Everything I say here is a personal theory and not a fact. I do not know if it is true. Sorry if this sounds a bit muddled.
It just hit me. You lie for someone when your child is missing. You marry them. You do that if they have a hold over you. You do that if they could expose you. (Marry me or I will tell.) Misty has to know something, but it is about Ron. However, she was a child. He also has a hold over her. I have never got why he got away with being involved with her underage even if he did later marry her. I never understood why, as an ADULT with a minor the drug charges for him were not more serious. Why has he never been charged for consorting with a minor? Wasn't there more than one minor? (You tell and something bad will happen to those you love.)
I personally think Ron confused Misty to such an extent that she believes she is to blame for the whole thing, (Children blame themselves for abuse,) but is confused because Ron was the real culprit. That might explain the lie detectors. It might also explain a resistance to hypnosis.
Ron is frightened of Misty and those love letters are not love letters at all. It is Misty's way of letting Ron and Theresa know that she still has the hold. OR it is saying "please do not tell on me about what you did. I am still keeping your secret." Only she thinks if she explains that hold to anyone then she will be the one to blame and put others in danger. (Haleigh is dead, but what if there was a threat to other kids?)
I may be wrong and it is just a theory, but I am just thinking of the way a person who sexually abuses a child convinces them they can never tell. They hold that information for years? Now who else was involved in that scenario, if you get the drift? What age were they and who were they? How young did he go?
What grown man would sit in a car and allow an underage child to carry our a drug deal no matter how "old" or in charge they seem?
What if Misty believes her family, who she does love, are going to be harmed if she talks? Misty is not an adult in her thinking. People stop at the age they experience abuse and Misty was abused by others. Emotionally, we cannot expect her to reason like an adult unless she has had a ton of therapy.
What if she thinks something will happen to others if she tells what she knows?
I don't care where Ron was but I suspect he is the one who should be in the frame.
I don't think in or out of jail we will get anything out of Misty unless the court orders some therapy for abuse and she matures to an age where she can become an adult.
I do think the law in Florida is what threw Misty under the bus jail wise but would like to know if there are any others who have similar charges and what happened to them. In many ways Misty going to Juvenile detention and getting some help might have ultimately helped Hailey. She is too old now for that. The trouble is that if she gets out and there was no therapy her fear and her level of thinking may not have evolved.
Misty getting a reduced sentence now, or not, is not going to help unless she is helped in other ways. She will continue to spin stories out of fear. Jail may help her if it also gives her access to the right courses and some therapy. I do not think she killed Haleigh. I think she knows too much and is convinced telling puts others in danger. (Too easy to tell a child that even if I am not around others will do the job for me.)
Which means I do not think Haleigh is alive. I do not now think she is trafficked. I do think if the investigators stopped assuming the players thought like adults they might get further along. Is it worth looking at her stories as a child trying to tell an adult something and adults not picking up on the clues?
I don't know if they have done it, but maybe if LE looked again at the mental age of the people involved? Ron on the 999 call. Kids would have that kind or reaction. NOT an adult. They might crack it if they took it as all the players think like children and not as they do?
Also, has anyone ever tested to see if Misty herself could have pushed back the bolts on the back door of the trailer? I would have thought there would have been a way of testing that.
I think part of the problem with the case is that people are looking at people who may have very child like thinking as if they are thinking like adults.
On the other hand, would children not leave a trail of clues? That would lead back to the stranger and chair in the woods theory.
Perhaps each idea needs to be revisited and examined again step by step. It may be something throws up.