ISSUES WITH JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL
Aired February 20, 2009 - 19:00:00 ET
Stunning new developments coming in fast and furious in the search for missing Florida girl Haleigh Cummings: now the story has crossed state borders. Police today questioned Misty Croslin`s cousin, now referred to as Joe, hundreds of miles away in Tennessee. Reports suggest that it was this cousin who got into a fight with father, Ron Cummings hours before little Haleigh disappeared and that he had taken off to Tennessee afterwards.
All this made more compelling by a tip that a girl matching Haleigh`s description was seen in a Knoxville, Tennessee Carrabba`s Restaurant in a red Toyota RAV-4 with Florida license plates and that her face was shielded by a man.
Haleigh`s family held a news conference today and answered the many questions about this mysterious cousin, Joe, who Misty says she doesn`t trust.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I bet you don`t trust him?
CRYSTAL CUMMINGS, HALEIGH`S AUNT: We don`t either.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why don`t you trust him?
NEVES: Well, from the newspaper clips that we have and what we`ve heard, he might not be a very good person for Haleigh to be with. We`re just hoping that if he does know something that he tells someone so we can bring her home safely.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you feel comfortable with this man who you consider potentially a pedophile in a home with Haleigh? He was in the home at one point.
TERESA NEVES, HALEY`S GRANDMOTHER: You know, you trust your friends and your family to bring in people that you can trust. He did not carry a sign that says "I`m a sexual offender and I`m going to steal your child." He carried nothing like that.
As far as the cousin, I mean, Ronald wants Haleigh home and he doesn`t care who has her, how they got her. He wants her home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
T.J., what is the very latest, particularly as regards this Joe person?
T.J. HART, WSKY 97.3 FM: This Joe person has become a person of interest. We`ve been hearing lots about a man who may be a relative up until late yesterday who lives in Tennessee and who may have been here during the time frame when young Haleigh disappeared.
Now he has a name. He goes by Joe. At least that`s how he`s being identified today. Misty Croslin was on morning television today, and she spoke a bit about this character Joe, this cousin, and she said she doesn`t trust him, she doesn`t trust him at all. She doesn`t think he`s a good person.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Is there any confirmation that he indeed has some kind of record as a pedophile because that`s what the family was referring to in the news conference.
HART: That`s the suggestion that`s being made, and that`s the lead that we`ve been following for a couple of days now. One, who is this cousin? What is this person`s full name? What is his age? And I`ve been looking through the sexual predator registries on just what I have. And of course, you`re not going to get much with what I`ve told you already.
But in the press conference yesterday at 3:00, with Putnam County Sheriff Jeff Hardy, he said I`m not going to answer that question. So he just declined to answer; very tight-lipped about the situation and the status of this cousin.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Lisa Bloom, this is such scary information. And then you dovetail it with this tip about a child that looks like Haleigh being spotted at a restaurant with a white male and, according to some reports, a mystery woman as well.
And my thought is why didn`t we know about this a long time ago? I mean, if this guy had had a fight with the father of this missing child, wouldn`t that be the very first person they would go to find since he would have some kind of motive?
LISA BLOOM, ANCHOR OF "IN SESSION": Jane, you are putting your finger on the most important development in the case over the past couple of weeks, and that is Misty, 17 years old, having the presence of mind to say on television, you know what, I don`t trust this guy. I don`t trust my cousin.
And you would expect her to say, well, he`s my family member, I`m sure everything`s fine. She doesn`t say that. And we know that when a child is missing it`s about a 95 percent chance that somebody in the family or somebody she knew is the one who abducted her. It`s the stranger abduction that gets all of the attention, but usually it`s a family member or somebody who knows her.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New reports suggest that it was Misty`s cousin Joe who was fighting with Haleigh`s dad, Ron, the night before she disappeared. But when asked about that fight yesterday, here`s what Ron had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RONALD CUMMINGS, FATHER OF HALEIGH CUMMINGS: There was no fight with no cousin over a gun. I don`t know where people are getting information from. But you know, people say -- people say a lot of things, and they don`t know what they`re talking about.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You didn`t have an altercation with anybody verbally, physically at all before --
CUMMINGS: I don`t have any enemies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
VELEZ-MITCHELL: T.J. Hart, was this cousin at the trailer hours before little Haleigh disappeared? Because I remember a week ago hearing that there was an air-conditioning repairman there. He had been questioned and cleared. And there was also a report at the same time, I can`t remember the source, that Misty`s cousin had stopped by the trailer earlier with some of her nephews.
Is this the same person, this Joe because that would explain everything? I mean, it could account for how this door was mysteriously opened that was supposed to be locked. If somebody`s in a trailer, they can unlock the door when nobody`s looking.
HART: Well, Jane, this right now is having this person of interest, Joe as he`s being referred to, being in this area, this tight little area, during the time of the disappearance. But no one has said anything about cousins, and no one has said anything about nephews, rather, at the time.
This is something I`ve not been able to confirm at this point. But it is something that my other reporters are working on
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0902/20/ijvm.01.html
Snipped by me from link above
