Snow said he obtained custody directly from Casey's parents through the court in Riverside, California. He had never actually met Casey's parents.
Snow explained in greater depth.
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Brian Nellis, Rodreick's former cellmate and closest confidant
AP/Wide World Photos
Robert Snow, longtime friend of Lonnie Stiffler
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He said he met Casey on the Internet while Casey was living in Oklahoma. Then Casey's parents got divorced. Linda Price left for Germany without Casey, so Snow decided to take custody of him. He said he got custody paperwork "through Casey's e-mail."
Diskin noted that if this were true, Casey already would have been living with Snow before Snow received the custody paperwork.
"Casey came down for a visit," Snow replied.
Diskin told Snow he was "just making stuff up. We already know Casey was enrolled in school in El Mirage."
Snow then changed his story, saying that he was wrong when he said he had moved with Casey from Payson directly to Chino Valley. In fact, they had moved from Payson to El Mirage, then to Chino Valley.
Diskin was still confused by Snow's claim that Casey had been enrolled in Payson under the name Casey Rodreick.
How, asked Diskin, did you enroll Casey in the Payson school with no paperwork saying his name was now Casey Rodreick?
Snow then explained that Casey's parents had enrolled him in the Payson school: "His mother took care of that because they had his mother's home number and name."
Diskin asked, "She flew from Germany to enroll him in school?"
"She was in Oklahoma at the time," Snow said.
"Do you have her number?"
"No," Snow responded.
Snow was asked if he ever considered calling Casey's mother.
"No," Snow said.
Asked why Casey's birth certificate was from Germany, Snow explained that Casey's parents had been married in Riverside, then Casey was born in Germany, then they moved to Oklahoma, then divorced, then the parents moved back to Germany.
Snow said they began communicating with Casey through MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. Snow said he and Stiffler moved from Riverside to Arizona to be closer to Oklahoma, where Casey was living with his brothers. Casey's brothers were now living with their grandmother in Oklahoma. Snow said he never met Casey's family when he and Stiffler went to pick him up in Oklahoma to bring him to Arizona.
Snow said "a friend" brought Casey to the motel where he and Stiffler were staying.
Snow said Mike Masters, the U.S. Marshal and attorney cited in the custody paperwork, was "one of Casey's friends."
Snow said they gained custody of Casey two years ago.
That would mean Casey was 10 at the time.
And Casey's mom, Snow said, knew that Snow was a convicted sex offender.
Diskin mentioned that it was odd for a mother to hand over a child to a convicted sex offender several states away in Arizona. It would be odd, too, for a 10-year-old to have a U.S. Marshal for a friend, let alone a U.S. Marshal friend who would hand a 10-year-old over to a convicted sex offender in Arizona.
Snow said he talked to Masters on the Internet and that Masters agreed it was better for Casey to live with him than go into a foster home.
Diskin told Snow he believed he was lying and that the paperwork was fraudulent.
"Those papers came from the Internet," he said. "We did not make those up personally ourselves, at all."
Snow looked perplexed. "How could I make up those papers?" he asked Diskin.
The question was too stupid to deserve an answer.
Diskin returned to the room where "Grandpa" Stiffler was waiting.
He began asking Stiffler many of the same questions he asked Snow.
How did you meet Casey? How did he end up here? Did you talk to his mother?
Diskin related Stiffler's answers in his police report the next day:
"We were just talking to him on the Internet — just chatting," Stiffler said. "We asked if he could come visit for awhile. We told Casey to 'ask your mother and have your mother talk to us.'"
Stiffler received an e-mail that began: "This is Linda, Casey's mom," he said. She said it would be fine for Casey to come visit.
Diskin asked Stiffler how he knew it was actually Casey's mom.
"She was there, she was typing on the Internet."
Most likely, Stiffler was simply lying. But another theory began to creep into the minds of the officers. Perhaps Stiffler himself had been duped in some way by the other men in the trailer.
With all this talk of Internet chats, Diskin asked Stiffler if he owned a computer. Stiffler said no.
Diskin asked who owned the laptop sitting in the living room.
"The one out there, the laptop, is mine," Stiffler said, "but I don't use it for Internet purposes, for any type of communication." Stiffler said the computer he talked to Casey with had "burnt up." Stiffler said he only uses the laptop in the living room to "check my mail. I don't check for anything else, don't go into no chat rooms or anything like that."
With those tortured answers, Detective Diskin knew that the computer hard drives in the trailer likely were going to provide a wealth of evidence.
