Pathological: The Casey Anthony Story — Where Is Caylee Marie? — Ep. 1 | MK Confidential

The Anthony family lives in a small one-story ranch house in the Orlando suburbs. Four bedrooms, two baths, and a screened pool out back. George and Cindy Anthony have called it the family home since 1989. Their house has a pale pink front door with an arched window. There is usually a wreath or a plaque hanging on it, and in the afternoon the Florida sun comes off the glass in a glare. The family almost never uses the front door. Everyone comes and goes through the garage, so when the mailman tapes a certified letter notice to the front glass, it sits there for four days before anybody sees it. Sunday morning, July 13, 2008, Cindy is out front pulling weeds. She and her husband George have put down new sod in the strip between the sidewalk and the street, and George is off to the side watering it. George and Cindy have been married for 27 years. They have raised two children together, Lee and Casey. The marriage has survived financial trouble and a separation, but they're hanging on still living in the same house, tending the same yard. Cindy straightens up and stretches her back, working her way back toward the house when the glare shifts, and she sees the paper. It said it was a certified letter, and it had Johnson's, and when I read it, I didn't know anybody the name of Johnson or Johnson's company, so I went over to George and showed him the notice, and he said he had no clue who Johnson's was. The notice on the door communicates the certified letter is waiting for them at the post office. George tells Cindy he will pick it up on his way to work on Monday, but he doesn't make it there until Tuesday, just before noon. Turns out the certified letter is from Johnson's record service off Narcosi Road. They have the family's white 1998 Pontiac Sunfire titled to George and Cindy. Their 22-year-old daughter, Casey, drives the Pontiac every day. Casey has told them she and her three-year-old little girl, Kaylee, are in Jacksonville. George studies the letter, thinking about this. The letter shows that their car has been sitting in the impound lot since June 30th. Today is July 15th. George calls Cindy at work. Neither of them understands how the car can be in Orlando if Casey and Kaylee are in Jacksonville. George drives to Johnson's to find out what happened. A woman at the front counter tells him the Pontiac was found abandoned in a payday loan store parking lot. To get it out of impound will cost nearly $500. George calls Cindy again, and she leaves work around $12.30 or $1. They meet at home, get the car's title, stop at an ATM for $500 and head to the tow yard. It is raining, a steady, misty rain. George and Cindy pay the fee, and George walks back into the tow lot with the manager to get the car. Before they moved to Florida, George spent about a decade working in law enforcement in Ohio, first as a police officer and then as a deputy sheriff. He has smelled human decomposition before. He unlocks the driver's door and gets in. He describes what he found inside to Dr. Phil in 2011. Did you smell something right away? I did notice an odor that I had smelled prior from many years ago in being a law enforcement, and as I locked the car, that's when the odor was leaving more stronger. I was feeling very sick in my stomach, and I was with the trunk. There's nothing back there, except a trash bag full of garbage, and I shut it. I was thankful. I didn't see my daughter or my granddaughter there. Your mind went there when you walked to the back of the car. Absolutely it did. The tow yard manager pulls the garbage bag out of the trunk and drops it in the dumpster. George drives the Pontiac around front where Cindy is waiting in her own car, the window down in the rain. He said, "We need to get home right now. This car stinks." At the tow yard, Cindy smells nothing. Back home, George pulls the Pontiac into the garage and gets out. Cindy walks toward him, and she smells it. George tells her the car stinks. Cindy starts going through the Pontiac. Inside, she finds a phone number for a young woman named Amy, a friend of Casey's, she has never met. And she calls her, Amy knows where Casey is. That evening, Cindy picks Amy up, and they drive about 20 minutes east across Orlando to a certain place where Casey's boyfriend, Tony Lazarus, lives. When they get there, Amy walks up to the apartment and knocks while Cindy hangs back just out of sight. When Casey opens the door, Cindy comes around the corner. Get your things, Cindy tells her, "You're coming with me." Casey goes back inside to gather a few things while Cindy waits at the doorway. Casey says, "She'll be coming back." No, get all of your things. A few minutes later, Casey is in the car, but Cindy does not drive home. It is after 8 o'clock that night when Cindy Anthony pulls into the local Orlando police station on Purshing Avenue with Casey in the passenger seat. But the local station is closed, so Cindy calls 911 from her car. "What are you trying to accomplish by bringing them to the station?" "I have a 22-year-old person that has grand theft, putting in my auto with me." Cindy does not tell the dispatcher her little granddaughter, Kaylee, is missing. Her first call is about Casey stealing a car and stealing money. Their address puts them in the sheriff's jurisdiction, so the dispatcher places Cindy on hold to transfer the call. While she waits, Cindy turns to her daughter. Now the argument is about Kaylee. Cindy is still on the line with 911. The recorder keeps running. By this point, Kaylee Anthony is dead. Cindy Anthony is threatening to take custody of a little girl. Cindy does not yet know he's already gone. 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Use my promo code Megan at hometitlelock.com to get a free title history report plus a free trial of million dollar triple lock protection. So you can make sure you're not already a victim. Find hometitlelock.com promo code Megan or use the link in the description. Cindy drives back home from the local police station with Casey beside her. It is only about a mile and a half. Cindy does not call her husband and she does not call her son. She is thinking as she turns into the subdivision her son Lee calls, George told him to come home and he is in the driveway waiting. He pulls into the garage, Casey gets out, walks past her brother without stopping and goes into the house. Lee follows and asks his mother to let him try. If everybody sits down and Casey comes down, maybe he can get an answer about Kaylee. They sit down together, Lee tries to get his sister to explain where Kaylee is. Casey tells them Kaylee is with Zanny, the Nanny, and that she is spending the night there. Cindy tells her they are going to get Kaylee. Casey says it's too late, Kaylee will be asleep already. They can go in the morning. Cindy does not care if it is late. She wants to see her granddaughter. About 15 minutes after her first call to 911, Cindy picks up the phone again. Last time she reaches the Orange County Sheriff's Office. The dispatcher tells Cindy a deputy will come when one is available. Cindy hangs up and waits, moving back and forth through the house. I was trying to stay close to the garage in case they came. could hear them. So I was pacing back and forth between the hallway from the living room to the garage, into the living room to Casey's room, and back and forth. I was just pacing because I was getting angry or an angry ear and up more upset as I was waiting. Lee takes a sister Casey into the bedroom and keeps talking to her. This time she tells him something different. She tells him Kaylee has been gone 31 days and that the nanny took her. Cindy hears part of the conversation through the bedroom door. Lee keeps Casey talking, then lowers his voice so their mother cannot hear the entire conversation. About an hour and a half after that first call to 911, Cindy calls again for the third time that night. The dispatcher asks for the child's name Kaylee, C-A-Y-L-E-E, then she asks how long Kaylee has been missing. Cindy says June 7th, but she is wrong. Kaylee was seen alive more than a week after that. Then the dispatcher asks to speak to Casey. Can you tell me a little bit of going on? My daughter's been missing for the last 31 days. And you know who has her? I know who has her. I've tried to contact her. I actually received a phone call today now from a number of minutes. There's no wrong answer, but I think it's my daughter for about a minute. Why are you calling now? Why did you call 31 days ago? I have been looking for her and have gone through other resources to try to find her, which is stupid. Casey has just told 911 dispatcher that she spoke to Kaylee that day. By then Kaylee has been gone for a month as Casey confessed to her brother Lee. Casey gives the dispatcher the name of the woman she says has her daughter, Zinnita Fernandez Gonzalez, Zanny. This is her nanny, she says, for about a year and a half, almost two years. Then Casey sees the deputies arriving. The dispatcher tells her to stay on the line, but Casey hangs up. Detective Yuri Melek gets the case. In the early hours of July 16th, he sits down with Casey and records her statement. She gives him an address for the nanny saw grass apartments on South Conway Road unit 210 second floor first building on the right just past the speed bump. She gives him the names of the nanny's two roommates and the friend who introduced them. Detective Melek asks Casey if everything she has just told him is true. Casey responds, that's the truth. It's the story I'm going to stick with. Yes. A little after 5.30 a.m. Casey takes Melek to saw grass apartments and points out unit 210. Later that day, after he drops Casey at her parents' home on Hope Spring Drive, Melek goes back and speaks with the apartment manager. Unit 210, she tells him, has been vacant for 142 days. Casey has also told Detective Melek she works at Universal Studios and that Zanny worked there too. So after checking saw grass, Melek heads to Universal and sits down with the head of security. They start running the names Casey has given him through the system. No Zanada Fernandez Gonzalez, the supervisor Casey named also does not work there, nor does the coworker. The phone extension she gave Melek does not exist. Casey herself has not worked at Universal in more than two years. She was fired in April 2006 after she stopped showing up. Melek calls Casey and asks her to come in with her employee ID. Casey says she cannot find it, so two detectives are sent to drive her to Universal Studios. Casey is still insisting she works there. At the employee gate, the guard finds no record of her or her supervisor in the system. Casey insists there is a mistake. The security manager lets her through. She leads the detectives into the office complex as if she knows exactly where she is going, left at the first building down the road across a parking lot and into another building. She is walking with purpose. Melek decides to let her keep going. About halfway down a hallway, Casey stops. She puts her hands in her back pockets and turns around. "Okay," she says, "I don't work here." Detectives take Casey into a conference room inside Universal Studios and keep talking. By now they clearly know two things. Casey does not work here and the apartment where she says Zanny, the person she claims has her daughter, lives, has been empty for months. Despite those lies, Casey still contends she's being at least somewhat truthful. "I know and you know that everything you've told me is alright, correct? Not everything that told you." "Okay, pretty much everything that you've told me, including where Kaley is right now." "That I still, I don't know where she is." "Sure you do." Sergeant John Allen is with Detective Melek. He tries another approach. He talks to Casey about parents who make terrible mistakes and lie because they are afraid to tell the truth. The conversation shifts to Casey's mother, Cindy. "I saw my mom's reaction right off the bat and it would have been the same from the get-do." "So what do you think? So you're more afraid of your mom's reaction than you are if you ever see your daughter?" "You know, I'm absolutely petrified. Absolutely petrified. I know my mom will never forgive me. I'm never going to forgive myself because there's that chance that I might not see Kaley again and I don't want to think about that." Detectives tell her quote, "We're arresting you. Unless you come clean and tell us the truth, we're arresting you now." Casey insists she is being truthful. At 4.33 that afternoon, Casey Anthony is arrested for child neglect, for making false statements to officials, and for obstructing an investigation. Six days later, a judge sets her bond at $500,000 on the neglect count alone. At this point, little Kaley Anthony has been missing for 32 days. It is four years earlier, spring of 2004. Casey is just days from high school graduation, at least. That's what her family believes. Then a counselor calls the house and asks George and Cindy to come for a meeting. Casey does not have the required credits to walk on graduation day. The Anthony's demand to see Casey's school records, but the school officials refuse, saying, "Casey is now 18 years old and that their hands are tied." Casey says she had taken an online computer class and claims the school never gave her the credit. Her family goes to the graduation anyway. They sit there knowing Casey's name will not be called. Afterward, Casey's grandmother Shirley Plasey asks her where her cap and gown are. Casey starts to cry and repeats the same story about her being about a half credit shy. Her parents tell everyone the school made a mistake and still throw a graduation party. Cindy tells her parents not to tell her brothers. They don't. Cindy's brothers, Casey's uncles, don't learn that Casey never graduated until four years later when police come and ask them about it. In the spring of 2005, Casey stops by Gentiva Health, where her mother Cindy has worked as a nurse since 2001. She's wearing a long black coat to cover her midsection, but it doesn't cover it quite well enough. Everyone's talking about weight loss injections because the results can be so dramatic. 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Usually when Casey pops into the office, she stops to chat with Charles. This time, she does not. To Charles, she looks pregnant. tells a co-worker what he had seen who then heads into the back to get a look at Casey. and thinks the same thing. Cindy appears clueless, even as all the signs are there. Casey had dated a guy named Jesse Grund for about six weeks at the start of that year. His father, a minister, looks at Casey once and tells his son she's pregnant. Jesse says Casey had female problems that caused her stomach to descend. He insists that he had asked Casey about it and that she told her whole family that same story. Reverend Grund doubles down saying he knows when a woman is pregnant and that Casey is expecting. Jesse ignores his father's observation, but will soon come to regret that. Nearly a month later, Jesse receives a call from Casey during which she says, I need to talk to you. I can't talk right now, Jesse says, send me a text message. The text comes, moments later, it reads, quote, I'm pregnant and you're the father, that's it. End quote. On June 4, 2005, Casey's uncle Rick gets married in Ohio and Casey flies out for the wedding. Her brother Lee drops her off at the airport and asks her before she leaves straight up. Listen, if you are pregnant or something's going on, tell me, be honest with me. No, Lee, she says, I'm just bloated. Later, when Lee learns the truth, he feels betrayed by his sister. When Casey gets to the hotel in Ohio, uncle Rick answers the door. She is wearing a powder blue top and her belly button is pushing out about half an inch. As soon as he can, Rick asks his sister and brother in law about Casey. Cindy, George, what's up with Casey? You got something to tell me? What's going on here? The couple look at him with puzzled expressions. What, they both ask. She's expecting. They look at him like he's crazy. Cindy shrugs off Rick's questions insisting, she's just putting on weight. But Rick keeps pushing. Cindy, I've seen a lot of pregnant girls. I'm not an expert, but man, she looks pregnant, he says. Rick, my daughter has female problems. She has a tumor on her ovaries. Rick responds, that tumor is as big as a baby. You'd better get her to a doctor right now, because she's going to die, and then he walks away. All day, wedding guests keep asking, who's the pregnant girl? Casey Anthony is 19 years old, and two months from her due date, her relatives would not say so out loud. Once back home, Cindy confronts her daughter, and Casey finally admits she's about to have a baby. The two of them go to tell George, Cindy makes him sit down on the sofa before saying, George, you're going to be a grandfather. George cries. He asks how far along she is and who the father is. Casey says she thinks it's Jesse. She does not give a last name. Her parents go with her to every doctor's appointment, and Cindy tells her about her own pregnancy. Every day, carrying Casey, she played classical music to her belly. Casey wants to do the same thing. Cindy goes and finds the same recordings. Kaley Anthony is born on a Tuesday, August 9, 2005. Her family gives her the middle name Marie, like Casey and Cindy before her. Casey has a hard birth. The doctor is still working on her when Kaley comes, so the nurse hands the baby to her grandmother. Cindy Anthony is the first family member ever to hold baby Kaley, and Casey notices right away. Oh my gosh, she says, you get a chance to hold her before I do. From that day, Grandma Cindy calls Kaley her daughter, her little girl. Cindy later describes the dynamic to CBS in 2009. It wasn't Casey's child, it was our child. She belonged to all of us. One man who believes he is the father is there. Jesse Grund. He holds Kaley the day she is born. It is the first time her parents have met him. He tells them that he's the father and promises to take care of the baby. He doesn't put his name on the birth certificate at the hospital. He wants a paternity test first. Casey refuses. Jesse petitions the court himself pays $550 and waits eight weeks to know for sure whether he is Kaley's father. He spends as much of that time as possible with Casey and Kaley in case the test comes back positive. As Jesse tells CBS, it does not. That said, in zero percent probability that I was the biological father. It was relieving and heartbreaking at the same time. I didn't want anybody else to be that little ghost father, except for me. Jesse Grund asks Casey to marry him. She says yes. Jesse's not the only man Casey will name as Kaley's father. Another is a young man named Eric who will die in a car accident in 2007. Casey had clipped his obituary out of the newspaper, kept it in her bedroom, and told her parents it was him. Casey gives different names to different people who ask about Kaley's dad, Jesse, Eric, Josh, Jesus. Kaley's real biological father is never confirmed. In November of 2005, Cindy Anthony throw her husband out of the house. George had lost about $30,000 online. He tells his wife it was online gambling. Years later, he would tell the FBI it was an email scam, and that he had lied to Cindy about it. At trial, he will say both are true. Cindy takes out a loan against the house and drains her 401(k) to cover bills she thought George had been paying. A divorce lawyer tells her if they separate, George would still get half the house, and she would likely owe him alimony. Cindy tells her mother that she, a full-time nurse, simply cannot afford a divorce. Quote between George and Casey, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. George moves in with his parents in Fort Myers, about 150 miles southwest of his wife, daughter, and granddaughter. Years later, they describe the effect of this separation to Dr. Phil. Everybody felt let down by their dad and kind of be trade. And the thing that hurt Casey the most was that he wanted us to sell the house and split it up. That Casey felt like he was kicking her and Kayleigh out. I know she didn't want him to come home. Did you know that she didn't want you to come back? Yes, she told me. For years, Casey has been recruiting friends and family, including Jessie and the grunts, into watching Kayleigh while she's at work. In the spring of 2006, she starts telling them she has found a proper babysitter. That summer, in 2006, Jessie's father, Richard Grund, asks Casey whether she has found someone to watch Kayleigh. She responds with not only a yes, but a monologue. Here's how he remembers it. Quote, "Yeah, I got that worked out. Oh, yeah, I found the night of Gonzalez, and she watches my friend Jeffrey Hopkins son, Zachary, and Zachary and Kayleigh play together. They love to be together. So this will work out great." Richard remembers thinking, "Wow. That's a lot more information than I really needed. It would also prove to be entirely untrue." From 2006 onward, Casey continues leaving the house for work every day. She wears an old Universal Studios badge and tells people she is working for Kodak, taking photographs of writers on the attractions at the park. But Casey is not actually going to work. Universal fired her in April 2006. As with the matter of Kayleigh's father, Casey tells different people different things. She says she has to go plan an event for Universal or work a warehouse shift at Sports Authority, and she asks for help to watch Kayleigh while she does it. Cindy Anthony says yes the most. Casey's high school friend Lauren Gibbs is another regular resource. She's been watching Kayleigh for free out of compassion for her friend. She calls Sports Authority in April of 2006. The employee who picks up has never heard of Casey Anthony. When Lauren confronts Casey, Casey dodges the question. "I have an ID tag," she says. She tries to explain it away as miscommunication. Lauren does not believe her. Casey's father, George, makes the same discovery. He goes to the store in person and speaks to the manager. There is no Casey Anthony here. Separately, Jessie's father, Richard, also visits the store to ask. He has no idea George had the same idea, but he receives the same answer. According to Richard, Casey uses a bad check to pay back an old debt to Jessie. $250, it bounces. He later tells Cindy who responds while she only did it once. Casey tells her dad she feels Jessie grund is trying to control her. On his advice, she breaks off the engagement. George moves back home in June 2006. He has missed seven months of his granddaughter's life. Around this time, Casey's parents start to notice money disappearing from their home. George describes the pattern to Dr. Phil in 2011. - Sometimes Cindy would even ask me, "Mrs. George, I'm missing $20 from my wallet or something." And I would say, "I didn't take any money from your wallet." When I had $20 or $30 a month, I'd go and look in mine, and mine would be gone. She was stealing gas from my gas can and outside my shed to keep her car going. - Cindy's mother surely would later estimate that Casey stole as much as $45,000 from her parents. But Casey does not only steal from her parents. In August 2007, Kaylee turns two. And Cindy's mother surely comes to stay with them and attends the little girl's birthday party. Casey sneaks into the guest bedroom, reaches into her grandmother's purse, and carefully peels a check out of the book from the back so she wouldn't notice for a while. Casey buys her daughter's birthday cake from Publix with that check, $54 for a cake and decorations. She writes her own driver's license number on the back. Days later, Shirley notices the missing check. First, she drives the utility company. When they don't have it, she goes to the police. An officer finds the check and the driver's license number. Do you know a Casey Anthony, he asks? Shirley gasps. She would have given Casey the money if she had asked. She confronts Casey and Cindy together. Casey apologizes. Shirley accepts it and says, don't let it happen again. Shirley does not press charges. Casey takes another $354. This time out of the account that funds care for her grandfather. Shirley's husband, Alex Plase, had suffered a stroke that January, and now lives in a nursing home. Shirley is a guest and leaves it to the bank to decide whether to press charges against Casey. The bank does not. Cindy Anthony tells Dr. Phil this sparked a change in her own behavior toward Casey. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I found out that she had taken money from my mom. I started coming down so hard on her and those few months before all this happened, she was not used to that. I said, I'm not taking your daughter away from you. I said, I could, but I'm not going to do that. Cindy does not act on the threat, which included throwing Casey out of the house. A counselor has recommended Cindy tried to get custody of Little Kaylee, and Cindy tells her mom she's going to do it. She does not. Sunday, June 15, 2008, Father's Day. The last day, anyone other than the family remembers seeing Kaylee Anthony. Cindy brings Kaylee to visit Kaylee's great grandfather in the nursing home up the street. There, an employee named Karen Angel asks Kaylee her name and is rewarded with a hug. Kaylee even rests her head on the woman's shoulder. Karen remembers her as a very happy little girl. Cindy and Kaylee take photos with great grandpa Alex before leaving. These are the last known pictures of Kaylee alive. They head to Shirley's house next for chili and cornbread. Shirley has made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Kaylee just in case she does not like the chili. Kaylee does. She plays with Shirley's cat for most of the visit. Cindy takes Kaylee home and they swim in the backyard above ground pool. When they get out, Cindy takes the ladder away from the side and locks the gate behind her. Kaylee comes home later that evening. What happens next depends on who you ask and when. Writer Diane Fanning gives one account. Years after the incident, she will work from the police file to reconstruct the night. Here's how she describes it in her book, Mommy's Little Girl. Cindy is catching on to one of her daughter's lies and confronts her. She slams photos down on the table one at a time of Casey at a "no clothes" party. Fanning quotes Cindy as saying, "You're at work, huh?" I watched Kaylee that night so that you could go to work. Cindy says Casey is an unfit mother and that she's going to get custody of Kaylee herself. Cindy later denies ever making that accusation to CBS. Casey's ex-fiancé, Jesse Grund, adds a detail to this fight. He says that about a month later in July, Casey's brother Lee tells him that this argument did happen and that it escalated beyond words. According to Jesse, Lee claims that Cindy put her hands around Casey's throat and squeezed. Lee will later deny this, so will Cindy. Here she is in 2009 to CBS. It's not true. Mr. Grund has come up with a lot of statements that are not true. Cindy Anthony told Dr. Phil about her appeal to Casey over those last months in 2011. I need you to straighten yourself up and I pretty much told her she had several months to do it. Did you push her too hard? I may have. I may have. The next day is Monday, June 16, 2008. It's 10 minutes to one in the afternoon. Casey sits on the recliner next to her father and says she'll be working late. Kaylee will stay with the nanny overnight. George tells her to be careful. Casey says she'll see him tomorrow. Kaylee dressed in a blue jeans skirt and a pink top walks out to the car with her mom. She carries a little white backpack with monkeys on it. No one in this home will ever see Kaylee Anthony again. I'm Megan Kelly. Next time on MK Confidential. Casey Anthony invented a nanny named Zanny. When police go looking for her, they find a real Zanita Fernandez Gonzalez who has never met Casey or Kaylee. Her life is about to radically change anyway.