Imperfect Justice_ Prosecuting Casey Anthony - Jeff Ashton [92]
From the start of the deposition it was pretty clear that Cindy’s demeanor was largely the same as it had been over the previous year. She remained in denial. Although at least this time she was willing to admit some of Casey’s shortcomings—lying, stealing, and so forth—she still could not confront the reality of Casey’s behavior. She stuck with her story that Casey was a good mom and they were the best of friends, even telling us how, the night before Caylee went missing, the three of them curled up on the sofa together to watch TV.
Linda led the questioning. She began by asking Cindy about her well-being, and Cindy responded that she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a year, since Caylee went missing. She had slept four hours the night before, so that was good, she said. Cindy then gave us her biography. She was fifty-one, born and raised in Warren, Ohio, not far from the Pennsylvania border. She had three older brothers: Dan, Gary, and Rick. She was the only girl and the baby of the family. She went to three years of nursing school, graduating as an RN. She first specialized in pediatrics, and later orthopedics. She met George when he came to visit his sister at Trumbull Memorial Hospital, where his sister was one of her patients.
The two were married in a church wedding in Niles, Ohio, in 1981. The marriage was Cindy’s first, George’s second. George was seven years older than she. He was a detective with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office, working in the homicide division. He eventually reached the rank of deputy sheriff. After thirteen years of service, he left the force at Cindy’s urging. He was getting hurt a lot, and friends of his had even been killed. The job was dangerous: “car accidents, and people throwing bricks through windows, and things like that,” she said.
George briefly joined his father in the family car business, Anthony’s Auto Sales, before he became a proprietor of his own dealership. In 1989 the family relocated to Orlando. George’s business was dissolving, and Cindy used the chance to be near her parents, who had recently moved to Mount Dora, Florida. Lee was seven and Casey was three. She chose Orlando because she thought it would have lots of job opportunities for both of them. Her job at Gentiva Heath Services, where she still worked, began in 2002. She managed a caseload of 120 patients.
Linda brought the questioning back to Casey, Caylee, and the recent past. We noticed that Cindy told the truth about all the important stuff that connected Caylee’s body to the house. In fact, she went on to tell us that the duct tape from the house, which matched the tape on the body, had been used at a command post that was established to coordinate getting the word out about Caylee during the days and weeks after they discovered she was missing. This tip about the duct tape would later lead us to a TV news video that showed the same unique Henkel logo on duct tape that had been used to post a “missing child” flyer of Caylee. The ironies in the case never cease to amaze me.
Cindy’s helpfulness in the deposition didn’t last long, though, once we got to the search for chloroform on the home computer.
“All right. There is a search for how to make chloroform on your desktop computer,” said Linda. “Did you make that search?”
“I’m not sure,” Cindy replied.
“Why not?”
“Because I remember looking up chlorophyll back in March of last year, and I am not sure if I looked up chloroform as well. I looked up alcohol and several other things like ethyl alcohol and peroxide, too.”
“Why?” Linda asked.
“I was researching things that—as far as the chlorophyll—and possibly chloroform—because of my animals. Because my cocker—or my