Read Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony for Free Online Page A

been impressed with his work then and had continued to hear good things since. All in all, he always struck me as the kind of officer who’s seen it all and then some—confident without being arrogant, and usually in command of the situation. In the years since I first got involved with the Anthony case, I have continued to marvel at the quirk of fate that just happened to place this experienced homicide detective on this call for a missing persons alert.
    When Melich arrived at the house at 4 A.M. , he was greeted by Sergeant Hosey, who quickly brought him up to speed. Hosey told him the story of the thirty-one days, the attempts to locate Caylee and Zenaida, and their inability to verify anything that Casey had told them. Before speaking to anyone in the house, Melich took a few moments to read the handwritten statements taken from the four family members.
    Once he’d read the statements, Melich sat down with Casey, explaining that they were going to go through her statement together, line by line, and that this process would be recorded. However, before they began, Melich made it clear that this was her chance to be forthcoming with the truth. He showed her the signed four-page document, and proceeded:
    “You’re saying that everything contained in these statements is true and accurate?” he asked her.
    “Yes,” replied Casey.
    Melich wanted to be certain that Casey knew what was going on before launching into the consequences of lying.
    “I want to explain what happens if you make a false report or if there’s something about this incident that you’re not telling us the truth about.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I want to make sure I make it perfectly clear that if you want to go ahead and rescind this statement and if you want to tell me a different story about what happened, if you’re trying to fabricate a story to kind of make something look a little bit better, now is your time to tell me. Are you telling me that this is the story you want to stick with?”
    “That’s the truth,” Casey said. “It’s the story I’m gonna stick with, yes.” It was an odd choice of words. While on the one hand she was simply parroting back Melich’s language, that wording left open the possibility that there were other versions beyond the one she was selecting. It was the story she was “sticking with,” but did that make it the truth? Either way, she’d been given the chance to correct a story that already stretched credibility, but instead she’d vigorously insisted that her statement was accurate in every way.
    For the next hour, she matter-of-factly took the detective through her version of events, repeating and in some cases elaborating on what she’d said in her initial statement to Corporal Fletcher. When Melich arrived at Zanny, he began to probe a bit deeper.
    “So you knew her before you had your child?” Melich asked.
    “Well, I met her just before. I was actually pregnant at the time,” Casey responded.
    “When did she start watching your child?”
    “It’s been within the last year and a half, two years that she started watching Caylee. I had another friend watch Caylee that I’ve known since middle school. When she went back to school I was looking for a new nanny. Jeff offered to have Zenaida watch both kids. She agreed, and it kind of went from there.”
    Detective Melich asked for Jeff’s phone number, but Casey claimed it was stored in her personal phone, which she had lost. She said she had reported the phone missing to security at Universal Studios nine days earlier. Launching into what proved to be a convoluted explanation, she said that even though she still had the phone’s SIM card, which stored her numbers, she lacked Jeff’s specific number because it had been saved on the internal memory of the phone she’d lost. It was a bizarre explanation, one that was technically problematic but also raised questions about why she appeared to be making it harder to get in touch with Jeff