Caylee Anthony: a shot at justice; Haleigh Cummings waits

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

It’s only a 90 minute drive between Orlando, Florida, where Casey Anthony goes on trial Tuesday for the murder of her two year old daughter, Caylee, and the swampy backwoods of Satsuma, in Putnam County, where the case of another missing and presumed murdered little girl remains unsolved.

For five year old Haleigh Cummings, justice is still a world away.

One big reason: Caylee Anthony’s body was found, along with crucial forensic evidence to analyze, like duck tape (with a little heart sticky) used to cover her eyes and mouth, say prosecutors, a dark stain in the trunk of her mother’s 1998 Pontiac Sunfire that tested positively for chloroform and carpet that “smelled like a dead body” to one of Casey’s parents.

Armed with that and other evidence like hair and fiber tested by the FBI, a cadaver dog handler and photos of the so called Tot Mom partying like 1999 in the 30 days Caylee was missing (but never reported), prosecutors plan to tell the Orlando jury Tuesday it all adds up to murder, plain and simple, that circumstantial evidence will show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Casey Anthony killed her own daughter.

In the Haleigh case, police say former 17 year old babysitter Misty Croslin holds the key to unlocking the truth, though she now denies knowing anything after numerous stories and four failed polygraphs. She reported Haleigh missing Feb. 9, 2009, and within 30 days, had married the father, Ronald Cummings.

Like Casey, Misty was a party girl born to lesser circumstances; she had drug addicts for parents, then married one, and moved into his Satsuma, Fla. trailer, where they were all living against a backdrop of understandable violence and drugs, not a tony Orlando neighborhood that evokes some arch-typical Lifetime movie villainess, accused killer Bad Seed Mama, pretty but hard-hearted, maybe even a party girl psychopath possibly gearing up for crocodile tears in court to fight for her life in an upscale reality TV morality play starring Good V. Evil few can fathom.

Casey can’t plead the abuse excuse, no husband or boyfriend who smacked her around. But Misty, who has not been charged in the Haleigh case, might certainly trot out a battered woman defense if it ever comes to that. Her man, Ronald Cummings, was violent, his three exes have all told me in exclusive interviews, and Misty told friends he rolled her into a ball when he believed she was pregnant and kicked her to the curb.

The Bald Truth first reported three days of the revenge binge that followed in early Feb., 2009, lots of drugs and sex on a wild weekend with a girlfriend and a light-skinned African American nicknamed “White Boy Greg,” who passed a polygraph and is not a suspect, sources tell me.

That fling ended on the Sunday before Haleigh vanished, when Misty was back home with a seething Ronald, a local thug with a love of guns, whose exes all told me he smacked them and his children around, caused his son, JR, a bad nose bleed and loved to stick guns in his mouth and threaten to pull the trigger.

Along with Misty, Tommy, and two others, Ronald was also convicted of trafficking after a drug sting last year, and got 15 years behind bars, like Tommy and Ronald’s 18 year old niece, who made the mistake of daring Palatka Judge Terry LaRue to give her the max. Oops.

We’ve also reported exclusively that Misty was offered full immunity in the Haleigh case if she would lead investigators to a body and a killer. She declined, her lawyer confirmed for The Bald Truth.

Investigators with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department and the FDLE are frustrated, but far from giving up.

After chasing down 5,000 leads, dragging the St. John’s River, digging up a relative’s backyard and ruling out parental kidnapping, they have yet to find a body, a weapon or any reliable witness to testify against other unreliable folks, even if backed up by forensic evidence.

The problem is sorting truth. Beyond Misty’s failed poly, there’s brother, Tommy, who flunked his own lawyer’s polygraph, The Bald Truth first reported, before he lead police to the St. John’s River, claiming that’s where cousin Joe Overstreet of Tennessee used a yellow rope to tie Haleigh to a cinder block and toss her into the gator infested currents.

Sources have also told us Timmy Croslin, Misty’s other brother, showed deception on a polygraph taken shortly after Haleigh vanished, and shortly after that, moved his then pregnant wife, Chelsea, and their two other children, to Massachusetts, to be near her parents, far away from the tangled swamps and twisted truth.

After Misty admitted she made up the cousin Joe did it story, Chelsea, retracted a similar accusation, raising questions whether she and husband Timmy may have driven the van to the trailer that night, NOT Joe, as she had asserted earlier, after taking a call from Misty.

Both still deny any knowledge of what happened or any wrongdoing, and Chelsea told us in March they’d be willing to take new polys, but no more interviews with police.

In recent weeks, her behaviour has zig-zagged; she was busted for drug possession in Volushia County, records show, “two joints,” according to a family member, then tried to peddle a bogus story that Haleigh was alive, and being held by pedophiles in Kentucky. She claimed the FBI had arrested someone for child porn, which was true, and that he was somehow tied into a man who had written Misty in prison, sending photos of a girl and insisting it was Haleigh.

She grew angry when we asked for more proof and said we’d showed the photo to others who agreed it looked nothing like Haleigh, then she handed the phone to her brother who hung up.

While she claimed Misty believed it, and claimed that her father was saying Haleigh’s DNA had been found in the suspect’s house, the FBI in Indianapolis in charge of the probe told us there were no ties whatsoever.

Sources close to the case also told The Bald Truth the Putnam County Sheriff had received no such information as is customary when a break in a local case happens out of state.

Still, that didn’t stop Chelsea from crying wolf, even finding one disreputable blogger to run with the phony Haleigh is alive hoax that even her close friends now say we debunked completely to even Misty’s satisfaction.

Some law enforcement sources suggest Chelsea’s actions raise questions, and fuel new suspicions about what might be viewed as a smokescreen. An attempt to divert attention from her recent pot bust, and husband Timmy’s failed poly we broke? Might they know more than they’ve shared, like investigators believe Misty and Tommy do?

Surprisingly, Chelsea and Timmy had returned to Florida from Massachussets, moving into an apartment complex outside Daytona Beach. They were driving a used Ford Taurus bounty hunter Leonard Padilla had bought Misty’s parents, until a friend told us “it blew up,” and they were now driving a cheap clunker purchased by a contractor who had given Timmy a job putting up sheetrock.

Their big hope, family tells me, is that it won’t break down when they move the family back to Massachussetts later this week. Their purported reason for initially moving back was to be close to Hank and Lisa Croslin, who were then in and out of jail for drugs, but are now living in a Satsuma camper and going to church, and to be able to visit Tommy and Misty, both serving long prison terms for drug trafficking.

But family sources tell us Timmy only paid his first visit to brother Tommy last weekend, almost a year after he was sentenced, dragging along his three children to

Both Tommy and Misty are serving long prison terms for drug trafficking, but sources tell us a rather sheepish Timmy paid his first visit last weekend to see his brother behind bars, dragging along his three small children to cheer up Uncle Tommy.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you punched me between the bars, for not coming to see me sooner,” he told Tommy, according to our interview with a family member privy to the exchange.

With an outstanding warrant for her arrest issued in Virginia, and obtained exclusively by The Bald Truth, Chelsea is not permitted inside either Florida prison.

Private investigator Tiny Church tells us Chelsea actually made contact with local detectives in Virginia and offered to go undercover for Putnam County to get information from Misty in prison in the Haleigh case, if they’d cut her a break with her warrant. “They were open to making a deal,” says Church, “but Chelsea apparently never followed through with local law enforcement.”

As it now stands, if she flees Florida and drives through Virginia on her way BACK to Massachussetts, she’d better be careful or she could find herself behind bars again. We’ll have more on Chelsea and her Virginia issues here at The Bald Truth.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 at 2:55 am and is filed under ART HARRIS EXCLUSIVES, ART HARRIS REPORTS, artharris.com, Caylee Anthony, Geraldo Rivera, Haleigh Cummings, Jane Velez Mitchell, Larry King, MISSING CHILDREN, Misty Croslin, Murdered children, Nancy Grace, Natalie Holloway, Texas Equusearch, the bald truth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.