Mystery surrounding Haleigh feeds online obsessionLocal stories like Haleigh's become national fixations when observers with opinions take rants to the Web.
* By Dana Treen
* Story updated at 7:00 AM on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009
haleighnewz Texas engineer Ellen Johnson created this account in support of Haleigh's mother.
hereforhaleigh A gathering spot of advocates for Ronald Cummings, Haleigh's father.
camille_2010 Wisconsin mom Kathy Schmidt says family hasn't been asked tough questions.
HopeforHaleigh Recent comments defend Ronald Cummings but ask the focus be on the search.
crystal0430 The Twitter account of Crystal Sheffield, Haleigh's mother.
artharris.com Emmy-winning journalist Art Harris reports on Haleigh, other cases.
Prayers4Haleigh With a middle of the road approach, this account tries to keep focused on the search.
haleighsside An anonymous Florida-based account supportive of Haleigh's father.
scaredmonkeys.net Crime and current events blog lists Haleigh as high-profile missing persons case.
Stephww.wordpress.com Courts and crime broadcast journalist Steph Watts covers Haleigh, other cases.
KEY Twitter account Blogger
Marie1207 Twitter account of Haleigh's grandmother and mother of Crystal Sheffield is oriented toward Scripture quotations.
The disappearance of 5-year-old Haleigh Cummings eight months ago occurred about the time Ellen Johnson got Internet access at home in east Texas.
"I didn't even have a computer in my house until just before this," she said.
Now, the 46-year-old petroleum engineer has a Twitter account called haleighnewz dedicated to the case and at summer's end, was in Putnam County to help with a school supply drive for Haleigh's classmates. Johnson met Haleigh's mother, Crystal Sheffield, and grandmother Marie Griffis there. She spends hours sharing her thoughts online and probing for information about the ongoing investigation.
It is as if the Internet has removed a wall.
Johnson is not alone. In the eight months since the kindergartner disappeared from the Satsuma mobile home where she was living with a younger brother, their father and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Misty Croslin, Haleigh has touched legions of hearts and spawned international attention in an online community.
Johnson says her attraction to the case is not something she understands completely. She had never posted on an online forum but is now immersed in Haleigh's story.
"You are interacting with the people themselves," she said. "There is not that distance between them and you."
Johnson said she is not married and has no children but was struck by the plight of a mother without her child.
"On some level I felt compassion for them," she said.
Steph Watts, a broadcast producer and journalist who has worked for Court TV, CNN and Fox and followed crime and justice stories, said there is a danger in becoming too close to a case. "We feel like we have permission and a right to be in their lives and we don't," he said.
Watts has a blog, Watts Up With This??? at stephww.wordpress.com that follows the Haleigh story.
"What the Internet has done is taken those local stories and made them national stories," he said.
Watts said he began writing about Haleigh in August.
"I think people are feeling they can become part of the story by weighing in," he said.
What has happened is not necessarily new, he said, and reactions from online observers are equivalent to earlier generations yelling opinions at the television.
"This is like a high-speed letter to the editor," he said.
Kathy Schmidt, 42, a mother of three in Madison, Wis., calls the case a "scattered puzzle."
Schmidt, who has a Twitter account, camille_2010, is scheduled to launch the Justice 4 Haleigh blog today with a friend she met online. It will be at justice4haleigh.wordpress.com.
Passion ebbs and flows in the forums, she said.
"Nobody is really in charge of anything," she said. "They just get a following."
Like Johnson, Schmidt said she had never been compelled by a case before Haleigh's.
"She didn't get treated right and she didn't deserve this," Schmidt said of the still-missing youngster.
She has an answer for her children, aged 10 to 14, when they ask her why she is so absorbed by a girl so far away that she never knew.
"I don't really see anybody fighting for Haleigh on either side," she tells them. "If it was you, I'd want someone fighting for you. Haleigh didn't just walk out of that trailer for the rest of her life."
It is as if these people can reach through their computer screens to ease the pain of Haleigh's family or nudge a detective's shoulder to prod them forward.
They e-mail the cops and politicians when investigations seem to sputter and urge state child safety workers to check the welfare of Haleigh's younger brother, said Chantell Wofter, 44, of Southern Ohio. She created her crwofter1 Twitter account because of the case.
"I feel close to the investigation," she said, one time even calling the FBI. "If there is a search or something is going on, I hear about it first."
Since Feb. 10, detectives and analysts have tried to crack the mysterious disappearance. They remain unconvinced that Croslin, who became Haleigh's stepmother after marrying 25-year-old Ronald Cummings in March, is telling all she knows.
But while searches, the Cummings' already dissolved marriage, standoffs by both Haleigh's parents and unrelated arrests of family members and others are strong fodder, they are not all that drives the story, said Art Harris, whose blog The Bald Truth at artharris.com gives her prominent coverage.
"There is something about Haleigh's picture," he said of the girl whose often-used image shows her with a bright smile and a pink bow in her hair.
"She is so winning," he said. "Just by looking at the pictures regardless of how you feel about her parents, she is an innocent."
Harris' posts are often biting and most likely focus on Ronald or Misty Cummings. Harris describes his coverage as "calling it the way you see it." He is regularly interviewed by cable television's Nancy Grace.
"My challenge is how do you get behind the motives and the reasons behind it," he said.
Lt. Johnny Greenwood of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said bloggers Harris and Watts check information and have not caused heartburn for investigators.
"The only thing that is really discouraging is those bloggers who have bad information," he said.
Some hide behind online anonymity, he said.
"We don't know who they are. People take what these people say as gospel."
The Internet can offer a measure of secrecy but is still within the reach of the law, said Rick Karcher, a torts law professor at Florida Coastal School of Law.
Opinions are not illegal but the First Amendment does not protect against false, defamatory statements, he said.
"It's from the perspective of the reader," he said. "Would they think it is true?"
While the case has gripped a divided online following that casts public accusations about such troubled families, to Haleigh's relatives, much of the attention is a bombardment that puts them on the defensive.
"It just consumes too much of your time to continue to sit and try to keep up with who is saying what," said Griffis, who lives in Baker County. "I think they're irrelevant. Half of their information isn't true."
Now, she said, she limits her involvement to posting Scripture. Those who think they have a lead in the case need to contact detectives, she said.
"If it is someone I've become familiar with, I'll answer them, but nine out of 10 times I don't," she said.
Ronald Cummings' grandmother, Annette Sykes, lives in southern Putnam County and said her family has found support but also suffers sharply from the commentary.
"There's not much you can do," she said. "They are going to believe what they want to believe or say what they want to say."
dana.treen@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4091
http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2009-10-20/story/mystery_surrounding_haleigh_feeds_online_obsession
