NANCY GRACE Transcript 9-21-09Croslin`s Brother Says She Wasn`t HomeGRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us. Bombshell tonight. After girlfriend turned stepmother Misty Croslin`s brother thrown behind bars on a gun charge, a break in the case. In a late-night jailhouse interrogation, we learn the brother finally confesses he goes to Haleigh`s house the night she goes missing, pounds on the door repeatedly. Nobody home.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
CUMMINGS: I just got home from work. My 5-year-old daughter is gone. I need somebody to be here now.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROSLIN: At 3:00 o`clock in the morning, I got up and -- I got up because I had to use the bathroom, but I didn`t make it to the bathroom. I seen the kitchen light on, and I walked in the kitchen and the back door`s wide open.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police sources confirm stepmom-slash-baby-sitter Misty Croslin`s brother told cops that he went to Haleigh`s home around 10:00 PM the night the child went missing and it appeared nobody was home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right beside me on my left is the bed where Misty Croslin was sleeping, and here on the right we have the bed where little Haleigh was sleeping. And you can see it is all but about three- and-a-half feet from each other. And this is right where Misty said she got up and she had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tommy Croslin told detectives that Ronald Cummings asked him to go to the home to look for Misty Croslin. Tommy Croslin says when he arrived at the home, the lights were all off and no sounds were coming from inside the home.
CROSLIN: People think that I had something to do with it. If I had something to do with it, I knew where she was, we wouldn`t be sitting here today. We would have her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everything she says is crazy.
GRACE: Is there any possibility that she left the home that evening and hasn`t told you?
CUMMINGS: If there is a possibility of it, I don`t know anything about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Straight out to T.J. Hart, program news director at WSKY 97.3. T.J., what can you tell us? This is a huge bombshell in the case.
T.J. HART, WSKY FM 97.3 (via telephone): It certainly is. Now, detectives at the Putnam County sheriff`s office say that Tommy told them he received a call from Ronald Cummings while Ronald was at work that night.
GRACE: Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back it up. Back it up. Back it up. Tommy is Misty Croslin, the girlfriend turned stepmother`s, brother. The brother has been taken in custody over some argument with neighbors over a gun.
HART: Correct. Absolutely.
GRACE: So he`s behind bars on a $50,000 bond. And let me just tell you this, T.J. Hart.
HART: Yes, sir.
GRACE: You don`t get a $50,000 bond on a gun charge, all right?
HART: No, you don`t.
GRACE: So they are clearly keeping him behind bars, hoping he`ll talk about Haleigh. Go ahead.
HART: Purposely, they are. and they`ve admitted as such. And now, what had happened on that night, Tommy tells the detectives with the Putnam County sheriff`s office that Ronald had called him from work stating that he wanted Tommy to go down and check on the trailer. He`d not been able to reach Misty since they had a fight on the telephone earlier that evening. This is about the 10:00 o`clock hour.
He agrees. He goes down to the trailer. He tells police that he banged on the door and he got no answer. He looked inside through the windows, saw no lights, no television, did not hear a sound. It was quiet. According to police, he stopped just short of saying no one was at home.
All the family members involved in this situation were told of Tommy`s comments about that night. Putnam County authorities thought it was a bit strange that in all the hustle and bustle and the confusion during the draining of a pond near Palatka over the weekend that people who had been doing all the finger-pointing earlier, Misty, Tommy, Ronald, et al -- that each one chose to keep that part quiet when they were talking to the media, especially after so much of the dirty laundry, so to say, got played out in the press earlier. And it`s making law enforcement even more curious and somewhat suspicious of it all, Nancy.
GRACE: To Marlaina Schiavo, our producer who`s been on the story from the very beginning. Marlaina, we showed repeatedly you in the home. Now, it`s a trailer, OK? Do we have Marlaina? Marlaina Schiavo, are you with me?
MARLAINA SCHIAVO, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: I can hear you, Nancy.
GRACE: So Marlaina, you saw the front door where the brother`s bamming on the door. It`s 10:00 o`clock at night.
SCHIAVO: That`s right.
GRACE: Is there any way anybody, even if they had just gone to sleep, because she says she laid down on the bed sometime around 10:00...
SCHIAVO: Right.
GRACE: ... wouldn`t hear that? I mean, it`s a trailer, Marlaina,
SCHIAVO: There`s no way she wouldn`t have heard that. Nancy, that front door is all but 10 feet from the bedroom where Misty was sleeping with Haleigh and Junior that night. So if someone`s whaling on the door, there`s no way she couldn`t have heard that whatsoever. And the fact that the lights were out, Nancy, and there was no TV on, that didn`t make any sense, either.
GRACE: To Art Harris, investigative journalist at
www.Artharris.com. Art, you`ve been down there for months on end. What have you learned?
ART HARRIS, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Nancy, I can tell you that door that Marlaina`s talking about has double-paned glass. You can see right in there. So any glimmer from a TV set -- Misty said that the kids were watching two movies, Junior in the living room just a few feet from the door, her daughter -- her stepdaughter, Haleigh, in the bedroom. Somebody would have seen a light, and it was not on.
GRACE: OK, Art, let me ask you a question. You remember the door that Misty Croslin says was -- she found propped open with a cinderblock. If you`re at the front door, how far away are you from that door that was allegedly propped open?
HARRIS: Well, it`s -- it`s right -- it`s, you know, very close, Nancy. I -- you know...
GRACE: It`s on the back or the side?
HARRIS: It`s -- let`s see, there`s -- it`s a side. And then there`s a front door. So it`s probably about, oh, 20 feet.
GRACE: So that door is on the side.
HARRIS: That`s my understanding. It`s on the side. There`s a little ramp that goes up to it.
GRACE: OK. Tonight, Misty Croslin`s brother, behind bars on a gun charge, now confessing he was at the home the night Haleigh goes missing, bams on the door, nobody home. This means that Misty Croslin`s story is false, if the brother is to be believed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was the bed made?
CROSLIN: No. I was sleeping in that bed. How would the bed be made if someone`s sleeping in the bed? I wasn`t the only one sleeping in it. But how would it -- me and his son. How would the bed be made if we were in the bed sleeping?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROSLIN: I`m trying to do everything to find her. You know, I`m -- answer any questions I have to because I know I didn`t do anything with -- to that little girl. I would never hurt her. I mean, they love me. They -- I mean, they look at me like their mom, you know. You ask little Junior. He`ll tell you, you know? They talk lovely about me. And I`m so good to them kids.
CUMMINGS: I pulled into the yard. The front door was wide open. She was standing in it. I asked her what she was doing up. She told me that the back door was wide open and Haleigh was gone. I turned the house upside down and told her to call 911.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let me show you the back door and show you how both doors close automatically. So -- and I`m also going to show you the lock because the lock is about three feet from the floor, and we know that that`s about as tall as Haleigh stands.
CROSLIN: I did take a polygraph.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you passed it?
CROSLIN: I mean, my understanding is I passed it.
GRACE: What is her story about what happened that night?
CUMMINGS: The same thing that she`s telling police or whoever, that she went to -- she put Haleigh to bed, done some laundry, went to bed, and woke up to the door propped open.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you believe that Misty was indeed home and that she`s been telling the truth?
CUMMINGS: Yes, I believe she`s telling the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: We`re seven months into what could potentially be a homicide, a child homicide case -- we know it`s a kidnapping case -- and we are just now learning the truth about the night little Haleigh goes missing?
Back to Art Harris. Seven months, Art Harris, this brother has sat on his thumb, and it takes cops putting him in jail on a legitimate gun charge before he finally says, I went to the home that night and nobody was home?
HARRIS: Nancy, the big question that investigators want to know is why did he hang onto this information? And why also did people in the family not reveal it, as well? Presumably, he has told some other people, I`m told by investigators, and they want to know who`s been covering up.
GRACE: Out to a special guest joining us tonight exclusively out of Jacksonville. It`s Teresa Neves. This is Haleigh`s paternal grandmother. Ms. Neves, thank you for being with us.
TERESA NEVES, HALEIGH`S PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER: Thank you, Miss Nancy.
GRACE: Ms. Neves, all along you have stated that you believed Misty Croslin. Now that you hear this, what do you think?
NEVES: I`m going to tell you, Miss Nancy, I have stated all along and I will continue to state that my grandchildren love Misty and that Misty loved my grandchildren. And this statement by Tommy Croslin to me doesn`t hold any water.
GRACE: Why?
NEVES: I`m sorry, but why wait seven months? Why say that -- you know, if he went down there -- my personal opinion, if I went there and knocked and everything was off, I would think they were sleeping.
GRACE: But Ms. Neves, you`ve been in the trailer, just like we have been, and somebody pounding on the front door, as close as her bed was to the front door, you would hear it.
NEVES: Well...
GRACE: It`s 10 feet away.
NEVES: This is true. I tend to think that she was very exhausted and wanted...
GRACE: But you can`t have it both ways. You can`t say they were asleep, and yes, she would have heard it.
NEVES: No. I`m trying to say that I think the children would have been more likely to hear it because I believe that because of the places she had been prior to that and the fact that she had been up all night with a conversation with Ronald...
GRACE: It was just 10:00 o`clock.
NEVES: ... she was very exhausted.
GRACE: It was just 10:00 o`clock. And her own statement is that around or a little after 10:00 o`clock is when she lay down.
NEVES: No, I`m talking about the night before, Miss Nancy. She was up all night the night before.
GRACE: I`m talking about that night.
NEVES: Right.
GRACE: The night Haleigh goes missing. According to her own statement, she may have been awake at the time the brother came to the door.
NEVES: OK.
GRACE: If she were home.
NEVES: Yes, ma`am.
GRACE: Ms. Neves, I mean, this isn`t ringing a red bell of alarm in your mind?
NEVES: If it was coming from somebody else. You know, I just don`t know if this is a statement made in order to...
GRACE: OK. Understood. Understood.
Let`s unleash the lawyers. We are taking your calls live. Eleanor Dixon, felony prosecutor, Atlanta, Peter Odom, veteran defense attorney, former prosecutor, Atlanta, Alex Sanchez, renowned defense attorney out of New York.
Eleanor, when you`re trying to determine the veracity or the truth of a witness`s statement, you look for things that corroborate that statement. You and I have had to go in front of juries many, many times. Listen, dope dealers, robbers, murders -- they don`t hang out with nuns and priests and virgins. So often, you have to corroborate what witnesses say.
ELEANOR DIXON, PROSECUTOR: Exactly.
GRACE: So let`s take a look. What do we have in corroboration, Eleanor? We have that night, Ronald Cummings admittedly trying to reach Misty Croslin. She had been gone for three days, AWOL, partying three days. She comes home that night. They get in a huge, big fight. He has to go to work. And by his own admission, he calls, he calls, he calls, he calls, she won`t pick up. He`s calling all of her family. That corroborates what the brother`s saying, that Ronald called him and said, I can`t get her on the phone, please go to the house and check on her.
DIXON: You`re exactly right, Nancy. And what else helps, as far as looking at it from the state`s perspective, is that Misty`s timeline doesn`t make sense. And her story changes. So the ring of truth is that somebody went there and she wasn`t home when they knocked.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: What time did she go to bed?
CUMMINGS: Approximately 10:30, 11:00.
GRACE: At 10:30, 11:00. At that time, was little Haleigh in the bed asleep with the brother?
CUMMINGS: Yes.
GRACE: And they all slept together in the same bed, correct?
CUMMINGS: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right beside me on my left is the bed where Misty Croslin was sleeping, and here on the right we have the bed where little Haleigh was sleeping.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For somebody to walk in the house and pick up a child laying beside another person is just ridiculous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Straight back to Haleigh`s grandmother, Teresa Neves. Ms. Neves...
NEVES: Yes, ma`am?
GRACE: ... you know I respect you and I care about you.
NEVES: And I you.
GRACE: You just heard your son, Ronald Cummings, who has apparently taken and passed a polygraph, he`s answered questions from viewers live on TV -- we don`t know what the questions are before they`re called in -- say that she went to bed between 10:30 and 11:00, which means she would have been awake when the brother came over there banging on the door.
NEVES: OK.
GRACE: Which means one of them are lying.
NEVES: I`m -- Miss Nancy, I just want to clarify that Misty came home on Sunday evening, and she and Ronald were up all night Sunday night until the evening of Monday, when she -- I was told, you know, that she went to bed at 10:00 o`clock. Now, being that exhausted, I think that maybe you could sleep through somebody beating on the door. I don`t think the kids would have, but I don`t know that they would have opened the door, either. If she went to bed at 10:30, then, you know -- I just don`t know what the validity of the story is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROSLIN: He told me that if I didn`t take the test that he wasn`t going to look for Haleigh. And that`s why I took them tests, because I don`t want no one to stop looking for Haleigh.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MISTY CROSLIN-CUMMINGS, RONALD CUMMING`S WIFE, LAST SEEN HALEIGH: 3:00 in the morning I got up, and I got up because I had to use the bathroom. I seen the kitchen light on, and I walked in the kitchen and the back door`s wide open. And then I go in and look and she`s gone.
RONALD CUMMINGS, FATHER OF MISSING 5-YR-OLD HALEIGH CUMMINGS: Ain`t had nothing to do with her, man. She can`t help that. She can`t help she was the last one to see her.
M. CUMMINGS: She didn`t make no noise that night. I would have woke up if I heard any noise. I didn`t hear anything at all. I mean, I was really exhausted that day. You know? I just wish they would have took me instead of her. What do they want with a little 5-year-old?
R. CUMMINGS: Could have been any one of us and our children. Any one. Nobody knows where there`s a psycho or sicko. Nobody knows.
M. CUMMINGS: She is scared of the dark. She would not go anywhere by herself. I did take a polygraph. I mean, my understanding is I passed it, you know.
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Ronald, has the theory that Misty left the home sometime during the night.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: And tonight, a break in the case. Croslin`s brother behind bars on a minor gun charge. The bail`s $50,000. You can`t make the bail. In a late-night jailhouse interrogation he confesses he was at the home, Haleigh Cummings` home, the night she goes missing and nobody else was there. He banged and banged and banged on the door about 10 feet from her bed. No answer.
We are taking your calls live. To Cheryl in Minnesota. Hi, Cheryl.
CHERYL, CALLER FROM MINNESOTA: Hi, Nancy. Thank you for calling, dear. What`s your question?
CHERYL: Well, I have two really quick questions, Nancy.
GRACE: OK.
CHERYL: First of all, why didn`t Haleigh`s father tell anyone he asked Misty`s brother to go and check on everything since they had an argument that night?
GRACE: OK.
CHERYL: The second is if Misty continues to fail polygraph tests why don`t they issue a warrant for her arrest or at least take her in and do some interrogation?
GRACE: OK. To Terry Shoemaker. This is the attorney for Ronald Cummings, Haleigh`s father. What does he have to say about this revelation?
TERRY SHOEMAKER, ATTORNEY FOR HALEIGH`S FATHER, RONALD CUMMINGS: Well, he`s kind of shocked that Misty`s brother went over there that evening. He said all along that he did call the house of Hank Jr. and asked him whether or not Misty was there. But he doesn`t -- he`s never said that he asked them to go look for her. He just asked if she was over there. And that was at about 9:00. So I think Hank Jr.`s timeline is a little off.
GRACE: Well, it sounds like everybody has a very, let me just say, shifting timeline, Mr. Shoemaker.
SHOEMAKER: Right.
GRACE: So I`m not exactly sure that anybody knows what time it is in Satsuma, Florida the night Haleigh went missing.
SHOEMAKER: Right.
GRACE: So he does say that he called the brother and asked him was Misty there?
SHOEMAKER: Yes. He didn`t specifically call Hank Jr.`s cell phone. He called the house of Hank -- Hank Jr. and his family. And that was at.
GRACE: Did he talk to the brother?
SHOEMAKER: I don`t know who he spoke with. I know that when we were speaking with FDLE that a call came up and they questioned him about it and he said he called to ask if Misty was at their house at that time.
GRACE: To Marlaina Schiavo, our producer on the story. Marlaina, we have gotten in touch with Misty`s attorney and after he goes through the usual legal jargon, you know, he`s trying to defend his clients, basically it boils down to this. He didn`t go in the house, did he? So does he really know she wasn`t home? I mean did you get something else out of that statement?
MARLAINA SCHIAVO, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER, SPENT TIME WITH MISSING HALEIGH`S FAMILY: No, that`s pretty much what he said. And he also said that his client still denies that she left the home that night. And.
GRACE: Go ahead, dear.
SCHIAVO: And he also said, that you know, she may have slept through it, she may have ignored her brother, but he has to get to the bottom of it. He actually hasn`t even spoken to Misty that much about this interview. I mean, with the tidbits that he just gave us.
But because she didn`t even tell him that she was going to speak to police. Police hadn`t even contacted him. So they`re all over the place down there, Nancy.
GRACE: To Gail in North Carolina. Hi, Gail.
GAIL, CALLER FROM NORTH CAROLINA: Hi, Nancy, how are you?
GRACE: I`m good, dear. What`s your question?
GAIL: I`m wondering if the fact that Misty possibly left the house, has anybody questions her friends or like people that she hangs out with to see if they may know anything?
GRACE: Good question. What about it, T.J. Hart?
T.J. HART, PROGRAM & NEWS DIR., WSKY 97.3FM (via phone): They`ve been asking a lot of people a lot of questions. Especially a circle of friends including Nene Prevat. She was one of the people who were questioned inside the Putnam County Jail over the last several days. She`s being held there on other charges as well. But none of her testimony has really amounted to a diddle (ph) as far as the police are saying right now.
GRACE: And back to the lawyers, Eleanor Dixon, Peter Odom, Alex Sanchez.
Peter Odom, let`s go to Cheryl`s second question. Excuse me, Gail`s second question. Now that she`s flunked two polygraphs, Gail wants to know why police don`t just go ahead and issue a warrant for her arrest.
Now, try, Peter, give me your best, put it in a nutshell.
(LAUGHTER)
PETER ODOM, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Polygraphs are unreliable. It would be foolish and foolhardy and unprofessional to arrest someone on the basis of a polygraph alone.
GRACE: OK. Alex, just a couple of yes-nos. Have you ever had one of your clients take a polygraph?
ALEX SANCHEZ, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Yes, I have.
GRACE: Because you believe polygraphs do work, yes?
SANCHEZ: Because I was interested in seeing what the defendant had to say. And he tells me he was innocent.
GRACE: OK.
SANCHEZ: . and I decided to give a polygraph.
GRACE: Now, instead of saying, as Mr. Odom does, that they are unreliable, isn`t it true that under our constitution and under the law as it exists that a polygraph is not admissible in court unless both sides stipulate to admissibility prior to the poly being taken?
That didn`t happen here. So police can`t make an arrest just on a poly. They need more than that.
SANCHEZ: A polygraph is not a substitute for hard evidence in the case. A polygraph is not admissible in any court in the United States. And therefore, if she failed a polygraph, as that questioner had called, you just can`t arrest somebody simply because they failed a polygraph. And you can`t even haul them back into the police station to ask them more questions based upon that.
GRACE: To Thomas Ruskin, private investigator, former NYPD detective. Thomas, what do you make of this?
THOMAS RUSKIN, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE: I -- listen, I am sort of shocked by this whole thing. I`m shocked that Ronald`s cell phones weren`t gone through much more intently by the police, to see how long the call was, did Tommy call him back, and what happened from then.
I`m also shocked that they haven`t re-interviewed Ronald at this point in time to ask him the questions. And I`d love to ask his attorney, would he go back in and talk to the police at this point in time? Because I`d like to know that.
GRACE: To Dr. Janet Taylor, psychiatrist and physician, medical doctor, Dr. Taylor, thank you for being with us.
DR. JANET TAYLOR, PSYCHIATRIST: You`re welcome.
GRACE: Here you are seeing a split between brother and sister. Misty Croslin`s entire family is now distancing themselves from her. The mother and the father have both said she may not have been home that night. One of them says they think that she`s holding back about what happened that night.
What do you make of it? I find it very difficult to believe a family would unfairly target their own daughter and sister.
TAYLOR: Well, clearly, they`ve known her the longest. They know what she`s capable of. And they also know her personality. So I really trust what they`re saying now. And I think we have to -- given this new information, have to investigate it further and look at her character and the potential that she really knows a lot more than she`s saying.
GRACE: Art Harris at
www.artharris.com. Art, what can you tell me about the pond that was drained in the last 48 hours?
ART HARRIS, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, ARTHARRIS.COM: By water, by the crow flies, it`s about a mile from the trailer where Haleigh disappeared from. But it takes 35 minutes to drive around and over a bridge to get to. Very remote.
And you know, it was accessible only by a little dirt road. So they drained it. They had a tip. Unclear if it came from the inmates they interviewed. But that`s what my sources say, where it came from. They won`t say who. And they`re looking for something they have not revealed.
They didn`t find anything of substance that was useful in the investigation, though, Nancy. A lot of rumors.
GRACE: To Dr. Gerald Feigin, medical examiner, Camden County, New Jersey.
Doctor, thank you for being with us.
DR. GERALD FEIGIN, M.D., MEDICAL EXAMINER, CAMDEN COUNTY: You`re welcome.
GRACE: Doctor, I want to bring it back to Haleigh, a 5-year-old little girl. She has Turner`s syndrome. If she were still alive and had been kidnapped by someone unfamiliar with that syndrome, she was sick so much, so many doctor`s appointments, so many illnesses because of the Turner`s syndrome.
How would that affect her health with a stranger?
FEIGIN: Everybody is different. I`m not sure exactly what her medical problems were. I know they can have kidney failure with Turner`s syndrome and other things. But if you don`t get the proper care, you simply can die from neglect.
GRACE: Everyone, you are seeing home video of Haleigh. This little girl has been gone for seven months. The tip line, 888-277-8477.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0909/21/ng.01.html
