The Misery Machine - Summer Wells Needs To Be Brought Home

Starting point is 00:00:09 Hi, we're the Miser Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And this week we're doing a case that all of you have requested very much over the past week. It's very tragic. It's about a missing little girl out of Tennessee. It is the Summer Wells case. If you're in Tennessee and you know anything about this or have any information,

Starting point is 00:00:26 we're going to go ahead and have all the contact info for the investigating agencies in our note section. In the description. In the description, yes. And if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. We've just passed 17,000. subscribers. Thank you everyone for the support. Thank you so much. By subscribing, you are helping get these cases that are not covered by the media, these lesser known cases, get more of a spotlight that they so dearly deserve. Without further ado, where's Summer Wells? Five-year-old Summer Wells

Starting point is 00:01:02 disappeared on the evening of June 15th, 2021, sparking a weeks-long manhunt in the rugged mountainous terrains of Hawkins County, Tennessee. As of the date of this recording, thousands of tips have been called into the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, all of which have been dead ends, and some in her family have given up hope of finding her alive. This is what we know so far. On June 15th, 2021 and around 5.30 in the evening, summer was planting flowers about 20 feet from her family's house on Ben Hill Road in the unincorporated community of Beach Creek with her mother and grandmother. The Wells family home is located on a hill near an 11-acre wooded lot. Beach Creek is part of Rogersville, Tennessee, with about 4,400 residents being present.

Starting point is 00:01:51 It's roughly 90 minutes from Knoxville and 30 minutes to the nearest shopping center. According to her mother, Candice, Summer went inside and told her three older brothers that she wanted to play with her toys in the basement. But when Candace came inside a short time later, Summer was nowhere to be found. She called her husband Don at work and he contacted emergency surfaces. The 911 call that Dawn placed alleges that his wife had gone on a walk for a short time. And when she came back, Summer was missing. Some have found this discrepancy in their story suspicious. In addition to the fact that Candace called Dawn rather than calling 911,

Starting point is 00:02:30 I personally don't find this particular fact to be suspicious because I think many people would call their significant other first to make sure. that they weren't overreacting or freaking out. I agree. So Candace has publicly refuted that she goes on walks around the property as she's scared of the local wildlife. So at around 6.30 p.m. on June 15th, summer was reported missing to the Hawkins County Sheriff's Office.

Starting point is 00:02:55 And at midnight on June 16th, the Tennessee State Bureau of Investigation released an endangered child alert for summer. However, shortly after 11 in the morning on the 16th, the Tennessee State Bureau of Investigation, changed the endangered child alert to an amber alert. The endangered child alert is issued when there is concerned for a child's safety, while an amber alert is reserved for the most serious of missing children cases where officials believe that a child is an imminent danger. So who is

Starting point is 00:03:25 Summer Wells? Well, Summer has been defined by her parents as a tomboy. She wore her bleach blonde hair crop short. And according to her mother, Candice, Summer had asked several times to have her head shaved. Some folks have alleged this haircut is suspicious or as a sign of abuse, but we don't think this is the case at all. Candice also wore her hair closely cropped, and in the southern heat, it would have been a practical haircut for an active child, which Summer was. Summer loved to run and bike, and was defined as more athletic than the boys she played with. Summer also loved to dance. Her favorite movie was frozen, and she wanted to beat Elsa, much like many little girls born within the last decade. has had trouble providing a full timeline of the day's events.

Starting point is 00:04:10 But this is what is currently known. Summer's grandmother, also named Candace, had knee surgery on the morning of the 15th, and then afterwards they had to pick up a prescription at the local Walgreens. Near the pharmacy is Warrior Path State Park, where Candice took Summer to swim while they waited for the prescription to be filled. They brought along an unnamed 15-year-old boy who Candice claimed he didn't want to wait at Walgreens with his own grandmother.

Starting point is 00:04:36 A web detective went to the swimming hole to look for evidence, and they found a black garbage bag full of empty alcoholic beverages, which sparked rumors that Candace bought alcohol for her and the unnamed boy. Candice has not directly addressed this rumor, but stated that there was trash everywhere. There are a few videos taking of Summer on the day she went missing, one being a TikTok video that shows Summer asleep in the backseat, which some folks have claimed that Summer appears to be dead. Another rumor that is circulating is that Summer

Starting point is 00:05:06 might have drowned at the swimming hole, it should also be noted that there's about a three-hour gap between when Summer got home to when she disappeared. So Summer's father, Dawn, also keeps referring to Summer in the past tense during television interviews, which has sparked outrage from web detectives thinking that it's him hinting that he killed her or his hidden information that she is dead.

Starting point is 00:05:29 He's been quoted in the Kingsport Times News, which is the local newspaper down there, as stating, and I quote, I'll see her in the resurrection, end quote. Folks have also found Don's timeline to be suspicious. He works about 45 minutes to an hour commute from the family home, and after calling 911 on the evening of June 15th, he was able to arrive home before the first responders even arrived.

Starting point is 00:05:55 What's also being dug up are the criminal histories of Summers' parents. So Don has been convicted of multiple violent felonies and served prison time for convictions involving drugs and burglaries in Arkansas, Utah and Texas. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was cited for numerous parole violations. Candice also has a criminal record in the state of Wisconsin, most recently a guilty plea on misdemeanor domestic abuse charges in 2003. Don has stated that he found God in prison and started studying the Bible intently as he wanted to change as a person. However, he was arrested again in October 20-20 after Candice accused him of domestic assault and deputies found him allegedly driving drunk

Starting point is 00:06:36 up his own driveway. A criminal complaint from the incident alleges that the deputies responded to the couple's home and encountered Wells pulling up the driveway, reeking of alcohol with a pistol in the glove box which he's not allowed to possess. Candice and the children were granted an order of protection. After she wrote that, and I quote, he drinks and throws things. I'm afraid of being hurt. He is abusive physically and mentally towards me. I am afraid for my children and myself. My mother fears he is going to hurt her because she is staying in her camper on the property, end quote. However, despite this, she dropped the charge less than a week later,

Starting point is 00:07:13 and the two appeared to have reconciled. Don has also acknowledged that his 34-year-old son, Donald Wesley Wells, is a convicted sex offender, having pleaded guilty in Arkansas in 2007 to sexual indecency with a child. Don also said that his son's Arkansas offense would have been considered a statutory charge in Tennessee because his son was 19 at the time and the victim was a girlfriend who was 18 months younger. His son was also in Utah at the time of Summer's disappearance. So did Don or Candace hurt Summer? Well, it's important to know what we know about stranger abductions. They are very, very rare.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Less than 1% of missing children are stranger abductions. And when it does happen, it's no. normally a crime of opportunity. For instance, children in these scenarios are normally abducted on their commute to and from school. Roughly 350 children go missing annually from stranger abductions versus the 875,000 children that are abducted by family members. It is important to note that even with these statistics, that does not mean that Dawn and Candice are responsible for summer's disappearance. Searching for summer has been difficult due to the rough terrain and due to the fact that searchers are using extremely old equipment. So for example, the radio equipment is over

Starting point is 00:08:34 20 years old. And the cell service there is horrific. AT&T even provided cell signal boosters and they're still not getting signal properly. It's not helping at all. No. So where does the investigation stand currently? Well, police didn't comment on the circumstances of summer's disappearance at first. However, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, you'll commonly hear them called the TBI, later said circumstances were still unclear, but that they would update the public if they thought they were facing an abduction. Law enforcement has stated that to date they have not received a credible tip out of the thousands of tips they have received in total. So the TBI have asked for the driver of a Toyota pickup truck to come forward after a witness reported seeing it at the Beach Creek area

Starting point is 00:09:19 in the late afternoon or early evening of June 14th or 15th. Officials said the person may have seen something related to Summer's disappearance. The truck was described as a 1998-2-000 maroon or red Toyota Tacoma with a full bed ladder rack along with white buckets in the truck bed. To date, the driver has not been found. It's important to note that as of July 21st, the Department of Child Service has removed Summers' three older brothers from the family home. Don Wells has been quoted as saying that

Starting point is 00:09:50 Right now it's not safe at my house There's too much going on and people are crazier than hell And right now it's just not safe at my house There's too much going on Too many crazy people coming around trying to start stuff End quote He's claimed to have a problem with amateur crime solvers And psychics trespassing at his home

Starting point is 00:10:09 And walking up to his house in the middle of the night However, it has been noted that a neighbor has called DCS on the Wells family due to what she described as squalid living conditions with insect and rodent infestations and child abuse and neglect. The neighbor went on to describe one occasion where Don punched one of Summer's brothers in the face

Starting point is 00:10:29 and the regular use of the C word used in reference to Summer. Dawn was calling his own daughter that. Although Summer loved dolls, she also enjoyed cars and trucks in the Lion King. Allegedly she was not allowed to play with those toys because they were considered too masculine. and her brothers would beat her for attempting to borrow theirs.

Starting point is 00:10:51 The neighbor described Candace as someone who would sit on her phone and not cook, clean, or take care of the children. She noted that although one would not know it based on their living conditions, the Wells family actually had money. But they were stingy with their children and said they would purchase drugs, all call cigarettes for themselves, and rather than cooking would just buy candy and fast food all the time. So what can you do to help?

Starting point is 00:11:14 Please be on the lookout for summer. She has blonde hair and blue eyes. She's about three feet tall and weighs 40 pounds. Investigators said she was last seen wearing gray pants, a pink shirt, and she was possibly barefoot. Anyone with information about her disappearance is asked to contact the TBI at 1-800-T-B-I-F-I-N-D. That's 1-800-T-B-I-Find or the Hawkins County Sheriff's Office, which is 423-272-7-1-21. You can also email tips to TBI at tn.gov. We will have that information, the description, the show notes.

Starting point is 00:11:52 So lastly, it should be noted that Summer is not the first person in her family to go missing. Rosemary Bly of Wisconsin, who has been missing since 2009 when she was 21, is the sister of Summer's mother, Candice. Rosemary Bly was last seen leaving her home in St. Croix Falls to go to Cushing, five miles away. Investigators say she never made it to her destination and her car was later found in a parking lot 30 miles away from where she lived. In 2019, the Polk County Sheriff's Office, which is the Sheriff's Office up in Wisconsin, put out a video to generate leads on the case ahead of the 10th anniversary of Rose's disappearance. The sheriff in Polk County says he would cooperate with the authorities in Tennessee in any way he can to help resolve the cases, but they do seem to be unrelated.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Rosemary Bly was last seen on August 21st, 2009. She's described as five feet tall weighing 110 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. She's a tattoo of two cherries on her right ankle. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Polk County Sheriff's Office at 715-485-8362. Granted, we make it a point to not throw around accusations or put too much of our opinions into things when we're stating. facts. However, it should be noted as more time has gone on. There has been more people, neighbors, friends, family members that have come forward and have specifically stated the types of parents that Dawn and Candace are, how they treated the kids, how they treated summer. And these

Starting point is 00:13:28 things should be taken into consideration, especially with a number of people coming out. It's hard for me to look at this as some sort of opportunistic hit piece during a time where their daughter went missing in a very mysterious way, in an area where it's unlikely that summer just randomly got lost in our own backyard, or in an area where it is hard for a stranger to come by and take summer. And I have to be very clear, there's pictures of this. Their home is in the middle of nowhere, up a big dirt driveway. Somebody getting up there would be very, very visible. And for them to know that summer would just be outside that period of time, it seems very, very, very, very, very, unlikely. Now this is not me making an accusation towards Candace and Don, and there's plenty of

Starting point is 00:14:15 YouTube channels out there that have had many excerpts from interviews with them, interviews with other people, news clippings, as well as taking into consideration the fact that, in general, when children like this go missing, only 1% can be attributed to strangers. So what does this mean? I'll let you be the judge. A lot of folks have been going through the family's social media as well because both of them have public profiles or at least post quite a bit of information publicly. And they've been noting that Candace and Don are out and about in public at parks, at jump parks, seemingly having a good time when they really should be looking for summer. And it really feels like Dawn is pushing a narrative as well on his own social media that summer could have been trafficked.

Starting point is 00:15:07 And a lot of folks have drawn parallels to what Don is currently doing to what Chris Watts did after he murdered his family. Obviously, that's a huge rabbit hole. And I'm not prepared to talk about in depth. There's people that know that case way better than me. But Chris Watts had this narrative he kept pushing to the media. I believe one of them was an unnamed relative came by and took the kids. It was an unnamed friend. Unnamed friend.

Starting point is 00:15:34 They were going to see an unnamed friend. Yeah. he kept saying that, which obviously was found to never be true. Don keeps saying that summer's been trafficked. Don keeps talking about summer in the past tense. Don keeps pushing this weird narrative. He keeps saying things like, oh, Summer was trafficked. This is the fault of the Biden administration. If Trump was still in office, maybe Summer would still be here. He keeps talking about things like that. And another thing that's come out recently, there is a relative that alleges that Don has assaulted and abused some family members, younger family members. I'll try to find the clips on that, but this is a very recent accusation

Starting point is 00:16:19 that Don has sexually abused some family members. Another thing that was interesting too is that folks saying, I believe it was the woman that had called DCS, that Candace and Dawn are very different people. If they're at church or dealing with customers or at work, they're very pleasant to be around. But apparently they're not really very nice people. What do you think happened? Who do you think is responsible? I feel like there could be some sort of arrest soon. I hope there's some sort of arrest soon. I would really like to hope deep within myself that summer is still alive somewhere, but I don't think she is. I don't think she is either. Do you want to do? I want to be. I want to talk about the potential drowning, dry drowning. Yeah, I actually really wanted to get into that.

Starting point is 00:17:08 So I had read an article that stated that there was some sort of report out there, possibly from the 15-year-old that was at the swimming hole, that Summer had gotten into some sort of trouble in the water and he had to rescue her. And that the video that shows Summer in the back of the car, she is actually either dead or is asleep and possibly dry drowned. So when I first saw this video, I thought that it was ridiculous that she could be dead in there because so many young children sleep like that. But is this a credible theory? We'll see. I would like to think that if a 15-year-old reported that summer got into some trouble,

Starting point is 00:17:51 that would be investigated. You know, this could be happening in the way that the whole Casey Anthony thing went. And it's really a shame because if she did dry drowned and it was an accident, then all they need to do was call the police. Yeah. Call emergency services. Call somebody. But if they're trying to cover it up, that's awful. So we obviously aren't saying that this is fact.

Starting point is 00:18:19 But if the theory is correct that summer did accidentally die and they panicked and covered it up, now they'll obviously be facing criminal. charges, whereas before, it wouldn't have been likely that they would have faced any sort of criminal charge. This panic to cover up is a possibility. So if you think that they're responsible, do you think it was murder or do you think it was an accident? I'd really like to hear from you guys what your thoughts are in this case. Again, this is still developing. It's very new. Leave your thoughts in the comments below. You're more than welcome to email us as well, Miserymachine podcast at gmail.com. And we'll definitely, as more information, comes out, be updating this case.

Starting point is 00:19:02 Absolutely. This is a case we're going to be following very, very closely. Thank you to everyone that has brought this to our attention. Since we did the main child abuse cases, many, many people requested Summer Wells. I was not familiar with this, and I'm very glad that you guys brought it to our attention. So, yes, we will be keeping a close eye on this, and you will be updated, absolutely. So if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. this is the best way to support and help our channel. All the subs we got.

Starting point is 00:19:35 I am so grateful for this. I'm so grateful for all of you that are still here in helping us. We are trying to bring more awareness to these smaller cases that the media isn't covering. That should be getting the attention they deserve. I also want to say this is our first episode we have recorded outside of the walking closet. We have since moved.

Starting point is 00:19:55 We are currently in a new space. It's not perfect yet. We are going to be working on, soundproofing it and getting this back to the best audio quality possible because you guys deserve the best. So I apologize in advance if this sounds a little spotty. I'm going to really try to make it sound pristine in post. But having a right room really makes the difference. And it's kind of echoey in here. Yeah, we're dealing with being by a window. We're living on more of a busy street, more busy than I thought it was going to be when we purchased this place. It's a quiet neighborhood. But there's a decent

Starting point is 00:20:28 through way through here. Yeah, there's a school right next to us. And there's really high ceilings in here. Yeah. Really high tin ceilings. Yeah. So I think I'm going to build a tent. Yeah, I think we're going to have some sort of tent. What worked really well in the walking closet was the fact that our clothes were everywhere. So they acted as really heavy dampeners all packed together. And the ceiling there was a little bit lower. I think that if we build a tent, and obviously I'm going to put some soundproofing squares on the wall, and it's going to cost some money. But, It's worth it to try to put out the best audio quality possible for these episodes. So over the next couple weeks, hopefully we will have that fixed up.

Starting point is 00:21:08 Yeah. And we've already had a stop recording a few times from motorcycles and school buses going by. Yeah. So we're going to try to find a way to remedy that we may have to set up in the bathroom or something. I don't know. I want to have a dedicated podcasting spot. And I'd like it to be here. But we're going to be troubleshooting that.

Starting point is 00:21:27 So please bear with us. and thank you all for understanding. We also have a very wonderful group of people who are supporting us on Patreon. And again, every dollar you donate on Patreon goes back to us making this podcast better for you. So all the Patreon money we're getting, we are going to be using that

Starting point is 00:21:47 to help build a better space for us so that way we can get you the podcast we feel you deserve. Absolutely. So let's thank those people now. Yeah, so thank you, Eddie Rowan, Marky, Holly, Ashley Voo, Serena Chloe, Mark Tara Sophie, Karen, with an EA, Neal and Karen, Dave and Karina, Dakota and Kitty,

Starting point is 00:22:04 Jen Mo Jenny, Nora, Robin, Tom, Kaylee, Alex, Jacob, Victoria, Bailey, Stephen, Casey, Casea, Amanda Patricia, Alexis, Corrine, Sarah, Catherine, Jody, Sallie, Kimberlin, Jacqueline, James, welcome Lawton, K.D. Shay. Welcome, Lawton, and K.D. Shay. And Levi. And Levi, our highest tier, Patreon supporter. There's this lovely picture right now. And if you two want to support us on Patreon, Patreon.com slash the misery machine. You get access to all of our secret episodes. You'd access to our secret discord and snapchat groups and you may even get a postcard. Haunted one. Patreon.com slash the misery machine. And again, everyone that's staying our patron, all that money is going to go back

Starting point is 00:22:43 to us making this so much better for you. But until next week, we love you. We love you. Bye.

The Misery Machine - Summer Wells Needs To Be Brought Home

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