Mommy's Little Girl (11 page)

 

Cindy and George were with Casey when she went into the delivery room at Florida Hospital in Winter Park. After cleaning up the baby's airway, the nurse placed little Caylee into Cindy's arms, because the doctor had not yet finished caring for Casey after the difficult birth. Casey objected loudly, “Oh my gosh. You get a chance to hold her before I do.”

That small act was in some ways a foundation for the bond between grandmother and granddaughter. It also planted a seed of resentment that thrived in the dark side of Casey's mind.

The moment Casey was out of the delivery room, she called Jesse. He rushed to her side and held the newborn in his arms. He told them that he would do everything he could for the baby, and acknowledged that he was the father.

It was the first time Casey's parents had met him. George was cold to him. He disliked the young man and it showed. On first sight, George disapproved of the sloppiness of Jesse's attire in the hospital. Any father might find it difficult to embrace the man responsible for his out-of-wedlock grandchild, and George was no exception.

When Jesse and Casey were alone, she said, “I want to put your name on the birth certificate.”

“No, let's wait and do a paternity test first,” Jesse said.

Casey recoiled in anger and refused to allow the test to be conducted. Jesse petitioned the courts and was granted legal authorization. He paid $550 and waited for the results. It would take eight weeks for them to return, but Jesse still spent as much time as he could with the little girl. Just in case he was wrong and Caylee was his baby, he didn't want to miss any part of her life.

The results confirmed Jesse's doubts—there was a zero percent probability that he was the child's father. Yet, by that time, his connection to the little girl was as solid as kiln-dried timber. He was emotionally devastated by the results, and remained ready and willing to raise Caylee as his own. When he gave a copy of the test results to George and Cindy, his disappointment was clear. Jesse proposed and Casey accepted.

George asked them, “What are you guys planning for the future?”

“We're getting married,” they said.

“Just 'cause you're engaged, that doesn't mean you don't need a plan.”

“I'm going to take care of her,” Jesse said.

“Yes, but what are you going to do with her? What are you going to do with my granddaughter? That's a very relevant question. Just saying you're going to take care of them doesn't tell me what you're going to
do
to take care of them.”

George did not get a satisfactory response, but since Jesse came by the house every day, he had to give the young man some credit. “He loved that little girl—I know it. You could see the compassion when he was holding her. I think he loved that little girl more than he loved my daughter.”

Maybe that's why Casey tried so hard with the Grunds. She began participating in the religious Friday night family
fellowship at the home. She was there for Bible readings and for the nightly family prayer before bedtime—anything to fit in with them.

She didn't stop there in her attempt to mold herself in their image. When she and Jesse had dated the first time around, he'd learned that she hated the Yankees—the team Jesse loved. Now, she professed to be an ardent Yankee fan.

In early September, Melina Calabrese, Casey's close friend from seventh grade through her high school years, stopped by to meet Caylee for the first time. Casey told her that Jesse Grund was the father. Melina and her fiancé Josh hung out with Casey and Jesse throughout the fall—Jesse and Josh even started rooming together.

Once the DNA tests were back denying the possibility of Jesse's paternity, Casey told a few people that the father was guy named Jesús.

Casey never mentioned Jesús to her parents. When they asked about the father, Casey refused to give her parents a name.

A new baby in the house wasn't the only upheaval in the Anthony household in 2005. George finally received a check for $60,000 in his workman's compensation settlement. Cindy thought they had a cash windfall—maybe they should use it to refinance their home at a more reasonable percentage rate.

She talked to George about how to spend the money. George confessed that it was already gone—he told her that he'd used it to pay some of his debts from on-line gambling. The worst part was that he still owed a substantial amount.

The pain of past wounds surfaced. To Cindy, it was yet another betrayal. She threw George out of the house. He moved in with his parents in Fort Myers.

She got an equity loan on the house, making the budget even tighter, while she made two large house payments. She wiped out her 401K to catch up on car insurance and other past due bills she'd thought George had been paying. She had to pay a penalty to the IRS because George had cashed out his retirement account and not reported the income. Then, she was unable to add any funds to her retirement account—a difficult position for a woman in her fifties.

Cindy consulted a divorce attorney, who told her that even though she'd made all the house payments, George would still get half of the house, and she'd probably have to pay alimony to him because she had been the main
financial support for the family since they'd moved to Florida. She told her mother, Shirley Cuza, “Ain't no way he's getting the house I paid for. Even if I sold the house and got an apartment, half the money would go to George. I can't afford a divorce—between George and Casey, I'm living paycheck to paycheck.”

 

In the fall, after Caylee's birth, Casey stopped into the Kodak office once to show off her new baby. Then, suddenly, she disappeared. Mike had expected her to come back to work, but it never happened. Corporate filed paperwork terminating her for “job abandonment.” Her lack of employment added to a fragile economic situation in the Anthony home.

Casey spent a lot of time in the Grund household, where she put pressure on Jesse. Casey wanted out of her parents' home. She told her prospective father-in-law, “I don't want to turn out like my mother. I don't want to be around my mother. I want out of that house.” She added that she hated her father for the financial problems he'd created with his gambling.

Casey wanted Jesse to move into a place of their own immediately. Richard Grund frowned on that scenario. He told his son, “If you want me to perform your [wedding] ceremony, you can't live together beforehand.”

But Jesse wanted to move in with Casey, driven in part by what he perceived as Cindy's negative attitude toward her. One day when Jesse and Casey were lying together on the couch in the Anthony living room, Casey and Cindy began arguing. Jesse interrupted, telling Cindy, “Please don't do this while I'm here. Don't talk to her like that. You know I love your daughter.”

“Why do you want to be with somebody who's got no future?” Cindy snapped back. “She didn't even go back to get her high school education. You know she's got a job at a place where she really doesn't even make enough money to support Caylee. I'm doing that—I'm the one supporting Caylee.”

Jesse hated to hear these words in front of Casey. He knew they made Casey feel as if she must be a failure in his eyes.

 

In the spring of 2006, reconciliation was in the air. George and Cindy made a few tentative dates to test getting back together. One night, after a pleasant evening of dinner and conversation, Jesse's pick-up truck was in the driveway when they arrived back on Hopespring Drive at 11:30.

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.