They were surprised by the quietness of the home when they stepped inside. They found Jesse, fully clothed, lying on one side of the bed in Casey’s room. Casey was asleep on the other side. Caylee nestled between them.
George erupted. He wanted to yank Jesse out of the bed and drag him out of the house. Cindy’s cooler head prevailed. “Listen, George, we’re going through enough right now—you and I. I’ll handle the situation. I’ll handle Jesse,” she said to him in the hallway.
Back in the room, Cindy turned her attention to Jesse. “I don’t want you in my daughter’s bed. There’s no reason for you to be in my daughter’s bed.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m not doing anything. I have a right to be here,” Jesse snapped back.
“This is my house. These are my rules. You have no right to be in here. You guys are not married—sure, you’re engaged, but you guys aren’t married. Until you’re away from here,” she said referring to when they lived together in marriage, “this stuff doesn’t happen in my house.”
Initially, Casey seemed captivated by her newborn and wanted to spend every moment with her. Before Caylee was capable of moving about, she installed child-proof latches on all the cabinet doors and put protective covers on all the open electrical outlets. Within a couple of months, though, she grew restless and yearned for the carefree life of a typical 19-year-old, with fewer responsibilities.
That was when she turned to another high school friend, Lauren Gibbs. Casey often called and asked, “I’ve got to work today and I don’t have anyone to watch Caylee. Can you watch her?”
If she could, Lauren headed over to Hopespring Drive and took care of the baby until Cindy or Casey returned home. She never charged Casey for watching Caylee. Lauren knew life wasn’t easy for a single mother, and she was glad to help her friend out.
Initially, Casey had told Lauren that she worked at Universal. Then, her early childhood friend Ryan Pasley started working at Sports Authority on Alafaya by Waterford Lakes. Casey told Lauren, Cindy and others that she was working there, too. When Casey went out late at night, leaving the baby with her mother, she told her mom that she had to do inventory. Cindy was comfortable with the late hours because she knew Ryan would be there, too, and she trusted Ryan.
Lauren didn’t harbor any suspicions until one day in April when she was watching Caylee and needed to call Casey at work. The person who answered the phone said, “She doesn’t work here. I don’t even know who she is.”
Lauren called mutual friend Melina Calabrese and told her about her call to Sports Authority. “You need to tell her straight up you’ve already called the job,” Melina said and advised Lauren to confront Casey to see what she had to say for herself.
Lauren took her advice, but even in the face of the stark truth, Casey would not confess. “I have an I.D. tag,” she insisted.
“Why did they say you didn’t work there?”
Casey didn’t have a real answer. She blamed it all on a communication problem at work. Lauren didn’t buy it. Casey was using her in order to be free to go hang out with other friends. Lauren’s days of providing free babysitting were over.
Despite her protestations to the contrary, Casey did not have gainful employment, and therefore, she had no money. She asked her friend Ryan to loan her $400, claiming that she had to pay rent to her mom and dad. Ryan didn’t believe the reason she gave when asking for the money, but he figured the need was real. He gave her $400 with no expectation that he’d ever see it again.
At the end of May 2006, Casey talked to her father about her relationship with Jesse. “He’s too controlling, Dad. I can’t do anything unless he knows about it. I can’t make my own decisions.”
“You can’t be in a marriage where you’re supposed to care about each other and have one controlling person. Your mom and I have had tough times, but we still meet in the middle somewhere and compromise.”
Casey broke off her engagement with Jesse early in June 2006. She told Melina that she’d stopped seeing Jesse because he was not the father. The biological dad, she said, was Josh, she now claimed, a one-night-stand she’d met at Universal Studios.
“Is Josh going to be part of Caylee’s life?” Melina asked.
“No. Josh has a girlfriend he’s going to marry. They already have kids together. I’m not even going to tell Caylee about Josh until she starts asking questions on her own.”
That summer, to satisfy her parents’ curiosity about Caylee’s paternity, Casey clipped an obituary of a young man named Eric who’d died in an automobile accident. She told her parents that he was the biological father of her daughter. Later she would write a memorial to Jesús, whom she told friends was the father.
She didn’t contact Eric’s bereaved parents to let them know they had a granddaughter. She never applied for the Social Security benefits that a child became eligible for when a parent died. She never had any DNA tests done to match Caylee and Eric. She simply said that Eric was the dad. That was her story and she was sticking to it.
Despite Jesse’s disappointment in his relationship with Casey, he missed Caylee and wanted to be part of her life. That desire made him vulnerable to Casey’s next request. She explained that she’d lost her sitter and needed to find someone to take care of Caylee so that she could go to work.
Jesse only had one day a week off from his job at Progressive Insurance. He gave up that Monday to take care of Caylee. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but Casey seemed to be doing nothing to change the situation. Soon, she’d cajoled Deborah Grund, Jesse’s mother, to assume responsibility for Caylee two additional days of the week.
Richard Grund liked the little girl, but having her around the house three days a week was a serious distraction for a man who worked from his home. Every time he talked to Casey, he asked, “Have you found anybody yet?” The answer was always “No”—until one day that summer, Casey surprised him.
“Yeah. I got that worked out. Oh yeah, I found Zenaida Gonzalez, and she watches my friend Jeffrey Hopkins’ son Zachary. And Zachary and Caylee play together. They love to be together. So this’ll work out great.”
Richard expected a simple “yes” or “no” in response to his question. Wow! He thought. That’s a lot more information than I really needed.
He didn’t know the half of it. Although he’d already realized that Casey was not always honest, he had no clue that Jeffrey did not have a child, nor did he know anyone named Zenaida Gonzalez.
Halloween 2006, Casey attended a masquerade party dressed as a casino waitress in a form-fitting, skimpy black lace and red-ribboned costume. She shocked and titillated the other partiers when she stopped in the middle of the room to engage in an intense make-out session with a woman wearing an umpire’s uniform. A little later the two women were joined by another, lip-locking, fondling and writhing. Casey didn’t limit her escapades that night to the same sex. She was also seen rubbing provocatively against a man’s crotch.
In October, one of Casey’s high school friends, Annie Downing, moved into Sawgrass Apartments at 2867 South Conway Road, unit number 218. By the end of the year, Casey dropped by her place nearly every day. It was an address Casey would remember well.
CHAPTER 16
Casey exchanged messages in an on-line chat with Jesse Grund in January 2007. “I can hit my friend Annie for some Xanax. We’d be a good time.” Annie later admitted to having these pills from an old prescription, but insisted that she’d never given any of them to Casey.
“Yeah, well that’s an understatement . . . then again, we never needed medication to be a good time,” Jesse responded.
“Again, very true. How’s the fam?”
“Alive and well. My mom actually recommended me seeing you.”
“Really? Whoa. What brought this on?” Casey asked.
“Yeah, well . . . I hadn’t heard you talk, except in my dreams, for months. So . . . I called mom and we talked, and she said I should see you.”
“
Odd that we’ve been in the same place, as far as dreams and such goes. I passed the Progressive office on University last week, and at random, noticed your car, parked by the street,” Casey confessed.
“Yeah, I have been in your neighborhood for calls and driven by your house,” Jesse said, still smitten—a state Casey was more than willing to foster.
Rick Cuza had been concerned about his father’s health since he’d visited his parents in the summer of 2006. At the time, Alex seemed out of it—as if he were sleepwalking through life. A subsequent ultrasound examination found no blockage in his carotid arteries—indication that he might have suffered from a stroke, for instance. Still, Rick worried.
In January of 2007, Rick and his new wife Robin set sail from Port Canaveral on a four-day cruise. At the end of the excursion, they planned to pay a surprise visit to Rick’s parents.
Rick’s cell phone rang on the last day of the cruise. He was amazed and delighted to got a signal that far from shore. His mood quickly turned dark when he answered and realized his sister Cindy was the bearer of bad news. Their dad had had a stroke and his condition was serious. After disembarking from the ship the next day, Robin and Rick headed straight to the hospital and met Cindy there. Since Cindy was a registered nurse, Rick questioned her about the ultrasound results and learned that they weren’t always reliable. The dye tests conducted after his stroke showed considerable blockage, Cindy explained.
They placed Alex in a nursing home just a short walk from his house. At first, he couldn’t talk at all. Gradually, his speech returned, but he remained difficult to understand. At times, he chose to write out what he wanted to say, rather than struggle with oral communication.
Shirley visited her husband twice a day—for breakfast and dinner. Initially, she walked between her house and the nursing home, but she soon abandoned that habit. Although it was Alex’s stroke, the traumatic experience and its aftermath had aged Shirley, too. She lost weight and became frail. Robbed of her vitality, she had to make the short trip in her car.
Cindy, Casey and Caylee visited the nursing home often, at first. After a few months, Casey didn’t bother, allowing months to pass between visits to her grandparents.
January was a tough month for Cindy. Casey dropped another load of stress on her mother’s back, with her claim that she was pregnant again, this time with Brandon Snow’s child. Casey shared the news with her brother Lee, who told their mother. Cindy hit the roof, probably imagining that much of the care of this second child would fall on her shoulders, as it did with Caylee.
Casey solved that problem by claiming that she’d had a miscarriage on Valentine’s Day. Annie, among other friends, doubted that she’d ever been pregnant. Annie noticed that whenever Casey was able to go out without her daughter, Cindy called frequently, wanting to know when she would come home to take care of Caylee. Most of the time, Cindy was angry, yelling at Casey. Annie suspected the pregnancy scare was somehow part of it, but thought there was a lot more to the conflict than she knew.
In March, Casey dated Christopher Stutz, a young man she’d met a few months after Caylee’s birth. They’d been friends for a little more than a year, since meeting on the football field, where Casey sat on the sidelines watching the men play. Casey decided to take their relationship “up a notch.” They often went to the movies, and at midnight, Casey would get a text from her mother: “You need to come home.” Casey would leave Christopher and head to Hopespring Drive.
Their romantic entanglement didn’t work well because of distance, though. Christopher was in college at Florida State in Tallahassee. So they went back to being friends.
After their dating ended, she told him that a manager from Universal had come by Sports Authority and said they wanted her to come back to work at the theme park again. She claimed she’d gotten a job in event planning, but said that it was only temporary, that what she really wanted to do was become a personal trainer, and she was working out a lot to further that goal.
She and Christopher continued to hang out together when he was home from college—Putt-Putt golf was a favorite activity. When Christopher suggested going to a bar, Casey insisted that she did not want to go out drinking because she didn’t want to leave her kid with her mom and dad that long.
The first quarter of the year, Casey seemed troubled. She showed up at Annie’s job for lunch, saying she needed to talk. “I need to get away. I feel like I’m having a breakdown.”
Casey would not tell Annie why she felt this way, but she added, “I want to go to an institution. Caylee can stay with my mom. I need help.”
Later that day, a concerned Annie called Casey, who reassured her that all was well. “I talked to my mom and everything is okay.”
Annie was perplexed. Casey’s problems sounded too deep and too serious to be alleviated by a simple conversation.
Michelle Murphy, a long-time Anthony family friend, got the next crisis call from Casey in March. “I’m feeling crazy and need someone to talk to,” Casey said.
Again, Casey did not explain why she felt that way, but she did talk about her miscarriage, and her disappointment in losing the baby she was supposed to have borne in October and the loss of her imagined life with Brandon. She also expressed fears about her inadequacy as a parent. “I don’t feel like a very good mother to Caylee.”
When Michelle called back later that day to check up on her friend, Casey blew her off and said everything was fine. It made Michelle suspect that Casey had fabricated the story of her distress simply to get sympathy.
Were these genuine cries for help? Or a way for Casey to garner attention?
Michelle moved in with Casey’s brother Lee in May 2007. She saw a lot more of both Casey and Caylee in the six months she roomed with him. She listened when Casey talked about being an event planner with Universal, but thought it was odd, since Casey didn’t have the required education. Lee’s girlfriend, Mallory Parker, on the other hand, was currently going to school in order to get that kind of job.
Michelle, however, never confronted Casey about this discrepancy.
Michelle worried a bit that Caylee suffered from extreme separation anxiety: The little girl’s distress was over-the-top when Casey put her down or stepped out of her sight.
In June 2007, Rico Morales met Casey at a birthday party Amy threw for her roommate Lauren Gibbs. At the time, Casey was seeing Steve Jones, though she told her mother that she was dating Jeff Hopkins.
Cindy wanted to meet Casey’s boyfriend and his son Zack. She invited Casey to bring them to the house for a cookout. Cindy bought the food and made preparations for the occasion. At the last minute, Casey said that Jeff couldn’t come, because Zack was sick.
A couple of weeks later, Jeff and Zack were supposed to stop by for dessert. Once again, no Jeff—Casey said he’d had to go to work. After a couple more repeat no-show performances, Casey announced that Jeff had moved to the Carolinas to live near his mother.
If Jeff had known about the stories Casey told her mother, he would have been quite surprised. Jeff didn’t have any children. And he certainly had no recollection of ever dating Casey. Their relationship as he knew it was wafer-thin.
When Jeff was in sixth grade, he’d played volleyball with eighth-grader Lee Anthony. The next year, when Casey started at Liberty Middle School, they’d exchanged “hellos” when their paths crossed, but nothing more.
In high school, they’d traveled with different circles of friends. He did remember the big smile she always donned when they passed in the hallway—but that was it. After high school, they’d had a few accidental encounters, but not one of them was memorable.
Caylee turned two years old on August 9, 2007, and that was cause for celebration on Hopespring Drive. Casey’s grandmother, Shirley Cuza, came down to spend the weekend and attend her great-granddaughter’s birthday party. Casey slipped into the guest bedroom a couple of hours before the festivities began and reached into her grandmother’s purse, removing a check from t
he back of the book. She went to Publix, and picked up a birthday cake and decorations for the Mexican-themed event, writing a $54 check on her grandmother’s account.
A number of Casey’s friends had been invited to the party. Among those in attendance was Brandon, who was still dating Casey and had not yet been apprised that she was telling friends that she’d miscarried his baby in February. Both Michelle and Annie were there, too.
Casey told Annie that her mother was “a horrible person,” who was trying to control her life and take Caylee away from her. “She wants Caylee to call her ‘Mom’ instead of ‘Grandmom,’ ” she claimed.
As Cindy sat behind Caylee, helping her open presents, Casey pulled Annie aside and said, “Oh my God, this is supposed to be Caylee’s day. I’m her mom. She’s not her mom. She’s trying to play mom, or be mom.” To Annie, it was obvious that Casey was jealous of the relationship Cindy had with Caylee.
Michelle noticed that tension, too. To her, it seemed as if Cindy and Casey were competing over the girl. Michelle thought Cindy was “overbearing” and “trying to run the show.”
Casey told Michelle that she was afraid of disappointing her mother, and was worried that Cindy would find out about the “bad things” she’d done.
“What bad things?” Michelle asked.
“I was pregnant with Brandon’s baby and had a miscarriage. And I planned to throw a party here in the house that my mom doesn’t know about.” She didn’t mention that day’s theft from her own grandmother.
And Shirley didn’t notice a check was missing until days later, when she balanced her statement. She’d paid the utilities bill in Mount Dora right before traveling down to Orlando, and thought she might have accidentally pulled two checks out and sent in both the actual one and a blank one. She went to the utility office, but they didn’t have the missing check.
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