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

Hopkins. But more to the point, she seemed to have an excuse for everything.
    Melich turned the conversation back to the nanny. Casey said that Zanny had only lived in the Sawgrass complex for four months, but she described in detail going to get Caylee on the day she went missing:
    “I got off of work, left Universal, driving back to pick up Caylee like a normal day. And I show up to the apartment, knock on the door. Nobody answers. So, I called Zenaida’s cell phone and it’s out of service. Says that the phone is no longer in service. Excuse me! So, I sit down on the steps and wait for a little bit to see if maybe it was just a fluke, if something happened. And time passed. I didn’t hear from anyone. No one showed up to the house so I went over to Jay Blanchard Park and checked a couple other places where maybe possibly they would’ve gone. A couple stores, just regular places that I know Zenaida shops at and she’s taken Caylee before. And after about seven o’clock when I still hadn’t heard anything I was getting pretty upset, pretty frantic.”
    Casey said she opted to stay with her boyfriend, Anthony Lazzaro, rather than in her own house. “I went to a neutral place. I didn’t really want to come home; I wasn’t sure what I’d say about not knowing where Caylee was. Still hoping that I would get a call or, you know, find out that Caylee was coming back so that I could go get her. And I ended up going to my boyfriend Anthony’s house, who lives in Sutton Place.”
    “Did you talk to Anthony about what happened with Caylee?” Melich asked.
    “No, I did not,” Casey responded.
    “Had Anthony ever seen Caylee before?”
    “Yes, he has,” she announced, with no further explanation. She claimed that that night she went to the Fusian Ultra Lounge and other bars—places Zanny was known to frequent.
    Melich was puzzled about why Casey’s mother, Cindy, and not Casey had made the 911 call and why it had taken so long for that to happen. “I was naive enough to believe that I could find Caylee myself, which obviously I couldn’t,” Casey told him. “And I was scared that something would happen to her if I did notify the authorities or got the media involved. Or my parents, which I know would have done the same thing. Just the fear of the unknown, fear of the potential for Caylee getting hurt, of not seeing my daughter again.”
    According to Casey, she had confided in two people about Caylee’s disappearance in the weeks following the event. The two people were Jeff Hopkins and Juliette Lewis. She said that Juliette was a coworker at Universal Studios, but then quickly backpedaled, explaining that the woman was actually a former coworker who had moved away some months earlier. Like Jeff’s phone number, Juliette’s contact information had also been lost with her phone.
    “Is there anything about your story that isn’t true?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Did you harm Caylee in any way, or did you leave her somewhere?”
    Casey was unequivocal in her reply. “No, sir.”
    “You’re telling me that Zenaida took your child without your permission?”
    “She’s the last person that I’ve seen with my daughter,” Casey said, without answering the yes or no question.
    They were beginning to wind down, and Melich ran down some final questions. He asked Casey about her employment. She said she’d worked at Universal Studios for about four years and added that Zanny had worked there part-time also, as a seasonal employee. Melich then asked Casey if she had any problems with drugs, or if Caylee took any kind of medication. Casey answered both questions in the negative.
    D AWN WAS JUST BREAKING AS Melich and Casey set off on an investigative tour of the three last known residences of Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez. Casey was going to show the detective Zanny’s former and most recent apartments, as well as the house of Zanny’s mother, where she said the nanny had lived before Sawgrass.
    Melich had instructed