Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [136]
This was around the time I began to tell Linda and Frank that I thought Casey was not going to testify. I was feeling stronger and stronger in my conviction that she wasn’t going to take the stand. I thought Jose’s whole opening statement was probably something that he was going to put out there and never prove. They both thought I was crazy, and that based on what Baez said in opening, she had to back it up on the stand. I completely agreed with the logic of what they were saying. But I pointed out that in the three years we had been dealing with this guy, he had filed motions or made statements time and time again, and got indignant when we made him back them up. I had this gut feeling that he thought he could just say anything, and people would believe him.
On May 27, Simon Birch took the stand. He was the manager of Johnson’s Wrecker, the place where George and Cindy came to retrieve the Pontiac. He testified that the smell from the Sunfire to him was foul and potent, like that of decomposition. He said he had been in the towing business for more than twenty years, with a two-year stint in waste management, and had smelled everything you could imagine in a car. He was firm in his belief that the odor in the Pontiac was from a dead body. He related that when he and George Anthony opened the trunk, lots of flies flew out. There was a bag of garbage in the trunk, which they tossed into the Dumpster. It did not help the smell in the trunk at all.
MAY 28, THE DAY CINDY Anthony took the stand, was emotional for everybody. Linda was leading the questioning, which began with extremely personal treasures. It was necessary for the prosecution to have Cindy identify certain items taken from the house that were related to items found with Caylee’s remains. That meant Cindy needed to look at pictures of Caylee’s room, which brought her to tears. About an hour into testimony, she became so emotional that we took a break to allow her to compose herself.
Cindy remembered her last day with Caylee, Father’s Day, June 15, 2008. She talked about Zanny, saying that Casey had been referencing the invented nanny as far back as 2006. Cindy did her best to recount the thirty-one days Caylee was missing. When Linda started to ask her about a MySpace page she had created on July 3, 2008, just to be able to reach out to Casey, the defense objected on the grounds of hearsay and the objection was sustained.
Linda was only allowed to go into those areas of the MySpace page that had been written by Cindy on her own page. She was limited as to what she could ask Cindy about her and Casey’s communication, because Casey had not posted responses on Cindy’s page. Casey’s own MySpace had postings under the subject line “Diary of Days,” which appeared to be direct responses. Her page had such things as “On the worst of days, trust no one, only yourself,” “What is given can be taken away,” and “Everyone lies. Everyone dies. Life will never be easy.” But Cindy was not allowed to testify to any of that.
These constraints compromised Linda’s ability to bring out a fuller understanding of the mother-daughter relationship. Cindy said the exchange between herself and Casey on MySpace was the first time they had “talked” since Cindy’s attempt to intercept Casey and Caylee at Universal Studios. Cindy’s subject line on her MySpace plea to Casey was “My Caylee is missing,” and Linda asked if she could clarify what she meant by “missing,” if she thought Caylee was safe somewhere with her mother. Cindy said that “missing” meant “missing in my heart,” not “missing” as in disappeared from the face of the earth.
Cindy did say that