Misty Cummings Brother Quizzed! Haleigh Siting??

Misty Cummings Brother Quizzed! Haleigh Siting??
September 8th, 2009

The Bald Truth has learned that investigators with the Putnam County Sheriff flew to Cape Cod to question the brother and sister in law of Misty Croslin Cummings, in an effort to glean new information that might explain “inconsistencies” they say riddle the accounts the 17 year old babysitter has been giving about the night she reported six year old Haleigh Cummings missing last February from her father’s trailer in rural Satsuma, Florida.

While the sheriff’s department declined to provide any specifics of the interviews with Timothy Croslin and his pregnant wife, Chelsea, Maj. Gary Bowling tells me investigators are still “trying to fill in (Misty’s) gaps between 8 p.m. on Feb. 9th, through 3:27 a.m., the next morning.”

We’ve learned exclusively that her then boyfriend, Ronald Cummings, purportedly quarreled with Misty via phone about 8:30 p.m. that Monday night over whether she might babysit for a relative.

I’m told she wanted to go to an (unspecified) brother’s house that night, but Ronald was adamant she stay home after a reconciliation the night before when she returned Sunday from what her party pals describe to The Bald Truth on videotape as three days of sex, drugs and drinking — without Ronald.

Misty gave similar accounts to investigators, sources tell me. (See Bald Truth exclusives with Kristina Nay Nay Prevatt, who drove her on the wild long weekend, and “White Boy Greg” Page, her weekend paramour.)

With that revenge romance hanging over his Satsuma lovenest, Ronald made what turned out to be a fractious call to her at 8:30 p.m. that Monday, Feb. 9, and sources tell me he kept calling and texting her from his job at PDM Bridge company, but Misty didn’t pick up until 3:15 a.m., sources close to the case tell me her cell phone records show.

She’d either turned her phone off “or it went off by itself,” says one.

Ronald was scheduled to get off at midnight, but wound up working until 3 a.m., then whipped into the San Mateo Handy Mart on the way home to buy beer and smokes. Sources say a video camera captured his visit about 3:15 a.m.

While police have cleared Ronald and Haleigh’s biological mother, Crystal Sheffield, as suspects in the case of their missing child, sources tell me some investigators are curious why Cummings would make a pit stop for beer if he was so worried about Misty’s whereabouts.

When he arrived, he says he learned his daughter was gone, and at 3:27 a.m., Misty makes the call to 911.
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Misty maintains she put Haleigh to bed at 8 pm., never left the trailer she shared with her father, Ronald Cummings, and found the little girl missing when she got up about 3 a.m. to use the bathroom, found a brick propping open the back door and the kitchen light mysteriously on.

Sources close to the case tell me if a credible witness comes forward who puts Misty away from the trailer during the hours she’s told law enforcement she was there, she could be arrested on unspecified charges.

Only no one has come forward so far to answer the sheriff department’s public plea for new information, and a $35,000 reward for information leading to solving Haleigh’s case goes unclaimed–along with a separate reward ponied up by a friend of Tim Miller.

I’m also told that Misty’s brother and pregnant sister in law provided little useful information, despite a virtual half day of grilling by Putnam County detectives Saturday at the South Yarmouth state police barracks in Massachussetts, where sources close to the family say they moved for better state health benefits for young mothers.

Meanwhile, police say the questioning had nothing to do with a possible sighting of Haleigh at a nearby Walmart in Abington, Mass., a lead police are following up on after exhausting 4,000 others, and interviewing and re-interviewing almost 140 witnesses.

A Putnam County Sheriff’s release Tuesday says investigators interviewed Timothy Croslin and his wife on Saturday, but that it had nothing to do with an alleged sighting of Haleigh Cummings in a Massachusetts store. Police maintain Misty has not been leveling with them.

But she did tell one newspaper she was excited at the prospect Haleigh might have been spotted alive.

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According to Texas Equusearch, she “miserably” failed a private polygraph test its director, Tim Miller, says she requested to clear her name, along with a voice stress analysis, which also showed deception. We’ve posted a copy of the voice report and an interview with its examiner, T.J. Ward of Atlanta.

But Robert Fields, Misty Cummings attorney, told me Tuesday that he has serious doubts how the test was administered.

For one, he says it was hardly a “clinical” setting, with Misty distracted by Native American art on the wall, and confused by three examiners – a polygraph operator, the voice analyst and a hypnotist. He also called it unethical for anyone to put his client through such invasive testing after he’d warned her against it—though she did sign a release. He scoffed at the results.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” he says.

Regardless, the tests confirmed what investigators have privately been saying for months – that the 17 year old Ronald Cummings married within a month after his daughter vanished knows more about what happened than she’s revealed.

Over dinner in Satsuma months ago, Ronald was conflicted about Misty’s purported partying in the days before Haleigh vanished, and confided he’d married her largely because she was the last person to see his daughter alive. “You know what they say, about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer,” he remarked over sweet tea and fried grouper at MeMas café in Satsuma.

But despite his child bride as a target of suspicion, his new lawyer, Terry Shoemaker says he’s standing by his woman.

As Ronald told me that night, “I know she fooled around, but I guess I just love her.”

Asked how the couple was holding up, Misty’s lawyer, Robert Fields told me, “They seem to be getting along just fine.”

http://www.artharris.com/2009/09/08/misty-cummings-brother-quizzed-haleigh-siting/#more-2778