Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [69]
So turning to Baez, Judge Strickland said, “Call your first witness.” He stammered and looked surprised, seeming to be caught off guard. He tried to delay by claiming that he hadn’t expected to have to present a witness. Luckily for him, Linda had brought the witnesses in for him (she is so helpful, isn’t she?), and when he put the witnesses on they testified that the evidence he claimed was withheld was in fact at an out-of-state laboratory being tested. The whole motion fell flat on its face.
The first trial date was set for January 5, 2009, which was within the six-month window. On December 11, 2008, the pretrial hearing was under way in front of Judge Stan Strickland when Baez came before the judge and asked for a continuance in the case, thereby waiving Casey’s right to a speedy trial and giving everybody more time to prepare their cases.
For us it was a gift, but not a surprise. In this instance, Baez did the smart thing. When your client’s life is in your hands, it’s no time to play chicken. He needed time to depose all the witnesses and inspect all the evidence. Up to this point he had done very little of either. Any conviction we might get would be far more secure if he left no stone unturned. We could have gotten the state’s case ready to present in time for January, but this extra time would give us opportunities to pursue things in a different way and go at a pace that would be much more conducive to presenting a thorough case. As it turned out, we’d need every second of the extra time.
At that very moment, Roy Kronk, the Orange County meter reader who’d called the police over the summer about a suspicious bag in a swamp, was revisiting that same swamp on Suburban Drive. He noted that the gray laundry bag he’d phoned in to 911 back in August was still there. Now he had no doubt that the white object he had seen next to the bag was a skull. While Judge Strickland was granting Baez’s motion for a continuance, Roy Kronk was calling his boss at the utility company, leading to the fourth call alerting the police to something important on Suburban Drive.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FINDING CAYLEE
I was sick and had stayed home from work on a very gray, rainy December 11 when my neighbor Dawn Feeser called to alert me to the latest “breaking news” in the Anthony case. I assumed it was another of the false alarms I’d heard so often, but I turned on the news anyway. I was in disbelief. At 9:38 that morning, the skeletal remains of a child had been found in a swamp just off Suburban Drive near the Anthony home. Someone had called 911 about a suspicious bag and something that might have been a skull in that area. The CSI team had already confirmed that it was a skull—a child’s skull.
I immediately dialed Linda to see what she knew. She had spoken to Melich, who confirmed that a body had been found. Melich told Linda that upon being notified of the find, he had requested CSI Gerardo Bloise to proceed to the scene and verify it. Bloise was there when Yuri arrived, as were the medical examiner’s investigator, the crime scene photographer, and another detective. By that point, they’d taped off the scene and Suburban Drive had been closed, though it wasn’t a much-traveled road to begin with, being frequented only by people going to the elementary school just down the dead-end road.
Beyond that, there was not much more known, but Melich was on the scene and promised to keep us posted. As the morning wore on, the details started coming in. There wasn’t much for me to do yet, even if I had been at the office, so I waited by the phone