Just a refresher of Chelsea's previous statements.
Two days before Haleigh turned up missing last February, a drunk driver with no insurance smashed into the used car Timmy and Chelsea had just bought days earlier. Hank, Sr., her father in law wound up in the hospital in Gainesville, Fla., she says, and didn’t come home until after Haleigh vanished, on crutches, pins in his leg and a lot of pain.
With her car totalled, Chelsea started driving the blue family van, which she initially reported appeared to be parked in a different spot than she usually left it the day Haleigh was reported missing. Cousin Joe Overstreet had spent the night, and Chelsea later told police she’d left the keys on the kitchen counter, where she usually does, within easy reach. Reflecting now, she says, “What I told police was that I can’t totally, 100 per cent account for Joe that night…
“I don’t see Joe doing something like this, but I just gave police my observations — that the van just seemed to be in a different spot. I have a long driveway, and the back steps are to the left. I usually turn the wheel so the car is behind the stairs. This time, I noticed it seemed to be parked more on the side of the house. I don’t know if Joe took it to the store, or maybe he didn’t take it at all.”
While police say there’s no evidence he had anything to do with Haleigh gone missing, Cousin Joe, whose mother tells me was questioned twice by police about the case in the last two weeks, became the Florida Croslin family’s prime suspect; months ago, I watched Misty’s mother, Tommy and wife Lindsay give private investigator Williams Staubs a yard tour, showing him a drainage pipe under the driveway where they claim Joe stashed a gun he’d allegedly stolen from Ronald; Joe declined to comment.
What Chelsea does know is that the day Haleigh was reported missing, cousin Joe split for Tennessee; she was beyond exhaustion. “We’d just left Gainesville, dropping (Misty’s mother) Lisa off to be with Hank at the hospital. I’d been up late trying to figure out insurance claims for our car that was wrecked, dealing with an injured father in law and then, we go to sleep and about 4 a.m., and I get a phone call.”
It was Misty. “I don’t usually answer the phone in the middle of the night,” she tells me, “but I did this time and heard everyone in the background yelling for Haleigh.”
They lay in bed for an hour or so, not sure what to make of it, not wanting to wake up her two girls, close to giving birth to a third. At about 6 a.m., “I woke up Timmy when we realized this was serious. I couldn’t imagine anything like this. I just figured she’s probably hiding in a closet. My kids hide from me all the time. Sometimes I’ll find them in a cabinet. To them, it’s a game.”
It was no game. Within hours, she’d raced back to Gainesville to pick up Misty’s mother and hightailed it back to the Sheriff’s Department, where she and Timmy joined the long line of family members for interviews, took polygraphs, and watched Ronald and Misty hand over the clothes they were wearing to police. “Ronald was wearing his company jumpsuit, like a blue work outfit that zipped up the front, and they both went in back and took off everything, including their underwear.”
http://www.artharris.com/2009/10/05/exclusive-inside-the-haleigh-cummings-family-feud/