Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [15]
“Did you talk to Anthony about what happened with Caylee?” Melich asked.
“No, I did not,” Casey responded.
“Had Anthony ever seen Caylee before?”
“Yes, he has,” she announced, with no further explanation. She claimed that that night she went to the Fusian Ultra Lounge and other bars—places Zanny was known to frequent.
Melich was puzzled about why Casey’s mother, Cindy, and not Casey had made the 911 call and why it had taken so long for that to happen. “I was naive enough to believe that I could find Caylee myself, which obviously I couldn’t,” Casey told him. “And I was scared that something would happen to her if I did notify the authorities or got the media involved. Or my parents, which I know would have done the same thing. Just the fear of the unknown, fear of the potential for Caylee getting hurt, of not seeing my daughter again.”
According to Casey, she had confided in two people about Caylee’s disappearance in the weeks following the event. The two people were Jeff Hopkins and Juliette Lewis. She said that Juliette was a coworker at Universal Studios, but then quickly backpedaled, explaining that the woman was actually a former coworker who had moved away some months earlier. Like Jeff’s phone number, Juliette’s contact information had also been lost with her phone.
“Is there anything about your story that isn’t true?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you harm Caylee in any way, or did you leave her somewhere?”
Casey was unequivocal in her reply. “No, sir.”
“You’re telling me that Zenaida took your child without your permission?”
“She’s the last person that I’ve seen with my daughter,” Casey said, without answering the yes or no question.
They were beginning to wind down, and Melich ran down some final questions. He asked Casey about her employment. She said she’d worked at Universal Studios for about four years and added that Zanny had worked there part-time also, as a seasonal employee. Melich then asked Casey if she had any problems with drugs, or if Caylee took any kind of medication. Casey answered both questions in the negative.
DAWN WAS JUST BREAKING AS Melich and Casey set off on an investigative tour of the three last known residences of Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez. Casey was going to show the detective Zanny’s former and most recent apartments, as well as the house of Zanny’s mother, where she said the nanny had lived before Sawgrass.
Melich had instructed uniformed officers to follow behind in a marked patrol car in the event they needed to enter someone’s house or apartment. Their first stop was a building on North Hillside Drive. Casey pointed to a window on the second floor of the structure, which she identified as the apartment where Zenaida had lived in the early part of 2006. She said the units were all three stories and indicated that the window directly above Zenaida’s had belonged to the babysitter’s roommate.
Moving on, Casey directed the officers to the Sawgrass apartment complex on South Conway. Casey didn’t see anyone she recognized, so they moved on to the Crossings at Conway, a townhouse community on South Conway Road near Michigan Avenue. It was there, Casey said, that Zanny’s mother, Gloria, owned a condo, and Zanny had lived with her mother there for a short time. She recalled dropping Caylee there several times between mid-2006 and early 2007.
The detective drove slowly through the streets of the complex as Casey tried to find Gloria’s unit. She pointed out three as possibilities. The uniformed officer knocked on all three doors, but none of the tenants knew Zenaida or her mother. Casey apologized for not being able to remember the correct address, saying that she had gone there so often it had been as though she was on autopilot.
Just before 6 A.M., Melich dropped Casey back