The Haleigh Cummings Story
- William Tell
- 23 hours ago
- 2 min read
The players; ages as of 2009:
Haleigh Cummings, 5, daughter of Ronald Cummings and Crystal Sheffield
Junior, 3, her brother by the same parents
Ronald Lemyles Cummings, 25, father of Haleigh and Junior
Misty Croslin, 17, his girlfriend
Crystal Sheffield, 22, mother of Haleigh and Junior
Tommy Croslin, Misty’s older brother
Joseph Overstreet, cousin to Misty and Tommy
Annette Sykes, Ronald’s grandmother
Ronald and Crystal became involved when she was 14 years old. At age 17, she bore him Haleigh, and Junior 18 months later. Ronald won custody of the children because Crystal was using cocaine and failing to keep crucial doctors’ appointments with Haleigh. Crystal was awarded visitation every two weeks.
As of February 2009, Ronald, Misty and the children were living in a rented trailer. On February 8, Tommy, Joseph, and Annette all visited the trailer at various times. At 8:00 pm, Ronald left to work his job at the night shift at a steel fabricating plant. Misty told police she put the children to bed at 8:15, and went to bed herself at 10:00. She told police she got up at 3:00 to use the bathroom, and saw that Haleigh was gone. The side door to the trailer was propped open with a cinderblock. Minutes later, Ronald arrived back from work; 911 was called at 3:27.
The child was never found.
Misty’s statements to police were inconsistent. She failed five polygraph tests. At some point, Misty and Tommy began telling police this scenario whereby Joseph was the perpetrator. The story makes sense, but nothing ever came of it.
A month later, Ronald and Misty married, left the trailer and moved in with Annette. The marriage would last six months.
“More than once, Sykes says she found her grandson crying on the floor clutching a photo of his daughter, wondering who had Haleigh and what they were doing to her.
“‘That’s where he’d be,’ she says, crying as she recalled the memory. ‘… He’d cry and talk to her picture.’”
Ronald and Misty each later served time for selling drugs. The first 90 seconds or so of the video, are a police tape of a sting in which Misty was arrested for selling drugs to undercover agents. She is scheduled for release in 2031.
As I said in perhaps my first-ever post about missing children (* “Soft” and “hard” skills in school; and other news | The Homeless Blogger), “These events seem most often to occur when adults have rendered total chaos in the home.”
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