Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony (4 page)

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
Caylee, C-A-Y-L-E-E, Anthony.

911
O
PERATOR:
How long has she been missing for?

C
INDY
A
NTHONY:
I have not seen her since June 7.

The call became inaudible when Cindy started addressing her daughter in the background, but the operator coaxed her back to the phone.

911
O
PERATOR:
Can you calm down for me for just a minute? I need to know what is going on. Is your daughter there? Can I speak with her? Do you mind if I speak with her?

Casey took the phone. Her voice was casual, almost uninterested. When I heard her one word, “Hello?” starting low and then rising quietly, as if “
hello
” were a question, I was stunned. She was the polar opposite of frantic and was clearly on the line against her own volition. She calmly and deliberately answered the operator’s questions as if she were letting someone know about a missed manicure appointment. There was no sense of panic, just a hint of fear and a dash of annoyance.

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Hello?

911
O
PERATOR:
Hi. Can you tell me what’s going on a little bit?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
My daughter has been missing for the last thirty-one days.

911
O
PERATOR:
And, you know who has her?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
I know who has her. I tried to contact her and I actually received a phone call today from a number that is no longer in service. I did get to speak to my daughter for about a minute.

911
O
PERATOR:
Did you guys report a vehicle stolen?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Yes, my mom did.

911
O
PERATOR:
OK, so there has been a vehicle stolen too?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
No. This is my vehicle.

911
O
PERATOR:
What vehicle was stolen?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
It’s a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire.

911
O
PERATOR:
We have deputies on the way to you for that, but now your three-year-old is missing—Caylee Anthony?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Yes.

911
O
PERATOR:
You lost her a month ago?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Thirty-one days.

911
O
PERATOR:
Who has her? Do you have a name?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
Her name is Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez.

911
O
PERATOR:
Who is that, the babysitter?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
She’s been my nanny for about a year and a half or two years.

911
O
PERATOR:
Why are you calling now? Why didn’t you call thirty-one days ago?

C
ASEY
A
NTHONY:
I’ve been looking for her and have gone through other resources to try to find her—which is stupid.

Just then a sheriff’s deputy arrived at the Anthony home, and the 911 call came to an end. The three 911 calls amounted to only a few minutes of audiotape and transcript, but there was a lot to find suspicious in them. Most obviously there was Casey’s calmness: most parents would be in hysterics if their child was missing. I have six children (I remarried again in 2005, and my wife, Rita, and I have two adopted children, David and Emma), and I cannot imagine one of them going missing for five minutes, let alone thirty-one days. I once lost track of my son Jon on a crowded beach one summer afternoon. I was diligently watching him, and he disappeared from one second to the next. I was panicked beyond words; every horror story I had ever heard and then some was taking residence in my head. Within minutes he was escorted back to us, but those few moments of paralyzing panic are eternally etched in my memory.

As a prosecutor and a parent, I was left incredulous by Casey’s reaction—even by her explanation that Caylee was with a babysitter. How was it even possible for a loving, caring parent to take that long to report a missing child? Helping herself to her mother’s money and credit cards may be acts of a young person angry at an authority figure, especially when it’s a family matter and the young person lives at home with easy access to the monies and wheels she covets. But to me, accusing someone of kidnapping a baby a month ago, without any sense of urgency or emotion, seemed completely incomprehensible. Casey had much to answer for. Of course, as investigators quickly found out, her answers had some serious problems.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

WHERE IS CAYLEE MARIE?

O
ne weekend shortly after Linda put me on the case, I got into my 2002 Sebring convertible and went on the eleven-mile ride to the Anthonys’ part of town. I’d been catching up on the case, talking to the people involved, and reading the various reports that had been filed, but I thought it would be helpful to get a view from the ground, of the house where so much of the initial action in the case had taken place.

The Anthonys lived in Chickasaw Park, a pleasant neighborhood of well-kept ranch houses and manicured lawns southeast of downtown Orlando. Their ranch was prettier than any other on Hopespring Drive—meticulous, well-orchestrated landscaping with lots of cacti, red elephant ear, and a towering palm tree to the left of the front door. The walkway had a brick border lined with solar-powered lights, the front yard nary a weed. The grass was well watered and evenly mowed. The house was board and batten siding, painted a soft shell pink. The front door matched in color but in a deeper tone, and a welcoming plaque of flowers and a blue butterfly hung beneath its arched window. I couldn’t see the aboveground pool and toolshed. They were tucked behind the house in a backyard protected by a wooden stockade fence.

I had heard that the Anthony family was well liked by neighbors on the block. They were charter residents of the subdivision. They’d moved into the just-built four-bedroom, two-bath, L-shaped ranch when Casey was only three. It was a quiet, family-oriented community then, as it is now. Whereas George had once helped Casey ride her tricycle, more recently he had often been seen helping his little granddaughter, Caylee, ride hers. He had even assembled a playhouse in a corner of the backyard for her, with its own landscaped border, tiny mailbox, and meticulously installed pavers under the playhouse so that she would never have to play on a dirt floor.

There had never been any trouble at the house, even when Casey and her older brother, Lee, were at the height of their teenage years. The Anthonys seemed the definition of blissful suburbia, especially with the addition of the angelic, bright-eyed baby girl. I could only imagine what the neighbors must have thought when that first squad car showed up at their curb, lights flashing, shortly before 10
P.M
. on July 15, 2008.

A
CCORDING TO THE POLICE REPORTS
from that night, Corporal Rendon Fletcher was the first officer to go up the home’s cement walkway. His knock was answered by Cindy Anthony, and he was surprised to find her sobbing and distraught. Based on the 911 calls, Fletcher had thought he was responding to a stolen vehicle report, but from the moment he walked through the door, Cindy didn’t say a thing about the car. She looked like a wreck. Her short blondish hair was as combed as it could be at that hour, but she was pale, her blue eyes bloodshot and swollen.

In between sobs, Cindy explained to the officer that she had just learned that her two-year-old granddaughter, Caylee, had been missing for thirty-one days. Choking out the words, Cindy said that her daughter, Casey, had dropped Caylee with her babysitter a month earlier and had not seen the little girl since. As Cindy told it, for the past few weeks whenever she’d called Casey, Casey had said that she and Caylee were vacationing in Jacksonville. But Cindy had dreaded that something was wrong when her requests to speak with Caylee were met with excuses every time. Cindy then went on to tell Fletcher about retrieving the Pontiac at the tow yard and confronting Casey at her boyfriend’s apartment. What seemed odd to me was that Cindy failed to mention to the officer the sickening smell emanating from the Pontiac’s trunk, which she had described with horror in her 911 call, although later on George would share that detail with another detective.

George’s demeanor that night was in stark contrast to his wife’s. Standing behind her in the living room with his gray hair groomed back, he appeared calm and in control. Investigators later learned that he had been a detective in Ohio and had been involved in a few homicide investigations before the family moved to Orlando in 1986. His stoicism had been learned from years on the job, but he was just as devastated as his wife. Yet, ever the cop, George had already moved into investigation mode. Emotions would get in the way of finding the facts, and finding Caylee was all that mattered at that moment. He had to be the strong one, since clearly Cindy could not.

George agreed with his wife that Casey had been very vague about why they couldn’t speak to Caylee. He said the last time he’d seen the child was on June 16 around 1
P.M
. He had no idea she was missing until he’d come home, just minutes before Corporal Fletcher arrived, to find his wife crying in the garage. The Pontiac he had picked up at the impound was parked there, where he had left it, but Cindy had found Caylee’s favorite doll in the still-buckled car seat, which put her over the edge. She had tried to reach him at work, but he had missed her call. When George had called her back, there was no answer, so he called their son, Lee, who lived about a half mile away and told him to go to the house and check on everybody.

As Corporal Fletcher interviewed Cindy and George Anthony, other police officers began to arrive. Though the precise order was not totally clear, Deputy Adriana Acevedo, Deputy Ryan Eberlin, still in training, and his sergeant, Reginald Hosey, showed up on the scene within minutes of each other. The sergeant instructed his officers to take written statements from everyone at the house. Eberlin began with Lee, interviewing him in the living room. Lee was almost four years older than Casey, tall and stocky, with dark brown hair and bushy eyebrows. He told the deputy that he had his own place now, but he knew his sister had not been around for the last couple of weeks. When his father had directed him to stop by the house to check on his mother and sister, he’d learned for the first time that something was wrong.

Lee had arrived at the house minutes before Cindy and Casey. When they came in, they were in the midst of a heated argument. Casey didn’t stop to explain but blew by him, heading straight for her room and leaving him alone with their mother. Despite her rage and frustration, Cindy told Lee everything she knew, including the fact that Caylee was apparently at some unknown location. It was clear to Lee that his mother was not going to be able to get a straight answer from Casey, so he decided to talk to his sister himself.