Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [78]
The sheriff’s office was equally piecemeal in their efforts. They totally botched Roy Kronk’s three calls. His third call had gone so far up the tip line that it had reached Yuri Melich himself. A Detective White, who had the role of reviewing the tips as they came in and passing them along, brought the Suburban Drive tip from Kronk to Melich’s desk, but Melich told him that the searchers had already completed a sweep of that area. The sheriff’s office was relying on the expertise of Texas EquuSearch, but not actually checking up on them. We all assumed that EquuSearch’s record keeping was better than it was, but they were only volunteers doing the best they could. The case had begun as a missing child investigation, with the sheriff’s office looking for a living child. When they switched the effort from rescue to recovery, the sheriff’s office investigators worked with tips, not grid searches or sweeps. In hindsight, relying solely on a volunteer organization for field searches was probably not the best idea.
Still, a fierce debate began to rage about whether EquuSearch had in fact searched and cleared that area. The stakes were high, because the defense was trying to substantiate their claim that the body had been placed there while Casey was in jail. If, in fact, EquuSearch had swept that area and okayed it while Casey was in custody, it would lend credence to the defense. Shortly after Caylee’s remains were identified, the defense began an attempt to obtain the records of EquuSearch. By this point, Tim Miller was represented by Mark NeJame, who had previously represented the Anthonys. Initially, Baez wanted the names and personal information of every single searcher who had volunteered in this pursuit. NeJame thought that request was too broad and offered to provide the information related to the swamp area in question, which was initially agreeable to all parties.
Later on, in August of 2009, the defense would go on to boldly announce, for the benefit of the press, that they had found a hundred people who had searched that area off Suburban Drive while Casey was in jail and had not found Caylee’s remains. A week later, we called their bluff and filed a motion asking the court to require them to produce the list of witnesses. We didn’t mind if the list fell short of a hundred people; we just wanted names so that we could depose them. The court granted the motion and set a February 2010 deadline for the defense to provide it. That deadline came and went, but we didn’t start to get names until late that year.
In the months following the discovery of Caylee, the defense began to contact some of the searchers for interviews. Shortly after Caylee’s body was found, a searcher named Joe Jordan e-mailed the sheriff’s office to say that he had searched an area on Suburban Drive, and she had not been there. That e-mail was not followed up on initially, but later investigators would learn that the area Jordan referred to in his e-mail was different from the one where Caylee was found. Regardless, the defense contacted Mr. Jordan for an interview, and a date was set.
Jordan was apprehensive, however. He later told police he’d been hearing rumors from other searchers that a private investigator hired by the defense to look into the records of the searchers was pressuring people to remember things the way he wanted them to. With this in mind, when Jordan agreed to meet with the defense investigators, it was at the office of a local attorney he’d hired, Kelly Sims. This was probably a smart move on his part, but his next decision was not so smart. Without telling even his own lawyer, he brought a concealed tape recorder