• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 660 0

in a strikingly new direction. Knowing that she had reached the end of the story with Zanny, her story now contained the deception that Casey was back in town but wouldn’t be home because she was staying at Universal’s Hard Rock Hotel with a friend. The version she gave her mom was that her friend, Jeff Hopkins from Jacksonville, was visiting. He had a son, Zack, the same age as Caylee, and he had invited Casey and Caylee to stay with them at the hotel. In Casey’s telling, Jeff was wealthy and had a trust fund. Furthermore, he was a single dad, his wife having passed away, and he was interested in her. This story resonated in part because Cindy had heard the name Jeff Hopkins before. A year or so earlier, Casey had told Cindy that Jeff was the person who had introduced her to Zanny. Building on that older lie had made Jeff seem like a recurring, and therefore more plausible, character.

Yet for all that her mother seemed to be taking Casey at her word, some of the lies were beginning to crumble. By Sunday, the Pontiac had been at the Amscot parking lot for two days. Casey had told Tony that her father was going to pick it up, so Tony didn’t think too much about it. In the meantime, however, the owner of the lot had taken note of the abandoned vehicle. The next day the car was towed, putting into motion the events that would lead to Cindy’s 911 phone call.

Of all the lies that Casey had been telling, I found myself most drawn to her decision to abandon the car. If ever something was bound to reveal her bizarre behavior, it was the car. Nothing seemed to add up about it. This move demonstrated such an apparent lack of planning, such an absence of consideration for the consequences, that it seemed like a spur-of-the-moment decision. Was that the case with all these lies? Was she really just making them up as she went along, elaborating on older lies and dusting them off to suit her ends? Did she have a long-term strategy? Abandoning the car at the Amscot lot was playing with fire. And yet she had enough forethought to park the car next to a Dumpster, an act that could have been designed to hide the odor that George Anthony would discover a few days later. One possibility was that she was hoping to leave it there to air out without drawing attention. That way she could return to it in the future, gas it up, and drive away. Hopefully by then the smell would be gone. The fact that George missed the notice of a certified letter on his door certainly was a lucky break for Casey, since her next big lie a few days later—that she and Caylee were headed for Jacksonville—depended on her car not being discovered in Orlando.

The day the Pontiac was being towed from the parking lot, Monday, June 30, was a busy one for Casey. She went shopping with Amy, then drove Tony to the airport in his Jeep for a flight he was taking home to New York. She was supposed to return the vehicle to his apartment, but she continued to use it while he was gone. With Tony away, she started staying with Amy and Amy’s roommate, Ricardo Morales, who was an old boyfriend of Casey’s. As Casey transitioned from Tony’s place to Amy’s, her lies transitioned as well. Cindy was informed that Jeff Hopkins wanted Casey and the gang to stay at the hotel until July 3. No one had seen Caylee for two weeks.

Shortly thereafter, Casey stopped calling her mother nightly, which in turn only frustrated Cindy more. For weeks, Cindy had been planning on taking a vacation around the Fourth of July holiday and hoping to spend time with Caylee. As Cindy’s vacation began, Caylee was nowhere to be found. Though Cindy was desperately trying to reach her daughter, Casey continually ignored her calls. When Casey finally replied to a text from her mother, she said that Caylee was at Universal Studios with Jennifer Rosa, Zanny’s roommate.

On Wednesday, July 2, Casey made an appointment to get a tattoo the next day. She ate lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, shopped, and went out clubbing in the evening. She decided to spend the night at Amy and Ricardo’s. When Amy asked where Caylee was, Casey