What a case this has started off to be. Sadly the life of yet another child is endangered and no one seems to know the truth of what happened the night Haleigh disappeared.
From the very start of this case it was reported that Haleigh Cummings disappeared from Satsuma, FL on 02/10/09 around midnight.
Ronald Cummings & Haleigh’s grandmother, Teresa Neves
Now the strange circumstances started with the actual disappearance of Haleigh. It was reported that Ronald Cummings, 25, (father) was at work when she disappeared and his girlfriend Misty Croslin, 17 was home alone with Haleigh when she vanished into thin air.
Misty Croslin
Croslin reports Haleigh was put to bed around 8 or 9 pm on Monday February 9, 2009 and then at some point Misty Croslin reportedly woke up and found the back door propped open and Haleigh was missing.
Now oddly enough they reported that the back door stayed locked but there was no damage noted to the mobile home door when it was reportedly forced opened and propped open with a brick.
Now with the many different reports and tips from different tipsters it’s not unclear whether or not the girlfriend was even home. Some have reported she left the child alone and wasn’t even home, I guess that would explain the long delay in calling 911 to report a 5 year old child missing. Croslin has now denied these accusations and said she was home when Haleigh disappeared. But Croslin has told police many different inconsistent stories about what happened and where she was when Haleigh disappeared.
There also seems to be some confusion regarding the sleeping arrangements one new paper reported that Misty Croslin stated that she was sleeping next to the child and couldn’t believe she did not hear anything when she was abducted and then a short time later she was back in the media claiming the media made an error, she now claims she was sleeping beside someone else and not Haleigh.
To add more confusion to the case the police are reviewing inconsistencies in the description of what Haleigh was wearing when she was last seen alive. Croslin reported that Haleigh was wearing a pink shirt on the night she disappeared but police are reporting that they have that item of clothing in their possession. If she got the child ready for bed, one would think she could at least remember what she had the child wear to bed.
Misty Croslin has also told different stories to the police and to the media about the time of her discovery that Haleigh was missing. Of course if she would have called 911 immediately, the official time she found her missing would have been recorded, but since that did not happen, we now are left to figure out on our own which version of the story is true.
As with any case the police of course have to list anyone with any connection to this case as a suspect. It seems they must include Ronald Cummings and Misty Croslin. They have reportedly taking a lie detector test and they both claim they passed or told the truth, yet at the same time there has been no official report made on the outcome of the test.
Now one part I really don’t understand is the fact of the delay in calling 911 or at least calling Haleigh’s dad to let him know that his daughter was missing. Since it was reported that he did not get off work and home until around 3 am, what would cause such a delay in making any notifications? And then add in the inconsistent stories about where Misty and Haleigh where when she disappeared, it certainly adds to the confusion of this case.
I mean if anyone has read any local on line news lately you would have read several stories that have been in the media about children being labeled as a hero for the actions they took in an emergency situation and yet we have people that claim she was too young to know what to do when she found Haleigh missing. Yet we have these children that are a lot younger than Misty Croslin that have taken heroic action to save a life.
I’m not really sure but something just doesn’t add up with the facts of this case so far.
Then if that’s not bad enough we have people that claiming that Ronald Cummings knows who took Haleigh and of course that alone was enough to get Geraldo Rivera involved.
Just a side note – I thought Geraldo Rivera was dead. I use to watch his show and it’s been years since I have even heard his name and yet there he was on TV trying to interview Ronald Cummings.
Through Geraldo’s investigation it reviled that there was a history of physical abuse with Haleigh and her family. When Geraldo confronted Ronald Cummings about these accusations he quickly denied them and said this mud slinging would not bring his daughter home. Then Geraldo was quickly asked to leave the area where the family has set up camp and been staying. The family has since been in the media reporting they wanted to hit Geraldo for his line of questioning but they elected not too.
Crystal Sheffield (Haleigh’s mother)
We also Crystal Sheffield (Haleigh’s mother) telling Geraldo Rivera that Ronald Cummings had been abusive to her when she first got pregnant.
She said that Ronald Cummings was very abusive. She reports that he punched her in the back of the head and she also told the media of an incident where Ronald Cummings had back handed so hard it caused her to fall flat on her face on the porch.
Yet we still have Ronald Cummings denying he had ever been abusive to Haleigh or Sheffield.
Ronald Cummings said never, ever have I ever hit my child. Never, never have I ever hit any woman, period. Never.
Then if the case hasn’t been strange enough already we now have the cousin from Tennessee that was visiting when Haleigh disappeared.
Crystal Sheffield reports she has been told that the cousin is a sexual pedophile. Then Haleigh’s grandmother, Teresa Neves, was also reporting that Croslin described him as a jerk and she was worried that he was in town. Then Neves told the media that she could not tell them anything about the cousin, she only knew him by his first name, Joe.
So in this short amount of time the case has moved into Tennessee, a tipster reported that she called detectives in Knoxville and reported to have seen a man in a restaurant with a little girl resembling Haleigh. She reported that the man was in a red Toyota RAV4 and it looked like he was trying to hide the little girl with him.
Police in Florida haven’t released any vehicle information in this case and it was reported that the Tennessee officials turned the tip over to Putnam County Sheriffs Office.
The police have been investigating every angle they can in this case and they have even been interviewing the sexual predators in the area and with rumors about the arrest of a local sexual predator police have said they do have a sexual predator in custody but they have no reason to link him to Haleigh. The police said he missed his curfew but GPS proved that he was not in the area where Haleigh disappeared.
Now even though Ronald Cummings has denied being abusive to any women, it was reported that the state child welfare agency has investigated the Cummings family. The welfare agency refuses to release any information regarding that investigation.
Now today to add more twist and turns in the case, we now have Haleigh’s brother telling police that a man dressed in black snuck into her room and took Haleigh.
Sheffield said that her son and Ronald Cummings both recounted the same story to her.
Now how could they both tell the same story? If Ronald Cummings wasn’t even home how could he recount any detail about the disappearance of Haleigh?
But none the less today it was reported that her brother wants to find his sissy and said someone in black took her. Even though her son reportedly has information regarding the disappearance, Sheffield said she has not questioned him and she is not going to question him.
Even though there are more twist and turns in this case, the police are still working to clear up about 1600 lead they have received about this case. Sadly none of the lead has lead police to any trace of Haleigh.
