Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [6]
In the end, my arrival on the case turned out to be easier than Linda or I had anticipated. Lawson was very proud of my reputation in the DNA evidence field. He also had great respect for me as a trial attorney, as my prosecution record spoke for itself, one of the best in the state of Florida. A few days later, Linda came to my office.
“I’ve talked to Lawson,” she said. “He wants you to be involved in the case, and so do I.”
She handed me the telephone number of Dr. Arpad Vass, the forensic anthropologist, and within an hour I was phoning the distinguished scholar in Tennessee to talk odor and decomposition.
CHAPTER TWO
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
Once on the team, I got myself up to speed by unearthing the specifics of the case to date. The whole thing had been put into motion by a 911 call that was made on July 15, 2008, by Casey’s mother, Cynthia (“Cindy”) Anthony. She had made the call to the Orlando police department from her car, saying that she wanted to have her daughter, Casey, who was beside her in the passenger seat, arrested for stealing her 1998 Pontiac Sunfire and withdrawing money from her bank account without authorization.
Because these thefts were all in the family and Cindy already had her car back, the 911 call had the trappings of a family fight taken too far. I dug around to determine exactly when Casey had taken her mom’s car without permission and learned that Casey and her daughter, Caylee, had pulled away from the Anthony house in the white two-door Pontiac on June 16, a month before the 911 call. At the time, Casey had informed her parents that she and Caylee would be spending the night at the home of Caylee’s nanny and that they would be returning in a day or two. During the ensuing thirty-one days, Casey’s phone calls provided various excuses why she and Caylee could not return home, including a twelve-day stay in Jacksonville, Florida, with a male friend, but not to worry, she and Caylee were doing fine.
On July 13, however, Cindy’s husband, George, had found a notice stuck on their front door stating that a certified letter was waiting at the post office. The Anthonys rarely used that door, so the notice had been there for days without anyone seeing it. When they went to retrieve the letter, the contents informed them that their Pontiac Sunfire had been towed to Johnson’s Wrecker Service off Narcoossee Road. The car had been found abandoned in the parking lot of a business located at the intersection of East Colonial Drive and Goldenrod Road. It had been in the impound lot since June 30.
Cindy and George drove to the towing yard to retrieve their Pontiac. By this point, Cindy was frantic. She had been under the impression that Casey and Caylee were in Jacksonville, yet the car was in Orlando. In the fine print, I read that she snapped at the tow yard supervisor, and George had to instruct her to wait in his car while he claimed their vehicle. As he approached the Pontiac, he became aware of an unmistakable smell emanating from the trunk. Having worked as a law enforcement officer, George thought he recognized the odor as that of a decomposing body.
By his own admission, he whispered, “Please God, don’t let this be Casey or Caylee,” as he raised the trunk. Relieved to find only a bag of trash, along with some flies and maggots, he watched the tow yard manager toss the bag into a nearby Dumpster. He drove the Pontiac home, while Cindy returned in the other family car. The smell was so strong and unpleasant that he had to open all the windows and the skylight to get the car the seven miles to their house.
Once George had the car back at the residence, Cindy inspected it and found a piece of paper in a bag on the front seat with the cell phone number of Casey’s friend Amy Huizenga. Cindy dialed Amy and reached her at the Florida Mall, Central Florida’s largest mall, with more than 260 stores. Amy told her that Casey had been staying at the home of her boyfriend, Anthony, who went by the name Tony Lazzaro, a guy Casey