PUTNAM COUNTY, Fla. – The St. Johns County sheriff brought attention to a 15-year-old case that rocked the Putnam County community.
Sheriff Hardwick recently appeared on Nancy Grace’s podcast “Crime Stories” to talk about the investigation into the disappearance of 5-year-old HaLeigh Cummings.
HaLeigh was last seen at her Satsuma home in February 2009. Her father, Ronald Cummings, was working that night while his girlfriend, Misty Croslin, was babysitting HaLeigh and her younger brother, Ronald Jr.
Hardwick worked with the State Attorney’s Office as the assistant chief in charge of death or homicide investigations at the time of her disappearance.
“It’s one of those cases that will just never go away because it was never solved. And it’s almost like a failure to myself professionally and personally, that we never recovered a 5-year-old girl. We never completed the case, per se,” Hardwick said.
Hardwick said Croslin’s account would include new or inconsistent information each time they talked to her like the fact that her brother Hank and her cousin Joey Overstreet were at the house that night and that a machine gun was in the house for hunting purposes.
Hardwick said at one point, detectives drove Croslin around for every possible lead.
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“The dive teams from the agencies that actually went to the boat ramp, they were finding alligator fingernails and teeth in the water. That’s how hard these units were looking for her. Next, she’d get back in the car, I don’t think this is the place. I mean, so just one of those things we would do everything in our power, our ability, our resourcing, to bring HaLeigh home, but it was just dealing with a person that was mentally unstable and sometimes smarter than us,” Hardwick said.
HaLeigh would be 20 years old today, and a lot of questions remain unanswered about her disappearance.
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office considered her case an unsolved homicide. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children listed age-progressed photos of HaLeigh if she was 9 and 15 years old.
“We were contacted by the Nancy Grace production company and producers,” Hardwick said. “I will not stop talking about this case. Of course, it’s in the hands of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Gator DeLoach; they’re a phenomenal team over there. But there’s only so much you can do when the leads dry up, per se. So anytime we get a chance to mention this on any media stage, and anybody that wants to listen to us, you never know that one person maybe watch the news going you know what, ‘I remember something now that came to me’ or maybe that person has that guilty conscience and says, ‘I gotta get off my chest.’”
Hardwick said he held out hope that she was still alive.
“To this day, we just, we’re always hoping because of other cases across America where children have actually turned up as adults. And I will say healthy, but alive probably is the correct response,” Hardwick said. “My thing is this with this case, I just would love to close up my professional career, whenever that ends, and say the Haley Cummings case was solved.”
PCSO said it still receives tips from all over the nation.
Crime Stoppers of Northeast Florida has a $15,000 reward for tips that lead to an arrest in HaLeigh’s case.
If you have a tip or any information, call 888-277-8477 to remain anonymous.