PUTNAM COUNTY, Fla. – The St. Johns County sheriff introduced consideration to a 15-year-old case that rocked the Putnam County neighborhood.
Sheriff Hardwick lately appeared on Nancy Grace’s podcast “Crime Tales” to speak in regards to the investigation into the disappearance of 5-year-old HaLeigh Cummings.
HaLeigh was final seen at her Satsuma residence in February 2009. Her father, Ronald Cummings, was working that night time whereas his girlfriend, Misty Croslin, was babysitting HaLeigh and her youthful brother, Ronald Jr.
Hardwick labored with the State Legal professional’s Workplace because the assistant chief accountable for loss of life or murder investigations on the time of her disappearance.
“It’s a type of instances that may simply by no means go away as a result of it was by no means solved. And it’s virtually like a failure to myself professionally and personally, that we by no means recovered a 5-year-old woman. We by no means accomplished the case, per see,” Hardwick stated.
Hardwick stated Croslin’s account would come with new or inconsistent info every time they talked to her like the truth that her brother Hank and her cousin Joey Overstreet have been on the home that night time and {that a} machine gun was in the home for looking functions.
Hardwick stated at one level, detectives drove Croslin round for each attainable lead.
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“The dive groups from the businesses that truly went to the boat ramp, they have been discovering alligator fingernails and enamel within the water. That’s how onerous these models have been in search of her. Subsequent, she’d get again within the automotive, I don’t suppose that is the place. I imply, so simply a type of issues we might do the whole lot in our energy, our potential, our resourcing, to convey HaLeigh residence, but it surely was simply coping with an individual that was mentally unstable and generally smarter than us,” Hardwick stated.
HaLeigh can be 20 years outdated at the moment, and plenty of questions stay unanswered about her disappearance.
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Workplace thought of her case an unsolved murder. The Nationwide Middle for Lacking and Exploited Kids listed age-progressed photographs of HaLeigh if she was 9 and 15 years outdated.
“We have been contacted by the Nancy Grace manufacturing firm and producers,” Hardwick stated. “I can’t cease speaking about this case. In fact, it’s within the arms of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Workplace and Sheriff Gator DeLoach; they’re an exceptional group over there. However there’s solely a lot you are able to do when the leads dry up, per se. So anytime we get an opportunity to say this on any media stage, and anyone that desires to hearken to us, you by no means know that one particular person possibly watch the information going what, ‘I bear in mind one thing now that got here to me’ or possibly that particular person has that responsible conscience and says, ‘I gotta get off my chest.’”
Hardwick stated he held out hope that she was nonetheless alive.
“To at the present time, we simply, we’re at all times hoping due to different instances throughout America the place kids have truly turned up as adults. And I’ll say wholesome, however alive most likely is the right response,” Hardwick stated. “My factor is that this with this case, I simply would love to shut up my skilled profession, every time that ends, and say the Haley Cummings case was solved.”
PCSO stated it nonetheless receives suggestions from all around the nation.
Crime Stoppers of Northeast Florida has a $15,000 reward for suggestions that result in an arrest in HaLeigh’s case.
In case you have a tip or any info, name 88-277-8477 to stay nameless.
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