Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [137]
I couldn’t make sense of Cindy’s just accepting Casey’s excuses. I think she feared that if she pushed Casey, then Casey would take Caylee away for good and she would never see her again. After all, Casey had the leverage, she had what Cindy wanted. I just couldn’t understand why Cindy couldn’t be right up front instead of making excuses for Casey.
Linda asked Cindy about the odor in the trunk of the Pontiac, once described to a 911 operator as being like the odor of “a dead body in the damn car.” But Cindy had watered down that strong opinion about the smell considerably over the years. Now she told Linda she accepted George’s explanation that there was garbage in the trunk. She acknowledged that she had some experience with rotting flesh, being in a medical field.
The 911 calls Cindy had made on July 15, 2008, were introduced next. The tapes of these conversations created the most emotional moment in the trial to date. Jurors, who had not shown much emotion before this, seemed to perk up as the first call started to play. Cindy looked uncomfortable as she heard her own voice. There was something about hearing the calls now, knowing that her granddaughter was dead, that was heart-wrenching. She listened with her hand covering her mouth, looking like she was wishing she could retroactively silence herself. Her recorded voice reverberated in the courtroom, becoming increasingly distraught with each additional call. Everyone could hear the voices of Cindy and the different operators as the text of conversations scrolled on a screen. Her first call had reported the stolen car, and she sounded annoyed at her daughter, who was sitting next to her in the car. The second call was from her house. She was quite upset, and mentioned that her granddaughter was missing. In the third call she was frantic, saying Caylee had been kidnapped by the babysitter.
By the time the third 911 call was played, Cindy was a mess. Looking down at her hands through her tears, she related the first time she had heard that Caylee was missing. With her head nodded down toward her chest and her face red from sobbing, she put one hand over her eyes and her mouth, her entire face, really and hung her head completely below the bar of the witness stand. She looked like she was trying to hide from her own words.
The taped conversation reached the point where Casey took the phone from her mother to tell the 911 operator what was going on with Caylee. Anyone who knows the tapes knows how calm Casey is when she tells the operator that Caylee has been missing for thirty-one days, but she’s been looking for her herself. Meanwhile, in the courtroom, Casey’s calm voice on the tape, juxtaposed against the sight of her mother sobbing and doubled over in emotional pain on the witness stand, was wrenching indeed. When the tapes were finally over, Cindy popped her head back up and sat up straight, trying to regain her composure as Judge Perry called a quick recess.
I thought Cindy’s reaction to the tapes was telling. She was so willing to go after Casey when she had thought her daughter was withholding Caylee from her. When it turned out Casey was keeping Caylee away from everybody, she was not quite as overcharged and frantic.
Next Linda played back the jailhouse calls between Casey and her parents and friends when she had first been arrested for child neglect and lying to the police, right after the lies had unraveled. To me, these conversations show the true, unvarnished Casey,