Casey/Caylee Anthony Case: PI Deposed in Gonzalez Suit Implicates ABC and Lee Anthony
Orlando, Fl– Jim Hoover, one of the private detectives that had been working for the Anthony family and by way of Dominick Casey also Jose Baez and Casey Anthony was deposed yesterday in the Zenaida Gonzalez Civil Suit.
Attorney for Zenaida Gonzalez, John Morgan, questioned Hoover for over three hours with the PI becoming visibly un nerved when faced with questions he did not wish to answer. Hoover arrived at the deposition at the law offices of Morgan and Morgan without an attorney. At one point, the self-proclaimed 35 year veteran private investigator requested to stop the deposition and he would get a lawyer.
“..Part of Private Investigations is that it is private.. Is that question relevant to this? How is that relevant? We should probably just stop this and I’ll get a lawyer.”
For most of the 3.5 hour deposition Hoover was fidgeting in his chair and when Morgan asked questions that were clearly uncomfortable for him, he seemed evasive. Morgan asked Hoover if he had memory problems:
..What celebrity were you a bodyguard for?.. Do you not remember or you don’t want to answer the question? See.. if I was a bodyguard for Oprah Winfrey, I would remember that.. By the way, this is the easy part..”
As previously reported exclusively on Blinkoncrime, Hoover admitted that Dominick Casey told him that either Jose Baez, attorney to tot mom Casey Anthony, or Casey herself was paid between $200–$225K for image rights by abc. When asked who he felt Dominic Casey was on the phone with, he said he was never told but that he always thought it was Lee Anthony. Hoover was never asked to perform any investigative work into any person named Zenaida Gonzalez at any time during his tenure with the Anthony’s.
YouTubes of Deposition:
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I think I love Zenaida’s lawyer!
Good Work Blink!
The sad things is the Lee, Cindy and George never really cared about what happened to Caylee. They don’t want the truth. They want to cover up for casey. I hope we can find out who was on the other end of the phone.
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Not just a cover up. The Anthony camp continued for months to put the Zenaida name out into the media. This is important stuff: not once did they even talk about finding Caylee or Zenaida. and why not? because they knew from day two that Casey had done something really bad. I only wish this Hoover man made a more likeable witness.
As bizarre as this sounds, I am a fan of Jim Hoover. For whatever reason, I just like the guy. I really felt for him when he gave the name of his x-wife, which he clearly did not want to do, because he felt she wouldn’t want that.
As Tim Miller says; Everyone involved in this case gets BODYSLAMMED.
I agree (#1 comment); John Morgan – sly as a fox and entertaining as all getout.
dominick casey has hired a lawyer to represent him and accompany him to his “re-scheduled” deposition. something is very fishy with his visit to the site where caylee’s remains were found. i believe someone in the anthony household knew where she was and was trying to head off law enforcement from finding the body. what a bunch of twisted people. when will caylee have justice?
Lee, rest assured that LE retrieved those phone records long ago. The only saving grace for the party on the other end of the line is that they may have called from a pay phone or from a bank of phones at an office. I doubt it. I think LE knows who it was and has pinged it out to know where they were when the call was made. They have been impressive in this case.
I reckon it’s kind of interesting that the PI said he did not know who the caller was but out of 300 million people in the US, he chose to guess LA. Is that an educated guess?
I reckon if Casey received the money to pay Baez through selling photos and videos, even if Baez acted as her agent he did not lie when he said there was nothing in their retainer agreement to allow him to sell them. Technically he did not sell them. An A did. It’s bad mojo to play semantics and word games with a judge that doesn’t like you. Having a smirk on your face when you do it compounds the pain you will feel later.
What interests me the most about the presence of multiple PI’s in this case is that at no time were they ever asked to search for the “kidnapper”, who presumably would be leaving more of a trail than a two-year old baby.
Should make for some interesting testimony, given that at least one of these PI’s was under contract to totmom.
John Morgan’s quote that “this is the easy part” is the absolute best! The fact that Hoover was never asked to investigate into any Zanny speaks volumes.
lol dolce-
I have a dear friend that is from the same area and he says July “Jew Lie” the same way and I LOVE LOVE it.
b
Did you guys see the quote from BB11?
“rumor has it kc sold her story last week my guess is lee anthony is handeling the money”
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=54234635
Too bad Morgan can’t have a sit down with her.
#3 Last night someone on the Nancy Grace show said that it was Lee who tipped off the detectives.
Question for Blink comes to mind from a comment in the news surrounding another deposition in this civil case, that Casey Anthony’s attorney for defense of this ‘civil’ action, a Fort Lauderdale-based attorney Jonathan Kasen, who did not attend that particular previous deposition on behalf of his client.
What are the circumstances under which Johnathan Kasen was contacted and retained on behalf of Casey Anthony? A lawyer would have no right to contact Casey Anthony directly as she is represented and the only things Casey can know, come through her lawyer or pastor supposedly unless she can write a letter to someone on the outside to request a civil lawyer. Has Kasen worked on the civil side of cases for clients of the Baez Law Firm in the past? Why, given the financial resources of Casey Anthony, aside from those controlled by Casey via her criminal defense team, would they use another lawyer for this, why not a junior lawyer in the Baez firm for the ‘paper shuffling’ (which so far, seems to be what has gone on, just delaying tactics)?
Is it practical, given Casey Anthony’s financial situation and her parents lack of resources, that a lawyer travel from another city to each and every deposition? Seems they want to just ignore this case essentially. Who retained this lawyer on behalf of CA?
“Casey Anthony, or Casey herself was paid between $200–$225K for image rights by ABC.” ABC HAS SOME EXPLAINING ? IS DISNEY BEHIND ABC?
Time to bring in ABC for a deposition.
I agree, I love Zenaida’s lawyer. For Hoover to be a credible wittness he needs to prove himself credible. his hesitation when answering is puzzeling. Perhaps he just wants to remain very private after all he was just being a volunteer until the incident in Nov. He didn’t mention all this when interviewed by LE. Never mentioned that DC was delayed by getting lost with CA in the car. Could this be love? Never mentioned three different tapes. Althought I think LE had all of them. Never mentioned that DC was holding his tape recorder while driving over to Suburban. Mentioned that all good PI’s tape record searches. Didn’t call LE with the tip because he was not in charge of the investigation, but would have if he was PI. I laughed at that. Never mentioned his mistrust or showboat attitude of DC. I felt he sounded much more confident in this depo towards the end and included more information. He said LA was a low probability guess, did not really know who made the call to DC. I think DC’s off the record conversation with LE is what has prompted him to get the new Lawyer. I read that DC is working with the Cummings family. Does anyone know if this is true. I agree LE has been impressive in this case and I believe they ask questions that they already have the answers to.
ABC is owned by Disney. They have enough lawyers to tie this up in court until an elevator is built to the moon. John Morgan is choosing his battles carefully.
Lee, re: your post to #3 about NG reporting Lee was the tipster– that came from yesterday’s depo of Hoover, but listening to the questions and the answers to who was the tipster, it’s clear that Hoover was not saying definitely, but he was asked to give his opinion as a professional PI for many years, and that was Hoover’s feeling. NG doesn’t give this depth to anything and she just took the material from Hoover’s depo, no other source. Better to get things from the source when possible.
and I think Hoover’s hestitation came more at the beginning when there were questions about his employer, he hesitated, fair enough, and he wanted to protect his private information to the extent that he could, that’s also fair enough. It’s worth a second listen, and with the fact that he could have brought his attorney, Hoover was willing to be honest and as open as he could be, but his resistance had a lot to do with not disclosing some of the more personal aspects at the beginning. And it was good to see the stories of Dominic Casey, not believed 100% by Hoover, things like the licorice story not actually believed by Hoover. It’s really hard to listen to edited newsreports and get the whole picture, especially NG, because often a portion of something is more sensational than if you know the context.
Can anyone tell me if the Defamation suit by ZFG is only against Casey Anthony? It seems like its possible it will come out in Court that the whole Anthony family knew Zanaida wasn’t involved and that they knowingly defamed her. George and Cindy will end up with the money Casey gets for selling out Caylee, so shouldn’t ZFG’s lawyer go after them too?
Riley; Casey Anthony is the defendant in this defamation suit. I honestly don’t think it’s about the money. The amount Zenida is sueing for is $15,000. Split that with the lawyers and that little amount of money isn’t worth anyone’s time. She really wants her name cleared. And Attorney John Morgan – gosh I’m not sure why he’s doing this. Maybe he just felt so indignant about this whole thing that he’s decided to take things in his own hands. And I think he’s doing a bang up job so far. The work he’s already done WILL have an impact on the murder case. He’s just taking the players one at a time and teasing out tidbits; under oath, that cannot be ignored once the murder case starts. Damn, he’s out to solve this case.
If Casey will not respond in an oral deposition, even taking the 5th on most questions because her civil attorney says she could incriminate herself, are they worried about the deposition when she can still simply take the 5th? That horse has been shod already– it’s in writing. Are the lawyers worried they will have no control over Casey should she decide to answer instead of taking the 5th on advised questions? She might get angry and show her cards? Or just perjure herself– what the heck on that one, except better to do it after the civil trial, no one will charge Casey with perjury after the cost of all this.
Annals, your last sentence– you may be right!!! This could be the clincher for Casey. And Zenaida DOES have the right to clear her name, and the Anthony’s trying to get out of it, delay, stall and avoid, is showing that they do not care, they will use Zenaida in any way they can to clear their accused daughter.
Not to claim any special knowledge, but: isn’t Zenaida FG suing for “more than $15000″ which I am told in Florida makes it possible for larger punitive damages to be awarded? Morgan seems to be a master of his craft. I am looking forward to the rest of the depositions. He has the Anthony’s and their pet PI ducking and hiding. (Here they would already be in trouble for ignoring their dates with Mr. Morgan)
Kleat #18,
Your right. Nancy Grance isn’t even up to date. She reported Lee’s DNA test a month after it came out and then acted like it was “breaking news”. I get more accurate facts from this website.
dddeerma; Respectfully, when I said $15,000 it was not just a guess. The Zenaida Gonzales defimation suit is for $15,000 (fifteen thousand dollars). I would not throw out a ficticional figure then comment on it. Here’s the paper:
http://media.myfoxorlando.com/photogalleries/092408zenaidalawsuit/1/lg/Scan001_Page_1.htm
Kleat! Thanks for the responce. I have a lot of respect for your input; thoughtful, informed and well written.
Annals, thanks, but I’m just going on second hand stuff, and it’s jmho. And even then, that changes– like who this Hoover really is, take him at face value or not. He doesn’t impress me as the most sophisticated kid on the block, but then that’s probably a big advantage for a PI, to come across that way, being a nice guy wanting to help out, and probably what helped him get to next to the Anthony’s in the first place.
We can hold out hope that whatever his intentions, his work will help to bring clarity what was really going on in the Anthony camp. No coincidence that the couple were on national TV once again and far from the scene, out in California, proclaiming the baby is alive on Larry King Live, all the while Cindy had sent her investigator to ‘walk the woods’ at the crime scene and in her own investigator’s words, to find the body. How has the deception of Cindy Anthony, supported by George beside her, harmed the cause of legitimately ‘missing’ and abducted children. Maybe the search boat ‘Caylee’ is covering their feelings of guilt for how they have negatively impacted the cause of missing children. Yes, when it’s time for a boat like that, the search will not be for a living child beneath the water.
oops… my mistake… they were on Larry King when the body was found of course, knowing they had sent the PI’s to locate the body without informing LE. They knew Caylee was dead yet used Larry King to continue the ‘missing child’ fabrication to help their daughter’s cause.
I really like Morgan. He’s experienced, intelligent and I like his style!
Do we get to read the depo taken by the Defense?
Good work Blink.
Thank you Dr. P and all.. I enjoy being around you all again!!
B
Just watched several Jim Hoover depositions and I must
say his behavior is bizzaire/strange.
There is a fracture deep in him. I find him somewhat scary.
What were the PIs who were poking around in the wooded area where Caylee’s body was eventually found, planning to do with the body once they retrieved it? They got an inside tip that it was there and did not report it to LE, so were they going to hide it, tamper with it, put it elsewhere, or what? Has anyone heard anything about this?
Thanks.
Dominic Casey posted his and the psychic’s phone records from the Nov.15 Suburban Dr. search/Hoover video tape. Go to: http://www.dgator.com
I believe it’s filed under “CA documents”, ” Volume # 4″. Very compelling, I must say!
Casey can take the 5th in the civil case all day long and will. However the measure of evidence in a civil matter is “preponderance”, not “beyond a reasonable doubt” as in criminal. If this ZFG can prove damages, and Casey doesn’t want to talk, a jury will never hear “her side” of this civil suit. Without any refuting of ZFG claims by Casey, a jury finds Casey liable for a monetary amount of damages and awards in favor of the plaintiff. Now if Casey wants to go ahead and defend her civil suit, she puts her foot in her mouth in her criminal case about the ZFG story. She won’t answer yes or no to the picture of THIS ZFG, because this ZFG was at Sawgrass and part of the criminal matter. I believe Mr. Morgan is brilliantly bringing his case along, with a token bonus thrown to the prosecution here and there.
Now there is another, quicker way to handle this manner, and that would be a default judgment against the defendant for failure to comply with discovery. In that case the judge rules in favor of plaintiff and a jury simply decides damages. That would be the likely scenario after Mr. Morgan gathers all the evidence. I wish he’d wrap this puppy up and lock down the cash flow into that house.
And when the money is on lock down, Mr. Baez will go postal.
and I was looking all over for you Blink…
Great site. Great job.
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