Web Site Hit Counter

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Deputy in Caylee Anthony case cleared in earlier complaints

Details on the complaints filed against the Orange County deputy criticized for his handling of a tip concerning the remains of Caylee Marie Anthony were released Wednesday by sheriff's officials.

The reports showed that investigators considered the complaints against Deputy Richard Cain -- none of which involved the Anthony case -- to be unsubstantiated.

Officials are still investigating his Aug. 13 response to a tip about a suspicious bag in woods near the house where Caylee lived with her mother and grandparents.The tipster, meter-reader Roy Kronk, said on national television Tuesday that the deputy didn't want to go into water to look at the bag and "he was kind of rude to me."

Kronk made four reports -- three in August and one in December -- before investigators recovered the bones last month.Caylee's mother, Casey Anthony, is accused of murder in the death of her daughter.

Records released Wednesday show Cain responded to Calibre Bend Lane on March 25, 2007, regarding a threatening call made to resident Kevin Newton.

Newton told Cain he had been robbed several days prior to receiving the threatening phone call and asked the deputy for protection."I explained to him that we could not provide him the type of services that he is asking for," Cain said in the report. "The best thing he could do is contact the detective assigned to his robbery case."

No sheriff's policies were violated in the incident and the complaint was dropped, the report said.A complaint from Jan. 17 alleged that Cain and another deputy had spent too much time at the scene of a service call at Pamlico Street, and that they refused to identify themselves to the resident at the location.

John Schuss told investigators that Cain and Deputy Brian Dishuk remained on his property 30 minutes after the call for service, according to the report.

A check of Cain and Dishuk's activity log showed they had not remained on scene for that long and that both deputies revealed their names to Schuss."Additionally, [Cain's] name is displayed on his uniform," the sheriff's investigator wrote in his report.

Schuss did not return calls made by the deputy assigned to investigate the allegations against Cain. Deputies determined the complaint was unjustified.Records show someone complained in December 2006 on behalf of an attorney, but deputies reported the attorney never returned the detective's calls and the complaint was not filed, sheriff's spokesman Deputy Carlos Padilla said.

Padilla said a "use of force" notation from February 2007 was a training session. Also Wednesday, Casey Anthony's defense team added a forensic anthropologist from Canada to their list of experts.

Scott Fairgrieve, the chief of forensic science at Laurentian University in Ontario, will be working with defense attorney Jose Baez and other defense experts.

Fairgrieve will make sure "all t's are crossed and all i's are dotted" in the search, recovery and analysis of human skeletal remains."My role in the case is basically peer review," Fairgrieve said from his office in Ontario. "I will be reviewing reports on the evidence. So far everything I've done has been remotely."

No comments: