Haleigh's Great Grandmother Speaks Out

Raw Audio Podcast: TJ Hart and Ruby Kanger (9:28)

In the wake of the fruitless search Friday for a missing Putnam County girl on a farm owned by her mother's family in Baker County, Florida at the family's request, another relative of Haleigh Cummings has decided to speak out.

Ruby Kanger, a great grandmother of missing Haleigh Cummings who was taken from her father's home in Satsuma on February 10, tells The Sky in this exclusive interview her thoughts about the recent search and who she thinks is involved in the girl's abduction.

Kanger said, "The search was just insult to injury and a waste of time. They don't have a shred of evidence against anybody--not anybody! If they had any evidence against somebody, why would they have gone there and did what they did?"

Kanger added, "The search in Baker County was a low point for me. I felt the lowest since the first days of Haleigh's disappearance. I realized then that, no, they weren't building a case against anyone. They don't have anything."

Nearly 40 law enforcement officers conducted that search Friday at the Baker County home of Marie Griffis, a grandmother of Haleigh Cummings. The property is owned by the family of Crystal Sheffield, Haleigh's mother, and was requested by the family, according to Kim Picazio, who is Sheffield's lawyer.

"We requested that they came out and search thoroughly," Picazio said. "It's very important to this family to clear their name and to make sure their name and to make sure their property was free of suspicion."

The family told authorities of dead animals buried on the property before the search began.

"We thought we should come out here and search the property over just to verify that these were just dead animals and nothing else," said Capt. Dominic Piscitello, chief of Putnam County's Major Crimes Unit.

The body of a horse buried on the property was exhumed and a forensic anthropologist confirmed no human remains were there.

In addition to the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, agencies involved in Friday's search include the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Baker County Sheriff's Office and dogs trained to locate cadavers.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office dive team additionally searched ponds on the property, with nothing found.

After criticizing law enforcement for the search, calling it "a tremendous waste of time and money," Kanger was quick to say the focus of the investigation needs to return to Putnam County and more pressure needs to be applied to Haleigh's new stepmother Misty Cummings. Misty was the last person to see Haleigh the night  she vanished.

As you will hear in the raw audio podcast, Kanger points out that neither Haleigh's father, Ronald Cummings Sr., nor her mother, Crystal Sheffield, had great parenting skills noting that each had come from broken homes. Beyond that, she faults Ronald for making a bad choice in deciding who was going to care for five-year-old Haleigh and her younger brother, Ronald Jr., while he was away working nights building girders for bridges.

Kanger says she believes that Misty (at that time, Ron's 17-year-old girlfriend) holds the key to everything in Haleigh's disappearance. She questions why Misty can't come up with an accurate timeline saying it suggest that she has not been completely truthful with investigators.

The questions of drugs, possible drug usage and those who provide illegal drugs also has Kanger wondering just what actually went on in the house where Haleigh lived up to the time she was abducted.

Haleigh's great grandmother did not shy away from the fact that Misty had a fight with Ron days before the little girl was taken from the home and that she had been on a sex a drug binge with Greg Page a.k.a. "White Boy Greg."  She insists that further attention needs to be paid to that scenario and the people who were involved in the partying in which Misty participated just days prior to the abduction.

Kanger believes her great granddaughter's abduction was "an inside job." She notes that the back door showed no visible signs of forced entry and no signs of an intruder having been there.

Kanger is pleading with Misty to just tell the truth so. In her closing statement to The Sky Saturday Kanger said, "If can't never get your story straight, then who would you be protecting except your self? The truth has one face. The truth has one voice.....and it doesn't change.