Free Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony by Jeff Ashton Page A

been for her to lie to him and the other police officers. Her determination at the security gate, her confident walk through Universal Studios—it all seemed so comfortable to her. Lies are like muscles: it takes practice to make them strong. Casey Anthony had clearly been giving hers a lot of exercise.
    As news of Casey’s arrest spread, Melich began receiving additional information that fleshed out this portrait of Casey Anthony as a liar. Calls came in to headquarters from close friends of Casey’s, claiming she was a “habitual liar” who had been known to steal from them in the past. One such call was from Amy Huizenga, who’d been one of Casey’s best friends up until a few days earlier. It had been Amy who’d helped Cindy collect Casey at Tony’s apartment prior to her first 911 call. Amy told Melich how Casey had recently driven her and her roommate, Ricardo Morales, to the airport, an apparently thoughtful gesture, as the two roommates were headed to Puerto Rico.
    Ricardo had once been Casey’s boyfriend. They had met in January at a birthday party for Ricardo, and went out for five months. On at least one occasion, Casey and Caylee had spent the night at Ricardo’s place, three in a bed, Casey in the middle. Casey and Ricardo broke up in June, but they remained friends. But shortly after Casey dropped them off at the airport, she’d started forging checks from Amy’s account. It had been only a few days since Amy had returned home to Florida and discovered the fraud, but already she had discovered seven hundred dollars missing from her account.
    Meanwhile, Casey’s boyfriend, Tony Lazzaro, also shed light on Casey’s fabrications. He called the police the afternoon she was arrested, telling Melich that he’d met Casey on Facebook in May, and they’d been dating since early June. Even though Casey had basically been living with him since June 16, she had never mentioned that Caylee was missing or in any type of danger. He claimed that he first learned of the toddler’s disappearance from sheriff’s deputies who had shown up at his apartment on the morning of July 16. The last time he’d seen Caylee had been when he invited Casey and Caylee to swim in the pool at his apartment complex on June 2. Casey had never introduced him to a babysitter named Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez, nor did he know where Zenaida lived. And yet during the time Casey had been living with him, she’d told him on multiple occasions that Caylee was with the nanny, either at Disneyworld, Universal Studios, or the beach.
    When authorities obtained Casey’s cell phone records, they found that Tony had exchanged text messages with Casey shortly before her arrest. Casey seemed to expect more consolation from him than he was interested in providing. The texts showed Tony’s understandable anger both that Casey had been lying to him for a month, but also that Casey wasn’t saying where Caylee was. Like Cindy Anthony, he too had been deceived:
T ONY: Where is Caylee?
C ASEY: I honestly don’t know.
T ONY: I don’t know . . . are you serious?
T ONY: When did you find out?
C ASEY: been filling out reports all night and driving around with multiple officers looking at old apartments I had taken her to. I am the worst fucking person in the entire world. I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to her.
C ASEY: Too long let’s just leave it at that.
T ONY: Y wouldn’t you tell me of all people? I was UR boyfriend that cares about you and UR daughter. Doesn’t make sense to me. Why would you lie to me thinking she was fine and with your nanny?
C ASEY: I lied to everyone what was I supposed to say I trust my daughter with some psycho how does that look?
T ONY: I don’t know what to say . . . I just hope your daughter is OK and I’m going to do whatever i can to help your family and the cops.
C ASEY: I was put in handcuffs for almost ten minutes and sat in the back of a cop car the best thing and the most important