People magazine broke a story Tuesday under the headline "Casey Anthony Flushed Out of Hiding." It featured Orlando lawyer Matt Morgan saying that he'd found Casey Anthony in order to serve her papers in a lawsuit but that at the 11th hour, her lawyers accepted the papers for her.
"Our investigation team had her whereabouts pinned down," Morgan told People. "Their backs were against the wall, so her attorneys said that they would accept service on her behalf."
What does Anthony's lawyer, Cheney Mason, have to say about all this?
"That's an absolute, unethical lie. Bullshit. That young lawyer just made it up. A fantasy. Imagination," he told the Pulp today. "It'll be a cold day in hell when [the lawyers of Morgan and Morgan] will get my back against the wall."
Morgan is representing housekeeper Zenaida Gonzalez, who happens to share a name with a fictional housekeeper Casey Anthony blamed for her 3-year-old daughter's death during the investigation. Morgan said it was a "pretty simple" defamation suit.
Morgan told me Tuesday that he offered months ago to serve the papers to Anthony's lawyers but that they wouldn't accept. So he hired an investigation team to find Anthony's home in order for her to receive the papers herself.
Mason said what actually happened at that hearing months ago was that Morgan tried to get Anthony's address and the judge refused to compel Mason's associate to turn it over. Finally, two weeks ago, an order was passed down that said Mason had to either disclose her address or accept the papers for Anthony. Mason elected to accept the papers and said he will never give out her address.
"It's a fabrication. Do you think for one minute that for all the self-aggrandizing publicity that they've done in that case... that if they knew where she was, they wouldn't serve her?" Morgan said. "Willie Nelson had a song about that, about the federales. 'We could have had him any day, but we let him slip away, out of kindness, I suppose...'"
(For the record: The song is "Pancho and Lefty," and Nelson only covered it. It was written by Townes Van Zandt, and it is awesome.)
And, though Orlando TV station WKMG reported late Monday that Mason had accepted the subpoena in question, he said he accepted it this morning. (And had a chat with the process server about Vietnam. Really.) I've left several messages for Morgan over the past two days but haven't heard back. If he has a response to all this, I'll post it as soon as I get it.
And here's that order:
