Kathi Belich Interviews J Hoover

P.I. Jim Hoover Breaks Silence In Casey Case

Posted: 6:29 pm EDT April 2, 2009
Updated: 6:52 pm EDT April 2, 2009

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Lawyers interrogated two corrections officers about violating Casey's rights in jail Thursday and a private investigator for the Anthony family, whose undercover work could link Casey to her daughter's remains.

VIDEO REPORT: Private Eye Breaks Silence

WFTV reporter Kathi Belich had a chance to interview private investigator Jim Hoover. Eyewitness News was first to report about and show his videotape at the scene a month before Caylee was found. It could show the Anthonys' private investigator had inside information.

Hoover was planning to tell the defense Thursday that's why he believes the Anthonys' private eye took him there a month early.

The Anthony family's private investigator, Dominic Casey, who was also working for Casey Anthony, directed private eye Jim Hoover, who was behind the camera, to a grouping of paver stones in mid-November. Caylee's remains were found near a group of stones just feet from the location.

"That day, he was real somber," Hoover told Eyewitness News.

For the first time, Hoover told Eyewitness News on camera Thursday that Dominic was somber that day because he said he found out Caylee was dead."

'She's dead and I know where she is,'" Hoover said Dominic told him.

"What do you think about all his other stories about a psychic and that he was checking out a teen hangout?" Belich asked Hoover.

"Stories, just stories," he said.

Hoover says Dominic was on the phone getting direction on exactly where to look. Dominic told Eyewitness News he was talking to his ill daughter and later said he was talking to a Virginia psychic "He never said anything to you at all about a psychic?" Belich asked Hoover Thursday.

"No, not at all," he said.

WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer says prosecutors will use Hoover's testimony to link Casey Anthony to the scene where Caylee's body was dumped.

"Where did he get that information? And you can only get that information from the killer or someone so closely associated with the killer that they had that information," Sheaffer said.

Hoover was behind closed doors at the State Attorney's Office Thursday for nearly three hours facing defense questions. Hoover has also said that the Anthonys' private eye never looked for the mysterious nanny of the same name whom Casey claimed disappeared with Caylee.

http://www.wftv.com/news/19080447/detail.html#-