“For not telling me sooner, for not telling the police sooner. You can’t, you can’t understand, someone can’t come to grips until they’re forgiven. So she’s probably not going to be able to tell me everything until I can forgive her,” Cindy explained.
“Well, what could possibly explain why it took her five weeks to report her missing daughter, Cindy? You know her.”
“I have no idea. I know her, and I know Casey knows. I know Casey doesn’t know where they’re at right at the moment, but I don’t know anything else right now, because I can’t speak to my daughter, and we’re trying to get that changed very quickly. I’d like to make a plea to the prosecutor and the judge to let her out so we can all talk to her.”
In the Orange County Sheriff’s Office forensics garage, Dr. Michael Sigman collected two separate air samples from the Pontiac Sunfire. He used a large gas-tight syringe to extract them. He placed each one in a separate Tedlar polymer bag, a sealed clear package designed to capture and hold gas vapors and air samples. He prepared the bags for shipment—one to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the other to the National Center for Forensic Science.
On Tuesday, he collected an additional sample using an SPME filter—a piece of equipment widely used in research laboratories studying odor pollution from pig and poultry farms. The smell from the garbage bag recovered from the impound lot was studied, but no trace of decomposition odor was detected in the trash or the bag itself.
Cindy clung to the rotten pizza story as an explanation for the wretched stench emanating from the car.
CHAPTER 32
Casey, with José Baez by her side, appeared in Circuit Court Judge Stan Strickland’s court for a bond hearing on July 22. Casey appeared calm, undisturbed by the drama swirling around her. Baez, with his slicked-back black hair and expensive suit, seemed confident and ready to do battle.
Assistant State Attorney Linda Drane-Burdick called Detective Yuri Melich to the stand. He testified that the forensic specialists “found hair samples in the trunk of the car that are a similar color to that of Caylee. They also set a stain inside the trunk of the car that came up under black light that’s questionable, and we need to process. They also found some dirt inside the trunk of the car that needs to be processed. I actually went into the car to smell what the smell smelled like. Briefly, just before I came into the job, I was a homicide detective for two years with Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office. And in my experience, the smell that I smelled inside the car was the smell of decomposition.”
“Right now, what we are dealing with is that you have a child who is missing for a lengthy period of time . . .” Drane-Burdick began.
“Yes,” the detective agreed.
“That wasn’t reported by the mother for several weeks . . .”
“Correct.”
“That there was an abandoned car that contained evidence of human decomposition.”
“Correct.”
“Is Casey Anthony a suspect, a possible—I don’t wanna misstate this. The evidence of human decomposition would lead you to believe, would it not, that there is a possibility that this child is no longer alive?”
“Yes, that can be concluded,” Melich nodded.
“All right. And is Ms. Anthony a suspect in that circumstance?”
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘suspect’ I would use the word ‘person of interest.’ ”
Jason Forgey, K9 Deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, stepped up next to testify about his trained cadaver dog, a German Shepherd named Gerus, responding to the odor in the car. “He jumped up into the trunk with front claws, stuck his head in, backed up, did the eye contact and moved to the right rear passenger side, rear fender/trunk–taillight area and gave me a fine train of alert.”
“What’s that mean?” Drane-Burdick asked.
“He alerted to the odor of human decomposition.”
“In the trunk of that car?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When cross-examined by the defense, all the witnesses with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office insisted they were still looking for the girl alive, and urged anyone with information to step forward. As of this date, they had received more than one hundred tips and were investigating every credible lead. The detectives told Baez that they had not been able to find the baby-sitter or prove that she even existed.
Linda Drane-Burdick turned to the judge. “The risk of her flight if she is released on some low bond increases exponentially, especially now that she’s heard this additional evidence, and knows that she is their person of interest.”
Cindy Anthony testified for the defense, acknowledging that her daughter had lied before, but said that Casey was a caring mom. Cindy said she would sell her home to free her daughter, and that she believed Caylee was alive. “I know Casey as a person. I know what she is as a mother, and I know there’s only one or two reasons why Casey would be withholding something about Caylee. I believe that it’s something that someone is holding over her, and threatening her in some way.”
Cindy said that despite her statement that she had not seen her granddaughter since June 9, she now remembers taking Caylee to the nursing home to visit her great-grandfather on Father’s Day, June 15. She also remembered looking in on her when she was getting ready for bed that night.
She described her daughter as her best friend, second only to her husband. She couldn’t verify whether Casey had had a steady job since Caylee’s birth. She and George had provided everything for Casey and Caylee, including food, shelter and the car. “Casey’s lied to me in the past,” she admitted, but added that either she or her son Lee can get to the “bottom of the truth” if they could talk to her outside of the jail.
Baez asked Cindy questions about Casey’s behavior as a mother. “She gets down on Caylee’s level,” Cindy said. “If Caylee’s sitting down on the floor, she’ll go down on the floor. Or if there’s a table or countertop in the kitchen and we need to talk to Caylee, she sets her up there. This is something Casey’s been adamant about, to pick Caylee up and put her on the counter, look her in the eye and say, ‘Caylee, look at Mommy.’ She’s always done that, instead of intimidating and looking down and scolding her. Casey doesn’t yell at Caylee, she talks to Caylee.”
Baez asked, “Who taught her to discipline a child that way?”
“No one taught her. She probably learned by example.”
“Whose example?”
“Probably mine and my husband’s. She stated that she was afraid to tell the police. She told them that.”
“Have the police questioned you about what kind of mother she is?”
“No, not until last night.”
“Last night, they questioned you?”
“Last night.”
“That was the first time they asked you what kind of mother your . . .”
“First time they asked me questions like did I ever see bruises or anything like that. The first time was last night. Oh, my gosh, I was in shock, the initial time. I mean, I was in shock because Caylee was missing. At that very moment, I didn’t know what to do, and I was bombarded with police officers. And then, when I had my first time alone with Casey, our focus primarily was to tell all of her friends to get the word out. And that’s been what I’ve been trying to do ever since.”
When the prosecutor cross-examined Cindy about the smell in the car, she said, “There was a bag of pizza for—what?—twelve days in the back of the car, full of maggots. Stunk so bad. Do you know how hot it’s been? That smell was terrible.”
Lee Anthony, Casey’s older brother, took the stand, too, saying that on July 15, before the police had arrived at the family home, he’d pleaded with Casey to tell him where Caylee was. He said that was when she’d broken down in tears and said she hadn’t seen her daughter in thirty-one days.
Casey shed a few tears in court that day while her family members testified, but reverted to her disinterested facial expression when they stepped down.
Baez argued to the judge that a bond of $10,000 would be appropriate. He said that the family can’t pay a high bond and that Casey Anthony had the right to freedom while facing lesser charges. He requested that the judge order a sketch artist to draw a depiction of the baby-sitter, Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, who may have had ties to Miami, Bradenton or Gainesville in Florida, or to Brooklyn, New York, or Charlotte, North Carolina.
But Judge Strickland was not impressed with the integrity of Baez’s client. He said that he doubted Casey’s alleged intention of aiding investigators and finding Caylee. The testimony heard in court today will “keep me up tonight,” he said. “I just heard some fairly compelling evidence as to a body decomposing.” He described Casey’s past conduct as “strange and difficult to describe.”
He added, “Not a bit of useful information has been provided by Ms. Anthony as to the whereabouts of her daughter. And I would add that the truth and Ms. Anthony are strangers.”
Nonetheless, he set Casey’s bond at $500,000, saying the law did not allow him to hold her without bail. He explained that he’d set the bail at an amount higher than the current charges would indicate after hearing credible evidence of human decomposition found in Casey’s car. If released, he recommended electronic monitoring of the accused.
The $500,000 amount required to bail Casey out of the county jail meant that the person posting it was required to pay 10 percent of the bond amount, or $50,000, in cash and possess sufficient collateral to back the remaining balance.
Before Casey was led out of the courtroom, she turned and looked back at her family. Cindy yelled, “Casey, we love you!” Her daughter nodded and sobbed out loud before being led away in chains.
At a news conference after the bond hearing, José Baez expressed indignation at Judge Strickland’s ruling. “This is not a capital case, and if it were, they certainly would file it if they had evidence to. There is circumstantial evidence of a possible homicide, I will give them that. But circumstantial evidence has not made them confident enough to charge her with any homicide or kidnapping or any capital offense.” He said that Casey was “willing to cooperate fully” with law enforcement, but her assistance should be used to help find Caylee and not to prosecute his client.
When asked why his client had lied to detectives, Baez said, “I am aware and have to save that for her defense. I would love to disclose the reasons, and I’m sure she would, but it certainly creates a disadvantage.”
Investigators spent time with the media, too, telling them that they wanted Casey to remain in jail. They also attempted to quash rumors by insisting that Casey’s parents were not suspects. Ron Stucker, chief of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, said that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI were helping with the investigation. The FBI was doing lab work and making it a priority, as well as working on out-of-state leads. The state agency was following up leads in Florida and also offering lab assistance for processing evidence.
He described the reliability of the cadaver dogs: “In very layman’s terms, they can seek out the scent of human decomposition. And from what I understand, they can actually distinguish the difference between human decomposition and animal decomposition.”
That night, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News interviewed forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who said “decomposition of flesh, human flesh, a human body, is different than old pizza and old kitchen garbage. One could confuse a human decaying body odor with a large animal, like a deer or even a big dog, but not with the pizza.
“Cadaver dogs, in particular, are trained to smell the gases that are produced by a decomposing body. So the fact that the cadaver dogs alerted on the car is certainly something to be investigated. Cadaver dogs can be wrong, but they won’t alert on pizza. They could alert on a dead mouse on the ground, for example. But there’s a uniqueness to the chemicals that are produced as the body deteriorates after a few days.”
“If you set a person who’s died in a trunk, for instance, you’d not have the odor, I assume, for some period of time,” Van Susteren replied. “And then you would have to, at least, have the body remain there in order for the odor to seep into the materials in the car?”
“No,” Baden said. “Depending on the temperature—the higher the temperature, the more smell—within twenty-four hours, one could get considerable decomposition in hot weather. And then the fluids—the decomposition fluids—which seep into the car, they would be there long after the body is removed. And, Greta, it’s interesting that the detective, homicide detective, said he saw hairs in the vehicle that looked like, to his naked eye, they could belong to Caylee. And from here, a dead person’s hair is very different under the microscope, from hair from a live person. So the crime lab, by looking at that hair, should be able to tell by DNA whether it belongs to Caylee, should be able to tell who the dad is from the DNA, and should also be able to tell if the baby was alive or dead when she was deposited in the vehicle.”
In the same show, Baez spoke of another sighting of Caylee—called in directly to Cindy Anthony. “Someone says that they were ninety-nine percent sure that they spotted her at the airport boarding a flight to Atlanta on July second. We don’t know what their final destination was. One of the things that seems very encouraging was, they asked her for her name, and she answered her name, and the way she answered her name is exactly as the family knows she would answer her name, but using both her first, middle and last name, and the way she pronounces her last name. She can’t say it very well. She says, ‘Antnee,’ and that’s one of the things that makes the family very encouraged at this point.”
But detectives followed up the lead and discovered a serious flaw in the airport sighting. The same Orlando airport video cameras that had had no difficulty tracking Lisa Nowak’s movements in 2006 picked up no sign of Caylee’s presence. And at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, where there are even more cameras—almost 400 in all—not one of them picked up her arrival there.
The seemingly related sighting of Caylee at a restaurant in northern Georgia led nowhere, either. White County police interviewed staff and patrons to no avail. No one remembered ever seeing Caylee.
CHAPTER 33
In an interview at the nursing home on July 22, Shirley Cuza shared her insight about her daughter Cindy’s family with investigators. When questioned, she also touched on the other big tragedy in her life—her husband Alex’s disabling stroke.
“Is there anything your husband might know that you don’t? Or are you always with him any time Cindy was here?”
“He can’t even remember his aide’s name,” she said. “If I ask him, ‘Who gave you a bath last night?’ he doesn’t know . . . So, now, he can remember World War II and anything up to before his stroke . . . but he can’t . . . tell you what he had for supper last night.”
“So he wouldn’t be able to tell us if he’s seen Caylee? He wouldn’t be able to . . . tell us if he’s seen Caylee since Father’s Day?”
“Oh, I know he hasn’t seen her since Father’s Day. Now whether he can tell you anything about Father’s Day, I don’t know.”
Detectives interviewed Jesse Grund, Amy Huizenga and Tony Lazzaro on July 23. Tony granted law enforcement permission to set up electronic surveillance on his cell phone. He agreed, as well, to a thorough inspection of his Jeep. In the forensics garage, they searched for signs of blood using a special light, conducting presumptive blood tests on suspicious stains and by spraying the interior of the doors with Blue Star. All results were negative.
The investigation was only a week old, but already Cindy had lost patience with Detective Melich. She left a message on Sergeant John Allen’s phone just before 8:30 on the morning of July 23.
“I just had a thought. There’s one photo of Caylee . . . in her little blue dress, smiling, and there’s some reddish curtains in the background . . . I’ve been told over and over again, it’s Zanny’s apartment . . . I’m jus
t wondering if . . . you guys have investigated that or asked any of her friends—if you’re looking into that angle. If you don’t have any idea, I’m thinking that maybe if the media show this picture and say not just ‘Have you seen me?’ but ‘Do you recognize this room?’
“. . . I heard on the radio you guys have contacted the FBI. If that’s true, I think this is a very key picture. I think it’s something we should be looking at. So if you don’t feel comfortable talking to me, please call my son Lee. I know you guys think I’m not cooperating, but you know why I was upset with Yuri yesterday.
“I told you guys that I could clear up that matter between the fifteenth and the eighth with a simple phone call, and I was not afforded that opportunity until early yesterday morning when my mother woke up and I was able to speak with her. And she did confirm it was the fifteenth from an email that her and my aunt had done.
“And he threatened me, sir, with sending a squad car and making a big deal about it . . . I’ve been working very carefully to protect my parents. They are very, very ill. I don’t want them getting stressed out like I am—they already are.
“I’m very sorry if you think I am not cooperating . . . I think I have more . . . than anyone else in this investigation.”
That day, assorted investigators and cadaver dogs descended on a large children’s playground surrounded by chain-link fence. The surface of the area consisted of dirt, grass and mulch. In the center, an area of ground showed signs of disturbance as if someone had been digging there.
Gerus sniffed out the suspicious patch, but showed no interest in it. Bones came in for a secondary search, finding nothing to merit an alert. The forensic techs probed and excavated the ground, uncovering a small yellow bucket with the remains of a tiny dead animal inside.
William Rivera, founder of the Never Lose Hope Foundation of Orlando, got the idea of using an automatic telephone system through his telemarketing firm to help in the search for missing children. George Anthony took advantage of the set-up, sending a message about his granddaughter to hundreds of thousands of people in the Central Florida counties of Orange, Seminole, Lake, Osceola and Volusia: “Please help my family to bring her home for her third birthday.”
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