked for her ID.

  “I lost it,” Casey said.

  The police asked if he would please let them in so she could show them the location of her office.

  He agreed.

  Casey led them into an office building in the back area of Universal Studios. She made a left turn, kept on walking, began to walk down a hallway, and then stopped.

  “Okay,” Casey said, “I don’t work here.”

  The detectives, growing more incredulous by the moment, took her into a conference room and began to question her. They hit her with her lies.

  Talk about going around in circles. It was such a red flag. I don’t know how Melich didn’t realize right then and there that he was dealing with someone with serious mental health issues. Why didn’t he see this was a clear sign that something just wasn’t right? She gave such vivid details from her imagination. This was a bit more than just lies.

  Though confronted with the fact she had been lying, Casey stubbornly stuck to her story: the scenario, in effect, that her nanny had taken Caylee and she didn’t know where she was.

  The police pounded away at her. As the interrogation was coming to a close, Melich received a phone call from Cindy.

  What Cindy wanted Melich to know was that on the day Caylee disappeared, the ladder on the outdoor above-ground swimming pool was up, meaning Caylee would have had access to the pool.

  “We’re religious about taking that ladder down,” Cindy said, “and it was odd that it was still up. Something is not right, and we are very concerned. We just don’t understand what’s going on.”

  What Cindy was telling Melich was that her suspicion was that Caylee had drowned in the swimming pool that day. Armed with this new information, Melich returned to question Casey. Did he ask her about the ladder? Did he ask her anything about the swimming pool? Not a word. Focusing in on the missing nanny, he asked more questions about her and asked Casey to look at some photographs to see if perhaps the faces in the photos were Zenaida.

  It was clear to me that Melich didn’t ask Casey about the ladder and the pool because he had already made up his mind that she was a prime suspect in a possible murder case. He knew there was a missing child, who was presumed to be dead, and he knew Casey was lying, and probably figured that after a night in jail she would come forward and confess. Don’t give her an out, was probably his thinking. Confessions are the quickest way to close a case. Let’s get an incriminating statement and we can pack up and go home.

  After showing Casey the pictures of women at the police station, none of which she identified as Zenaida, they told her, “We’re arresting you. Unless you come clean and tell us the truth, we’re arresting you now.”

  “I am telling the truth,” she said defiantly.

  “Okay, then, you’re under arrest.”

  She was arrested around three in the afternoon. Two hours later, the police alerted the media. In Orlando, the police like to do perp walks, where they take the accused out of the police station and march them in front of the television cameras. The TV and newspaper reporters then ask the suspect questions. The strategy is to try to get recorded statements that can be used in court. Or, at the very least, the police department gets more publicity for a big arrest.

  So the cops handcuffed her and walked her out.
In front of the one camera crew that appeared, Casey didn’t answer a single question. Casey wore a light blue hoodie with the number 82 in bright yellow. The news crew had no idea that the B-roll it had just shot would be replayed and broadcast across the country for the next three-and-a-half years.

  You might wonder why the cops arrested her so quickly. According to Melich, the reason they did so was what occurred in the Melinda Duckett case. Duckett was a young woman from Lake County, Florida, who had a missing child. After going on the Nancy Grace show, where Nancy Grace attacked her repeatedly, Duckett came home and took her own life. She shot herself in her grandparents’ home on September 8, 2006. Melich said they didn’t want a repeat of what happened to Duckett. But this case was different. Casey had shown no signs of depression. What was their hurry?

  I have always believed that at this crucial moment in the investigation, the police made a horrible decision. They should have stopped and realized, Wait a minute, we’re not dealing with someone who’s playing with a full deck here. How much more evidence did the police need to see that this girl was taking them on a wild goose chase? Rather than thinking, This is a guilty person who’s a horrible liar, why didn’t they consider, This is a person who has built some kind of fantasy world, someone who lives within a mythical reality?

  I just can’t fathom that after going down to Universal and watching her make up names of coworkers and a fictitious office, saying she worked there when she didn’t, why the cops wouldn’t say, Wait a minute. Maybe we should have a psychologist come in and talk to her and see what we’re dealing with here.

  That moment at Universal Studios was the time and place to confront this girl in a different manner. It was the time to bring in a mental health professional and say, We’re dealing with something beyond our comprehension. Instead, they went old school with a good cop/bad cop routine and mounted an accusatory interrogation.

  They slapped the cuffs on her. They thought they were going to pull the truth out of her and that after a night in jail she’d break down and tell them everything. If they had just let her remain free, they could have bugged her phones, watched her movements, followed her, and perhaps would have gotten a better idea of the extent of her involvement in Caylee’s disappearance. But within twenty-four hours they arrested her and made her a suspect. She immediately got herself a lawyer (yours truly), which meant they had no more access to her. I’d have to say that was a really stupid move on their part.

  The police took Casey to the Orange County jail, and the next morning she had what is called a first appearance. The judge read the police report. He told her, “You’re not cooperating. We need to know where Caylee is.”

  Casey said nothing, and despite being held for child neglect and lying—minor crimes—the judge held her without bond, which was odd. Casey had a public defender at this point (she hadn’t yet hired me), so I can’t answer why this wasn’t fought more vociferously.

  Several hours later I came to see her, and my life would never be the same.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE PHONE RINGS

  IN THE SUMMER OF 2008, our little firm was growing. We were really rocking and rolling. I had moved my practice from Orlando to Kissimmee, Florida, which is a suburb of Orlando. It had almost tripled in revenue because I had built a strong practice specifically catering to the Hispanic market.

  There are three units in the building where my office is: two small units on the side and a larger unit in the middle. At the time I met Casey we had just finished moving from one of the smaller units to the big one. An appraisal firm, our neighbor, moved into my smaller office, and I moved into its bigger one.

  I had put in close to $30,000 in renovations. We hired an interior designer and installed hardwood floors because we really wanted to show that we were a boutique law firm on the rise. One hundred percent of my business was based on referrals. We did not advertise. The only way to build a strong referral-based practice is by delivering results. And that is how the phone rings.

  Later, when the media described my office as being in a “strip mall,” it upset me, because we had put so much work into our office, and the entire firm was so proud of it. It was one of the first attempts to paint me as a small-time lawyer with no prospects, even though my cases were taking on greater importance.

  The last case I tried before Casey’s, the Nilton Diaz trial, had been an ordeal. Diaz was accused of murdering his girlfriend’s two-year-old daughter.

  I strongly believed that Diaz was innocent. It was a pediatric head-injury case in which our defense contended that the mother was the one who struck the child, and after she hit her, the child went through a lucid interval, a common occurrence in such head-injury cases. While the mother ran out to the store, leaving the child in Diaz’s care, the child had a seizure. Diaz immediately took the child to get help, but she died anyway. The police arrested him and charged him with child abuse and first-degree felony murder.

  Our defense was excellent. We answered every question we thought the jury would have and raised a significant amount of doubt. But what I didn’t understand yet was that in child death cases, juries want someone to pay. I really believe the jury thought Diaz was innocent, but it felt someone had to be held responsible so it came back with a compromise verdict. The jury found him guilty of child abuse and manslaughter and sentenced him to fifteen years.

  I was devastated. It had been a long trial, and I had dedicated a significant amount of my personal time to it. I needed to do something where I could relax a little bit and find an activity I could do outside my office. I was living in Florida and figured that boating would be relaxing, so I joined a boat club. Members got to rent boats at reasonable rates. I was sure this would be a wonderful activity for my wife, Lorena, and me to do together.

  As part of the process of becoming a member, I went out with one of the owners to learn the workings of the boats. He and I were talking, and I told him I was a criminal defense lawyer, and after a day of training he said, “Jose, we’re trying to get the word out about the club. We’re having a local newspaper do an article on it. Do you mind if they call you and you can talk about the club? We’d like other professionals like you to join.”

  “Sure,” I said, “no problem.” And I forgot about our conversation.

  About a week later, on July 17, 2008, I was driving in downtown Orlando when I called my office to check my messages. My secretary told me to go see a prospective client. She said a relative of an inmate called and wanted me to go to the Orange County jail to see an inmate by the name of Casey Anthony.

  It’s just another case, I thought. I didn’t think anything of it. I was going to the jail anyway.

  “I’ll go see her,” I said.

  After a twenty-minute drive, I was at the Booking and Release Center, what we call the BRC, which is where they house the newly arrested inmates who are going to bond out shortly. While I was waiting in the building, I noticed a whiteboard on the wall, and I saw the name Casey Anthony written on it. That’s odd, I thought. Of all the inmates, why is her name up there? I wondered if maybe she had beaten the crap out of a correctional officer and she was a high risk.

  Maybe she’s a live one, was my thinking. They usually only put the names of the troublemakers up on the wall.

  I told the guards, “I’m here to see Casey Anthony,” and I was struck by their reaction. They looked at each other as if to say, “He’s here to see her.” A public defender, who was also waiting to see Casey, asked me, “Who are you?” I explained I had gotten a call to come see her.

  “This case has been in the news,” he said, “and I just came down to tell her not to talk to anyone because detectives might be coming by.”

  Casey walked in and sat down. The public defender told her, “A private lawyer is here to see you.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “I asked someone to do that for me.”

  He said, “We just wanted to let you know you shouldn’t talk to anyone without a lawyer being pre
sent.” And then he left.

  I sat down and said, “Hello. How are you?”

  I saw this tiny, attractive, hip-looking girl with short dark hair and greenish-gray eyes in her early twenties. She was no more than five feet tall, weighed 105 pounds soaking wet, and looked totally out of place in the jail. She wasn’t your typical inmate. She was dressed in jail blues but very well kept. Most of my clients, both male and female, are a little rougher around the edges, more street-wise. That was not Casey. In this business you mostly run across people who have been through the system. They’re much more hardened. I could see Casey was a first-timer.

  After I introduced myself, I could tell she was grateful that I had come to see her.

  I asked her, “Do you have your paperwork with you?” meaning her police reports. We were talking through a glass partition, so she slid them underneath the glass.

  “Give me a second to read your report,” I said.

  I saw that the specific charges were child neglect and lying to law enforcement. I thought, Okay, she’s going to be out of here pretty soon. Then I saw, “No bond,” and that was a head-scratcher. I couldn’t understand how, with those relatively minor charges, she didn’t have a bond.

  I thought, There’s no reason she should be held without bond.

  As I was reading the arrest report line by line, I could see that this was not your typical child-neglect case. I thought, This is a missing person’s case. I kept reading, and the report said that she hadn’t seen her child in thirty days and that she had led police to an apartment that had been vacant for 142 days.

  Strange, I was thinking. They certainly have cause for suspicion. I read further, and the report talked of statements she had made. She said that she dropped off Caylee at the babysitter’s home thirty days before, and it gave a location, and that when she came back to pick up the baby from the nanny, no one was there. When the police went to verify her story, they knocked on the door and found it to be a vacant apartment. They then called the manager of the apartment complex, and he said the apartment had been vacant. So the conclusion of the police was that she was lying.