Bounty Hunter William “Cobra” Staubs Wants His Freedom Back

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15 years ago

One of the people at the center of the Haleigh Cummings case is William Eugene Staubs, aka “Cobra,” a bounty hunter from Fort Lauderdale, FL, who has been involved in several high profile cases over the years, including the O.J. Simpson case and the take-down of an alleged terrorist in Fort Campbell, KY.

Despite an impressive record, which, by his count, includes the capture of over 8,000 fugitives – 199 of whom he says were child molesters – Staubs now finds himself at the center of his own criminal investigation – a case which he claims has been manufactured to silence him.

According to Staubs, he got involved in the Haleigh case just weeks after the tot was reporting missing by her father, Ronald Cummings.

“Pastor Richard Grund (father of Jesse Grund – Casey Anthony’s former fiancé) got a call from a woman who was involved in the case, and she told him that there was something really wrong going on in this little girl’s disappearance,” Staubs said in an interview with Criminal Report Daily. “She said ‘we need some type of investigator. These people are poor; they don’t have any money.’ So Pastor Grund contacted me, and we discussed it. I asked him what he thought and he said, ‘I will tell you right now; it isn’t going to be easy. It is going to be dangerous, so I suggest you prepare yourself.’ So I called journalist Art Harris and asked him to come down to Satsuma to go behind the scenes with me, and I headed down there to get started.”

Staubs says that within his first week in Satsuma he was able to meet with Haleigh’s family and local police, during which time he uncovered a lot of inside information in the case. In addition, he also claims to have actively searched wooded areas in an attempt to find Haleigh.

Moments after arriving on the scene, Staubs was joined by two police officers, who stood watch as he threw the man to the ground and handcuffed him (click here to view video of the event as shot by Art Harris) before putting him into his vehicle for transport to the county jail. It was during that trip that Staubs says he received a call from people at the insurance company, who, he claims, said they had changed their mind, and told him to release the man.

The company in question, Continental Heritage, has not returned calls to Criminal Report Daily regarding the case; however, in a May interview with artharris.com, they said they never gave Staubs permission to make the pick-up.

“Cobra called me to say what he wanted to do, and I made clear [that] he in no way represented Chuck’s Bail Bonds, C.E. Parish or Continental Insurance. As a private citizen, he can go talk to someone, but I told him, ‘Do not represent yourself as an agent of the company,” general agent Roger Capener told Harris, adding, “I just don’t understand Cobra. He’s made pickups before, even caught a terrorist with bombs. But after he called a friend of mine in the business to intercede for him on Snodgrass, I said, ‘Where is this guy coming from?’ Then he calls back and says, ‘Don’t worry, I got the guy handcuffed.’ I said, ‘Are you CRAZY? Are you nuts? Have you lost your mind?’ You don’t do things like that, even if you have permission from a company to go talk to a guy.’ He’s a loose cannon. Who would give permission to wrestle a guy to the ground and put handcuffs on him? That’s an instant lawsuit in our business … What Cobra did was stupid.”

As a result of the incident, Staubs was arrested and charged with a single felony count of false imprisonment. He was placed in the county jail and held for a brief period of time before being released on a $5,000 bond.

“They told me that what I done was illegal and I asked them to please look at the state statute – that I am equal to a police officer and that I have the right of arrest and I can detain him for as long as I need to,” Staubs said. “It doesn’t say in the statute that if, at any time, the insurance company starts arguing with the pickup guy, that you can charge him with false arrest or false imprisonment. You can’t. They violated me … What it’s come down to is the insurance company is trying to protect their assets and everything. They say we never authorized him, so now I am in a fight … They are charging me with one statute and another statute says I am innocent.”

Staubs believes that the entire ordeal came about, in part, due to information he uncovered in the Haleigh case – information that he says made certain people uncomfortable.

“I tried to help them in any way I could,” he said. “Me being a bondsman and a private investigator, I can work real good. [If] they didn’t want me there, they should have had the nerve [to tell me] just like they told Geraldo [Rivera] to leave [and] Tim [Miller] from EquuSearch to leave. They should have told me, ‘Hey Cobra, we got this. I appreciate everything you tried to do, but we got this and you’re kinda making some folks nervous.'”

According to Staubs, prosecutors have offered him a deal in exchange for admitting he was wrong; however, he claims to have turned it down.

“They offered a deal. They tried to give me a PTI [pre trial intervention]. Well a PTI is 18 months, but the problem is there is a clause in there that I have to admit that I did wrong. If I did that – being an officer of the county – my testimony would no longer be reliable.”

If convicted of the charge against him, Staubs faces a 5 year prison term and the possible revocation of his bondsman license. Neither option is very appealing to him; however, he says the possibility that he might miss his daughter’s upcoming wedding weighs on him even more.

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