Mommy's Little Girl (33 page)

“Wait right here,” Cindy said. Fifteen minutes later, she returned. “You're going to get a phone call soon.”

Jim's cell rang. It was a private investigator by the name of Dominic Casey. “I checked you out and verified that you are who you say you are. Thanks for offering to help them. Since I've started working this case, I kind of became a pariah. Nobody wants to work with me. So I appreciate any help you can give me.”

Dominic Casey of D & A Investigations worked both for José Baez and the Anthony family for a time—then, only for Cindy and George. He claimed that Baez did not pay him as promised.

No high-profile case would be complete, of course, without a psychic on hand. Gale St. John traveled from Toledo, Ohio, to Orlando to provide her insight. But Gale relied on more than just psychic ability. She also traveled with a cadaver dog team. She was not working with the police or with the family, but she claimed to have visions of Caylee's location. She told Nancy Grace, “We have seen a wooded area. This is pretty much agreed upon with the entire time. . . . We've seen . . . a particular-looking building.” Following the clues from their visions, the canine teams searched for nine hours, covering an area near Hidden Oaks Elementary School and another on Lee Vista Boulevard. In three months, another psychic's involvement would become even more controversial.

Another man to step into the ring was preceded by his
stellar international reputation. Tim Miller of Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search and Recovery, out of Dickinson, Texas, was best known for his search for Natalee Holloway in Aruba. He had strong enough credentials in the search business that the government of Sri Lanka had called for his assistance in finding missing victims after the tsunami. Much of his work, however, rarely made the front page. Since its founding a decade ago, the organization has participated in more than five hundred searches.

Tim understood, first-hand, what the families of the missing experienced. In 1984, his 16-year-old daughter disappeared. For one-and-a-half years, he knew nothing of her whereabouts. Then kids on dirt bikes found a body. Near their discovery, authorities located the skeletal remains of two other girls. One of them was Laura.

It was the 1997 disappearance of Laura Smither in a nearby town that led Tim to become involved in the search business. He first volunteered for the Laura Recovery Center, founded by Smither's family. The director of that organization encouraged him to combine his love for horses with his passion for the missing, and Texas EquuSearch was born.

Bounty Hunter Leonard Padilla rode into town, wearing a black cowboy hat and chomping on a toothpick. He worked for his family's business, Tony Padilla Bail Bonds in Sacramento, a company with three decades of experience. He believed Casey Anthony was being railroaded and he was determined to get her out of jail. He appeared on the
Nancy Grace
show on August 15 to explain his presence in Orlando.

“The original contact came from a friend of mine in New York, who suggested that there was something that could be done here. And, I—myself and my family—have gotten involved in high-profile cases in the past, and sometimes it required bailing a person out of jail so they could talk to somebody other than law enforcement.

“Obviously, in this particular situation, he put me in contact with the attorney . . . I said to my nephew, ‘Look,
if we get her out of jail, she's liable to be more pliable as far as talking to somebody. She's sat in there for thirty days. It hasn't done law enforcement any good. Let's take a run at it.'

“I'm looking at it like this: I don't think the three-year-old is dead. I think she's alive. I think Casey just handed her off to a baby-sitter. These young ladies, when they're sometimes on drugs and things of that nature, they don't remember from one day to the next what they've done, and I believe that's what's taken place here.”

This wasn't Padilla's first quixotic mission. He'd run for mayor several times, most recently losing in a primary in June 2008. He'd run for Sacramento County supervisor and the United States Congress, and aspired to be the replacement for the recalled Governor Gray Davis. He'd never had luck in elections.

But he did succeed in getting Casey out on bond on August 21. In an interview with ABC the next day, he said, “There's a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar reward out there right now. And for the next week, if somebody brings her back and deposits her anywhere, in a drugstore or in a hospital, they can claim the reward. They can simply state that they were baby-sitting her for the mother and there will be no law enforcement involvement. I'm not a cop. I'm not out to make a case against them. They have a week in which to bring the baby to a drugstore or a hospital or any place that's open, and then they can claim the reward.”

And then there was Biteboy, a pop music boy-band drawn to controversy. The group had made headlines in June of 2006 in Topeka when they staged a concert to protest Westboro Baptist Church. Run by Fred Phelps, the church sponsored anti-homosexual demonstrations, but moved on to stage demonstrations at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. It was the latter that caught the interest of Orlando-based Biteboy.

The band was another discovery of music impresario Lou Parlman, best known for introducing teen heartthrobs
the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync to the world. He now managed Biteboy from his federal prison cell, fifty miles outside of Atlanta, where he sat after conviction in a $300 million Ponzi scheme—at the time, the largest one ever.

Biteboy loaded up their instruments and arrived at 4937 Hopespring Drive on August 24 on the back of a flatbed U-Haul trailer. They came to a near-stop and launched into their Casey Anthony song, “Wine Sick Mind.” Before they could run through all the lyrics, Leonard Padilla strode out of his RV command center and approached Richard Namey, the man driving the Chevy Blazer that towed the flatbed. According to Richard, when he rolled down the window, Leonard slammed both hands down on the door frame, making it impossible to roll the window back up. “I'm gonna have you arrested,” he threatened. “You are interfering with an active murder investigation.”

“You have no such authority,” Richard said.

“I'll kick your ass,” Leonard snapped.

Richard kept his vehicle rolling slowly forward and Leonard approached the band swinging his fist at Ricky Namey—Richard's son—on the flatbed. His target moved in time to dodge the impact, and Leonard connected with the microphone. The stand fell over, cutting Ricky's hand. As they pulled away, the band left behind a CD of their song for Casey's listening pleasure.

The next week, Ricky filed a criminal complaint against Padilla. Rob Dick, another bounty hunter working with Padilla, filed a complaint against the band. Leonard grew dismayed with Casey after sitting down with her in her home. Casey started to explain the Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez story and Leonard cut her off. “If you want to discuss something with me, tell me the truth. I don't want to hear that. That's bunk. I traveled three thousand miles and you're going to start with this?”

“Get out of my house!” Casey shrieked at him. “You're not going to talk to me like a cop. Get outta here.” Leonard left. His support for Casey was on a downhill slide.

Add to that mix the experts consulted by the defense. Henry Lee, the forensic scientist who dismayed many of his admirers with his performance on the witness stand during the Michael Peterson trial, came to Orlando to render his opinion on the evidence gathered by the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Kathy Reichs was the forensic anthropologist brought into the case. She was best known to the general public for her Temperance Brennan novels and
Bones
, the Fox television show the books spawned. Larry Koblinsky, of the Forensic Science Department at John Jay College provided advice and opinion in the areas of forensic biology, serology and DNA analysis. In addition, two world-renowned forensic pathologists involved with the defense were Cyril Wecht and Michael Baden.

Perhaps the oddest visitor to the Orlando area was Tropical Storm Fay. She was the first in history to make landfall in Florida four different times and had an impact on the search for Caylee Anthony. She went through Orlando on August 21, dumping twenty-five inches of rain. The heavy downpour flooded a wooded area behind Hidden Oaks Elementary School, near the Anthonys' home, on Suburban Drive.

 

Casey Anthony was arrested again—this time on three new charges: uttering a false instrument, fraudulent use of personal information and petty theft for stealing from Amy Huizenga. The next day, Padilla revoked her bail.

It was time for the next sideshow in the Casey Anthony drama. Deputy Anthony Rusciano, who'd had a lengthy text flirtation and a few hasty sexual encounters with Casey in the spring, sat down with Detective Yuri Melich and Sergeant John Allen. Allen asked him about his relationship with Casey. “During our initial conversation, where you indicated you'd met her only once at a party, you have since told us that wasn't true, and you lied to us because you were just afraid, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Anthony said.

“Okay, you come in here today and you told us another version of those events.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that wasn't entirely true either, right?”

“There's a little more to it, yes, sir.”

“. . . But you are in no way trying to impede our investigation?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You don't have some information about this and you're trying to misdirect us in some other direction, right?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You're just simply . . . don't want to be associated with this,” Allen pressed.

“Yes, sir.”

“. . . You didn't help in any crime.”

“No, sir.”

“You didn't help cover up a crime?”

“No, sir.”

He may have been innocent in the disappearance of Caylee Anthony, but it did not save Anthony Rusciano's job. He'd lied to fellow law enforcement officers about the breadth of his relationship with Casey. His career with the Orange County Sheriff's Office was over.

On the same day that Fay hit Orlando, Allen and Melich, along with Special Agent Scott Bolin, traveled to the home of Cindy's mother, Shirley Cuza, to question her again about the case. When they arrived, Shirley had no electricity due to the storm.

Detective Melich asked her, “How was Cindy's relationship with Caylee when Casey was around? Was there some jealousy between Cindy and Casey about Caylee, like who was the better mother, or who took better care?”

“Cindy tried not to overstep her, but she was happy, I think, when Casey was gone and she was taking care of her. I think there was. Sometimes in my heart, I says to myself . . . I don't want to think that . . . Caylee isn't alive, but I wondered if she [Casey] hated her mom more than she loved Caylee.”

A while later in the interview, Melich asked, “What do you think it's going to take for Casey to tell anyone what happened?”

“She probably needs somebody to threaten her, personally. You know, I hate to think of her being put in a jail with them women that's going to beat the hell out of her, but it might do her some good.”

“Do you think she would open up to you?”

“No. I don't think she would open up to me, because she knows I'm mad at her . . . I mean, our last words weren't loving words. I did say, I said, ‘Casey, I love you, but I don't like you.' I don't like the stuff she's doing.”

Melich also interviewed Cindy's brother Rick that day over speakerphone. Three FBI agents were present during the conversation. When Rick was asked about the relationship between Cindy and Casey, he said, “Casey
resented Cindy. She resented Cindy to the point where she could see that Caylee likes Cindy way better than she likes her. And to me, that was normal for a baby to like the grandma, because grandmas always spoil kids.”

 

Cindy received an email informing her that her brother Rick was posting on an on-line forum about the case. Cindy forwarded the message to Rick with a question:

Is this true?

Her brother wrote back:

You are alive. You never responded to any of my last emails. Yes, I was on a blog . . . Yes, I MAY talk to Greta . . . I would not tell Greta anything bad. I would tell her that you are a good person
[who]
loves your daughter very much and absolutely adored Caylee. The people of this country think you and George are wackos. They think Casey is a monster.

. . . You and George are in such denial and no one can reach you anymore. I love you and hate like hell to see you go through this. This is very hard on Mom, too. It is slowly killing her . . . Those people on that blog were ripping you guys apart. I tried to set them straight. I couldn't stand seeing you guys get bashed so bad. Some people were really nice though. They really feel for you and George and Lee. I am not trying to hurt you in any way.

Cindy lashed back at him, criticizing him for spreading lies and pleading with him not to go on Greta Van Susteren's show. Rick agreed to the latter, but objected to her characterization of what he said:

I am trying to reason with you . . . It's not you against the world. We are trying to help you. Have
you asked or received any counseling yet? I am real serious about this. Families that go through bad things need to get it . . . I used to be able to talk to you, but you are so involved in this you are lost. We are all hoping for the best. Casey has ALL the answers though.

I am here when you are ready to open up. Okay? I mean it. I am here.

She snapped back saying that the story of George pushing his father through a plate-glass window was a lie, her 401K was gone before Caylee was born and Casey did not steal a checkbook from their Mom's house—all allegations he had made in the chat room.