I am not the best person to ask about transferring pics. I can do it, but I cant explain it very well....I was wondering if you get a sense about the general "feeling" in your area about what people think happened to haleigh? Thanks In advance if you can answer. If not, thanks for being here and sharing what you can
lol - I do feel like I am being interviewed here by one of the hordes of media in town.
All of the towns in Putnam County are small, Peyton Place -like communities, with overlapping asoociations between people. I am in the biggest town, Palatka. The Satsuma community is across the river and to the south. The Interlachen community is south and west of us. Both of those communities border on the Ocala National Forest, more on that later.
On Facebook, there is NO chatter about the case amongst the current and former residents of the area that I have seen. I have posted several things about Haleigh and only one person responded.
One of my relatives did e-mail the Amber Alert out to everybody. And Trish [who I sent my "Aunt Sunday" info to] participated in the ground search which she told me about, but otherwise it's as if we are all avoiding the subject.
Here's what I have heard via the grapevine -
Misty, the 17 yr old girlfriend, had been kicked out of the home by the father due to her drug use. She had only recently moved back in with him and the kids.
Most of us initially thought Misty and/or the dad were the culprits. At this point, I personally do not believe that she is smart enough to have killed the kid and gotten rid of the body without a trace.
There was talk about the possibility that Haleigh had been left unattended, or Misty was inattentive [passed out, partying, whatever], or that Misty and Haleigh were having a bit of a stand-off, Haleigh "ran away" and Misty was trying to wait her out.
I really thought that Haleigh would be found in the St. Johns River. It is a very large body of water [that flows north, btw] so it may still turn out to be so.
Few of us knew anything about Chad Reynolds, much less that he was a predator who had absconded. After reading about him in the Ocala Star-Banner and viewing his myspace page, I'm wondering if he and Haleigh might both be found in the Ocala National Forest which is huge. There are countless hunting camps in there, parts are restricted because it is used for military training [dropping bombs from aircraft - we used to sneak out there for keg parties and the fake bombings were scary but exciting.]
As such a rural area, kids around here are used to being highly mobile. I drove my kids out to the Cross Florida Barge Canal yesterday [another teen keg party hangout] and was surprised at just how far we would drive every Friday and Saturday night to party. And we thought nothing of driving 30-40 miles to the beach the next morning. Chad Reynolds is probably even more used to driving quite a ways to do stuff.
He may have nothing to do with it, but it is pretty difficult for someone raised in the digital era to just vanish - unless they are hiding out in the Ocala National Forest. Pure speculation, of course, but maybe he anticipated flunking his drug test the week after the Super Bowl.
We in Putnam County don't know what to think at this point. I am rapidly losing confidence in our newly elected sheriff - who I didn't vote for, btw.
I'm sure this is way more than anyone wanted to know, but there you have it.