Bondsman: Casey Anthony going back to jail on Saturday

Walter Pacheco, Bianca Prieto and Amy L. Edwards

Sentinel Staff Writer
August 28, 2008

Casey Anthony's bond will be revoked Saturday and she will be booked back into the Orange County Jail, bounty hunter Leonard Padilla just told the Orlando Sentinel. Padilla, the bounty hunter who helped bail Anthony out of jail last week, said he fears for Anthony and her family's safety.

Padilla also just told the Sentinel he no longer thinks Anthony's 3-year-old daughter Caylee Marie is alive. Officials said Wednesday that air-sample tests from Anthony's car showed it once held a decomposing human body.

"I think she's dead," Padilla said. "I can't figure any body else that would be in the trunk deceased." Padilla said of that information, coupled with other recently revealed investigative findings and the fact Anthony refuses to speak with him to help find Caylee: "You add all three of those up and you're headed in one direction." Padilla said he and the bondsmen who helped bond Anthony out of jail are not going to revoke her bond Friday because she has a scheduled appointment to meet with her attorney Jose Baez. "It's just a courtesy," he said.

Anthony was at Baez's office for several hours today and left quickly without speaking to reporters just after 3 p.m. Baez will not be making a statement to the press today. Padilla said neither Anthony nor her parents have talked to him about the plans to revoke her bail on Saturday. "She knows what's going on," Padilla said of Anthony. Al Estes, the Florida bondsman who actually posted the bond at the jail, was unavailable for comment Thursday morning and did not return a telephone message left at his office.

Padilla's comments come a day after air-sample tests from her car showed it once held a decomposing human body. Authorities investigating the Caylee's disappearance have offered Anthony a limited-immunity deal if she will lead them to the child, the Orlando Sentinel learned. If she takes the deal, the specific information Anthony provides could not be used against her by prosecutors.

The Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office would not discuss details of the inquiry Wednesday, but spokeswoman Danielle Tavernier said Anthony has been "invited to our office to shed light on the disappearance of the victim in this case." During a bail hearing in July, investigators said they had found strands of hair, a stain and dirt in the trunk of Anthony's white Pontiac, which had been left in a parking lot. That evidence led investigators to suggest that Caylee could be dead and that her mother might be involved.

Family members publicly dismissed the strong odor in the car, saying it must have come from a spoiled pizza. But during the July 15 phone call in which Cindy Anthony -- the missing girl's grandmother -- reported the disappearance, she said it "smelled like there's been a dead body in the damn car." Samples of air from the car were sent to the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center near Knoxville, where researchers gather data on how bodies decay and other information to help law-enforcement agencies determine time of death. A police dog trained to detect human decomposition also indicated the presence of a body in the trunk, sheriff's investigators have disclosed.

On Wednesday, Baez said detectives had not given him information about the anthropology center's findings. He said the information leaked to reporters and the resulting speculation "was very disappointing and shocking to us."

About 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, sheriff's Sgt. John Allen, the supervisor on the case, and three FBI agents arrived at Baez's office, where the lawyer was meeting with Casey and Cindy Anthony. Casey Anthony -- wearing big sunglasses and a T-shirt with Caylee's picture on the front -- left about 20 minutes later. She rode alone in the back of a vehicle driven by a bounty hunter associated with the man who helped bail Anthony out of jail earlier this month. She has been charged with child neglect and giving false information in the case.

At 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, Cindy Anthony walked out with Baez, giving no comment to reporters. The two climbed into Baez's car, and he drove her home. She left her Toyota sport utility vehicle, which has "Missing" posters about Caylee on the doors. Allen and three men with him left without commenting.

Baez would not give any details about the meeting but said no plea deal was discussed. When asked how Casey Anthony was doing, the lawyer replied: "This doesn't help any. . . . We are doing the best we can." Earlier in the day -- before news of the air samples and the possible legal deal -- the California bounty hunter who secured Casey Anthony's release said she has made no effort to help him find Caylee.

"She has not communicated with us at all," Leonard Padilla said. "She has no interest in communicating with us."Padilla, whose nephew posted Anthony's $500,200 bail last week, said that if he knew then what he knew now about the case -- and that the 22-year-old wouldn't cooperate with him -- he probably would not have helped get her out of jail.

Padilla said he still thinks Caylee is alive and that Anthony handed her off to someone. But he dismissed the story that the toddler disappeared in mid-June after being dropped off with a baby sitter named Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, which is what Anthony has told detectives."We don't believe [Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez] exists," Padilla said. Anthony's "got an invisible friend that's called Zenaida," he said. "She's got a world that she lives in that's apart from ours."