Presumed Guilty: Casey Anthony: The Inside Story (4 page)

“You go straight over one speed bump, and it’s the first building on the right-hand side. There’s a welcome sign. There’s a little shed close to the building, maybe ten yards away.”

Casey rode in the back of Acevedo’s squad car. Fletcher followed in a second squad car.

Acevedo lowered Casey’s backseat window, and Casey pointed out the apartment. Fletcher knocked on the door, but no one answered. He then went to the management office of the apartment complex, where he learned Casey wasn’t telling him the truth. No one had lived in the apartment for almost six months.

Detective Melich arrived at the Anthony home around 1:00
A.M.
After being briefed by Hosey, Melich was pulled aside by George, who informed him that he was a former law enforcement officer in Warren, Ohio. George told Melich that Casey was not being truthful and that her car smelled of human decomposition. Melich, ignoring George, concentrated on reading Casey’s statement about Zenaida taking her baby rather than going to inspect the car.

“This sounds very suspect,” Melich said to Casey. “Are you sure, before we go any further, that you don’t want to change anything in here?”

Casey didn’t.

“Okay,” said Melich, “Let’s take your sworn statement.” So Casey regurgitated the same story about Zenaida, her nanny of two years, taking her baby, Caylee. She described the directions to Zanny’s apartment in great detail. She said she met Zanny through a mutual friend, Jeffrey Hopkins.

“She was his son’s nanny at the time,” she said. She described how Hopkins had moved to North Carolina and then back to Jacksonville. When asked for his telephone number, Casey said she didn’t have it on hand. She said Hopkins had a four-year-old son named Zack. She said that her nanny before Zenaida was a woman by the name of Lauren Gibbs.

In an effort to make headway, Melich asked Casey if she knew where Zenaida’s mother lived.

“She lived off of Michigan,” Casey said. “It’s not a very well-marked neighborhood. It crosses over Conway. It’s one of the big stretches of neighborhoods.”

When asked if she could find the house, she said she thought so.

Melich asked Casey what she remembered about June 9, the day she dropped her child off with the nanny, and the last day she said she saw Caylee.

“I got off work,” Casey said, “left Universal, driving back to pick up Caylee like a normal day. And I show up at the apartment, knock on the door. Nobody answers. So I called Zenaida’s cell phone and it’s out of service. So I sit down on the steps and wait for a little bit to see if maybe it was just a fluke or if something happened. And time passed. I didn’t hear from anyone. No one showed up to the house, so I went over to Jay Blanchard Park and checked a couple other places where maybe possibly they would have gone. A couple stores, just regular places that I know Zenaida shops at and she’s taken Caylee before. And after about 7:00
P.M.
, when I still hadn’t heard anything, I was getting pretty upset, pretty frantic. And I went to a neutral place. I didn’t really want to come home. I wasn’t sure what I’d say about not knowing where Caylee was. Still hoping that I would get a call or, you know, find out Caylee was coming back so I could go get her … and I ended up going to my boyfriend Anthony’s house, who lives in Sutton Place.”

When Melich asked Casey whether she told any of this to her parents, she said she didn’t. Did she tell anyone? She said she had told Jeffrey Hopkins and Juliet Lewis, another coworker at Universal Studios, and said she attempted to call Zenaida’s mother, Gloria.

“Do you know Gloria’s telephone number?”

She didn’t.

When he was done, Melich said to her, “I asked you this at the onset, and before we went on tape, and I’ll ask you again just to make sure we’re clear. Is there anything about this story that you’re telling me that’s untrue?”

“No.”

“Is there anything that you want to change or divert from what you’ve already told me?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you hurt Caylee or leave her somewhere and you’re …”

“No.”

“… worried that if we find that out that people are gonna look at you the wrong way?”

“No, sir.”

He then asked whether she had any problems with drugs, narcotics, cocaine, ecstasy, meth, anything like that.

“Nothing like that.”

“Have you ever been to Lakeside?” he asked, referring to a local mental health facility.

“No.”

Melich said, “You said Zenaida had family in New England or New York or something.”

“Yes, she has family down south. Her mother, her sister, and her brother are in New York. She’s originally from New York.”

“And where down south?”

“Miami area.”

“Where’s she originally from?”

“New York.”

“She was born and raised in New York?” asked Melich.

“As far as I know, she pretty much grew up there, moved down here, went to the University of Florida.”

“She Puerto Rican, Dominican, or white?”

“She’s mixed. She’s black and Puerto Rican.”

Melich asked Casey, “Does Juliet Lewis still work at Universal?”

“Yes, she does,” said Casey.

“And what does she do there?”

“She’s an event coordinator.”

“Can I have her phone number?”

“Oh,” said Casey, suddenly changing direction, “she moved up to New York two months ago.”

“So she doesn’t work at Universal anymore?” asked Melich.

“No, she does not.”

Melich asked if he had forgotten to ask her anything.

Casey told him that Caylee had very distinctive features and that even if someone had cut her hair, people would recognize her dark hazel eyes. “They’re brown and green. She has a birthmark on her left shoulder.”

“What kind of birthmark?”

“It’s just like a small line. It almost looks like a small little beauty mark.”

“Anything else?”

“I just want my daughter back.”

Melich then had her raise her right hand and swear that everything she had told him was the truth.

After taking down her statement, Melich said, “Okay, take me to where you showed the police officers.” They went back to the same apartment complex. Then he asked, “Do you know any other places where Zenaida lived before she lived here?”

“I know where her mother Gloria used to live,” she said, and she took Melich to another apartment complex, which turned out to be a home for the elderly.

Melich checked. The people at the home had never heard of Gloria Gonzalez. Later police would discover that the complex was across the street from one of Casey’s former boyfriends, Ricardo Morales. And the Sawgrass Apartments, where Zenaida supposedly lived, was the home of Dante, the boyfriend of her best friend, Annie Downing.

After driving Casey around until three in the morning, Melich drove her back to her home.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll talk tomorrow. We’re going to keep investigating.”

Before Melich left, George pulled him aside.

“My daughter has been lying to you,” he said. “Something’s very suspicious. I don’t think she’s being truthful. You need to look into this a little bit more.”

“Don’t worry,” said Melich. “We will.”

George then told him about finding the car at the impound lot and again mentioned the smell in Casey’s car.

The car was in the garage of the Anthony home with the trunk open. As the police were coming in and out of the house that night, they entered through the garage. Any of them could have smelled that car, and not one said a word about it. Even though George had told him, “The car smells of death,” the detective was either grossly incompetent or believed the smell from the car came from the trash that had been in the car, as apparently did all the police on the scene. In Melich’s five-page, detail-rich initial report, not a word was said about any smell in the car. If the car smelled uniquely of human decomposition, none of the officers noticed it. As I will show later, decomposition is decomposition and no one can uniquely detect human decomposition.

Melich drove back to his precinct and met with Sergeant John Allen around seven in the morning. During breakfast Melich briefed Allen about the case.

As they discussed it, the new strategy was to see how far Casey would go with her lies.

Casey had told the police she didn’t have Zenaida’s cell phone number because she had left the cell phone in her office at Universal Studios.

“The number of everyone who knows about Caylee being missing is on that SIM card on the cell phone in the office,” said Casey.

“Let’s go to Universal and get it,” said Melich. “We’ll get your cell phone out of your office, and you can get the numbers.”

She quickly changed her story.

“My phone was stolen,” she said. “I reported it to loss prevention, and they’re looking for it.”

Melich, sensing another lie, decided to drive over to Universal Studios and see what Casey’s coworkers could tell him about this strange tale-spinning woman whose child was missing.

It was July 16, 2008, and in speaking with Universal’s head of security, Leonard Tutura, Melich learned that Casey was fired from her job at Universal Studios on April 24, 2006, after not showing up for work one day. Melich asked about Casey’s coworkers, including Hopkins and Lewis. When Melich checked, he found that Hopkins had once worked at Universal but was fired in 2002, so he couldn’t have known about Caylee’s disappearance during the thirty days when she was missing. And Lewis wasn’t found in the company’s database.

Melich called Casey from Universal and asked for the name of her supervisor.

“Tom Frank,” she told him.

He also asked for Casey’s number at work and her extension.

Melich checked the database. No supervisor by the name of Tom Frank existed, and though she knew the main number for the Universal Studios switchboard, extension 104 didn’t exist. Melich asked for the building number. Casey said she couldn’t remember it.

Melich told her, “I’ll have an officer pick you up, and you can meet me here at Universal. We’ll go find your office and we’ll talk to some people here to see if we can find Jeff Hopkins or Juliet Lewis.”

She cheerfully agreed.

Around noon Allen drove over and picked her up with Officer Appling “Appie” Wells. Casey had not slept all night
.
During the early morning, Casey and Cindy had been building Facebook and Myspace pages in their attempt to spread the word about Caylee’s disappearance. They were texting hundreds of people trying to organize a search for Caylee.

Casey and the two cops arrived at Universal. When they arrived at the gate, the security officer asked for her ID.

“I lost it,” Casey said.

The police asked if he would please let them in so she could show them the location of her office.

He agreed.

Casey led them into an office building in the back area of Universal Studios. She made a left turn, kept on walking, began to walk down a hallway, and then stopped.

“Okay,” Casey said, “I don’t work here.”

The detectives, growing more incredulous by the moment, took her into a conference room and began to question her. They hit her with her lies.

Talk about going around in circles. It was such a red flag. I don’t know how Melich didn’t realize right then and there that he was dealing with someone with serious mental health issues. Why didn’t he see this was a clear sign that something just wasn’t right? She gave such vivid details from her imagination. This was a bit more than just lies.

Though confronted with the fact she had been lying, Casey stubbornly stuck to her story: the scenario, in effect, that her nanny had taken Caylee and she didn’t know where she was.

The police pounded away at her. As the interrogation was coming to a close, Melich received a phone call from Cindy.

What Cindy wanted Melich to know was that on the day Caylee disappeared, the ladder on the outdoor above-ground swimming pool was up, meaning Caylee would have had access to the pool.

“We’re religious about taking that ladder down,” Cindy said, “and it was odd that it was still up. Something is not right, and we are very concerned. We just don’t understand what’s going on.”

What Cindy was telling Melich was that her suspicion was that Caylee had drowned in the swimming pool that day. Armed with this new information, Melich returned to question Casey. Did he ask her about the ladder? Did he ask her anything about the swimming pool? Not a word. Focusing in on the missing nanny, he asked more questions about her and asked Casey to look at some photographs to see if perhaps the faces in the photos were Zenaida.

It was clear to me that Melich didn’t ask Casey about the ladder and the pool because he had already made up his mind that she was a prime suspect in a possible murder case. He knew there was a missing child, who was presumed to be dead, and he knew Casey was lying, and probably figured that after a night in jail she would come forward and confess.
Don’t give her an out,
was probably his thinking.
Confessions are the quickest way to close a case. Let’s get an incriminating statement and we can pack up and go home.

After showing Casey the pictures of women at the police station, none of which she identified as Zenaida, they told her, “We’re arresting you. Unless you come clean and tell us the truth, we’re arresting you now.”

“I am telling the truth,” she said defiantly.

“Okay, then, you’re under arrest.”

She was arrested around three in the afternoon. Two hours later, the police alerted the media. In Orlando, the police like to do perp walks, where they take the accused out of the police station and march them in front of the television cameras. The TV and newspaper reporters then ask the suspect questions. The strategy is to try to get recorded statements that can be used in court. Or, at the very least, the police department gets more publicity for a big arrest.

So the cops handcuffed her and walked her out. In front of the one camera crew that appeared, Casey didn’t answer a single question. Casey wore a light blue hoodie with the number
82
in bright yellow. The news crew had no idea that the B-roll it had just shot would be replayed and broadcast across the country for the next three-and-a-half years.