The Investigation

Detective Yuri Melich of the Orange County Sherriff’s Department found several discrepancies in Anthony’s statement. The first was her allegation that Caylee had been kidnapped by a nanny called Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzales and that she had been too scared to report this. The family members told Melich that none of them had ever met Zeniada. Anthony also claimed that she had been working at Universal Orlando Resort, but when detectives took her there, she could not identify her office and admitted that she had been fired five years before.

Although Anthony was arrested the day after Caylee was reported missing, it was only five months later that the decomposed body of her daughter was found. The five-month delay could have been prevented if the police had reacted more diligently to the reports of a meter reader, who claimed to have seen something suspicious in the forest near the Anthony home, scarcely a month after Caylee’s disappearance.