Mommy's Little Girl (26 page)

“What do you think her reasons are?” Cindy asked.

“Mom, I don't know.”

“Okay.”

“I forgive her. My only concern is that Caylee comes back to us and that she's happy and that she's okay.”

“What do you want me to tell Caylee?”

Casey's voice strained and shot up an octave as she answered, “That Mommy loves her very much. And that
she's the most important thing in this entire world to me. And to be brave.” Casey sniffled and sighed as she wiped her eyes and her nose.

“Anything else?”

“Just that I love her. I truly, truly love that little girl, and miss her so much. God, I really miss you guys.”

Cindy choked on tears as she said, “We miss you, too.”

Casey talked about her agreement with Lee to write letters. When Cindy asked if she was protecting someone, Casey said, “I'm protecting my family, yes, but not from anything I've done.”

“Is someone threatening us?”

Casey bent her hand forward and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist as she sniffled.

“Is someone threatening us?” Cindy repeated.

“Mom, just leave it at that, please. For right now, just leave it at that.”

“Okay. I trust you. Just know you don't have to protect this family. This family is tough. We've been through a lot in the last week-and-a-half. We're pretty darned strong. We almost lost it a few times, but we're stronger now than we've ever been. So don't protect Mom, or Dad, or Lee. We have to protect Caylee . . . I've got a question for you: How come you never had a chance to get the car? It doesn't make sense.”

“Mom,” she said, outlining the syllable with exasperation. “Because this is recorded, they are going to see things and they are going to misconstrue. Like I said, there are things I need to directly say to each of you.”

“Okay. I trust that . . . Has someone else been in our house?”

“I don't know, Mom, possibly. A long time ago, she had a key,” Casey said, referring to Zenaida.

“How about Jesse? He's been real close. Is there anything you want me to say to Jesse?”

“I would like Jesse to stay as far away from you guys
as possible. I'm saying that wholeheartedly and as calmly as possible . . . In my gut, I don't know if I can trust him.”

“I've had that feeling all along,” Cindy agreed. “We've got one minute. What do you want to say to us?”

“That I love you and I miss you. You guys stay as strong as possible.”

“We are, Casey. Our whole life is turned upside down looking for this little girl.”

“I know. Trust me, if I could be out there with you, I would be in a heartbeat.”

“We're going to see her little face again,” Cindy reassured her.

“I pray to God every day that we do.”

At 2
P.M.
Casey's parents were back. Casey's morning tears were replaced by subtle traces of anger whenever she felt challenged by her mother.

“I have to ask: Did Caylee ever stay at Tony's?” Cindy asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. We'd hung out over there, but she never stayed, no.”

“Tony admitted to Lee that there's drugs in his home,” Cindy said. “Could this be related to anything like that?”

“No. It's not.”

In a conciliatory tone, Cindy said, “Just had to ask, sweetheart.”

“No. His roommates smoke weed. But no.”

Cindy told her that although she was getting a few nasty calls, most callers were sympathetic and supportive. “Everybody that knows you are saying that you're the mom of the group. You're the one that always takes care of everybody else.”

“That's how it's always been. That's the truth.”

“I know. 'Cause you're a lot like me.”

“I'm a lot like you—you're exactly right. And that's what people have said. Like, you know, ‘Your mom's a
real spitfire.' People have been talking you up like crazy. ‘I wouldn't piss her off.' ‘No, you wouldn't.' They would respect you more than anyone else,” Casey said.

“All I'm trying to do is find Caylee for both of us . . .”

“Oh, I know.”

“For all of us, and I'll do whatever it takes.”

“I feel the exact same way,” Casey assured her. “It's exactly what I've been saying. I don't care what I have to do. When I told them I would lie, I would steal—I would do anything, by any means, to get her back. That's exactly how I feel. That's the truth.”

“Casey, we have to find her before her third birthday. That's coming up fast.”

“Mom, I know—we have a couple weeks.”

“I don't want to wait another minute. Let alone . . .”

Casey cut her off. “I don't want to wait another minute. I want her to be found whether I'm still stuck in here or not. I don't care.”

“I think once she's found, then you can tell everyone what you know and you'll be released. Don't you think?”

“Potentially. I don't know. Yuri has it set in his mind that I've done something.”

“Well, he thinks you guys did something to Caylee,” Cindy said.

When her dad got on the line and told her that he missed her, wanted to take her pain away and wished he could've been a better dad and a better granddad, Casey's tears flowed.

“You've been a great dad and the best grandfather. Don't for a second think otherwise. You and Mom have been the best grandparents. Caylee is so lucky to have both of you. I can't even put into words how glad I am that she's had both of you, and that she still has both of you,” she said in a strained voice.

Her mother returned to the phone and said, “We never really got a full description of Zanny. We know she's got brown curly hair.”

“It's long—about shoulder length—she wears it
straight.” Casey described Zanny. “It's curly, but she also wears it straight, that's what I'm telling you, it's called a straightener, remember? She's the one that gave me my straightener.” She elaborated on the baby-sitter whom everyone involved with Casey had yet to meet. Zanny, she said, was 5'6” or 5'7”, 140 pounds, brown eyes and no tattoos that she'd seen, even when Zanny was in a bathing suit. She added that her mother's name was Gloria, her stepdad, who'd legally adopted her, was Victor, and her older sister was Samantha, a student at the University of Central Florida. She gave the names of Zanny's roommates, Raquel Farrell and Jennifer Rosa, and provided employment history for both of them.

When Casey complained that detectives had never created a composite drawing and never shown her a photograph of the Zenaida who lived in Kissimmee, Cindy said, “They told us you couldn't pick her out in a line-up.”

“They're full of shit.”

George asked Casey if she would be willing to talk to the FBI or anyone in law enforcement. She assured her father that she would talk to anyone they sent to her. She did say, though, that she would not be comfortable talking to Detective Melich or Sergeant Allen, but would be willing to talk to Appie Wells. She said she didn't care if she talked to him one-on-one or if the attorney were present.

As they wrapped up the conversation, Cindy asked, “What's your gut telling you right now?”

“My gut is telling me that she's okay.”

“And your gut's telling you that she's close or she's hiding?”

“She's not far. I know in my heart she's not far. I can feel it.”

Over the weekend, Lee emailed Melich the detailed description of Zanny and other details from the conversations he and his parents had had with Casey at the jail. Law enforcement, however, was convinced that Zenaida did not exist.

George and Cindy prepared for the second Caylee vigil on Sunday, July 27. They planned to hold one every Sunday night until Caylee came home. That afternoon, Richard Grund called George, leaving a message that offered help, and asked one question: Why aren't you doing what ex-cops do?

George must have understood the meaning of that question, that a former law enforcement officer would first focus his suspicions on the person closest to the missing person—his daughter Casey. According to Richard, George called back right away and said, “Here's my answer to your question as to why I'm not doing what you think I should be doing: because my wife doesn't want me to.”

 

Despite the rain that day, more than two hundred people filled the front yard of the Anthony home. A minister delivered a short sermon. Everyone joined hands as he led the group in prayer. “Casey has gotten deceived and we are standing here to ask God to break that bondage off of her.”

Cindy led the group in a chant of “Bring Caylee home!”
Outside of the prayer, no one spoke about Casey or her situation in jail. They were encouraged by the news that an anonymous corporation had put up a $225,000 reward for the safe return of Caylee.

Rozzie Franco of Fox News approached Cindy at the end of the service to discuss Detective Yuri Melich. “We asked him about a grid pattern from your home, and why they hadn't done that and why they're not searching actively. What do you think? What are your thoughts on that?”

“I don't know,” Cindy said. “I mean, they had receipts that could have traced my daughter's last actions for the last month. They didn't want them. They didn't even want to go through any of her personal things. It's too late now, guys. I've already put her stuff away. So you know, I let it sit out in the bedroom for the last week, and no one's wanted to come through any of the stuff that we took from the apartment . . .

“And I'm frustrated. I just want one of them from the sheriff's department to call me and give me some respect, give my husband some respect, give us a little update. They were so good about coming here every day for the first three days, because they knew we were giving them everything they wanted, and I've given them everything they wanted. I open my home to them. I let them search my backyard without question. I let them take my computers without question . . .

“I feel like I am the one who's being punished for trying to look for my granddaughter. And I can't keep doing this day after day. I've been grabbed by the media. My son gets chased down on his way to see his sister this morning. . . . My son is a tough person, but he called me this morning, he said, ‘Mom, this is first time I felt like my life was in danger.' ”

Cindy concluded the interview with some venting about the media: “. . . This has to stop. Quit harassing her friends, her friends trying to speak to the authorities. They won't return their phone calls. But they don't need to be on the
media. They've already said Casey is a great mom, that she's always taken good care of Caylee; she's always been worried about Caylee, that she's been around cigarette smoke or whatever. This Zenaida person I've known about for the last three years. Do they think that she's been plotting to murder her child for three years now? Come on. Give me a break!”

 

Lee sat down for an interview with Orange County Detectives Eric Edwards and Michael Erickson that day. He provided the investigators with a handwritten list of receipts containing twenty-two dated entries in chronological order. “I want to make sure that we're on the same page—that these receipts were very organized . . . I saw them that night,” Lee said, referring to July 15, “when they were being taken out of the bag.” He added that he'd created the list when he visited the attorney on July 28.

“It would have been very nice to have those receipts,” Detective Edwards said. “The attorney currently has them?”

“Yes, he does.”

“And you can't remember when you took them and gave them to the attorney, but it was some time . . .”

“I want to say it had to be this . . . past Monday. Not yesterday, the week prior. It had to be around that time.”

“Like the twenty-first?” Edwards asked.

“Yeah. Within a day or two, one way or the other. And we had offered it up . . . first to the officers on that—at this point, we're early morning into the sixteenth—we offered it to them at that time. We offered it to them again on the evening of the sixteenth and again on the evening of the seventeenth. I was present for every time when that was offered to them,” Lee avowed.

The detectives moved on to questions about Casey's relationships with the men in her life. Lee said, “Ricardo and Casey had been seeing each other from February until the month . . . of April on kind of a full-time basis. They decided to break it off, see what they can do as friends. But
they were still having, you know, a relationship . . . kind of on a semi-serious level up until Casey started hanging out with Tony—and actually even through the initial part of hanging out with Tony. So, it was in that time that she kind of transitioned . . . from Ricardo to Tony.”

“She kind of seems like she may swing from boyfriend to boyfriend to keep a comfort?”

“Sure. Absolutely,” Lee said.

“Is that . . . how you look back at her past and . . .”

“Absolutely. That's very accurate. But also to make sure that we're clear on this, Casey—unbeknownst to Jesse's and my parents—Casey and Jesse still maintained a semi-regular relationship, and always have over the past few years. This includes, from what I've been able to find out, at least into May when she started to see Tony.”

Lee laughed. “She's always maintained to my mother and father that Jesse is the one pursuing her, and she's trying to get him out of . . . her life, while Jesse maintains that same thing to his parents. When, truth be told, even through phone records, you can see they equally reach out and facilitate the relationship between themselves. No one person is chasing the other more than the other.”

Edwards wanted to clear up a piece of confusing information with Lee: “Now we go to the eighth [of June]. I have highlighted that in red because your Mom originally thought, in her frantic state, that she hadn't seen Caylee from the eighth on. But now that changes. We know that to be the fifteenth. And that's just over stress. There's no finger-pointing going on there.”