Hello WS
Richard Grund's interview with LE
September 5th, 2008
LE: We spoke earlier tonight. I was trying to get a hold of your son, Jesse, have him come down. To make a long story short he spoke to us on the phone and started mentioning things about the conversations you had with George or the Anthony's in general. I appreciate you taking the time to come all the way down to talk to us. I'll let you start where you want to start...(crosstalk).
RG: Just so you know I was coming to talk to you but I was waiting for Caylee to be found first. But now we are at a place where were gonna find her but not the way I wanted...(seems emotional, then silence for a few seconds...)because I thought you needed to know what I know. When all this first happened ah, Jesse immediately went and volunteered to the family to start passing out fliers and
I said, now you tell George I want to talk to him. I said, would you ask him a question for me? Why aren't you doing what ex-cops do? 'Cause I know what I would be doing, and ah, his answer to Jesse was tell your dad I want to talk to him. So that's Sunday, I think its the second Sunday of the vigil. I don't remember what the date was, ah, I left George a voice mail. I had decided I was gonna start calling in a few favors of friends in Military, law enforcement,(inaudible)things like that and see what we can do here. But I left the message for George and here was the message,
"George, I'm getting ready to shake the trees to see if I can find Caylee, please tell me if anything I'm going to do is going to endanger her." George immediately called me(repeats: "immediately called me" after you hear some talking in the back ground) and said he wanted to talk to me, he wasn't avoiding me,
here's the answer to your question as to why I'm not doing what you think I should be doing and he said, "because my wife doesn't want me to."
LE: Knowing George...how long have you known George or the Anthony's?
RG: Ah, I met George when Jesse and Casey got engaged, ah, we went over to the house and I spent some time with George. I've only actually spent any length of time with George twice, same thing with Cindy. Um, most of my information is from Casey and as we know probably not real reliable.
LE:
So when George said something about his wife...err, Cindy not letting him, how did you take that?
RG:
I knew, I knew it was probably true. From being around them from knowing what went on before hand, my perception of that household is, again this is uh, uh, a regular person but is also a minister. I've been doing this for twenty years.
Um, its a house hold that Cindy rules, the only thing that gets is what Cindy wants done and that's the way it is and George, ah, made some mistakes in the past, ah, the gambling which you all know that. Which he talked to me about,
and he basically in my opinion had been emasculated since the point. So whatever Cindy wants is what Cindy gets. To me, that still, that wouldn't be enough(inaudible)I'm(inaudible) and that wouldn't stop me from finding what I wanted to find.
LE: Um, so after he made this comment to you...
RG: So, what I said was, he said I do want to talk to you, he said can you meet us half way, he was at the ah, public shopping center on his side of town and I was at home. We decided, I said I'll meet you in the parking lot of the Florida Mall at 3:00 out side the, the main entrance.
He calls me back and says I'm late for the prayer vigil, can you meet me at the house, you can stay after and we can talk in private. So I got there late so I would be behind the cameras because I was trying to stay low profile because of Jesse.
George acknowledged my presence when it was over and then left. Now, I grabbed Lee because Lee wanted to talk with me as well and he said, "oh, I know my dad wants to speak, wants to talk to you." So Lee and I talked a little bit but didn't go into any detail.
George never came back. My wife and I stood outside in the rain for almost an hour and Lee finally said, "hey why don't you guys come inside and sit down, I don't now where my dad is."
LE: Where was the vigil at?
RG: It was at the house, right in front of his house and so we went inside and we sat down and by that point it's after 10:00, most everybody's gone.
So we were in the house, my wife Deborah and I, Cindy, Lee and his girlfriend and I think her name is Mallory?
LE: (affirmative)
RG: Okay. That's all there was in the house.
George, I don't know where George is at this point. So, we sat there, Lee and I talked we went over the, what notes I had, what I was thinking and
Lee was pretty much, you know saying things: Zanida, Jeffery Hopkins, the whole story. Saying he had all the emails, which I know were forwarded to you because he actually printed them off that night while I was there. We sat there, finally Lee said, "look, I don't know what's going on but I'm getting tired it's 10:45, I gotta go."
George comes out of a back room at about 11:05 in his shorts, kind of shocked to see me. Now I'm thinkin' I just drove a long way, "oh, I'm really sorry I got delayed" and I'm sittin' there thinkin' trying not to get angry because of the situation but I'm kind of insulted to be honest with you. Okay, I cut him some slack, ah, so you know ah,
so you know he starts himming and hawing and I'm thinking, what's going on here? Ah, Cindy didn't really talk to me. Cindy and I, I'm not(inaudible)and Cindy knows it so she pretty much kept away from me.
The only thing I did hear her say that night that I think was interesting, she said it to my wife but I was standing right there she, the only thing she said that night that I felt was even human, was in truth was, "you know I could lose both my girls on this one."
LE: Hum
RG:
First sign that she had a clue something was wrong.
LE: And did you discuss that with Lee with her in the room? How, how did she make that statement?
RG: She, ya know, my wife and her hit it off(inaudible)when the baby was born, ah, you know it did it came out of nowhere, it was one of those emotional, seeped out kind of things. Ah, but it stuck with me and my wife. But then we were going to the car because it was 11:15, I've go to go home. George walks me out to the car and I start asking him questions.
He says, "I know, I wanted to talk to you but something came up and I forgot that you were there." Of course, I didn't believe any of that, I mean, you asked me to come and talk to you. So he says, "what do you thinks goin' on?" I said, George here's where I'm working from right now. I said I have two theories, something happened Casey's snapped this isn't Casey anymore or Casey got involved in something that went wrong and either she's hidden Caylee or somebody's taken Caylee. And, that's the one he was leaning towards.
Um, and I said you know George, wha, which, which what has your daughter gotten involved in? He goes, "ah, I don't know she's always had issues,"...that's always been, that's always his statement, Casey has issues. Um, at and then we talked about the smell in the trunk and I said if it's not Caylee, George, who is it? He goes ya know, "I don't know." Then I said point blank, I said George what has your daughter gotten herself into? I said because I'm just startin' and I'm startin' to find things I don't like about Fusian and some of the people she's been hanging out with, I said somethin's really wrong. I said, Casey's life in my opinion is not good, it is a controlled mess up until the end of May, early June, something happens to spin that out of control. Um, so yeah, I dunno it's this new crowd and then he, he just kind of blurted out about the whole job thing.
He said you know, we I knew she didn't have any of these jobs. Said, she "when she told us she worked at the Sports Authority I went there one day and they told me she'd never been there and I've discovered most of the jobs she's told us she had, she never had." Which I made a note of, that means you knew, she wasn't working. So, if she has a nanny, who's paying for her? Um, the thing that struck me when I was reading those notes about her story about Zanida, it, hasn't changed word for word since April of '06. It's still exactly the same story. Um, when she told it to us, I think I told you on the phone ah, from the end of her, her babysitter at that point was Lauren Gibbs.
LE: Um-hum
RG: Lauren suddenly couldn't do it anymore, I think she was going back to school. Now she has no babysitter for Caylee and she's supposedly working for Kodak at Universal.
LE: And this is when again?
RG: This is, uh this is March, April and par of May '06.
LE: Okay
RG: Okay? So, Jesse decided to give up his only day off form progressive. He's watching her on Mondays.
And then it got to the point where somebody else in my family was watchin' her two days a week. So now Caylee's at our house three days out of a week during work and Casey's there at night and on the weekends. I don't have a problem with that because Caylee's a wonderful little girl but I work out of my house and this was a severe disruption to me.
So I began to press Caylee(I am sure he meant to say Casey)about have you found anybody yet and when she finally said she found someone as I told you on the phone it was really odd, rather than just saying, yeah I've go that worked out, "oh, yeah I've found this lady, eh Zanida Gonzalez and she, she watches my friend Jeffery Hopkins son Zachary, Zachary and Caylee play together and they love to be together so this will work out great." I was thinking wow that's a whole lot of information that I really needed.
(end Part I)
I just realized I never finished this transcript. I will do that this week and post part II. After re-reading this first part I feel that Casey was very premeditated in Caylee's murder. I think she was establishing a "invis-a-nanny" very early on and I think that is what RG is thinking also. I also found it telling where RG says about Cindy
"the only thing she said that night that I felt was even human...", it only confirms for me-that Cindy is just as much of a monster as her daughter and it has always only been about attention and money for Cindy. That is what started the mess in the first place, both Cindy and Casey fighting for attention and money. :furious:
...jmo...
