Mommy's Little Girl (22 page)

“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.

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 didn'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?”

“I have the garbage bag.”

“How did you know about the garbage bag, and how did you get it back?”

“We came to your yard last night and your night driver let us in, and we took the garbage bag out of your Dumpster and took it away.” Melich went on to explain how he got the information from George Anthony.

Another drama played out that morning in Mount Dora. Shirley Cuza was surprised when she had a 6
A.M.
visitor. Cindy knocked on the door and then used a key to come inside. She called out to Shirley, who asked, “What the heck's wrong?”

“Lee's out here. Come on out. I've got something to tell you.”

“Well, give me a minute,” Shirley said. She left the bathroom and went into the living room, where she sat down. Cindy stood in front of her wearing a solemn expression on her face. “Who died?” Shirley asked.

“Nobody died,” Cindy said. “Casey's in jail and Caylee's missing.”

Goose bumps raced up Shirley's arms and across her scalp while Cindy explained how the abandoned car had led to Casey's arrest. Cindy's next stop was the nursing home. She needed to prepare her dad for the day's news, too.

Cindy called Ryan Pasley at 8:30
A.M.
He hadn't watched the news yet, but he caught up with the coverage
later that morning and listened to details Cindy hadn't shared—the Zenaida kidnapping story, the Jeffrey Hopkins connection and the suspicion swirling around Casey.

Cindy called Amy, too. “I'm so sorry for any hurt that happened, that Casey may have lied to you or betrayed you or anything like that. I'm very, very sorry.”

“Don't worry about it,” Amy reassured her. “I still believe in Casey.”

 

Detective Pedro Rivera went to Cast Iron Tattoo, where he interviewed Sean and Jonathan Daly and Danny Colamarino. Danny told him about Casey's visit on July 15, and said, “It truly blows me away how normal she was.”

In court that day, Casey, with her newly hired attorney José Baez, appeared before Orange County Judge John Jordan. He denied the motion for bail, chastising Casey: “You left your two-year-old child with a person who does not exist, in an apartment you cannot identify, and you lie to your parents about your child's whereabouts. It appears to the court you care so little for your child, you did not even report her missing until five weeks later.”

The judge ordered a mental health evaluation. On the current charges, Casey faced a maximum sentence of 7 years.

 

At last, Casey had a place of her own—but not exactly the one she'd envisioned. Her residence was s 12.5-foot–by–7-foot cell, with a floor-to-ceiling door of Lexan, a clear glass substitute, located in Protective Custody Level One, in the high-security section of the Orange County correctional facility. It is the same area of the jail where love-crazed astronaut Lisa Nowak was once housed after she'd made headlines for assaulting a fellow astronaut's girlfriend in a parking lot in Orlando.

There was no illusion of privacy in Casey's new room. She was allowed to leave for one hour a day to take a shower, sit in the day room, make collect phone calls or select books from the library cart. She had another hour
for exercise in the jail yard where the only equipment was a volleyball and a basketball. The remaining twenty-two hours a day was spent in her fishbowl cell, unless she had visitors.

Her attorney could visit her any day of the week, any time of the day or night. Family and friends had to adhere to the jail visitation schedule. When they did, they never were in the same room as Casey—they communicated via a remote video feed.

For a party girl who found the rules in her parents' house stifling, this total absence of freedom must have felt like cruel and unusual punishment.

Detective Yuri Melich went to the Sutton Place apartment complex on July 17 and asked Tony Lazzaro and Cameron Campina if he and his detectives could look around and see if there was any evidence there to indicate that something had happened to Caylee. When Tony and Cameron agreed, Melich put three other investigators to work searching for clues while he talked with the two residents.

Cameron expressed surprise at the turn of events: “I would never expect anything like that to happen . . . it seemed like a happy and loving relationship . . . It feels like we had the rug pulled out from under us.”

At 3 o'clock that afternoon, Detective Appie Wells met the Anthonys' neighbor Brian Burner at his place of work. He told the detective about the shovel Casey had borrowed from him in June. Wells followed Brian to his home on Hopespring Drive, where they met a crime-scene investigator who took the tool into custody.

After an hour-and-a-half-long interview with Brian, Wells went next door to the Anthony home and knocked on the front door. The Anthonys welcomed the detective inside. Three attorneys sat in the family room talking to Cindy—two of them represented Casey; the other was a friend who was looking out for Cindy and George's interests.

Wells explained the purpose of his visit to Cindy and the lawyers, and received her permission to examine the
house and the yard. George walked out on the back porch with the detective. Wells told him about the borrowed shovel and said, “We want to examine the backyard for any evidence of freshly turned soil or any suspicious disturbed areas.” George walked through the area, with Wells pointing out spots that he thought might look suspicious.

He unlocked the door to each of the three outbuildings in the yards to allow access. “My wife and I already searched through the sheds, but you're welcome to check behind us. Cindy even moved Caylee's play house and looked underneath it for anything suspicious.”

After consulting with his supervisor, Wells called for a more thorough search, complete with cadaver dogs. K-9 Deputy Jason Forgey and his dog, Gerus, had already been put to work at the forensic bay of the Orange County Sheriff's Office on West Colonial Drive. On command, Gerus worked from the driver's-side front fender in a counter-clockwise direction, alerting Deputy Forgey at the rear passenger fender, indicating that the dog detected the odor of human decomposition in the trunk of the Pontiac.

The dog and his handler reported next to the Anthony home. They pulled up by the single-story home and walked to the wooden fence and through the gate to the backyard. After the crime-scene investigator had made thorough photographic documentation of the area, Gerus received the command and responded. Gerus zoned in on the plastic play house sitting on twenty-five pieces of square concrete that covered a 36-foot-square patch of ground. He did not alert at the 12-inch-wide and 5-inch-deep area of disturbed soil behind the swimming pool.

Osceola County Sheriff's deputy Kris Brewer arrived with her cadaver canine, Bones. That dog alerted in the same spot as Gerus, but also found two other areas of interest—a patch of ground near the screened patio porch and a spot to the east side of the playground area. All three areas were flagged.

The detectives moved the play house off of its platform
and, using hand shovels, they excavated the area of disturbed soil behind the pool, but found nothing of interest. Darkness descended on them as they worked. The investigators called off the search until the next morning. They wrapped the backyard in yellow evidence tape, planning to return the next morning at 8
A.M.

On Friday, Crime Scene Investigator Melissa Cardiello moved the 16-inch-square flat concrete blocks to examine the ground underneath. The weed barrier appeared to be undisturbed. She removed the weeds in one corner and saw that the roots had likewise not been disturbed.

At a spot marked the previous night, she found an area of wood chips. She scooped them up. The next layer was a black plastic weed barrier that had no breach in it. In three other areas, she found the same covering of mulch atop a similar barrier. Beneath one, she found three hair ties and a piece of plastic. A plant root grew through the center of the tie. None of the locations showed any signs of disturbance.

Cardiello also searched through the three sheds. In one, she found a teddy bear in a plastic bag. It was shown to Cindy Anthony, who didn't recall ever seeing it before. In addition to the outdoor search, detectives went into the home and seized electronic equipment belonging to Casey and her parents.

Investigation of the car continued in a bay at the Orange County Sheriff's Office forensic garage. They found a page of paper filled with different variations of the signatures Casey would sign if she married Tony Lazzaro and took his name. Crime Scene Investigator Gerardo Bloise collected dirt from both rear fender wells and secured it in marked petri dishes. Using an UltraLite-ALS (alternate light source), he examined the interior and exterior of the car, finding two suspected stains on the carpet in the cargo area. He recovered hairs from the trunk, as well, and removed the spare tire cover for analysis in a lab.

After photographing the stains, Crime Scene Investigator
Michael Vincent used swabs and sterile water to take samples from the suspected areas. Presumptive blood tests came up negative.

CSI Bloise moved the Pontiac to the auto theft garage in order to put the vehicle on a lift. He collected dry vegetation and a leaf before returning the car to the forensics garage.

 

Shirley wrote an email and sent it to both her sister Mary Lou and her son Rick, giving a synopsis of the events that had led to her granddaughter's arrest:

Even before the judge the next day, she wouldn't say truthfully where she was or is. Everything she told them and wrote in her statement proved to be a lie.

She talked about Casey not working for two years and running up bills and also using Cindy's credit. She
[Cindy]
is wiped out. Now Cindy is talking bonding Casey out. So, she's as nuts as Casey is. Where does she think Casey would go, except to her house and finish stealing her blind . . . I'm really a mess over this.