Mommy's Little Girl Read online

  “Absolutely,” Casey agreed.

  “. . . how it goes? Okay. We’re about halfway down that hill, three-quarters down that hill, and it’s a pretty big snowball. Which means that there’s a lot of stuff going on right now.”

  “Uh huh,” Casey nodded.

  “And I can tell you just for certainty, everything you’ve told me has been a lie. I can tell you with certainty, and let me explain why. Since I left you this morning . . . I’ve gone to every address that you’ve told me. I looked up every name, I’ve talked to every person you wanted me to talk to, or tried to.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And found out all these names you’re giving me are people that either never worked here or been fired a long time ago. Okay? So, where we are right now is in a position that doesn’t look very good for you.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’m just being straight with you,” Melich explained.

  “Yeah.”

  “ ’Cause obviously I know and you know that everything you’ve told me is a lie, correct?”

  “Not everything that I told you,” Casey contradicted.

  “Okay. Ah, pretty much everything that you’ve told me. Including where Caylee is right now.”

  “That I still—I don’t know where she is.”

  “Sure you do. And here’s . . .”

  Casey interrupted. “I absolutely do not . . . know where she is.”

  “Let me explain something,” Melich continued. “Together, with combined experience in this room, we all have about thirty years of doing this.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Okay. Both myself and John Allen worked for Homicide Division for several years. We’ve dealt with several people; we’ve conducted thousands of interviews between the three of us . . . And I can tell you for certainty that right now, looking at you, everything that you’ve told me is a lie. Including the fact that you know your child was last seen about a month ago. And that you don’t know where she is. Yeah, I’m very confident, just by having talked to you the short period of time, that you know where she is.”

  “I don’t,” Casey objected.

  “You do. And here’s the thing, we need to get past that, because we could sit here and go back and forth all day long about ‘I don’t,’ ‘You do,’ ‘I don’t,’ ‘You do.’ It’s pretty obvious that with everything that you’ve told us, nothing has been true. You know where she is. Now my question to you is this: We need to find Caylee. I understand that right now, Caylee may not be in very good shape. You understand what I am saying?”

  Casey’s silence was, in itself, an acknowledgment.

  “She may not be the way . . . your family remembers her. We need to find out from you where Caylee is . . . This has gone so far downhill and this has become such a mess.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “We need to end it. It’s very simple. We just need to end it,” Melich urged.

  “I agree with you,” Casey said calmly. “I have no clue where she is.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “If I knew, in any sense, where she was, this wouldn’t have happened at all.”

  “This stuff about Zenaida, the caretaker, or the nanny, taking care of . . .”

  Casey interrupted again. “It’s the truth.”

  “It’s not the truth. Because we went to the apartment complex. There’s no person that ever lived there by that name. The apartment’s been vacant since March. That same apartment. Now the apartment that you pointed out to me—the two-story apartment? That’s an old folks’ home. It’s right across the street from your ex-boyfriend’s house, who you never mentioned. And you said you wrote the address down because it was across the street. That’s a lie, because I’ve already talked to him and we’ve already been by the house and we’ve already, you know, looked at everything we need to look at over there.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Everything you told us is a lie. Well, now, there’s a couple of ways that this goes . . . I’ve never met you before, so I can look at you in a couple of ways . . . I can look at you as a person, who’s scared—who’s concerned and who’s kind of afraid what’s gonna happen, because of something bad that happened before. Or we can look at you as cold, callous and a monster, who doesn’t care—who’s just trying to get away with something . . . bad that happened, and trying to cover it up.”

  “Uh huh,” Casey said with chilling nonchalance.

  “It’s going to be one of those two options . . . Now what we would have to do is, we have to determine which way this is gonna go. Are you . . . a person who’s scared about the consequences of what happened? Or are you scared about something that happened? Or are you . . . really this cold, callous person, who doesn’t care about what happened? It’s one of these two options.”

  “I’m scared that I don’t know where my daughter is . . . I would not have put my entire family . . .”

  Sergeant John Allen stepped into the conversation. “Hold on. I want to ask you something.”

  “Yes, sir?” Casey said.

  “. . . You’re here willingly, right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You’re here ’cause . . . you’re trying to help, right?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “Nobody’s forced you to talk to us, right?”

  “No,” Casey shook her head.

  “. . . Now, let me ask you,” John Allen continued. “I want you to put yourself in . . . my shoes for a minute, okay? . . . In an attempt to try and help find your daughter, you’ve given him bad addresses, okay?” he said pointing at Yuri Melich.

  “Uh huh,” Casey acknowledged.

  “You drove me all the way out here. We walked from the gate back here all the way to your office, right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Okay. To . . . an office that you don’t have. We got all the way to the building into the hallway out here before you finally say, ‘Well, I really don’t have an office here.’ But . . . we were walking to your office, right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Okay, so, I mean, does any of this make sense to you?”

  “I understand how all that sounds. I . . .”

  “No. No. No. No. No . . . Here’s the problem with that, okay? You can carry the weight of this room for a long time, it’s not gonna get any easier, okay? . . . I’ve learned this: People make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. All—The three of us have all made some . . . mistakes in our lives—we’ve done some things we’re not proud of, okay? But then there comes a point in time you either own up to it, you say you’re sorry, you try to get past it—or you lie about it, you bury it . . . and it just never, ever, ever, ever, ever goes away.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Okay. That’s it, okay? Now you know I want you to stop and think about what’s going on here, okay?”

  John Allen waited for a response, but Casey did not oblige.

  “At this point, we can explain that you’re afraid,” Allen continued. “You know that you were ashamed of maybe something bad that happened . . . We’re giving you this opportunity, yet you continue to lie and you continue to lie. Then what happens, at some point, it becomes there’s no excuse—there’s no reason . . . A reasonable person can look at this and go, ‘Wow, this is a person who really just doesn’t care,’ okay? . . . You called because you want our help. You want us to find your daughter, okay? ‘I am calling you and I’m asking for you to help. I’m asking you to help me find my child.’ ”

  “Uh huh.”

  “That’s been going on for a month, okay? ‘And to help you help me find the child, what I’ve done to this point is, I’ve given you a bunch of bad addresses to go look at—addresses and people that don’t exist.’ Okay? ‘Then, I take you to a place where I tell you that I work.’ Okay? ‘And I walk past the security gate.’ Okay? ‘All the way to an office that I don’t have.’ ”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Okay. You sort of get the picture?”

  Again, Casey did n
ot respond.

  “. . . Do you understand where we’re headed here?”

  “I understand,” Casey said.

  “. . . By burying this . . . you are not going to get yourself to a better place, okay? What you are going to do, you’re going to cause everybody else around you to suffer, okay? And at some point, this is going to come out. It always does.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “It always comes out, okay? Now your best bet is to try to put this behind you as quickly as you can. Go to your parents and tell ’em, you know, some horrible accident—whatever happened—happened. Get it out in the open now, okay? Instead of letting them worry and worry and worry and worry, okay? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “At some point . . . you’re going to want to mend things with your family . . . You let this drag out . . . You make us solve this some other way. We’ll solve it, we always do . . . There’s no point in coming forward to say, ‘Oh my God, this is what really happened,’ once we figured it out, okay?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You ever had anybody do anything wrong to you? Did anybody hurt . . .”

  “Of course,” Casey snapped.

  “. . . When somebody’s hurt you in the past, and they’ve come to you and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ okay? ‘I really am, from the bottom of my heart, sorry for what happened.’ Do you forgive ’em?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about somebody that does something to you and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. You forgive them?”

  “It’s a lot harder to sometimes.”

  “A lot harder to,” John Allen nodded in agreement. “Tell me the last time somebody hurt you over and over and then let you suffer for a period of time. And then lied about it when you caught ’em . . . When you caught ’em, that apology didn’t mean a hell of a lot, did it?”

  “No.”

  “. . . Right now, your best bet is to just get it out in the open, whatever happened, and tell us now, okay? So . . . we can kind of start getting past this . . . There’s nothing you’re gonna tell any of the three of us that’s gonna surprise us, okay?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’ve had to sit down with . . . mothers who rolled over their babies accidentally. I’ve had to sit down with mothers whose kids drowned in swimming pools. I’ve had to sit down with mothers who had boyfriends who beat their kids to death—who felt horrible about what happened. And then . . . I had to . . . help them explain to their families, okay? And, then, I’ve also had to deal with people who have done horrible, unspeakable things to children. And then lied about it and lied about it and lied about it, okay? And I’ll bet you somewhere near, I probably dealt with somebody who, maybe, made a mistake, but continued to lie about it. Maybe they weren’t such a bad person. But maybe the whole world didn’t see it that way. Maybe their family didn’t see it that way ’cause they kept lying, lying, lying and lying about it. . . . Look at this from an outsider’s perspective . . . What would you do? How would you see that person? How would you see that person different? You might see somebody, maybe a young mother who made a mistake and, you know, maybe, initially, was afraid to tell the truth. But at some point, she came forward and said, ‘A horrible thing happened. I’m sorry, I feel terrible about it, but I have to tell you.’ ”

  After all that talk, Casey still did not give an inch. “The horrible thing that happened is—this is the honest to God’s truth—of everything that I’ve said, I do not know where she is. The last person that I saw her with is Zenaida. She’s the last person that I seen my daughter with.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Yuri Melich grasped the reins of the interview again. “We know that’s not the truth.”

  “Absolutely is,” Casey insisted.

  “Listen. We know that’s not true—that can’t be the truth. Because if it were the truth, everything you told us would’ve been on the money. Everything else would have matched. If you had told us the truth, we wouldn’t be here at Universal Studios at a place that you’ve been fired since 2006. With you trying to explain to us, you know, you got an office and all that stuff.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “We wouldn’t be here. So, we know—and this is the part we need to get past—we already know that you’re not telling us the truth. That you know what happened to Caylee and you know where Caylee is.”

  “No.”

  Melich kept at her for a while longer, and then Allen stepped back into the fray. “I want to go through this, and I want you to stop me at the part that isn’t the truth, okay?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You take your daughter and you drop her off on June the ninth . . .”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Okay. At . . . the baby-sitter’s . . . apartment, okay? That’s been vacant . . .”

  Casey interrupted. “I dropped her off at that apartment.”

  “Okay.”

  “At those stairs.”

  “Oh, you just walked her—You dropped her off . . .”

  “Walked her to the stairs. That’s where I’ve dropped her off a bunch of other times . . .”

  “Okay. And when you dropped her off, who took her at that point?”

  “Zanny did. She took her at that point.”

  “You left her in Zanny’s care?”

  “Yes.”

  “On June the ninth? Okay? So far that’s right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. You first called the police about this when your mother and father—Ah, you actually, you don’t call the police to report your daughter missing. What happens is your parents find their car has been towed . . . from Amscot, and your parents ask you where your daughter is. And you tell . . . your parents that you haven’t seen your daughter for over a month, right?”

  Allen waited, but Casey made no comment. Then he continued, “So far, I haven’t said anything that’s not true, okay?”

  “That’s all true.”

  “Okay. . . . When your parents involve the police in an attempt to locate your child because they’re worried . . . the first thing you do . . . is . . . lie to the detective whose job it is to try to find your daughter and get her back into safe hands, okay? You give him all kinds of bad addresses to look at, right?”

  Again, Casey sits mute.

  “So far, I’m on track, right?”

  “Uh huh,” Casey conceded.

  “Okay. Then you bring us out to Universal, where you say you work in an office . . . to try to help find stuff that will help us find your daughter. I’m on track so far, okay?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And we get here. We walk all the way down the hall to . . . where you tell us you don’t really work here. You don’t have an office here . . . So far, everything I’ve said is true, correct?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “. . . I’m telling you this story. I’m saying to you: ‘Listen. I drop my child off five weeks ago at the baby-sitter’s house. And she’s just disappeared . . . Now I didn’t call the police and tell them. Matter of fact, I made some attempts to locate her on my own. But I didn’t really get the police involved or anything like that.’ Okay? ‘And, oh by the way, I got my mom and dad’s car towed, and when my parents asked me what happened to my daughter, I told ’em I hadn’t seen her in five weeks. So, they call the police.’ Okay? ‘Now, what I did is, I lied to the police when they got there . . . I told them a whole bunch of crap that isn’t true . . . I did all this to try and help find my daughter.’ Makes sense to you, right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Incredulous, Allen asked again, “That makes sense to you?”

  Casey said nothing.

  Allen continued to push. “It makes sense to you, that ‘I’m trying to help the police find my daughter by giving ’em a bunch of bad addresses’? That makes sense to you?”

  “That’s what I said, yes.”

  “No, I’m asking you, that makes sense to you?”

  “That part of it, no, not at all,” Casey finally admit
ted.

  “. . . We’re here ’cause you brought us here. Right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Now, I want you to tell me how that’s helping us find your daughter.”

  “It’s not.”

  “But everything we’re doing is to find your daughter. That’s the most important thing in the world to you right now, right?”

  “Caylee’s been up here. Maybe we could talk to Security, see if she’s come through the front. I know she’s come to the park. She’s gone to Disney. She’s been at SeaWorld.”

  “Whoa! Ho—Hold on . . .”

  “She’s been to other places,” Casey continued.

  “Let’s go back to—Let’s . . .”

  “It’s . . . a backwards way of . . . looking.”

  “Why do you think it’s backwards? It’s backwards ’cause you haven’t been truthful with us, okay?”

  “ ’Cause I’ve been reaching.”

  “You’ve been reaching, huh?” Allen said with a shake of his head.

  “I’ve been reaching to try to figure out a place where she actually is.”

  “So—once again, okay? ’Cause you never did answer my question. You’re reaching and helping find her by bringing us here to this office that you don’t have. It’s helping us find her how?”

  “It’s . . .” Casey began.

  Allen cut her off. “Because what you’re doing right now, is, you’re doing everything you can to find your daughter. You have three experienced detectives right now, whose sole focus is here to help you find your daughter, okay? And we’re here ’cause you brought us here, correct?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You directed us here because we’re going to your office to find evidence . . . that will help us find her, okay? Now that we’re here, I want you to tell me how that’s helping. What is it we’re doing here? What’s helping us right now?”

  Again, Casey had no answer.

  “Well, coming to an office that doesn’t exist . . .”

  “It’s not helping,” Casey agreed.

  Melich picked up the thread of the questioning. “So why’d you do it?”

  “Honestly, I wanted to come up and try to talk to Security. Maybe pass around a picture of Caylee. I legitimately have not seen my daughter in five weeks. I don’t want anything to happen to her. Except I trusted her with somebody—somebody that had been taking care of her—that had been taking good care of her. Someone that she was comfortable with—that I was comfortable with.”