Imperfect Justice

by Jeff Ashton

  “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.

  AFTER CASEY’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.

  Approaching the situation in an organized and professional manner, Lee read from a set of notes, and even though he was greeted by his sister with a giggle, he remained composed for the entire visit. He told her how the jail mail system worked: that everything she wrote would be read, nothing was private. He also explained that her conversations with her attorney, Jose Baez, were protected and that the lawyer was not obligated to pass along anything she said. Lee thought that Baez was interfering with Casey’s ability to communicate with the police by telling her that she should always speak through him.

  It appeared that Lee, and perhaps George, saw Baez’s commitment to advocating for Casey as hampering the investigation into Caylee’s disappearance. While Baez may have been doing his job as her defense attorney, that job also seemed to be at odds with finding Caylee. And Lee, like his parents, believed that Caylee should be everyone’s number one priority.

  Lee listed his own priorities as he had written them down: (1) Caylee; (2) Casey; (3) Mom; (4) Dad; (5) Me. “I don’t give a shit about the cops or Baez,” he said.

  Casey laughed and agreed with her brother, assuring him that her priorities were identical to his. “I will stay here as long as I have to,” she announced. “My only concern is Caylee.”

  Lee was clearly there to get answers, and he had a long list of questions for his sister. He wanted to be sure Casey understood that she could tell him anything, and even had a plan for secret communications, suggesting that she give him a hand signal if he asked her a question she objected to.

  The first thing Lee wanted to know was which of Casey’s friends he could trust. Casey identified Amy Huizenga as trustworthy but said that her roommate, Ricardo Morales, wouldn’t know anything. She was cagey about Tony Lazzaro, and pointed a finger of suspicion at her ex-fiancé, Jesse, even suggesting that he be brought to the attention of the police. When Lee asked her for more information about where Caylee might be, Casey was vague about places to search, saying that she had already given her mother her best ideas.

  Still, Lee seemed to take every word she said seriously. He listened, even as she talked in circles and hinted that she had information without actually providing anything of use.

  In her first jailhouse conversation with her parents, Casey appeared relaxed, happy, pleased to see her mother and father—even giggly during the first minutes of their visit. She casually asked her father about the white T-shirt he was wearing, which had HELP FIND CAYLEE lithographed above a huge butterfly, with Caylee’s photograph in one of the wings. George and Cindy told her how the entire country was looking for their little angel; her disappearance was even the subject of a cover story in People magazine.

  The conversation quickly turned serious when Cindy began questioning Casey about a photograph that Cindy claimed was taken in Zanny’s apartment. “You know the pictures of Caylee in Zanny’s apartment?” she began. “Is Zanny’s apartment the one with the drums?” Cindy knew that it wa
s not.

  Casey responded without so much as a hesitation. “She had a drum set, yes.”

  “The one in the picture?”

  Casey appeared to answer, but evaded the real issue of the question. “I think there are even other pictures,” Casey replied. “I told Lee to look through everything.”

  “Okay, is that Zanny’s apartment?” Cindy asked again. She paused before completing the rest of her question: “Because I know whose apartment it is.” By saying that she knew whose apartment it really was, the protective mother was giving Casey an out before she was too deep into her lie. “Is that Zanny’s apartment?”

  “That exact apartment? No, that is Ricardo’s apartment,” Casey replied, taking advantage of the opening her mother had given her. “It’s set up a lot like Zanny’s apartment.”

  To me, this conversation revealed a lot about the relationship between these two women and demonstrated the conflict that existed in Cindy. It seemed apparent to me that Cindy brought up the photograph with the intent of trapping Casey in a lie. Yet at the last moment she could not bring herself to spring the trap and instead gave her daughter room to squirm out of the lie. Cindy’s ambivalence was palpable. Suddenly it was clear why Cindy had been so easy to lie to for thirty-one days: that was the way she wanted it, classic codependency.

  Casey took the drum thread and ran with it, following up on Zanny’s being a drum hobbyist with more biographical information about her supposed babysitter. According to Casey, Zanny had roots in North Carolina, New York, and Miami. Casey even provided the name and age of Zanny’s mother.

  “Did Lee tell you how much the reward is to find Caylee?” Cindy asked.

  Casey said no, he hadn’t.

  “It’s over . . . I think it’s two hundred twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s half my bond,” Casey gasped.

  “Well, a lot of people want that little girl found,” her mother replied.

  Cindy asked if Casey wanted to talk to George, who was sitting slightly behind her. Casey smiled and giggled affirmatively. George Anthony took the phone from his wife and addressed his daughter. “Hello, gorgeous. How are you doing?”

  “I look like hell,” Casey replied.

  “Well, you know something, you really need to keep your spirits high through all of this,” her father told her.

  Casey cried as her father told her he just wanted to give her a big “Papa Joe hug,” and that his only concern was getting Caylee back. George had had the phone for only a minute when Cindy grabbed it back. Teary-eyed, Casey gave her mother a message to communicate to Caylee through the media: “Mommy loves you very much. You are the most important thing in the world to me. Be brave.

  “I truly love and miss that little girl and you guys,” she continued in between sobs.

  Cindy handed the phone back to her husband. “Casey, what can I do?” George asked.

  “Keep in front of the media and focus on Caylee.”

  I found George’s overall demeanor to be both indulgent and supportive. He was just this big sympathetic marshmallow that Casey seemed incredibly comfortable with. From the differences between Casey’s exchanges with Cindy and George, you could imagine that Cindy was the one who punished the kids when they were growing up and George was the one they ran to for comfort. There was a sense in these discussions that George was afraid to question Casey aggressively, that if he did she would simply shut down and cut off all communications. Keeping the lines open appeared to be his primary focus, so he didn’t ask his daughter the hard questions.

  What he did do was suggest that she reach out to law enforcement for help. Casey discounted the idea, complaining that the investigators had misconstrued and twisted her words and had not bothered following up on the leads she had given them.

  Once Cindy had the phone back, Casey jumped from one topic to the next. First, she lamented about her disappointment with Tony, who had not come to visit her in jail and was not responding to Jose Baez’s requests for an interview. Her ex-fiancé, Jesse Grund, was also on her bad side, as she expressed her opinion that he couldn’t be trusted and she wanted him nowhere near the family. Casey closed the visit by providing her mother with an abundantly detailed description of Zanny’s car—right down to the color, model, and location of the car seat—and claiming that Zanny had a complete set of clothes for Caylee, including shoes.

  Later that same afternoon, George and Cindy returned to the jail for a second visit with their daughter. This time George took the phone first. The cop in him was coming out, and he was angling toward the kidnapping theory, asking Casey if she had taken something from someone who might hold Caylee as collateral.

  “No!” Casey replied emphatically.

  George next alluded to the money she had taken from her mother and her best friend, Amy. But Casey defended her actions, insisting that she had stolen from Amy only in “times of desperations.”

  “What does that mean?” George asked.

  Casey dodged the question, claiming that she would communicate to them secretly.

  George wanted to know if there was anything he personally could do for Casey. “If I could get you out of here today, I would, but we have to get Caylee back,” he said. “I miss her.”

  “I miss her, too,” Casey replied, tearing up.

  “I want to take your pain away from you. You know you can tell me anything?”

  “I know that, Dad.”

  “I miss you, sweetie.”

  Casey again started to cry. “I know that and I miss you, too.”

  “I wish I could have been a better dad . . . a better grandpa, you know?” George said with sadness.

  “You’ve been a great dad, and you’ve been the best grandfather. . . . Don’t for a second think otherwise. You and Mom have been the best grandparents. . . . Caylee has been so lucky to have both of you.”

  George choked back tears as he told his daughter how much he missed her and Caylee, and how hard it was to see all their belongings around the house. He told his daughter the Anthony family was like a hand, and he was the thumb. He appeared heartened when Casey agreed to communicate with the FBI.

  On July 28, Lee returned to the jail. Without using names, he asked if any of the three people she had communicated with by phone or text on the day Caylee went missing could be involved in her disappearance. Casey left that open as a possibility. She told Lee that she had been doing her own search for Caylee during the daytime, but not at night.

  During the visit, Lee asked Casey about her new MySpace password, Timer 55. On June 16, she had used her computer to change the password to her account, a move that had been discovered by the police computer forensics lab. She would later tell Lee that the password had something to do with Caylee. We in the prosecutor’s office did some calendar arithmetic and discovered that the number of days between June 16, when Cindy last saw Caylee, and August 9, Caylee’s third birthday, was fifty-five. That, combined with the word Timer, led us to conclude that fifty-five was the number of days Casey thought she could hold Cindy at bay, knowing that on Caylee’s birthday, Cindy would be unstoppable.

  The two discussed the tremendous outpouring of support for Caylee. Lee asked if she had a message she wanted to communicate to the people holding Caylee. “I know with every ounce of my gut we will be with her again,” she dictated. “You know how much I love you and how much I appreciate this every day.” Casey then repeated her father’s message to her brother: “Our family is like a hand,” she said, telling her brother she loved him.

  “I love you, too,” Lee replied, tears welling. “I know we are going to find Caylee.”

  That morning, Jose Baez made a motion to keep the visits between Casey and her family private. One reason he cited was that “the release of any visitation video-conferencing could impede the investigation, chill the public’s willingness to report any lea
ds, and compromise the integrity of the Defendant’s right to a fair trial.” This was the beginning of a trend by the defense to attempt to control the media message. They would routinely appear before the cameras to give opinions or leak information favorable to Casey, and then complain when unfavorable information was released.

  Rather than simply being something on which the judge could rule, however, this was an issue dictated by Florida law. The public and the media are afforded the right of access to a broad range of records maintained by government agencies. The law was clear that the jail was obligated to release the recording; the motion had no chance of being granted.

  The following day, the motion was denied.

  ON JULY 30, GEORGE AND Cindy visited again. This time both parents were wearing Caylee T-shirts. Casey was once again happy and relaxed. George took the receiver and told Casey how much he loved and missed her, and she said, “Ditto” back to him.

  George discussed the outpouring of support for Caylee. After about two minutes, Cindy took over the visit. She discussed Caylee’s picture on the cover of People magazine.

  “God, I just want to go home,” Casey blurted out. “Every day I wake up just hoping and praying that I just get to go home. I just want to be with you guys, I just want to help find her.”

  The situation was much the same a few days later, on August 3, when George came to see his daughter alone. Casey arrived looking more jubilant than usual. She smiled when she saw her dad. She seemed much more comfortable with her father now that her mother was not with him.

  “Hi,” she chirped.

  “Hey, good morning, beautiful. How are you?” George looked equally happy as he went on about how all the extended family was missing her. “Hopefully you can get that energy just from my voice.”