Crime Weekly - S2 Ep91: Summer Wells: A Father’s Love (Part 2)

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

From the very beginning, the disappearance of five year old Summer Wells has caused confusion and frustration for everyone following it, from people watching it unfold on the news and on the internet and the websleuths who have made this case their personal project, to the law enforcement officials trying to put the pieces together. Due to the widespread attention, the investigation and news coverage of this case has been marked with a great deal of speculation and rumors, which is often what happens when so much is left unknown, and when the official narrative doesn’t really add up. Stephanie covered Summer’s disappearance on YouTube when it initially happened, but since then there have been more updates and more information has come to the light, and we know there were a lot of people who wanted us to talk about this case on Crime Weekly, because Derrick would be able to contribute his unique detective perspective and hopefully it will provide us with some insight of what happened here, and if there is any truth to the multiple rumors that have muddied the waters of this case. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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lawson says they have found no evidence Summer was abducted. Summer loves me, man. Y'all don't fucking understand. Everybody thinks, oh, poor Summer, poor Summer. Well, Summer loves her fucking daddy. I know in my heart and in my mind she was abducted. Someone snuck up there when we weren't exactly paying attention. We don't know if they come in the basement and grabbed her or if she stepped outside the basement and was walking to her swing or something.

She loved to be outside all the time. That was unfortunately her downfall. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we're diving into part two of the Summer Wells case. We have some interesting things to go over. I especially am looking forward to portions of interviews with Candace Bly and Don Wells that I want Derek to kind of watch and give me his opinion on what's going on, what they're saying, if they're behaving in a certain way, because a lot of people have looked at these interviews and thought that they saw some things that were odd. And so I kind of want a little confirmation or I want to get his take on it. And, you know, we're kind of going to go into the

background of the family members, specifically Summer's mother and father. And in the next episode, what we're going to focus on is the theory that Summer could have been abducted. And it's kind of hard to focus on that theory because, as we'll talk about multiple times in today's video, the TBI and local law enforcement say there's no evidence that Summer was abducted. They have no evidence that Summer was abducted. They say it over and over again, which kind of leads cavalry came in that she didn't hear anybody calling for her, that she didn't see all these people looking for her and all these night vision airplanes and stuff didn't see her. Or the other option would be something happened to her at home, whether it be an accident or on purpose. And there's things that happen that we don't know about, but I do think law enforcement knows enough to be able to say so convincingly over and over,

we have no sign of an abduction. There's no evidence of an abduction. Yeah. It's really interesting. And when we work these cases, when we talk about them, we obviously record, but then you spend the whole week thinking about it. You're writing notes, you're talking about it. And I can tell you not only this case, but a lot of these cases, I lay up at night, especially right after we record and I start doing this thing, which is why I'm an insomniac. I just start playing out scenarios, playing devil's advocate with myself because I do just like any human being get caught up in like, well, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. And I know from my own personal cases and from researching cases online as a, as an investigator, where, when that happens,

that's when investigators sometimes make a mistake and they get so focused on one particular theory that seems like the most logical come to find out it was something completely different, which is why it was never solved by them. So I try to, I'm really fearful of that and I try to avoid it. And I was going back and forth because I know what a lot of people think. I know what I was thinking after the first episode, but then I was playing, I had questions for you. It was too late to call you, but I was asking. It's never too late to call me, Derek, you know. Well, I mean, it was like three, four in the morning, but I, and I too late to call me derrick, you know Well, I mean it was like three four in the morning But I I and i'm gonna ask it now because I didn't ask you off camera and I want intentionally When i'm getting the layout of the house

I know if she comes out of that summer if she comes out of that side door and she goes to the right, right? So her back is to the house. She comes out the basement door goes to the right That's going to wrap around the back of the house And that's where you're going to see grandma's trailer and kind of a wooded area. I remember you mentioning something about a swing set. Is the swing set the same way where she would go to the right or would she go to the left more towards the driveway, the entrance driveway? So it's not a swing set. It's just like a single swing hooked up to a tree and it is right up. So if she if she leaves the basement door, she's going to go up and to the right. It kind of goes up a hill to the front of the house where that the main driveway portion would be, where the front door of the house is, where grandma's trailer is, where the swing would be. Yeah, that's where everything would be centrally located. She would have no reason to really go any other direction. Okay. I have to look it up on a map too, because I'm under the understanding that the side of the house that we were seeing in the last video where like you come out the door, remember the door that we kept seeing in the video that they

went into, which led to the living room, the way I was assuming it, it was, that was the back of the house because it felt like when they came out that side door there was a driveway to the left maybe I'm wrong like like if you came out of the house the side door there the driveway was to the left and you go to the right to get back to grandma's trailer okay so what's at the front of this house then what's at the front of this house if that basement door is like considered the back door technically right because it faces the woods Then where's what's at the front of the house great question? It's a great question, but I remember you mentioning the swing set and I I was wondering oh could that have been or the swing I should say could the swing have been on the opposite side of

The house where where Candace and grandma was. That's what I was wondering because that would create an opportunity. Okay. We both have the photo up right now. We can break it down. Yeah. I mean, this photo really shed some light on it. I should have looked at it before we recorded, but I'm glad we're doing it while recording. If you're on YouTube, you're seeing the photo right now as we're talking. If you're not, just type in Summer Wells House on Google. When you get a second, you'll see something from News Channel 5. Great photo, high definition. So the best way I can describe it for you, if you're not going to go look it up, imagine a cul-de-sac, but instead of it being multiple houses in that cul-de-sac, it's just their house right in the

middle. And it was what Stephanie was saying. So the front of the house is the side that we've been seeing in both episodes where the trailer is directly out the front door and I can't see the swing, but I'm assuming the swing is out the front door as well, because they said in the front of the house, the backside of the house, which was in question is actually the backside of the house. Although the driveway is the cul-de-sac that I'm kind of describing where the road literally circles their property and goes back out. So the reason I had brought it up was could Summer had been on the swing, which is out of the view of, you know, Candace and grandma.

The answer to that question is no. And in fact, now seeing this photo, it would even question, it would make me question more what would be the purpose of summer going the opposite direction of where Candace and grandma were, which was right at the trailer dealing with the cactus plants, right? So she would have no reason to go that way whatsoever. I mean, I don't, I'm not there. I'm not physically able to kind of observe what could be in that wooded area. But without knowing anything further, I don't know what would be in that direction opposite of mom and grandma that would draw

Summer away from the house without telling mom. There really isn't anything that anybody can figure out. And that's kind of the point. They keep saying like, oh, she was either lured out or somebody walked right up and grabbed her and then walked away. And that's the whole hypothesis or hypotheses from Don Wells and Candace Bly. That either Summer was lured away, like somebody crept up and was like, come here, little girl, I have some candy. And Summer's like, oh, let me get that. And then she ran into the woods or somebody just walked blatantly, brazenly onto the property, scooped her up and walked back into the woods, down to the street, to a waiting car and off you

go. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at different angles right now. I'm glad you said that. I'm very confident if there is an offender, someone, an abductor who comes on the property, they have to be on foot. You would hear, it's like a crushed gravel slash sand slash rock. You would hear that in the tires. I'm sure most of us have experienced it. There's no way that vehicle would pull onto that property and not be heard by someone if they were outside. And secondly, it's a circular driveway. So they would have to come around the side of their home, basically in reverse back out the circular driveway. It doesn't make sense. Could someone have been on foot? Yeah, that's out of the two scenarios. That's the more likely, but strongly recommend go look at the photos for yourself. It gives you a completely different

perspective of what we're talking about. And once you see the photos, you're probably going to understand where law enforcement is coming from because this driveway is so big that you would expect to find some form of trace evidence. And when I say trace evidence, let's not just talk about fibers and blood and DNA. We're talking tire tracks or foot tracks, something that would suggest there was another person on that property in a footwear that wasn't identified to a pair of shoes in the house. With everybody working on this case, I can promise you they had the dental stone out and they were looking for impressions that may not fit the sneakers or boots of the owners of that property. And once again, I want to be very clear when I say this is an isolated property. If you

did not know it was there, you wouldn't just be wandering by, see a little girl playing outside and say, oh, a little girl playing outside. Let me take her. This isn't really a crime of opportunity thing. This is somebody, if Summer was taken by somebody, they targeted her. They followed her. They knew where she lived. They knew who she was with at any given time. They knew when she would be alone. And they waited they they boded their time Is that how you say it boded their time they baited their time. I don't know man. They waited until She was alone in that split second just two minutes says Candace two minutes that summers alone They came up and they took her without anybody noticing without summer yelling without any of the 25 dogs Barking and alerting somebody to this if everything went kind of as it was saying.

So it's very difficult. It's not like it's a neighborhood and some pedophile is driving by and sees a little girl playing and is like, oh, here's my chance. I'm just going to grab this little girl. You'd have to know Summer was there. You'd have to have known exactly where she lived. And that's what makes it a little bit more, I suppose, difficult to believe. And you'd think a little bit easier for law enforcement to solve if she had been abducted because they could just look in her general area, look in her circle.

This isn't some stranger who just popped into town, took her and left, and you'll never see him again. Yep. So we have another photo on the screen right now. If you're watching, John has it. It's a kind of a Google maps view, more zoomed out than the previous photo, which really puts in perspective how secluded this property is. You can see the circular driveway that wraps around the house. Then there's like a off that circular driveway. It goes up to the road, which I believe if I'm reading it correct, it's Ben Hill Road, which leads out to Beach Creek Road. But in between that distance, it's a long ways away from that main road. And there's basically two or three properties right at the corner of Ben Hill Road and Beach Creek Road. And that's really it. And Summer would know this. Where is she going? And more importantly, why would someone come down that way on the off chance that this

young girl is going to happen to be in an area where they can get in and get out without being detected? It's just, it's really hard to believe. I'll never say impossible because obviously anything's possible, but looking at it from this scale, it's really difficult to see why someone would be in that area, even possibly looking for someone or just passing by and seeing her. There's no reason to be down that way unless you live where Summer Wells lives. And that's not the case. Everyone who allegedly lived there, we're going to get into Don, obviously, was on that property. Wait, so is this her property? Is this her house to the left on the map?

Yes, that's how I'm seeing it. So you got the little blue, the red dot there. I think that's just because as close as it gets, but down to the left-hand corner, if the map's still up right now, see the circular driveway, you see the house. And I think if you zoom in, you can see grandma's trailer, just a little bit of it on the right there. I think that's the property because it's definitely not on the top in the middle of the screen where that red mark is. So don't pay attention to that. Sometimes Google Maps, when you type in an address, it'll get you close. I'm fairly confident that that circular driveway right there is in fact that Summer's home. And it is, as you can see the circle, you can see how it goes back out. There's a long driveway from the circle out to Ben Hill Road.

Where do you see the driveway? If you look really close in the corner that you can kind of see where that road connects. Bottom left-hand corner, right under the Ben Hill Road. Yes, right there. That's where I'm seeing it. So it wraps around. This is going to come in handy actually for how both of us understand because they had a path that they believed she was taken that goes through the woods and then goes to the street. And I was kind of confused as to whether it was Ben Hill or Beach Creek that they had taken her to or thought that they had taken her to.

And this is going to actually help us because we have a video of the exact path from the house that somebody took of the house down through the woods and then to the street. If you look really close in this picture as well, it almost looks like there's a body of water running right around there as well. It kind of runs from Ben Hill Road all the way down off the map. You can only see a small section of it, but it kind of wraps around the, I guess what would be the front side of Summer's home. And that also creates some obstacles. If an intruder's going in there, there's only really a few ways in and a few ways out. It kind of limits their escape route. So a lot of hurdles here for someone who is going there with nefarious intentions, but strongly recommend again, I can't reiterate it enough. If you're

fascinated by this case and you're really genuinely interested in it, there's no way you can fully be doing your due diligence without looking at these photos. You have to check them out. far before she was ever even born, her parents had experienced quite a lot, especially Don Wells, who he is significantly older than his wife, Candace. I don't know if you noticed that, but Candace is about like, I think she's 34, 35. And Don Wells, he looks like he's well into his 50s, right? Yeah, no, I agree. He's definitely older. But they both had been married before they were married to each other, and they both had children before they had the four children that they shared, which is Summer and her three older brothers. Now, it looks like Candace was married at a very young age, some sources say 19, and she was married to a man named Andrew, and they had two children together, a daughter named Candace and a son named Andrew. It's been

reported that their relationship between Candace and Andrew, the adults, not the kids, it's very complicated because Candace and Andrew had a daughter and son that they named Candace and Andrew. But the adults, Candace and Andrew, they had some abuse in their relationship. This also affected the children who ended up being removed from the home at a very young age by the state. Now, it looks like the daughter, Candace, her name was Candace, she was adopted but later placed in foster care. So the younger Candace, who now goes by the name Candace Floden, she wrote on Facebook, quote, I was adopted at six months, put back into foster care around the age of 12 with my brother, same name as my bio father. I was told my bio mom was a meth head and abused us as babies. She has a record. Not sure if she has one where she is now, Tennessee, but she has one or a few in Wisconsin for sure.

End quote. And yes, Candace Wells does have a record for domestic abuse, things like that. I'll talk about that in a second. But Don Wells also has two children with his first wife, a daughter named Margie and a son named Donald Wesley Wells. And the son, Donald Wesley Wells, he was actually convicted in Arkansas in 2007 of sexual indecency with a child. Now, according to Don Wells, his oldest son was in Utah at the time of Summer's disappearance, and Don Wells has also downplayed his son's charges, saying that in Tennessee they would be considered statutory rape because his son

was 19 at the time and the victim was his girlfriend who was 18 months younger. So Candace Bly has some charges for disorderly conduct and domestic abuse from 2003, and Don Wells has been convicted of multiple felonies and has served time in prison for convictions involving drugs and burglary in Arkansas, Utah, and Texas, as well as multiple parole violations in the late 90s and the early 2000s. In Arkansas, he was charged with possession of a controlled counterfeit substance without a prescription and burglary between 2006 and 2007. In Utah, he was charged with aggravated assaults, interfering with a public servant, forgery, burglary of a dwelling, and theft from 1990 to 2001. But according to Don Wells, he found God in prison and he started studying the Bible intently because

he wanted to change. And if you watch his early interviews, the ones he does with the legitimate news stations, not the ones he's doing with like YouTubers and stuff, Don does play up this religious angle quite a bit. He talks about their church and how they go to their church and how he's very, you know, religious. And he's so thankful for the good Christians out there who are helping look for his daughter. And he, you know, hopes God will help and things like that. He plays up this angle quite a bit. So apparently Don met his second wife, Candace, and they moved to Tennessee when Don's mother got sick. And when his mother died, Don took over her property, which was the land on Ben Hill Road. And by the time five-year-old Summer went missing, Don and his family had lived there for about 12 years. Now, this was the same property that deputies were dispatched to in October of 2020 after receiving reports of a domestic assault, and when they arrived, they found Don Wells behind the wheel of his vehicle.

A stop was conducted in the driveway, and Don Wells was detained, because according to deputies, Wells was stumbling and there was a strong smell of alcohol on and around him. Don told the police that he had a black powder pistol, and he revealed to them that he had been convicted of a felony in Utah. Deputies then spoke to Candace, who told them that Don had come home drunk to find her with another man in their house, and he thought she was cheating on him, so he began to argue with the man, and Don Wells also had a struggle with Candace, causing her to be pushed down to the floor during this altercation, and she injured her knee. At that point, Don began punching himself in the face, and he left the house, at which point he was apprehended by police officers and booked into the Hawkins County Jail.

The next day, Candace Bly filed for an order of protection against Don Wells, in which she stated that Don drinks and throws things, he was physically and mentally abusive, and she was afraid for herself and for her children. And her mother was also afraid that Don was going to hurt her. On April 21, 2021, Don Wells pleaded guilty to possession of a handgun while under the influence, but the domestic assault charges were dismissed. According to Don Wells, there had been a miscommunication between himself and his wife, Candace, and she had asked the judge to dismiss the charges. Tonight, Summer's father tells us that he and his wife have put that incident behind

them and all they want is for their daughter to come home safe. I was in Utah, so she was thinking one thing and I was thinking another, you know, but once we got to talk and figure things out, you know, we smoothed it all out. I mean, it's just we weren't on the same page, WE WERE ON THE SAME PAGE, A LACK OF COMMUNICATION." THE FOLLOWING DAY, BLY FILED AN ORDER OF PROTECTION AGAINST WELLS. IN THE ORDER, SHE SAYS WELLS DRINKS AND THROWS THINGS AND THAT HE WAS MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY ABUSIVE. SHE SAID QUOTE,

I AM AFRAID FOR MY CHILDREN AND MYSELF. BECAUSE WE WERE FIGHTING, OF COURSE PEOPLE WERE GOING TO TELL THE POLICE WHATEVER TO GET THEIR WAY. WE'VE WORKED IT OUT. SHE'S APOLOGIZED FOR THAT.

SHE'S BEEN ABLE TO TELL THE POLICE WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO TELL THE POLICE. SHE'S BEEN ABLE TO TELL THE POLICE WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO TELL THE POLICE. SHE'S BEEN ABLE TO TELL THE POLICE WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO TELL THE POLICE. SHE'S BEEN ABLE TO TELL THE POLICE WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO Because we were fighting, of course, you know, people are going to tell the police whatever to get their way. You know, we've worked it out. She's apologized to me.

Four days later, Bly asked for the charges to be dismissed. Wells pleaded guilty to possession of a handgun while under the influence and turned the weapon over to the sheriff's office. The domestic assault charges and unlawful possession of a handgun were dismissed. She's went to the district attorneys. She even talked to the judge. The domestic assault charges and unlawful possession of a handgun were dismissed. She went to the district attorneys. She even talked to the judge and told him that she made a serious mistake. And, you know, and that's the end of it. She didn't get hurt, and I never hurt nobody.

Let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back. So there's a lot to consume. It's really self-explanatory right they both had criminal pasts and i'll first say that there are individuals who can have things like this in their past and go on to be great parents because they go through some things and they come out better on the other side but i i don't think this is a controversial take where even without these things, they're not the best parents and probably shouldn't have kids. And I'm not even talking about their criminal history. I'm just talking about the incidents from that day. Just leaving your children in their house. It's the truth. Just leaving your children alone and not seeing anything wrong with it. You're setting yourself

up for disaster. Little boys being left in a home by themselves for eight hours. That's the type of stuff that gets your kids taken away from you if reported, period. Just that in and of itself. So I don't mind saying it. It may not everyone agree with me, but you take what we know about just that day and couple it with some of these other things where it appears they haven't completely moved on from their past. And even with the kids in the home, there were signs of domestic assault and there were cops responding. It's not good for children in the household. I can tell you as someone who's had the police respond to my home, it's traumatic. And you couple that with the fact that there is clear evidence of negligence and not being present when your children are in situations that they could hurt themselves.

Hate to say it, but not the ideal situation for children to be living in. No, listen, I agree with you. And there are situations like I understand sometimes you're a single mother. You have to go to work. What else are you going to do? You've got kids like you have to work to keep a roof over those kids heads. And, you know, sometimes you have to depend on neighbors and relatives and things. But what we're dealing with here is a family who had a main breadwinner and that's Don Wells.

And he said often, you know, when they moved to Tennessee, Candace, his wife, had decided she was going to be a stay at home mother, that she wasn't going to work and he was going to work construction and she was going to be a stay-at-home mother, that she wasn't gonna work and he was gonna work construction and she was gonna be a stay-at-home mother. So when you are a stay-at-home mother, there really shouldn't be a time where you're like, oh, it's either pay the rent or leave my kids alone. That's kind of your job to keep the kids safe because you're the stay-at-home mother or the stay-at-home parent or whatever. Just because you wanna run errands

and you don't wanna have four kids with you isn't a good enough reason to leave them alone. But I will also say the thing with having the guy at the house when Don got there, it looked like he was out of town, maybe for work or maybe to visit family. And then he came back in town and there's another guy there. And this guy, his name was- Wasn't Hunter, was it? No. Okay. All right. Just checking. and this guy uh his name was wasn't hunter was no okay all right just checking i'm sure don came home many a time to find hunter there so it wouldn't have been a surprise but you ain't kidding but however this this guy is kind of connected to hunter and hunter's mother allison

because apparently this this guy was married he lived in like a different state and he was a friend of allison's and he didn't have a place to stay. So Allison had asked Candace if this guy could stay with her and like crash at their place. And I guess he did for a little bit. And I'm not sure if Don Wells just didn't know about it. It's all very confusing. I will also say having strange men that you don't know living in your house or crashing in your house or on your property when you have four young children there also isn't a great idea. Also not something I would do as a parent. And I'm not saying don't have family friends over, but make sure you know these people.

And from what I can tell, Candace didn't really know this guy. It was just kind of like a favor to Allison. Like, yeah, he can crash here and he could have been anybody yeah we're just scratching the surface right that's why I'm saying what I'm saying I know when I get a reaction out of Stephanie I know I went somewhere cuz she's not one she's usually the one with the hot take but it's definitely something where just with the limited amount of things you've told me as a parent myself I I wouldn't want my children being watched by Candace, period.

So I can see just from the limited information you've told me, I can say and mean it that I don't necessarily think those kids were in the best situation, but I'm also not saying that, oh, just because she was not a good parent that she killed her daughter. That's not what I'm saying. It's two different things. But at minimum, that negligence and that lack of attention to your child can lead to an accident that could be fatal or an opportunity for someone to take your child from you without you knowing for an extended period of time. That's what I am saying. It does create that environment. Yeah. It's very difficult, this case, because typically I will try not to judge. You know, I've been in different positions. I've lived with a single mother who had to do all sorts of crazy things sometimes to go to work. And that meant sometimes leaving me alone with my younger

sister. And I wasn't like really of an advanced age at that point. So I try not to judge because I've been there and I know people who are there but at the same time like you said am i gonna be like oh candace bligh is a great person and yes let me bring my kids over to her house for her to babysit no absolutely not and when you have that gut instinct about somebody and in a situation it's important to listen to it and i think that a lot of us out there even if we don't want to judge candace probably still have that gut instinct where we're not like hiring her for a babysitter either. She's not winning mom of the year anytime soon. Yeah.

Now, in this next section, listen, we're going to get into some crazy stuff here. There have been other serious charges put against Don Wells for things he allegedly and reportedly did over 30 years ago. Now, normally, I wouldn't even talk about this because it would be all hearsay to me. You know what I mean? I wouldn't even talk about this, but he's kind of admitted it. So it's on the table. Don's stepsisters, Mary and Jeannie, they've accused him of sexually molesting them when they were younger. And Jeannie claims to have called the TBI the day after Summer disappeared and told them what had happened between herself and Don when she was just five years old and he was 12. According to Jeannie, the abuse started when she was five. It continued on until she was 12 and Don was 19.

And the strange thing is, like I said, Don Wells has not necessarily denied that this happened. But he does defend it, which is, it's hard to hear, but you'll see in this phone call with his stepsister, Mary, another sister. And remember, this is a man who's found God because he wanted to be better. And remember, when he talks about his stepsister, Jeannie, in this following clip, he's talking about her when she was a child and she was five years old. Well, I don't know, Donnie. She just told me that when, you know, when we heard that Summer went missing, that everything came back to her

because she was five years old at the time it started and Summer is five years old, so she just- Yeah, she ain't taking no blame on her part, though, but she did. Yeah, well, but Donnie, she was five. How could she take the blame? I mean, a five-year-old baby wouldn't be able to do that. Oh, of course not.

She ain't got no shit. She ain't going to take no blame or nothing. Well, I don't know. I mean, she's come to hell. She tried to sleep with Dad. I mean, you know, hellfire. She can try. I mean, when are they going to go down her first charges?

When are they going to do it? Today. Oh, today. Okay. Yep. So I just want to know. They're going to be coming after you, Donnie. And they're going to put you in jail and probably extradite you back here to Utah. So I'm just giving you a heads up. I doubt it. I really doubt it. I really doubt it. Yeah.

I really doubt it. I mean, it's so long ago. How can they, I don't see. And I never, you know, it was, I mean, I was freaking like 14, 15 years old. So I, I, she had to go to the juvenile court. I don't know. I don't think it'll go through juvenile now that you're old you guys are older yeah but i was a kid yeah i was a kid i know what i'm saying is when she's just an evil man she's just an evil she's trying to say i've done that to my kids man that's ridiculous man her and the horse she rode in on. Because we played a little game when I was a fucking, when we were both little kids. She's gonna act all like this.

She wants to be an evil bitch. Well, fuck her. She played along with me, Myra. She played the little game. She's not innocent. I think it's pretty fucking evil to wait for somebody 40 years just for when they was playing house or whatever. And she didn't have no problem playing house. You know, now all of a sudden, 40 years later, she's going to say I did all kinds of stuff to my kids and Donnie and Margie and everybody else.

What the hell is wrong with that? What's wrong with everybody? She was, we played house, Mary. Yeah. She stuck her hand down my pants first. Right. First time. Yeah, I don't know. That's the truth. That's the truth. I swear on a stack of Bibles to that. She's the one that initiated the whole thing. Right. It was her.

Yeah, I wish I was there, Donnie. And where she learned it from or whatever, I don't know, but I even remember the exact words. Well, I've seen my brother's, Winky. Can I see yours? And that was her exact words. And she's the one who initiated it. Where she learned it from, I don't know yeah and i thought it was all at the time but i was still i was a little kid too man yeah she ain't the only innocent one

in this game i was innocent too nobody taught me any better nobody taught me nothing she was never hurt in any way we played a little bit of house touchy-feely shit. That's all it ever fucking was. Fuck that bitch. Yeah, I don't know, Donnie. I wasn't there. You know what? If anybody was evil in this whole thing, it's her.

She's the one that initiated it. Okay, before you react, before you react to this, one more short clip that I want i want to play for you first so you can react to both of them boiling i know you i watched your face right i want to throw this mic that's what i'm saying one more clip now you guys listen to to this one okay this is uh another another podcast who don wells uh did an interview with and the podcast is called um no thanks investigates and here's that clip i'm pissed too i'm like can't even talk right now so like go ahead and play that well she was five years old no she wasn't she was seven that's another fucking

line and you were older so i was well well that's still in there well you know what girls don't know girls mature way faster i understand that they mature way faster in their evil ways you know right it's just one of those things don if you if if you went in front of a judge and said my sister touched me inappropriately and then the judge said well how old were you and you would say i was 12 she was seven and he goes what shouldn't it be the other way around she come on to me she come on to me man she didn't come on she wants to turn it all around and say crazy stuff but the truth the matter is she come on to me bro but you don't want to face that fact well how can a seven-year-old come on to somebody how does that happen oh well i don't know why don't you tell me that i didn't

understand it either okay okay listen to the second clip guy's a scumbag i'm being i don't want to get demonetized just go off on a rampant here but i'm not even there's no justification for it if anything he's off with the math too because i believe they were seven years apart so if she was seven even at the time he was 14 he doesn't get younger as she gets older that's what he's trying to do but you know i don't think I need to explain to anyone other than Don that if that was actually what happened, it's his responsibility to stop it immediately, not justify it. And the things he's saying about her are absolutely terrible. So just to add to my point that I was making earlier, because these interviews are from now, right? This isn't like 20 years ago. This is after Summer's gone missing.

So this is his mind state right now. That's how he justifies things. This is Summer's father. So let's tie it into Summer real quick, unless you had something to say about those clips. I kind of want to just say the same thing. As far as we know from Jeannie, she was five. They're seven years apart. And to me, it doesn't matter if she's five or seven. There's not a big difference there when you're 12 and 14. What he's doing here is he's making it seem as if a literal child could be the initiator of sex. And he was just like taken in by the siren song of this child. And he even says in that second clip, you know, women mature faster in their evil ways. This is how Don Wells sees women and not just women, but little girls, actual children who are five years old he views them

almost as full-grown women who are capable of like sexually manipulating a man and he even says oh she tried to do the same to my dad this this and that he keeps he's talking about either a five or a seven-year-old girl it doesn't matter a literal child okay go ahead absolute scumbag so if anyone didn't agree with me before as far as there shouldn't be children in that home maybe you're maybe we're all on the same team now okay how does this relate to our case because we're trying to find summer we're trying to understand what could have happened to her easy answer is there was molestation in the home it got out of control summer was going to say something. Don had a reason, an incentive to kill her and

hide her body because he didn't want to be exposed for the scumbag that he is, right? That's the easy one. Well, there's another option too. If she's being consistently molested in that home by Don, by straight, whoever it may be, we have seen situations in the past where young girls who are being sexually raped, you know, molested in this home will decide to run away. And we're only being told the story from Candace. So we don't know exactly how that day went down, but could it have been a situation where Summer knew Don was coming home soon, knows what that usually means, tells mom she's going to go hang out with the brothers when she's not going to, slips down to the basement, grabs only a thing or two, maybe not as extensive enough to notice that she's leaving, maybe

something that can't be identified by police because the house is in shambles, but grabs a couple of things and then runs up that circular driveway and out to the road. And that's where she's abducted by someone. Okay. Cause now there's an opportunity for it. Or lost, right? Lost in the wilderness, coyotes, wolves, bears, all sorts of shit out there. Exactly.

Exactly. Could be an abduction, could be just an accident where she's running through the woods. She gets hurt. Maybe she got a far distance and you know, she gets hurt and they just in the grid, they didn't find her. But when we're thinking about reasons or questioning, I was saying it earlier, why would Summer go that way? Well, this might explain it. And I'm not saying that this other person was molested, but it brought me back to Asha Degree, where Asha, all investigators mainly believe she wasn't abducted from the

home. Whatever happened to her happened after she left the home and she was picked up by someone, et cetera, something like that. This could be a similar situation. So it's really enlightening to hear this because it does give us an inside look into what potentially was going on in the household behind closed doors. When we're talking about reasons for Summer to run away from home, yeah, I think this would justify that,

would be a possible explanation for her running away. So I want to say, I'm going to get out in front of this. This is all alleged. It's an alleged theory. Alleged. We're not saying Don molested his daughter, Summer, okay? What I will say is that his sister, Jeannie, his other sister, Mary, they've both made these claims. There are now seven women in total, some family members, some not family members, some friends of Jeannie and Mary's who would spend the night at their house who are now raising these allegations against him in Utah.

They're going to court and all that jazz. You don't go to court and pull something like this if you're lying. So I truly do believe that these women were molested by him. Now, he tries to downplay this, right, throughout the whole conversation. We were just playing house. Just touchy-feely stuff. They were never raped. Okay, fair enough. But what I think he doesn't understand, which to me is enlightening that he doesn't understand this, is that as a 12-year-old or a 14-year-old boy, it is not normal to want to play house or touchy-feely with a literal child.

That's not normal. It's normal to be curious. It's normal to wonder like, oh, what's under their pants, you know, and they're a girl and I'm a boy and what's going on? That's normal. But as a 14-year-old boy or a 12-year'm a boy and what's going on. That's normal. But as a 14 year old boy or a 12 year old boy, it is not normal. It's not acceptable. And it's not OK to do that to a child. But he is literally he didn't even try to deny this. He wasn't like it didn't happen. He's just like, it's not a big deal. That to me is the biggest thing. He could have denied

it. He could have denied it and nobody could have ever done anything about it because it's basically 40 years gone. He said, she said, if he had said, absolutely, I did not do that, nothing would have happened. But this dude came right out because he doesn't think there's anything wrong with it. And there's definitely something wrong with it. And the fact that at this time as a grown man, he still does not think that there's anything wrong with it to the point where he doesn't even have the shame to deny it, it says everything to me. Yeah. And you're saying alleged, but let's be honest based on what he said, just on what he said. Now, I don't know the statute of limitations in Utah. It's probably past it, but just what he said, she initiated it. She touched, she went down my pants. That in and of itself is child

molestation. That would 100% get you charged by a police department. But I do believe there probably is a statute of limitations in place in Utah where even if he says, yeah, I did it at this point, charges can't be brought. Although the stepsister was saying, hey, they're going to get a warrant. They're going to have you extradited. I don't know. How long ago was that interview that you just played? I think just like a month or so ago, not long. Okay.

So it could still be happening. I mean, I don't know what the statute of limitations on child molestation is. In fact, there might not be. Sexual assault, definitely. I think it's like three years, something like that to report it. But child molestation, there may not be a statute of limitations in Utah. And if that's the case, you could hear about Don Wells getting his ass dragged back to Utah very soon, which awesome.

Love it. Love to see it. Maybe it's dragged back to Utah very soon, which awesome. Love it. Love to see it. It's dragged back to Utah, tied to the back of a truck. Honestly, just my opinion. Allegedly don't come from me. Yeah. Do you want me to disagree with you? There's no recovery from that one.

You're done for me. We've discussed this before. There's no, no coming back from that. And he admitted to the one part of it, but he also, he made it, he framed it as if that was the start of it. That wasn't, he didn't say, oh, it was a one-time incident. She went, it was like, that was what initiated it. And then I don't even want to talk about where it went from there, but that he made it very

clear that that she started it and it started with the hand down the pants. I'm assuming it didn't end there. Nevertheless, heard enough. Don Wells is a piece of shit Candace just from the basic stuff that I've heard As far as just that day and the days leading up to it Not very attentive As a mother and something that's

Kind of required when you're a parent So not a fan of either of them That all being said There's nothing here yet that suggests they would have had A motive other than the one that I just mentioned as far as don's concerned to kill summer and then hide her body Nothing tangible yet And that's where we have to be careful because you can be the absolute biggest piece of shit on the planet

And still may not be responsible for summer's death if she's even deceased. I get this too. Okay, so mary his other Um have well his stepsister his other stepsister she's the same age as as he is and she talks to him on this phone call and she's like well what about that one day you know with you and your friends and he cuts it and he goes oh when i saved you from getting raped so apparently him and a couple of his friends when they were both both he and mary were i think 13 or 14 they basically like held her down and they were both, both he and Mary were, I think, 13 or 14. They basically like held her down and they were like molesting her and like doing horrible things to her. And, you know, he basically took part in that as well. So there's all these terrible stories,

multiple women coming out. It's hard to try to remain unbiased about somebody like Don Wells when you're talking about a five-year-old girl going missing and knowing how he feels about you know children and young girls and things like that it is hard to remain biased but we are going to continue to try and do it because like Derek said there's no there's no evidence and no proof that he had anything to do with summers disappearance or possible death well that said if he was molesting her if he was and we found out down the road that summer did in fact attempt to run away would you be surprised now knowing what we know no i'd run away too no and i will say that i don't

think that him downplaying it and saying oh we were just playing house touchy-feely it doesn't stop there like if you do that as he is a, 14, 15 years old, you always have this sort of perverted kind of like twisted view of sex. That doesn't change. That only escalates, right? When we're talking about molestation, not all young boys out there are touching their little sisters or their little cousins or their little friends. I want to make that very clear. I know there's some people out there who may think this is a normal part of like sexuality and exploring when you're a kid. It's not.

It's not okay. It's not normal. The majority of young boys are not out there doing that. Did you do that when you were 13 or 12 or 14? I think for most people, 99.9% of the people listening or watching, that is something that's commonsensical. It sucks that you even have to say that out loud because it seems pretty straightforward to me. Yeah, you'd think. But I've seen a lot of people online being like, oh, that's completely normal. It worries me. That is not normal. If you say it's completely normal, you will get blocked.

Yeah. You will get blocked in the comments. That's not normal and it would only escalate from there. So somebody like that isn't going to start. If you see that in the comments, flag them. Oh yeah. We're going to flag them. And we're going to get rid of them because. Call the local authorities where you live.

Find your IP address. Tell them to be on the lookout for you. Yeah. It's not, it's not good. So I hope nobody thinks that. And if you do think that, you know, I don't, I don't blame you for, for thinking that people are raised differently, but I do want don't blame you for for thinking that people are raised differently. But I do want you to revise your way of thinking because it ain't normal.

Yeah. Let's take a quick break. Leave your address. You name and address. Let's take a quick break and give us some time to simmer down. We'll be right back. So I want to go back to the days after Summer Wells went missing. Local law enforcement and the TBI were conducting thorough and exhaustive searches, and that included dive teams, exploring waterways, neighborhood canvases, collection of surveillance photos and videos, collection of electronics from Summer's family, and the use of police dogs hoping to pick up Summer's scent and see if it could be followed. Now, according to the Wells family and according to Hawkins County Sheriff Ronnie Lawson, the scent dogs had picked up Summer's scent and they tracked it for a while before it disappeared near the road.

Law enforcement has confirmed that Summer's scent was followed by these dogs to the road, and Ronnie Lawson said, quote, sometimes canines will lose the scent when it changes different types, where they maybe went from the gravel to the pavement, end quote. Don Wells posted a video on YouTube illustrating where the dogs followed his daughter's scent and where they lost it. So if you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to watch the video, And if you're listening, I'll sort of explain what it's showing. And Derek and I will kind of talk about what it's showing as we're watching it. All right.

So what you see here is the back door that Summer would have reportedly gone out. And it basically faces the trail that leads down the hill, which Don Wells and others have called the dog trail. Because I guess all the dogs run along it. Now, as the camera travels down the hill, you'll see and others have called the dog trail, because I guess all the dogs run along it. Now, as the camera travels down the hill, you'll see like a message pop up and it says, in June, the trail can be walked very quietly. This was videoed near the end of October 2021. Wouldn't be as many leaves. This is after obviously you get more to the fall. So obviously you hear anything back there. But as you can see, right, it's not really a trail, right? There's not a cleared out path or a specific area that looks as if it's been made into a walking trail. There are trees and vegetation that you'd have to push through.

And I think whether it's June or October, you'd have a hard time going through it quietly, you know, without the 50 dogs on the property noticing. But I guess that's also assuming that Candace, yeah, see how it goes down to the road. Now, what road do you think that is? Ben Hill, right? That's Ben Hill. It's got to be. Yeah, because it would have been a lot further of a hike to get out to that main road. And it looks more like that curved road that we saw in the beginning of this episode that we put up on the screen. Yeah, to me, this kind of holds true with everything. It's almost like you did this on purpose, right, Stephanie? Where it kind of holds true.

I don't want to interrupt the video as it's playing. Are they still tracking you right now? Yeah, so now they run down and he says, Somerset went down to the trail, fading on the road. And then it says that fades. You'll see them kind of go up towards like a driveway. Somerset ended just beyond the dogs who are at the driveway. And that would be the driveway that goes up to Candace and Don's house.

Somerset's house. Yeah. So I don't know. We've talked about dogs before. I don't know how good these dogs were. It seems like they had two different dogs who kind of followed the same path. So that does give it a little bit more credibility. Couple, I mean, it could be an offender who took her out of that way.

Those aren't police dogs you see. Those are Don's dogs. Yeah. Okay. They're Don's dogs. And what I'm saying though is regardless of the scent dogs that they are, regardless, we don't know their training. We don't know how good they are at what they do.

They both did follow the same path. So that does say something. Whatever they were following, they both were doing it. Unless they were just kind of literally chasing each other. at what they do. They both did follow the same path. So that does say something, whatever they were following, they both were doing it unless they were just kind of literally chasing each other. But let's, for the sake of what we're seeing here, say that this does have something to it. May that have been the path that Summer took to kind of escape the property without being detected because it's literally the opposite direction of where the trailer was so that she could come out that door and go out that way and not be seen by mom or grandma if that's what her intentions were.

And could it be a situation where someone driving by picked her up? Yeah, very possible. There's a lot of scenarios that could play out there. But as you said, these dogs, they're not canines. And whether they're canines or not, they do have, you know, what is it over three, 400 receptor cells just in their nose alone. So obviously dogs have a great sense of smell and they appear to be like hunting dogs. So I'm assuming they're pretty good. I do like the fact that there's two of them. It doesn't seem like Don was manipulating them in any way to kind of have them go a certain way to maybe support his narrative because obviously their narrative is that she was abducted. And so this is good for him to say, hey, she wasn't killed on the property and then hidden.

She was taken from our property. have to see a path or basically a resume to show success rates from the past in order for this to be something that we can really hang our hat on. And as you mentioned, these are Don's dogs. We're not going to have, I'm assuming there's not a paper trail to say how successful they've been in the past. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven dogs in that one shot. So I think they're just running that way. I don't think they're tracking anything. No. I mean, I don don't know what they are i don't know if they're hunting dogs no they're like strays they said people just leave these dogs on their property and then the drugs grow up but what i'm saying is like i think there's just so many dogs here that you just see a bunch and they're just kind of going in whatever direction maybe they're sort of just running ahead of him you know like i

don't think they're tracking and maybe they're just on the trail that the dogs usually walk on like they said at the beginning of the trail right what do we do we know if do we know if canines were ever brought in to me they brought in police canines okay that they followed that trail that's allegedly now so they're saying the same trail. So the police have never said like, oh yeah, that's the trail. The police said the dogs, the canines, the legitimate dogs tracked Summer's path to the road where they then lost it. And the sheriff Ronnie Lawson was saying, you know, maybe it's because of a change in like pavement or a change in like, but they never told us exactly what the path is. This is Don Wells claiming this is what the path is. This is don wells claiming

This is what the path is. Okay, so so when you were talking about ronnie lawson earlier He wasn't referring to these dogs. He's referring to canines that he brought in Okay, I thought that he was kind of referring to this video like hey We saw the video there was a separate set of dogs that were not put on video That kind of followed a similar path to the dogs that we saw in this video but you know what else i think is interesting he says like oh in in october in june it would have been easier to get over here because it's kind of loud right now but you see the one part where you're looking from the road up at the house even in october even when the foliage

is sparser than it would be in June, you can barely see that house. Okay. Oh, yeah. I just want to point that out. It's definitely secluded. So you wouldn't be driving by and say like, oh, snap, there's a house up there. Let me go and see if there's a little child up there that is waiting to get kidnapped by me. You'd have to know where you were going.

You'd have to know you were going there specifically for summer and like where she would be. That's what I'm saying. If you're going to be in actor unless she ran unless she ran away unless she ran to the street which after what you just told me is now it's not as far-fetched anymore no it's not far-fetched but you know what why are her parents so insistent that she did not run away and that she was abducted okay they're not just insistent like oh no she was abducted. Okay. They're not just insistent like, oh no, she was abducted. We didn't do anything to her. They're like, absolutely no, she did not leave this property. She never would do that. Somebody definitely lured her out or

came up here and stole her. Why are they so insistent on that to the point where you heard, even at the top of this episode, them saying, we know for a fact she was abducted. How do you know for a fact? How can you even say that? Well, I think they a fact she was abducted. How do you know for a fact? How can you even say that? Well, I think they know what people are saying about them. The consensus out there is they are lying and they are somehow connected to her disappearance and possible death. Yes, but still, the wandering off theory would still work in your favor. But it seemed like they kept saying, why are all these cops and searchers around our house? Why is everybody looking around our house?

There's no way she's anywhere near here anymore. You guys need to leave this property and look for her elsewhere because somebody took her off. And in the beginning, people were like, why do the parents want them to leave the property so much? Like, why do the parents want law enforcement to like get away from the property to the point where they're insisting she didn't even wander off when it's quite a like wild area you know it wouldn't make sense that she might wander

off and get lost yeah a lot of questions like i said it last episode i'll say it again i can definitely we see why a lot of our listeners viewers, and other people who are in this field have been really drawn in by this case because it's perplexing. So on the official Find Summer Wells website, which is run by the Wells family, it says, quote, There is no way to know if it came from Summer directly or if her scent was on our dogs from playing with them and they spread it, or maybe on the boys if they came down through here after playing with summer but there is a good chance it was from summer possibly her being carried by someone it is the only place that her scent was found to this degree that the dogs followed end quote yeah i mean you just said it right their incentive is to obviously show people let's say they're telling the truth

they want to they want people to get off of them as the suspects and start tracking down the actual killer that's out there somewhere who has their who has their daughter and i i say killer we're assuming that that summer's deceased we're all hoping she isn't but we haven't heard from her i'm really it's still this case is still new so there's a strong possibility that should could she could be alive somewhere this isn't like springfield three where it's been 30 years there's a strong potential where a year and she's five the stats are not in her favor not in her favor but not impossible so let's let's keep that hope but as far as their incentive their motive yeah they're they're operating under the you know assumption that they're innocent and that they had nothing to do with this.

And they're using this as evidence to support what they believe, which is that Summer Wells disappeared. A scream that was preceded by a vehicle pulling into the Wells driveway and the sound of a truck door closing. The Wells family lives across the street from a neighboring property. On mirroring mountains together, they can be described as sentinels which sit high over Ben Hill Road. The night Summer went missing, the neighbor swears that she and her two children heard a scream shortly before they joined the search for a now missing Summer Wells. On the watch and hyper vigilant.

That's how Jody Sue Brown was the very day Summer Wells went missing. There's no TV, no noise at all. Jody Sue was in her cabin with her teenage kids 19 and 14, waiting for anything. We were kind of hyper alert because of property things that had happened the day before. So we were listening for noise. Everything was kind of quiet. The sale brought a plethora of people to their door,

confused about which piece of land was for sale, leading to a dispute of property lines. While we were out at one point doing survey lines and there was a flash of a car that went up Candace and Donnie's driveway, something about it struck me wrong. She and her family next heard a truck door slamming and dismissed it as their neighbors. The next sound was harder to justify.

About an hour and a half before summer is thought to go missing. Jody Sue, her son and her daughter heard something far more suspicious. A scream. Stopped all three of us cold. Her daughter was the first to go to the cabin door. Then all three were there listening. Still, we heard just this kind of shrill,

almost animalistic. Scream animalistic, but not an animal. Knew it was, you know, wrong. It wasn't a dog. It wasn't an animal. That vigilance kicking into overdrive. Jodi Sue and her son went out to look for the source of the scream. My son and I decided to go out, look and see what we could see. We went back onto the bank, didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. They went on with their evening. The kids returned to being kids. Jodi Sue headed down her driveway around 6 to 10 to Flowers. And at this point, I start hearing Candace hollering for Summer. And then my brain immediately went, you know, scream earlier, this, uh-oh. Jodi Sue was the first to hear those calls and the first to join the search for Summer. I dropped my purse. I tried to yell up at Candace. I was like, I'm looking, and I started looking.

Jody Sue searched one side of a creek, Summer's brothers the opposite side. And you gave statements to the police, right? Oh, absolutely. Jody Sue had been interviewed many times by investigators, bringing up the scream often. But the sheriff doesn't believe the scream is related to the disappearance of Summer Wells. She's been interviewed numerous times by not only my agency but the TBI and FBI and we don't find anything with that complaint or information related to this case. Jodi Sue wishes she could go back to just a short time before Summer disappeared and

before the scream she believes was Summer. I wish every day that when I heard that scream I hadn't tried to dismiss it. Hawkins County Sheriff Ronnie Lawson reiterated in an interview the same week as Jodi Sue's that investigators have found believes she saw a car pull into the driveway, then the sound of a truck door closing, and then a scream just before she heard Candace yelling Summer's name. But once again, law enforcement, they claim that this is not a credible piece of information. And this has obviously led to other questions as to whether or not Jodi Sue and her children actually heard a scream. And if so, how did Candace and grandma not hear a scream? This is what happens when you only have a small portion of the evidence.

TBI, local police, FBI, they have it all. Time stamps, whatever they might have, you know, cell phone, GPS, court, everything. And on the surface, my reaction is, well, how do they know that they didn't hear what they said they heard? That's my natural reaction. I'm sure it's a lot of yours. What do they have to discredit this family? If they're saying they heard a woman, a young girl scream, and they're saying that they heard Candace yelling for summer almost immediately after, right? How are they completely ruling that out? What does law enforcement have to say?

Nope, you're wrong. We don't believe it's connected to this case. I don't see how they would be able to determine that definitively, but that also is because I don't have everything they have. And maybe if I did, I wouldn't feel that way. But looking at what I've just watched and coming to my own opinions based on that video, this is all tying into something where it could be a situation where Summer was taken by someone. is this person who may have presented themselves as being a friend turned into a monster for that her and as she's screaming and they're sticking her in the car taken off and then maybe candace is yelling for summer shortly after because she realizes summer's nowhere to be found uh that's possible uh still very it's a stretch but the whole thing that's interesting to me is just law enforcement saying, nope, couldn't happen. Not true. For them to come out on record and say that, they better have something damn good. So I don't believe that she heard a scream. It seems like this woman and her family in general have been inserting themselves into this case online, on Facebook, on YouTube,

taking super chats, stuff like that. So I don't necessarily believe that she heard a scream, but she did say something that interested me. A property line dispute and a property sale that was bringing all sorts of people to the area who were confused about what property was for a sale. That's interesting to me because if you have a bunch of people in the area who aren't familiar with the area, who might be looking to buy a property, who might be wandering around trying to see which property is which, you might have somebody stumble upon Summer's home without knowing it was there before. So I would like to find out more about that. It was very difficult for me to find out anything about that. So I know there's a lot of people watching and listening who are like in this case, like in it to the point where you're hearing everything going on.

If you have any ideas, let me know. Email me. Put it in the comments section if you're watching on YouTube. So I would like to know that. But I don't know about the scream. However, I will say that Don Wells has really grabbed on to Jodi Sue Brown hearing the scream. He talks about it a lot in interviews, even though the police continue saying there's nothing to it and they don't believe that what she heard was connected or that she even heard anything. So I will say that. Because don't

you think if she did hear a scream, Grandma and Candace would have heard the scream? They're right there. Yeah. That's one thing that runs through my head. You would think, especially if they're saying they heard Candace yelling for Summer almost immediately after right so that's one scenario but then could it also be and we haven't gone there yet but could it also be a situation where don is upset and takes summer with him somewhere and candace is yelling for summer and they're all kind of in this together now at this point something happened at the property i mean i i'm going all over the place here right but who knows we how you haven't even gotten into don and whether he was actually home or was he at work and i said first episode that police would definitely know that just by gps coordinates but anything's at play right now yeah i'm not really

going to get into that because at this point it is all speculation it's all people he said she said i i was gonna talk about it but i don't want to like get i don't want to go there i don't want to have something that's not complete too far yeah and i don't want to i don't i just don't i'm sure i have a feeling he was home sooner than he said he was home, but I don't have any evidence of that. And at this point, I don't want to talk about it without better evidence. So if you want to look it up. Fair enough. I appreciate that. You guys want to look it up and see there was messages that Candace was sending to a friend saying like, oh, Don was actually home earlier than he said he was. You know, just don't tell anyone. You can look that stuff up. You can find it. It's out there on the forums. But it's all

hearsay for me. And you can fake text messages and stuff so easily nowadays that it just doesn't feel right for me to really go in depth and use it as a legitimate thing at this point. Now, reportedly, both Don Wells and Candace Bly have passed polygraph tests, which Don Wells was eager to tell the media. To me, it means nothing. You guys know how I feel about lie detector tests. I feel like they're junk. I don't believe in them. And I think you can pass them if you're good at lying and if you remain calm.

And if you're on some serious drugs or alcohol that kind of makes you more calm, then you probably might have a better chance of passing. But Don was very insistent to make this fact known to the public because by this point, most people had already turned on Don Wells and Candace Bly, feeling that there was something they weren't revealing and feeling that they knew more about their daughter's disappearance than they were seeing. Just two weeks after Summer's disappearance, Candace and Don sat down with local news station WJHL and what some believed to be their strange behavior and bizarre comments added fuel to the fire. By this point, both Don and Candace were insisting to anyone and everyone that they knew Summer had been abducted and law enforcement and the TBI were still reporting that they had found no evidence of an abduction. But the TBI had put out information to the public that they were looking for a 1998

to 2000 maroon or red Toyota Tacoma with a full bed ladder rack and white buckets in the truck bed. Investigators had reportedly received information that a vehicle matching this description had been seen in the area of Beach Creek Road and Ben Hill Road in the late afternoon or early evening of either Monday, June 14th or Tuesday, June 15th, 2021. And if you remember correctly, Summer goes missing on the evening of Tuesday, June 15th. The TBI made it clear that the driver of this truck was not a suspect, but they wanted to speak to him or her as they may have had potential witnesses and seen something which could help in the search for summer now here's Candace Bly and Don Wiles reacting to the news of the truck just turned I mean go to the FBI the police and clear it up I mean I don't know it seems kind of elusive

it's really strange that I've never seen this truck and I've never heard of it until just recently. But I wish they would come forward and explain themselves. We just want to focus on the good friends and Christian people that are trying to help us and praying for us and praying for summer. And we thank them from the bottom of our hearts. And that's the kind of people we try to relate with and socialize with. So we don't know anything about, you know, no red truck. We hardly know many of our neighbors. I mean, because we just try to be around good people. I mean, and we do have good people in this area.

We found out since this has all happened. We got some real good neighbors and good folks everywhere. I got to say, I don't know if I'm, because I'm already crossed the point of like giving the benefit of the doubt to Don and Candace, in case that hasn't been made clear in this episode. And weigh in the comments below if you're watching on youtube if you don't agree with me but something that just came to me and it's been in a lot of interviews that we've seen and they've done a lot of them i've never seen a tear yeah not one tear from either of them very calm very collected always on script maybe that's just their personalities maybe they got all their tears out off camera, but from cases that we've seen that we've done right here on crime weekly, whether it's six

months, a year or 20 years later, anytime the parents speak about the loss of a child, they can't, but help, but break down because it's something it's a, it's a, it's a wound that never heals. And that's not me just saying it. That's the truth. I mean, it's something that you, you never get over. Even you think about John Walsh. I mean, obviously later in life, he was able to talk about it, but even in like interviews years later, he was still breaking down about Adam. And so, and that's a strong and mentally strong individual right there. I mean, he went on to create this whole different world that goes after, you know, people who hurt children from this, but even him, he still messes them up, you know, and they not a single tear, not even a tremble in their voices

when they're speaking. So just something, an observation, maybe I'm looking too deep into it. Let me know what you think. You guys are watching the same stuff that I'm watching for the first time. Stephanie's obviously seen this before. I'm interested to hear what you guys think though. And even if you're listening on audio, comment in the comments, you can hear their voices pretty, pretty, pretty even keel the entire time. It's interesting. So I will say that nobody, everybody reacts to stress differently. Everybody reacts to loss differently. We've always said that. However, just how they're reacting and talking in general in these interviews isn't the only thing we're looking at. We're looking at a combination of factors and them being basically emotionless and very controlled in these interviews, as Derek said, combined with all of the other stuff

that we know, it does not look good. But I will say in general, I wouldn't say that anybody specifically acts a certain way when under pressure, some people go introverted. I also think Candace might be on something. All right. Maybe like some anti-anxiety medicine or something which could be numbing her senses, which could be dulling her affect. So I'll just put that out there. But yeah, you guys let us know. Look at us changing roles. I'm proud of us.

Yeah. I'm proud of us. Look at me being the emotional one tonight. And you're like, well, let's qualify. We did not do this intentionally. I like this. It feels terrible, but like, I don't like these people, okay? I don't like these people to such an extreme level that I'm almost course correcting as dramatically.

So I'm always thinking like, am I judging them because of how much I dislike them? So I'm trying to like, you know, center myself to try and look at it objectively. And it's hard. It's hard, man, because I really don't like them. And I don't think that they're, I don't think they're all there. And I don't think that they are, you know, the best parents, but it's, it's hard to, to say that. But listen. Can I, can I tell you, can you, can I tell you why I'm here, why I'm at this point in this episode, this particular case, and you're quick to say, no, Derek, you're wrong. I didn't say you're wrong.

Let me tell you why I am where I am. Okay. Because I've come to a conclusion at this point in our investigation. And my conclusion is this, whether Summer was killed by her parents, whether she was abducted by someone else, or this was an accident that resulted in her death, no matter what way you slice it in some way, the parents are responsible for what happened to summer. And the reason I say that is because if she ran away, she ran away because of something that was happening in that home. And if she wandered off the property and just wasn't seen by her parents, it's because Candace wasn't paying attention like she clearly doesn't do often.

And if she was obviously killed by her parents, well, that's one self-explanatory. So no matter what way you slice it, this was an avoidable situation and it starts at the parents. So am I holding them responsible for what happened to Summer regardless of what it is? Yup. Yes, I am. That's why I'm at this point where I am usually the one that qualified because there is an angle where it could have been something that they're not responsible for in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, I'll give those parents the benefit of the doubt. The John Walshes of the world where he wasn't there that day, but Adam was in a store and got away for a second

could happen to any of us. This is not one of those situations. So I just want you guys to know where I'm coming from, where you're like, well, who pissed in Derek cereal today? No, I, based on what you've relayed to me so far, Stephanie, there's a few possibilities of what happened. Some of them do not directly involve the parents being responsible, but if Summer got to that point where she was allowed to be abducted, taken by someone, it was because it was on Candace's watch at minimum, maybe Don too, and it should not have been the case. So that's why I am where I am on this one. No, I'm with you. Looking at that house, looking at the way those kids lived,

Summer deserved better. Her brothers deserve better i completely agree i love this about you i love this for you it's not often but i mean i mean you're you're one we don't always agree people say it all the time i mean do you see where i'm coming from it's like yeah no i i can't tell you what happened to her but i can tell you it starts at the home i said the same thing about madeline mccann's parents i said you don't bring your kid to a foreign land that you don't know the area, leave them in a place that you don't know that's on the street with the door unlocked while you go to dinner someplace else. No matter what happened to Madeline, her parents are still at fault because they decide to leave her alone. You have certain responsibilities as a parent. And I don't want people to be in the comments saying like, oh,

you're judging them because they're poor. No, you're judging them because they're poor. You guys are judging them because if you think that poor equates immediately to being a shitty parent, that is being fucking judgmental. That is judging them because they're poor. We're not judging them because we're poor. I know lots of people who aren't well off that are great parents. I was broke. My mom was was broke growing up she was a great mother and she was very protective of me being you know not well off being you know at the poverty level does not mean you have to live like a you know a slob and it doesn't mean that you have to be a shitty parent and anybody who thinks oh well you know they're poor and that's why they live like that and you shouldn't be judged you're judging them you're saying that poor people live that way and are shitty parents you're the one

making judgments so that's all i'll say about it yeah i mean listen it's pretty simple i'm judging i'm judging specifically candace because she left her she admitted that she left her three boys at home alone all day uh there's a situation at the watering hole for you to take it at face value where hunter the teenager how old was he 15 still a teen when this happened 15 years old possibly saved summer's life from from her drowning because candace wasn't really paying attention and then the obvious with with don's past whether he's responsible for this situation or not, still a scumbag, admitted that basically he molested his little sister. So, yeah, just that's what I'm judging them on. I'm not judging them on any the way their house looks, how they talk, how they walk. I could give a shit.

I'm judging them off the things they have admitted to openly in public that I don't think under any condition should be acceptable. I agree. And, you know. Now we got to find Summer. Well, yeah. And I want to go back to their interviews because Don and Candace, they got a lot of heat for referring to Summer in the past tense during this interview and others to the point where Don actually catches himself and corrects himself.

And he cites the fact that people have been accusing him of talking about his missing daughter as if she knew or as if he knew she was already dead but then he also continues to refer to her in the past tense along with candace also referring to her in the past tense it's almost kind of ridiculous how they're like we know we shouldn't be doing it and then they go back into doing it she would always want me she says daddy hold my hand so i can twirl and she would just like to twirl and twirl and twirl until my arm got tired. You know, but, and I mean, you know, I put out there that one of Summer's favorite songs was Godzilla and they say, you know, and they're jumping all over me about past tense was, you know, well, I'm sorry about that. She also liked the song by a new breed. past tense was, you know, well, I'm sorry about that.

She also liked the song by a new breed. It was called House, My House. She sung that a lot of times when I played on the TV. She loved to dance. She liked to think of herself as a princess and you know, and all that that like all young girls do. She loved Frozen. She loved to be that Elsa and...

I think she really loved to be in church because she felt a lot of love there. And I think you can't explain what that love is but you feel it and you know it you know when you're young and she felt that there and she loved everybody in that church or she loves everybody in that church I should rephrase that because they'll tear that apart as past tense and I apologize again for that I hope she gets to come home you know and I hope she gets to be with our church family again our best friend in that church I hope she gets to come home, you know, and I hope she gets to be with our church

family again. Our best friend in that church was Robin. She loved her to death. Yeah, she looked up to women that were... When she come to that church, she went looking for Robin. That was her favorite person. Any woman that was professional, that was pretty, beautiful. Yeah, she looked up to those kind of women. You know, they were, the word I'm looking for, I can't think of it, but she looked up to them. She'd give them a run for their money every day. She'd give them a run for their money. And there was times, you know, we'd be, you know,

that our boys, like, don't do this, don't do that. And next thing you know, the stick would come up and just whop them, you know that our boys like don't do this and don't do that next thing you know the stick would come up and just whop them you know. Summer don't do that. Summer was the boss of the family. She's a typical girl. When they get out of line she'd put them in line. She'd do her best. She'd love to play in the mud and the water and swing on her swing and enjoy dirt. When I was when I run the lawnmower around she she would run behind me when the boys run their bikes around she as fast as that little bike could go she would be behind them running and keeping up with them no problem you know she loved to run she just loved to run and she could pull herself up on that swing

her full body weight with her two hands and she could do that nobody none of the other boys can do that but she can was she at school yet no she's going this year this was supposed to be her first year she's getting uh we did all the what i took care of everything she i had her already took them all over shots and registered in the school for ready for this year i don't have a lot to say about that clip i've said in the past i don't think uh don or candace are scholars by any means so the past tense presence tense thing to me depending on the situation if it's like a 9-1-1 call immediately after that can maybe give you some insight but when you could see they constantly went from present to past in there and i i don't i don't put a lot of weight into that i never have some people do i don't i agree i think

it can be sometimes just a certain vernacular a certain way that that you talk um where you kind of do you know i've done it before like i was at when i was researching this and then i was going through i did it with my own kids you know like oh bella loved to do that and she's like standing right next to me so it just it depends um but maybe the past tense or the reason for the past tense wasn't necessarily a sign that they knew what had happened, but simply the fact that they felt with everything in them that Summer was gone, that she had been taken and she wasn't coming back. to please release her somehow. I don't know how you might do that. I mean, you're probably scared of going to prison for the rest of your life and everything else, I'm sure. But please find it in your heart, have mercy, and find a way of letting her go

where we can get her back. And just please have mercy on her and, you know, and us and her brothers. She's such a loving, good spirit. Please, please don't hurt her. Please let her come home. My biggest fear is, you know, her being tormented or locked in a dungeon or basement or something. Because she loved to be outside all the time. That was her, unfortunately, her downfall.

A lot of times the boys would be inside and we'd be like, where's Summer? Why'd you leave her out there alone? You know, go get Summer now. And that's happened over and over again. And we'd come out and she would always be close by, but we was always coming up. She had to be outside. She was an outdoor person. She loved to be outside.

Yep. And I'm so afraid that she's locked away. She's such a loving heart and everything. I'm afraid that she won't be able to... I'm locked away where she can't be outside or play with a puppy or anything. Love nature, you know. That's my greatest fear, that she's not able to do any of these things anymore. Enjoy the details of outdoors.

Or that she could possibly, I don't want to think she's dead, but it's a possibility. I don't want to address all the negativity. I just want to focus on the positive because it's so easy to get, you know, lost in that negativity and stuff. And it's just not worth it. I just, I lose hope. And I think, well, maybe we won't never see her again, you know. So I start thinking in past tense, sorry. But I'm trying to keep hope up.

I'm trying to keep my prayers up and all that. So to be fair, saw a little emotion there. You know, I'm looking for it now, obviously. And I saw a little emotion there from Don. He might be the type that isn't a crier, but there's definitely some trembling in his voice. I can see he's getting a little choked up as he's talking about the potential of what's happening this summer as he's speaking. So give credit credit you know where i see i'm not going to just ride the narrative that i'm trying i'm going one particular

way he definitely has some emotion there and now that you've said it i definitely see that that that candace could be under something because of maybe the stress the trauma whatever it might be that she's highly medicated because she just seems like she's completely out there just like spaced out like she throws a word out there once in a while but if you compare it to some of her other interviews completely different person so that's why i think we're both saying it now um this she's she's doing something's going on whether it's she's been drinking or medicating whatever it may be she's not completely in that conversation. But listen, in this past clip, when Don Wells said Summer loved to be outside, it was her downfall that she loved to be outside. That struck me harder than any past 10 statement

ever could. Okay. That was, it was like he was blaming her. Kind of like he blamed his half sister. Like she came on to me. She stuck her hand down my pants. Summer got kidnapped because she loved to be outside. It was her downfall. This is two weeks after she's missing. Not only is he saying it's her downfall and basically it's her fault she got kidnapped because she loved to be outside. Not because her parents weren't watching her. Not because she wasn't being protected, because she loved to be outside. She made herself a target. But he's also saying, you know, she could be dead. I want to have hope. But it's hard to have hope after this long. It's only been a couple of weeks. So it just it strikes me as very I wouldn't be I personally, if my five year old was missing, of course, I would be fearing the worst, but I would not voice it out loud. I would be like, hope, no, she's alive. You know, she's alive. I'd have to keep saying that in order to keep going because the idea that she could be gone from the world, that somebody had stolen her from me and hurt her and I never had a chance to say goodbye or hold her or give her a hug one more time or smell her hair one more time, it would break me to the point

where I could never say it out loud. So to have him so casually just being like yeah i mean she could be dead i don't want to think it but could it could be it does not sit well with me i'm just gonna say it no i don't like it as far as the downfall comment it could be lack of vocabulary like miss misspeaking like just a lack again i'm'm not a Don fan, but it could be a situation where she was outside doing her own thing and joining the woods and playing. And some creep came by and saw her playing in the woods and took advantage of it. Yeah, it's possible. So her being in her element, doing what she loves may have exposed her closer to the street to someone driving by. Now he didn't say it that way though.

He said it completely different, which is why I think it rubs you the wrong way and probably rubs some of you watching and listening the wrong way. Yeah. I'm just, I'm just over these two. Although I would love the opportunity to interview Candace when she's coherent, because I think there's opportunities there to a tactic that can be used to kind of pin her down a little bit more. And maybe she already has been by official investigators. We've seen the interviews with, with Chris, who's done a great job, things of that nature. I mean, he has the experience for it as well. He is a trained investigator, but I really, you know, we're only seeing parts of it, but I really wonder if someone

drilled her down to, and there's ways you can do it. But when she says it was only minutes, you look at her, Candace, it wasn't minutes. It was an hour. Wasn't it? You know, like really push the envelope, you know, try to try to try to create a bigger window where something could have happened that maybe would explain this crazy situation where we're led to believe that she disappeared in a matter of minutes that's what i think everyone's having a hard time wrapping their head around which is also why a lot of people think the parents did it because if that's true though it was too small of a window for any of that to happen if she noticed that she was missing minutes later to what you said earlier, she would have heard the screaming. She would have heard

because she would have already been looking for her minutes after she noticed she was gone. I don't think even if you were face to face with Candace Bly and you said, Candace, it wasn't five minutes. It was an hour, right? I literally don't think, I think she would start looking off in the distance, start talking about Chase being on the case and it would be over. She wouldn't answer you directly because there's been a lot of questions that I've seen her asked where she kind of pretends to be confused or she loses her train of thought. And I mean, maybe she is confused. But I think at this point, she's convinced herself it was only a couple of minutes. That at least, I will say, she has convinced herself that her eyes were only off of Summer for a a couple of minutes and that's it. That'll be the end of it. We'll never get the real timeline, although I'm sure 100% it was more than two minutes. I know we still have more to go, but when we get close to the end, I want to, you know, we always do like our little sum up of the episode. I'll elaborate more on my, just there's a lot to take away from that interview. Just even

the body language, things like that. But we'll keep going. Well, I do want to play you one more clip from that interview. To the people who were suspicious of Candace and Don, the haters, as they call them, Candace and Don had this to say. There's always going to be haters, you know, and, you know, it's always going to be that way in this world. And we just want to focus on the good.

I'm sorry that you feel this way about us, but we love our children with everything we have. We've never went without, thanks to Summer's daddy and my husband. He's always provided for us and has worked as much as he could and can and still is and i'm sorry that you guys feel that way but that's my baby and nobody would ever treat her like that as long as I was around ever. Six weeks after Summer vanished her three older brothers were removed from the Wells home after an investigation. In the aftermath of this event Don Wells he kind of made it seem as if the boys had been taken from the house because of all the attention the family had been getting since summer disappeared, which had brought in all sorts of people to their property, like YouTubers and amateur sleuths who were either

harassing the family at home, harassing Don Wells at work, or sneaking around on the property looking for clues. Looking for clues, air quotes. The four have a combined following of over two million people. They say they came here for answers for both themselves and their ample audience. I mean it's been six months, six months, six months and I don't want this girl to be a cold case. They're like a stalemate here. It's been six months and they still don't have answers. So they are here, four social media sleuths from around the country traveling here to Hawkins County to keep up awareness.

Summer Wells is still missing. Pressure breaks pipes. They are social media influencers and investigators. Their goal is to make noise and get noticed. They say it brings attention to victims but criticism to their tactics. Any leverage I can use, whether I like what's coming out of my mouth, if it's leverage that I can pull people in, I will use it. While in town, they say they met with the sheriff's office

and surveyed the Wells property. They deliver any findings back to law enforcement. This has opened up almost like a niche market for crime solving. The idea is to keep spreading awareness. A finger touch to their phone starts their sometimes nightly conversations with their hungry for answers audience who support them. The footage will speak for itself. So that's a super chat right there someone just donated ten dollars thanks. That ten dollars little by little adds up to pay for the means to work, which is what they say this is.

We're down in Florida. We're over in Utah. We're in Wyoming. We're now in Tennessee. This stuff costs real money. And, you know, this is a full-time job. And the only way we could afford to do something like this is by providing a service to the viewers, providing information, information that we're getting no place else yeah so i don't like this you know i don't like it and i don't want to make it about this too much this is kind of like a passing thing but i don't know these people i've never heard of them maybe they have some type of investigative background but my argument would be this i love that they're raising money and they're raising a decent amount of it, I guarantee, I bet. So I would prefer to see that money going towards tools and resources that actual investigators can utilize for this case or raise the reward amount for information that could

potentially find Summer. And I don't have a problem with them taking super chats if they're sitting at home and they're talking about the case and they are interviewing people and they're bringing on like I know a couple of these guys did get some great interviews with Don and Candace that arrested for trespassing and it was kind of a mess. And I think it kind of gives like Don and Candace like this way to make themselves look like victims, even though I wouldn't say these two are, are, you know, like necessarily victims, but they can now say, oh, well, you guys are harassing us and you're attacking us and you have no proof and things like that. So it kind of gives them a way to distract from what's happening with Summer. Now, we've been consistent. I mean, even with the Laundries, we think that Brian Laundrie's parents are definitely hiding stuff. But when you start seeing people on their lawns and harassing, well, allegedly believe it.

But when you see people on their lawns and doing their own investigative journalism, it doesn't help. It doesn't help. So yeah, I'm pretty consistent on that. I agree. And Don Wells, he told one podcaster, quote, right now with everybody attacking us and all this stuff going on, it's probably better for them, end quote. And this is in reference to his three sons being removed from his home and his care. But later, Donwells admitted that the real reason his sons were taken by CPS was because of a lot of people who were coming at him and accusing him of things. And he said, quote, I believed that stuff like an idiot. I believed it. And I flipped out, started drinking and everything else. And that's why they

took our kids, end quote. And it looks like Donwells did not really learn from his mistakes as just a few months later on October 31st, 2021, he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence, open container, dropped the other four charges. And although this was his first DUI, Don's arrest was a violation of his probation, which was related to a previous charge of possession of a handgun while intoxicated. So he was taken directly from the courthouse to the Hawkins County Jail to serve out the next 11 months and 29 days behind bars. So during his sentencing, the judge asked, you know, why did you drive under the influence of alcohol? And Don responded that he and Candace were arguing and he had wanted to get away, to which the judge responded, quote, that's what feet are for, end quote. Now, where it stands now, Don Wells is still in jail, and he claims that both he and Candace were taking classes and working to regain custody of their three sons. On July 19, 2022, Don Wells shared a letter with the media, a letter that was addressed to the person or persons responsible for kidnapping Summer,

and it went on to say, You've ruined her chances to become educated, ruining her life. You've also broken the hearts of her father and mother and brothers, and in the midst of all the commotion, ruined our lives. You see, the public blames us. I don't know if we'll ever find employment again. Nobody will hire my wife, and I've been fired from a job I had for 13 years. We may end up losing everything. When you took our little girl, you took our lives. Why don't you give our little girl back before God's wrath descends on you? You've broken many hearts and more, especially

an innocent five-year-old girl's heart. One day God will hold you accountable for this crime unless you do something to make this right. Please do the right thing and turn our daughter over to the authorities, end quote. So I would just like to mention that Don has said multiple times that his wife Candace was not working when Summer disappeared. She hadn't been working in several years. She'd made the decision to be a stay-at-home mother. And at the time he was arrested for the DUI in October of 2021, Don also told the judge that he was working full-time. So I'm not sure what he's talking about, that they can't be employed and nobody will hire Candace and this, this and that. And some might say their circumstances have improved since Summer went missing because it looks like they kind of raised some money and they began renovations on their home in the fall of 2021.

And they actually put stairs where the desk and the hole used to be that led down to Summer's room in the basement. So there's stairs and like a railing there now. Don Wells' letter to whoever had taken his daughter was followed up by another letter addressed to Summer herself. And this letter said, quote, Dear Summer, I don't know if there's even the remotest chance of you ever seeing this letter, but I'm going to write it hoping you will. First of all, I want you to know that I love you with all my heart. I've never missed someone as much as I miss you. My heart aches constantly and then the thought of someone mistreating you puts so much anguish and fear for you that I can barely breathe at times. I beg God for your life and break out in tears constantly. I'm very glad I got to spend five years with you, but now my life always feels like snow, rain, and drizzle never ending. You are

the highlight of my entire miserable existence on this earth. I love you, Summer, with every fiber of my being, sweetheart. I love you and I will never give up on you and one day I will see you again. Always and forever, your earthly dad, father." So hard because there's a situation here where this could be genuine, where this is the thoughts of a father who lost his daughter. And again, I'm looking at this through the lens of, I don't know what he's previously done. So just bear with me here, because it's hard for me to even say that. But there is a situation where we can separate the two. Scumbag for what he did, scumbag for his perception on what he did now and yet even with all that being the case he's not connected to what happened to his daughter in any way which is

possible it's possible so this could be the true feelings of of don and he may be even looking at it and like this is my karma for being so you know he says he's a religious person he might be looking at it like god has a funny way of of getting you back and you know making you pay for what you've done and this is my i don't believe that not for a freaking second he does not seem sorry at all not once did you i'm not saying we believe it he may he may see that he doesn't seem sorry he he never said once like oh i am actually sorry i did that to my sister like i know she probably feels bad about it. I'm sorry I did it.

I was young. Oh, yeah. No, yeah. He doesn't feel sorry. He doesn't feel like it's karma. If he feels like this is karma, he's probably thinking like, what the hell did I ever do to deserve this? It's a tough one. It's a tough to kind of separate the two because we know what he said publicly and what he's allegedly done.

And then you see letters like this or hear letters like this. And as a father, you can relate to that where it's like jesus i couldn't imagine but i think i'm it's safe to say that myself and many other fathers out there aren't aren't don wells and don't conduct themselves the way he does what do you think about the interview you said there was some stuff about body language that you had noticed yeah i know we have one more part so we won't go too deep but i'll just say this And I just got to be candid with you guys. There's some times where people get lucky and they carry out a crime and they're not apprehended. It's not linked back to them because again, they just got lucky. There seems like there were too many eyes and too many

ears in this particular group of individuals, Candace, Don, grandma, the three boys, I don't see how this could be something that was carried out on that property and someone not slip up. I've always said, if it's more than one, more than one person knows it's no longer a secret and someone has to be at the head of this situation where they're at fault. They're the main culprit. They're the main reason that whatever happened to summer happened and everyone else is just kind of guilty by association. And I would think that one of them at this point would have slipped to a friend, a family member, news outlet, something. I don't see this group of individuals, this family being a tight bond where, let's say, for example, you believe that the Ramseys are responsible for what happened

to JonBenet. They were a tight family. They took whatever happened. Patsy took it to her grave and JonRamsey's still out there professing that he had nothing to do with it. Maybe that's the case, but I know a lot of people believe that it was a coverup, that they did it. I don't see this family being able to carry that out and completely avoid detection from the TBI, local police, and the FBI. There's not a single piece that connects them to this. So there's something that we're missing here. There's something about this case that we don't have yet.

Could be another person. Could be, I don't know what it is, but I just don't see, when I look at the body language between Candace and Don, them being such a tight couple that whatever was happened, if it was them that did it, if whatever happened to Summer is there, is at their hand, I just don't see them being able to get it by everybody. I just don't see it. They don't seem strong enough as a couple. And there's also the theory that she died in an accident, right? And then they covered it up. But why would you do that, right? If it was an accident, then why would you cover it up? Unless it was some accident that like led back to severe neglect, then I could see that. But like you said, if the boys are playing with

Summer and something happens and, you know, maybe she falls down the stairs or whatever, that ladder from the main house into her basement room. Maybe she breaks her neck or something and now they got to cover this up. Why would you do that if it was an accident? So that really kind of goes out the window too. And like I said, in the next episode, we're going to explore the stranger abduction theory or just the abduction theory in general. There's something called the cornbread mafia that everybody's talking about and they might be involved and a bunch of pedophiles that Don claims are living around the area and things like that. So that might have something to do with it, even though the police did talk to all of those people. So I'm not sure how that could be,

but we will talk about that and kind of explore that theory next time. Absolutely. Guys, we appreciate you coming and checking us out again, sticking with us. The channel's been doing great. If you're listening on audio or you're watching on YouTube, we truly appreciate the support. If you want to follow us on social media, you can go to Crime Weekly, at Crime Weekly on, I believe it's Twitter, or Crime Weekly Pod on Twitter and Instagram. like we had said last episode we have the fight crime mission that we're going for here a portion of the proceeds from every bag is donated directly to organizations or family members currently dedicated to fighting crime if you want to check that out you can go to criminalcoffeeco.com guys we appreciate it all have a good night be safe we will see you next week see you next week bye