George visited Casey in jail on August 3. He reminded his daughter that it was just six days until Caylee’s birthday and he wanted to throw her a big party. He vowed that once Caylee was home, all of the family would volunteer to help find other missing children. Once again, George beat up on himself: “This is destroying your mother. She feels so bad. Maybe we’ve been all too domineering. Maybe we didn’t let you be the best mom—you are the best mom.”
“It’s nobody’s fault. It’s nobody’s fault,” Casey protested.
“Well, I could have opened up more to you. I could have done stuff. But I can’t go back. There’s times you wanted to talk to me. I wish I woulda listened. But all that’s going to change—I’ll listen more. I have one question to ask you and I know it’s going to be a tough one.”
“Yeah?”
“Would you speak to someone about Caylee?”
“I already answered that. I mean, I’ll try to the best of my ability,” Casey sniffled and rubbed her reddened nose. “Things would be so much easier if I wasn’t still here—if I was home. I want you to understand that. I mean, I feel that more each day. I want to be home. I want to be there when Caylee comes home. I want to be there with our family when she comes home. I don’t want to have to wait three days, four days, after that happens, to see her.”
Still believing Casey’s story that lives were in danger, George told her that they could all go into protective custody if she would tell everything. He said that he was meeting with John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted that week, that a foundation had been established for Caylee, and a website, helpfindcaylee.com, was up and running.
He then reassured her of how much everyone in the family loved her. Casey professed her love for Caylee and her parents—all the while shaking her head back and forth as if she were denying the words she spoke.
As he left the visitation, George spoke to reporters: “She knows who has her daughter. She knows her daughter is safe. And I got to believe her that she knows where—everything is okay.” He also said that Casey had given her attorney a letter that might contain clues about Casey’s disappearance. The lawyer said no such letter existed. Was this another of Casey’s lies to her father? Or was José Baez withholding it from the family?
Cindy’s brother Rick sent an email to their mother, Shirley Cuza:
I am terribly upset about Cindy and George. Casey is the biggest liar in history. She would rather spin lies than find Caylee. She thinks it is a game. She makes them look like the stupidest parents ever in the entire world.
Cindy and George ARE on very thin ice, too. They look like accomplices because nobody can believe they can be THAT stupid to believe Casey. Everyone is frustrated including the media. They have never seen anything like this—ever.
There is no babysitter and there never was. It is all lies, lies and more lies. No one could have a sitter for a year and not know the phone number. No one has ever seen the sitter. No one knows the sitter. The cops aren’t stupid. They know there was no sitter and know Casey is stalling.
She will never get out of jail and if and when they find Caylee’s body, Casey will get the death penalty. I have no doubt whatsoever. The police will press murder charges even if they can’t find a body. They are waiting for the forensic evidence first but even if it is inconclusive, they will still go after suspicion of murder and hold her without bail until the trial.
. . . Casey better change her story to an accidental death and she may cut some time off of her sentence. I know I have her guilty before charged but after she destroyed her family for those worthless people from that club, she more than deserves it.
Cindy agreed to questioning by Detectives Eric Edwards and Mark Hussey at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office on August 4. She took a phone call just as she sat in the interview room, and talked sweetly to an FBI agent. But by the time she had completed the call, her fury had been unleashed and lobbed at the investigators: “No one’s doing a fucking thing!”
“What do you need?”
“I need someone to pay attention to Caylee, that’s missing. I need someone to actually follow up on someone that has called in,” she said referring to the sightings of Caylee in the Orlando airport and elsewhere.
Cindy returned to this theme over and over during the hour she spent in the interview room. When Detective Hussey tried to explain the investigative process, Cindy complained that they were trying to build a case against her daughter: “Casey may be a liar, but she didn’t murder her daughter.”
Later, Cindy said, “You know, everybody can speculate or whatever, I think Casey got mixed up with some bad people.”
“Highly possible,” Detective Edwards agreed.
“Ricardo, Amy and Tony, who I’ve just learned are all intertwined. They’re all into drugs.”
“Sure,” said Hussey.
“We talked to another agency. They’re all into drugs, they all know each other very well, and for Amy telling me she’d only been to Tony’s apartment once has to be a lie, ’cause she knows him. I think she’s the one that introduced . . .”
“Uh huh.”
“And Tony and Ricardo go way back, and there’s some dealings there. So Casey’s mixed up somehow, so—And they have the money and means, and Casey’s been maintaining all along.”
“Uh huh.”
“But there are physical threats against this family.”
“Uh huh.”
“Or harm if she comes clean and tells where Caylee’s at . . .”
Edwards asked, “So you think they may be coming from Amy and Ricardo or . . . ?
“I don’t know. I mean, my understanding is, these folks have some connections with some people that has money . . . Has a way to make people disappear. Has means to threaten, and Casey’s scared. I could see it in her face. She’s scared, and I think she’s trying to give us clues. I’ve been saying that from day one for us to figure it out without coming out because—and that’s why, I think, I could have Casey out today. I want you to know.”
“There’s still going to be . . .” Hussey began.
“I could have Casey out today,” Cindy insisted. “The bail money is not an issue.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m telling you that right now. I have people that help me. I think it’s a safety issue for both Casey and Caylee, keeping her ass there for right now until we figure this stuff out. Because if the media and everybody’s still pointing fingers at Casey . . .” So if we get off our butt and we keep looking for these people—I’m just saying, me or Lee or whomever, not just you guys—we start looking at these other issues, other possibilities, we’re gonna find who these people are, and we’re gonna find Caylee.”
The next day, Casey was formally charged with child neglect, a third-degree felony with a maximum sentence of 5 years, and filing a false statement, a misdemeanor with a maximum of 1 year in jail. This delay between arrest and formal charges was typical in Florida.
Cindy was a no-show for her scheduled visit with her daughter that afternoon. She said that she changed her mind because of the videotaping and the public release of their conversations.
Family friend and neighbor Holly Gagne appeared live on Larry King that night. He asked, “Holly, you know Casey very well. She used to baby-sit your boys. What do you make of this?”
“There’s a lot of confusion, Larry. And, you know, I have answered the question so many times that I just say that the Casey that I knew that baby-sat my children and that has been in my home and we’ve been friends with for six years would not harm her child, or be a part of her child being harmed in any way.”
“So, you’re totally shocked?”
“That is putting it lightly, yes. When my husband and I had gotten home from our vacation and we heard the news, we went straight to Cindy and George’s home—we were their neighbors for over three years. And I just fell into Cindy’s arms and I said, ‘What is going on?’ And she said, you know, at that time, ‘We just don’t know.’
“There’s been so many twists and turns, Larry, that, you know, and there’s so many scenarios. But in my mind, and in my opinion, a scenario that she harmed her child, that she hurt her child, that she knows her child is not alive and she’s torturing her parents and putting us all through this, I don’t believe that.”
Cindy telephoned into that show and the Nancy Grace show that evening, pushing the defense’s spin: “If they had something to charge her, why wouldn’t they do it today, with everything else? So, I mean, hello? We’ve known this all along. Why else did they go and handcuff her and put her in jail? Because they feel that she needs to be there. And again, once Caylee is found, everybody’s going to know that she doesn’t need to be there. She doesn’t belong there, and she doesn’t deserve what everybody’s doing to her. No one knows everything. I don’t know one hundred percent, but I sure as heck know a lot more, but I can’t say a lot of things.
“Today is actually a very hopeful day. You know, I just found out that, you know, they did charge her formally today, which actually is good—because look what they charged her with—they didn’t charge her with anything but with voluntary child neglect and withholding evidence. If they had anything concrete on her [for homicide charges], I think they would have used that today. Today was the last day that they had an opportunity to do so. That is, in essence, a victory for us.”