Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [41]
Casey’s call to Cindy that night contained bad news: on the way back from Tampa, she had been in a car accident. Zanny was hurt and had been taken to the hospital. She, Caylee, Juliette, and Annabelle would stay in Tampa so Casey could tend to Zanny in the hospital.
In reality, a week had passed since anyone had laid eyes on little Caylee Marie Anthony.
ON THE MORNING OF TUESDAY, June 24, George Anthony had been planning to mow his lawn when he discovered the broken lock on his shed and two missing gas cans. Casey had stolen his gas cans before, and though he suspected her in this instance as well, he called the police because he didn’t know for sure. He reported two stolen gas cans holding fifty dollars’ worth of gas, and fifty dollars in damages from the broken lock.
That afternoon, Casey returned to the house to find George still at home. It was the first time either of her parents had seen her in more than a week, and her reaction made it look as though she had not been expecting him to be there. According to George, his daughter rushed past him to her bedroom, claiming that she needed to retrieve some insurance papers because of the accident.
As I was reading this account from George to the police, I was amazed how effortlessly Casey was able to adjust her lie to accommodate the situation. In an instant, she had built on her original lie in a way that was both plausible and fitting. Her mental agility was incredibly impressive. Nevertheless, George’s suspicions were far from allayed.
Still suspecting that Casey had stolen the gas cans, George pretended to need something from the trunk of the Pontiac. As he was heading for the car, Casey beat him to it, grabbed the two containers from the trunk, shouted, “Here are your fucking gas cans!” shoved them at his chest, and drove off. Because of the way she was standing, he didn’t get a good look inside the Pontiac’s trunk, and at that point had no reason to try.
Records showed that not twenty minutes had gone by when Casey started calling her mother. She called five times with medical updates on Zanny, telling Cindy that there were complications with Zanny’s injuries and the nanny would have to stay in the hospital for a few more days. She also told her mother about going home to get the insurance papers, making sure to repeat the story she had told her father.
The deceptions seemed to move fluidly from one day to the next, evolving and compounding each other. On Wednesday, June 25, Casey called Amy. During the conversation, she mentioned a smell in her car, which she said was the result of her running over a squirrel. Casey again spent the day at Tony’s, but told Cindy in her nightly contact that they were still in Tampa. The next day, Casey told her mother that Zanny had been released from the hospital, but it was so late that they would spend one more night in the Tampa area. In reality, she was again at Tony’s.
Phone records from the following day, Friday, June 27, indicated that Casey traveled from Tony’s apartment to the vicinity of the Anthony house. At 11:30 A.M., she texted Amy about the smell in her car, saying that a dead animal was “plastered to the frame.” Seventeen minutes later, she called Tony to pick her up at the Amscot check cashing store at the intersection of East Colonial and Goldenrod in Orlando, because she had run out of gas again. When Tony got there, he offered to put gas in the car, but Casey said her father would take care of it. Even though two gas stations were immediately adjacent to the Amscot store, they left the Pontiac in the parking lot next to a Dumpster and went back to Tony’s. As it was a Friday night, they again spent the evening partying at Fusian.
That weekend, Casey’s nightly calls to Cindy took her lies