Mommy's Little Girl

by Diane Fanning

  On the basis of the evidence he had thus far compiled, Yuri Melich arrested Casey and ordered her transported into the Orange County Jail. The 22-year-old moved into a single-occupancy cell at the county female detention center. She was in a foul mood when she phoned home that night.

  After Cindy greeted her daughter, Casey dished out a snide comment: “Mom, I just saw your nice little cameo on TV.”

  “Which one?” Cindy asked.

  “What do you mean, which one?” Casey snapped.

  “Which one? I did four different ones, and I haven’t seen them all. I’ve only seen one or two so far.”

  “You don’t know what my involvement is in stuff?” Casey asked.

  “Casey . . .” Cindy pleaded.

  “Mom . . .” Casey said in a mocking tone.

  “No, I don’t know what your involvement is, sweetheart. You are not telling me where she’s at.”

  “Because I don’t fucking know where she’s at!” Casey yelled. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Casey, don’t waste your call screaming and hollering at me.”

  “Waste my call sitting in the jail?” Casey sputtered.

  “Whose fault is it you’re sitting in jail? Are you blaming me you are sitting in the jail? Blame yourself for telling lies. What do you mean, it is not your fault? What do you mean it’s not your fault, sweetheart? If you would have told them the truth and not lied about everything . . .”

  “Do me a favor and just tell me what Tony’s number is. I don’t want to talk to you right now. Forget it.”

  “I don’t have his number.”

  “Well, get it from Lee,” Casey demanded. “I know Lee is at the house . . . It was just on the news. They were just live outside the house.”

  “I know they were.”

  “Well?” Casey snarled. “Can you get Tony’s number for me so I can call him?”

  Cindy handed the phone to Lee. “Hey?” he said.

  “Hey. Can you get me Tony’s number?”

  “I can do that, but I don’t know what good it’s going to do you at this point.”

  “Well, I’d like to talk to him anyway because I called to talk to my mother and it is a fucking waste,” Casey complained. “By the way, I don’t want any of you coming up here when I have my first hearing for bond and everything. I mean don’t even fucking waste your time coming up here.”

  “You know, you are having a real tough year, and making it real tough for anybody to want to try to, even if it is giving . . .”

  “See, that is just it, every . . .” Casey interrupted.

  “You are not even letting me finish,” her brother said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “First, you are asking me for Tony’s phone number so you can call him and then you immediately want to start pressing toward me and saying ‘don’t even worry about coming up here for all this stuff’ and trying to cut us out.”

  “I’m not trying to cut anybody out.”

  “I’m not going around and around with you,” Lee warned. “You know, that is pretty pointless. I’m not going to put everyone else through the same stuff that you’ve been putting the police and everybody else [through] for the last twenty-four hours, and the stuff you’ve been putting Mom through for the last four or five weeks. I’m done with that. So, you can tell me what’s going on. Kristina [another young mother whose children often played with Caylee] would love to talk to you, because she thinks you will tell her what’s going on. Frankly, we are going to find out—whatever is going on is going to be found out. So, why not do it now?”

  “There is nothing to find out. There is absolutely nothing to find out. Not even what I told the detectives. I have no clue where Caylee is. If I knew where Caylee was, do you think that any of this would be happening? No.”

  “Anyway, you only have a couple of minutes with this, so I’m not going to let you completely waste it. Here is Kristina.”

  “No, no,” Casey objected. “I want Tony’s number. I’m not talking to anybody else.”

  “Hello,” Kristina said.

  “Hi.” Casey’s voice softened. “I’m glad everybody is at my house, but I’ll have to call you later, or I’ll have to call to get somebody to get your number. Do me a favor and get my brother back, because I need Tony’s number.”

  “Okay. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “I’m sitting in jail. There is nothing anybody can do now.”

  “I’m just trying to be a . . .” Kristina said.

  “I know you are, honey,” Casey said. “I absolutely know you are, and I appreciate it and everything you are trying to do, but I’d like to call Tony. He’s not at my house, is he?”

  “No, it’s just me and your parents and Lee.”

  “Well, can you do me a favor and get my brother back so I can get the number from him, please?”

  “Does Tony have anything to do with Caylee?” Kristina asked.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Okay, so why do you want to talk with Tony? You probably don’t want to tell me, do you?”

  “. . . Tony had nothing to do with Caylee,” Casey insisted.

  “Oh, then why do you want to talk with him?”

  “Because he is my boyfriend and I want to actually try and sit and talk to him because I didn’t get a chance to talk to him earlier. Because I got arrested on a fucking whim today, and because they are blaming me for stuff that I would never do. That I didn’t do.”

  “Well, I’m on your side, you know that?” Kristina said.

  “I know that, I just want to talk with Tony and get a little bit of . . .”

  “Casey, you have to tell me if you know anything about Caylee. If anything happened to Caylee, Casey, I’ll die.” Kristina’s voice quavered with emotion. “You understand? I’ll die if anything happened to that baby.”

  In a situation like this one, with a friend breaking down, a lot of mothers would have fallen apart. But not Casey Anthony. Instead of displaying tears, she gave rein to her impatience. “Oh my God! Calling you guys—A waste, a huge waste. Honey, I love you. You know I’d never let anything happen to my daughter. If I knew where she was, this would not be going on.”

  “Then how come everyone is saying that you are lying?” Kristina asked.

  “Because nobody is fucking listening to anything that I’m saying. The media misconstrued everything that I said. The fucking detectives . . . got all of their information from me, but at the same time they are twisting stuff. They already said they are going to pin this on me if they don’t find Caylee. They’ve already said that. They arrested me because they said . . .”

  “Yeah, ’cause they said that the person you left Caylee with doesn’t exist,” Kristina pushed.

  “Because, oh look, they can’t find her in the Florida database,” Casey Anthony said. “She is not just from Florida. If they would actually listen to anything that I would have said to them, they would have had their leads. They maybe could have tracked her down. They have not listened to a fucking thing that I’ve said.”

  “You know that whoever has Caylee, nobody is going to get away with it—nobody.”

  “I know, nobody is going to get away with it, but at the same time, the only way they are going to find Caylee is if they actually listen to what I’m saying, and I’m trying to help them, and they are not letting me help them.”

  “So, how can I help them find her?” Kristina asked.

  “The best thing you can do, baby, is to listen to me. They need to look up her information in the New York database and a North Carolina database,” Casey said. “And other places that she’s lived outside of Florida. That is what I told them, even again today. I told them that four times today. I sat up at the police station. The county police station . . .”

  “Is she the one who has Caylee, or did she transfer Caylee to someone else?”

  “Honey, I have not talked with her. I don’t know. I have not talked to her.”

  “How come everyone is s
aying that you are not upset, and that you are not crying, and you show no caring of where Caylee is at all?”

  “Because I’m not here fucking crying every two seconds because I have to stay composed to talk to detectives, to make other phone calls and do other things. I can’t sit here and be crying every two seconds like I want to—I can’t,” Casey shrieked.

  “Okay, Casey, don’t yell at me, I’m on your side,” Kristina said.

  “I know you are on my side. I’m not trying to . . .”

  “Nobody is saying anything bad about you,” Kristina said. “Your family is with you one hundred percent.”

  “No they’re not. That is bullshit, because I just watched the fucking news and heard everything that my mom said. Nobody in my own family is on my side.”

  “Yes they are. Nobody has said . . .”

  “They just want Caylee back. That is all they are worried about right now, is getting Caylee back,” Casey complained, and then added, “And you know what? That is all I care about right now.”

  “Casey, your daughter, your flesh-and-blood and baby girl . . .”

  Casey cut her off. “Kristina, please! Put my brother back on the phone, I don’t want to get into this with you right now. I love you, honey, and I’m glad that you are there. Thank you for your help. I will let you know if there is anything that you can do.”

  “You can’t tell me anybody who can find Caylee?”

  “No. No, because everyone that I’ve tried and every number that I’ve called is disconnected—nothing. I can’t get ahold of anybody.”

  “But that girl was the last person to have her?”

  “She was the last person to have her,” Casey said. “That was the last time I saw Caylee.”

  “Lee said he doesn’t have Tony’s phone number.”

  “Yes, he does. He has Tony’s phone number in his phone. He needs to stop fucking lying. He just told me a second ago that he’d give me the number.”

  “So, if I go and get you Tony’s number, are you going to finish talking to me?” Kristina asked.

  “I will call you tomorrow. I want to talk to him really quick. I wanted to actually try and call tonight. I haven’t slept in four days. I have not slept in four days.”

  “Listen, if you are going to talk to anybody, you can talk to me,” Kristina urged.

  “I know I can talk to you, but at the same time, I know that I can talk to Tony and that is who I want to talk to now. I have not gotten the chance to talk to him since this morning. Since all of this stuff happened, with trying to set up the MySpace, and I made the MySpace—”

  “Do you know the password for MySpace?”

  “I made all of it.”

  “What’s the password to MySpace so we can see if anybody has written any leads of where Caylee might be?” Kristina asked.

  “You can go on line and see it. As far as messages, I don’t know if anybody is going to be messaging,” Casey Anthony said, then gave her the log-in information.

  In the background, Lee said, “Hold on for a second,” as he looked up Tony’s number.

  Kristina passed the phone number on to Casey and asked, “Can Tony tell me anything?”

  “Baby, Tony doesn’t know anything. And I have not even talked with him since this morning.”

  “Has Tony seen Caylee?” Kristina asked.

  “Tony has not seen Caylee since the beginning of June. What’s Tony’s number, again?”

  Kristina repeated the number.

  “Thank you. I will find a way to call you later. Leave your number at my house with my mother and I can get it either later tonight—”

  “How can I get ahold of you?”

  “I’m at the jail, you can’t.”

  “You don’t have a way to write my phone number down?” Kristina asked.

  “No, I have no way of writing it down. I have to remember Tony’s number. I have to try to memorize his number right now. Just leave your number with my mom and I will try to call you in the morning if I don’t get a chance to call you tonight.”

  “So, how can I find information about that girl?”

  “Have them look up a New York license for Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez,” Casey said. “They’ve just been looking up the last name ‘Gonzalez’ or the last name ‘Fernandez.’ If they look up her entire name, they might actually find her. They have not done that. They haven’t listened to anything that I’ve said.”

  “How do you spell ‘Zenaida’?”

  “Z-e-n-a-i-d-a.”

  “Where does she live? Because they went and looked at her place and . . .”

  “Baby, you are not telling me anything that I don’t already know. Again, I’ve only been in jail since about eight thirty tonight. I was with them all day. I know that. I was with officers pretty much since nine P.M. last night up until this evening when I came up here.”

  “But you are telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

  “That I have no clue where my daughter is?” Casey asked. “Yes, that is the truth. That is the absolute truth.”

  “They’ll find out, and whoever . . .”

  “Okay, Kristina, I’m hanging up. I need to make this other call before I forget the number. So, I’ll call you later.”

  When old friend Melina Calabrese heard the tape of this phone call on television, she was furious, and came close to punching her TV set in her frustration. “That’s not the Casey I know . . . I just couldn’t understand how she was so rude . . . It just didn’t sit well with me, and it really upset me that that was her way of talking to her parents and her brother and [Kristina]. And then to ask for Tony’s phone number, I just don’t think that . . . should have been her number-one priority, especially during whatever may have been going on.”

  The driver that night for Johnson’s Wrecker service answered a towing request call from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. He called manager Simon Burch at home.

  “Hey, that car that we released today that you were telling Nicole about, with the smell in it? Was that a white Pontiac?”

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “Why?”

  “Well, I’m picking it up right now,” the driver said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m picking it up and taking it to the Crime Lab.”

  “Oh, that’s kind of weird.” The pieces of the puzzle didn’t fall into place for Simon until the next morning.

  CHAPTER 29

  At 7 P.M. on July 16, Detective Jerold White went to the only address that law enforcement had for Jeffrey Hopkins to interview him about Caylee’s disappearance and Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez. He wasn’t there. Jeff’s parents, Jeffrey and Melissa, lived at that location, and said their son had not resided in the house for five years. They promised to tell Jeff that police wanted to talk to him. They asked the detective why they had received a call from Casey’s phone at 5 A.M. that morning.

  White visited Rico Morales at 9:30 that night. He answered all of the detective’s questions without hesitation, until White asked, “If you were me, you were the police, and you’d been tasked with trying to figure out what’s going on, where would you point me to look?”

  Rico stammered, “If I was—From what I feel right now—I don’t—I know just about as much about Casey as you probably do. Everything I thought I knew about this girl was not the truth.”

  “Um huh,” White encouraged.

  “So I feel like the person we’re talking about now, and the person I knew before are two different people. I don’t really feel like I know her. Apparently where she worked wasn’t true. Her nanny? No one knew her. I really don’t know what to think.”

  “Where did she tell you she worked?”

  “At Universal Studios.”

  “She ever take you there?”

  “As an event? No never took me there.”

  “Never got you a free pass?” White asked.

  “No, we tried a few times to go to a concert or something, but it always fell through and—maybe because she d
idn’t work there—but she talked about it a lot, to the point where I would never guess that it is not true. Like she had her boss, Tom, she had a best friend named Julia that she talked about—and it all added up. I don’t know. I mean, I had no reason to question it or anything.”

  At 10 P.M., Amy Huizenga was at police headquarters filing a fraud report against Casey for the theft of her checkbook and the money in her account. Detective White found her there and interviewed her about the missing person case.

  At his home, Christopher Stutz’s cell phone rang. It was a call from the Orange County correctional facility asking if he’d accept a collect call from Casey Anthony. He hung up without answering and called his parents. They warned him not to take it. Three minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, he refused the call.

  Simon Burch, manager at Johnson’s Wrecker service, woke around 6 the morning of July 17, and turned on the news. He saw George and Cindy sitting on a sofa answering a reporter’s questions. It all came together in his mind. Oh crap. Garbage bag. Dumpster. Smelly car. Oh shit.

  Simon was in his pajamas, but he didn’t take time to dress. He just slipped into a pair of flip-flops and raced to the receptacle. He felt sure he could locate the bag. At work, they used black garbage bags with red drawstrings. The one from the Anthony car had been white with yellow pulls.

  He looked down at the contents of the Dumpster. The last garbage pick-up had been on Monday, but there was already an amazing amount piled up in the big metal container. When he didn’t see the white bag, he climbed inside. He picked through the trash expecting to spot a flash of white or buzzing flies without any trouble. But it wasn’t there.

  Still standing knee-deep in the filthy container, Simon called the sheriff’s department and talked to someone he knew at Dispatch. Eventually, he and Detective Melich connected. He spilled out the whole story of the Anthonys picking up the car, the discovery of the bag and his early morning search. “But I can’t find the garbage bag.”

  “Thanks, okay,” the detective said. “I have it.”

  “What do you mean, you have it?”