Nothing About This Adds Up- The Story of Summer Wells

Nothing About This Adds Up- The Story of Summer Wells

Summer’s mom had turned her back for only two minutes. She believed the little girl was in the house with her big brothers and safe, but when she went inside to check on her, the basement door was unlocked, and Summer was nowhere to be seen.

The case I have for you today was another viewer request, and this one is still unsolved. In this case, there’s been a lot of discrepancies and a lot of contradictions. There’s a few different things I think could have happened, but let me know what you think at the end. This is the story of Summer Wells’s disappearance.

Background and Early Life
Summer Moon-Utah Wells was born on February 4th, 2016. Her parents are Donald and Candace Wells. Summer also has three older brothers and was a bit of a tomboy herself, who loved to do the same activities her brothers did, such as fishing and sports. But she also enjoyed dancing and being girly sometimes, too. She loved watching the movie Frozen, and PAW Patrol was her favorite show. She was also known to be a daddy’s girl.

Summer and her family lived on Ben Hill Road in the Beech Creek community of Hawkins County, Tennessee. Their home is located on 11 acres and surrounded by very dense forest. Candace’s mother also lives on the property in her trailer. The Wells had inherited the property from Don’s mother, who had died 12 years prior. Little Summer went missing on June 15th, 2021, after a day of running errands with her mother and grandmother. She was five years old at the time and ready to start kindergarten in the fall.

The Day of the Disappearance
So here’s what’s said to have happened that day. Don got up and left for work. He said it was sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 AM—he can’t remember the exact time. He works in Jonesborough, which is about 45 to 55 minutes away from the family’s home. Candace woke up early to get ready for a busy day, and Summer had actually slept in her mother and father’s bed the night prior. So Candace woke her up at the same time. The first thing Candace had planned that morning was that she needed to bring her mother to the doctor’s for 8:00 AM, and she was going to bring Summer with her. The three boys she was going to leave at home, though. She said that she would lock them in and they’d be all set because they were older than Summer anyway. So the three of them left in Grandma’s truck.

After dropping Grandma off at the doctor’s, Candace received a call from her former best friend’s son. His name is Hunter. Candace had been friends with Hunter’s mom, Ali, for a while, but the two had a falling out, and Candace said that she always considered Hunter to be somewhat of a son to her. So they kept in contact and still sometimes hung out, even though Hunter was only 15. Hunter asked Candace if she wanted to come over and visit for a little while since Candace had some time until she needed to pick her mother up from the doctor’s. She agreed, and she and Summer headed over there.

At some point during the visit with Hunter, Candace’s mother called her and told her she was ready to be picked up. Hunter asked if he could go too and hang out with them for the day. Candace said, “Sure, why not?” So they left to go pick up her mother. Once they got her from the doctor’s, they needed to fill a prescription for her, so the four of them headed to Walgreens. Once they dropped off the prescription at Walgreens, the pharmacist told them it was going to take about 30 to 45 minutes. So Candace decided that at this point, maybe they should go swimming at the local swimming hole. That would kill some time, plus Summer loved swimming and she happened to already have her bathing suit on, too, for some reason.

Then Don called at that point just to say hi and check in with Candace, see how things were going, to say hi, how are you? She said that’s all that it was—innocent. But Hunter had a different story. He said that Don had called Candace to tell her about a strange man named Andy that had been seen around their property for the last few weeks, and apparently, Don said that he was trying to touch the children.

Stops Along the Way
So before they went swimming at the swimming hole that was located at Warriors’ Path State Park, they had a few stops to make. The first stop was to a smoke shop called Hippie House, and then the second was to another smoke shop that sold alcoholic beverages. Candace said she purchased cigarettes, vape pens, and Twisted Teas at this time, and then they proceeded to go to the swimming hole. Hunter told police that Candace had sat by the swimming area watching Summer play in the water while drinking alcohol and smoking the vapes. He said that she also let him join in—keep in mind, he’s only 15 years old. So, of course, Candace denied this: “Never happened. I drank, I smoked, not him.”

Hunter said that during this brief swim trip, he actually had to get up and go in the water himself because he saw that Summer had been underwater for 15 to 20 seconds and he got worried about her. Luckily, she was fine once he went out there and got her. Candace also denies this happening.

So when Summer got out of the water, they put a long-sleeve top and pants on her. That outfit was an outfit that Candace said she had recently purchased for Summer for back-to-school. So, okay, maybe that would be in Grandma’s truck, but what are the odds that a new school outfit that Candace had bought—now, she’s got her own car—would be hanging out in the grandmother’s truck when they had never even talked about or considered going swimming, and Summer had clothes on?

After grabbing the prescription from Walgreens, they decided to head to Sonic for some slushies. And then after that, Candace and her mother needed to get a few groceries, so they went to the local grocery store, and Candace says that she left both Hunter and Summer in the truck at that time with the windows rolled up. It was hot out; it was June in Tennessee. Candace says she was only gone for five minutes. Hunter says it was more like an hour. However, if it was closer to what Hunter said, then I don’t think that he would be here to talk about it today either—and he’s 15, he could have opened the windows as well if Summer was getting hot. So I mean, either way, I don’t think that really has anything to do with it personally.

After grocery shopping, they went to drop Hunter back off at home. On the way to drop off Hunter, Summer actually fell asleep, leaned up against some milk jugs that were in the back seat. When they got to Hunter’s house, Hunter’s mother said that Candace was acting different. Hunter’s mom said that normally she would go over to the car, say hi to Candace, and give Summer a hug, but this time Candace was trying to keep her away from the car. Candace said this is just because Summer was sleeping and she didn’t want to wake her up. Makes sense! I wouldn’t want someone coming over and trying to hug my child while they’re taking a nap. I’d be like, “Nope, no, no, she needs a nap.”

So Hunter’s mother also noticed that he seemed very withdrawn and almost traumatized for the rest of the day. And when Hunter’s mother had asked where the three boys were, Candace had told her that they were at work with their father, when she had previously told police that she had left them home and locked them in. I’m not sure how much I trust Hunter’s mom’s account because they did have a falling out. Who knows what that was about? She could have some bad blood towards her still, and she could just be trying to screw her over.

Returning Home
After they drop Hunter off, Grandma and Candace take a picture of Summer sleeping in the back of the truck, leaned up against the milk jugs. You’ve probably seen this photo before, and there’s been some debate over whether Summer is alive or not in this picture. A criminal justice specialist came forward and looked at the picture, and she believes that she actually is alive due to the coloring in her hands and face. But others are saying that the fingernail beds on Summer’s fingers look purple, and that makes her look deceased. I don’t think she does; I think she looks like she’s just napping.

Candace says this picture was taken about five to ten minutes away from home. That would have put them home between 3:14 and 3:19 PM that day. When they arrived home, Candace says that Summer woke right up and jumped out of the car. She and the boys then helped their mother unload the groceries and unpack them. From there, Summer and Candace helped Grandma replant some flowers in the garden. Candace says that took around 45 minutes.

When they were finished planting the flowers, they went into Grandma’s trailer, where Summer got a piece of candy. At that point, Summer asked her mom if she could go back to the house and play with her brothers. Her mom said, “Yeah, sure.” Her grandmother’s trailer was only 10 to 15 feet away from the family’s home, but regardless, Candace decided that she was going to walk her halfway to the front door. Candace told Summer she’d only be gone for a few minutes and then she’d be right back. Candace says it only took her two minutes to fix her mother’s knee brace, at which point she walked back to the house. She said she also had a clear view of the front door the whole time, and Summer never walked out the front door.

When she got inside, she called for Summer, but Summer was nowhere to be seen or heard. Summer’s room was in the basement, and that’s where her brothers told Candace that she had gone. But when Candace went down there, there was no Summer. So Candace goes out into the backyard and starts looking for Summer out there, but she’s nowhere to be seen. So they start checking the woods. Neighbors join in to help them look for her because they don’t know where she is at this point. And Candace says that she wouldn’t have just taken off on her own because she’s scared of things like snakes and bears out in the wilderness, so she knows that Summer wouldn’t have done that. She says that Summer also always asks her to do anything, so she wouldn’t have just taken off without saying something to her mother first or asking her permission.

The Search and Contradictions
Candace also calls Don at that point. Don tells her, “Hang up the phone and call the police.” So Candace does, and Don packs up his tools and hits the road, as he says it. He also called the police on his way there. He later describes driving home and almost losing it on the corners because he was going so fast. He says that’s why the journey only took him 25 minutes instead of the normal 45 to 55. Also, when Don reached the house, he drove past the house and down to the shed that was on their property a little ways down the hill. He says the reason he did this was because everybody else was looking around the house and he wanted to go down there and check out that area. However, it’s said he never actually looked around or inside the shed at all.

There was another point that Don said that Candace never called him back on his drive home, but later says that the two of them were messaging each other the entire time. Also, how are you driving so fast you’re almost losing it on corners and messaging somebody—not talking on the phone, messaging?

Candace says that once she hung up with Don, she ran to her mother’s trailer to get her phone because it had better reception (I’m assuming it was a landline). Candace called the police at 6:29 PM. The police began arriving at the Wells property around 7:00. At that time, the Wells were telling them that they believed that Summer had been abducted. The basement door opens to the back of the house, and then it’s only a short distance to the woods from there. In those woods, there’s a trail, and that trail leads down to Ben Hill Road, and the Wells theorized that maybe somebody took her and there was a car waiting for them down on the road.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said that their scent dogs tracked Summer’s smell from the back door to the beginning of the trail that led to Ben Hill Road. There was also a red Toyota that was spotted in the area that day that seemed suspicious, but nobody has come forward with any other information so far.

So the Wells have three vehicles: Don’s work truck, Grandma’s truck, and a brand-new shiny red Subaru. This car was said to be for Candace, and it also had a GPS system inside. So that morning, Don had taken the Subaru to work. Now, he’s a drywall plasterer, which is a very messy job, and this being a brand-new car, you wouldn’t think that he’d want to take it and risk getting it dirty. When police asked him why he had taken the car that day, he said, “Well, I have a $600 payment on it and it’s just sitting there, so I figured I’d get some use out of it.” Did he actually take the car that day because he figured with the GPS system it would give him an alibi, and then Candace would be free to use one of the other vehicles that had no GPS installed in it, therefore she could go off-location and nobody could track where she was?

The day after Summer disappeared, Hunter was looking at Candace’s phone, and he says that he saw text messages from her dealer, and in one message, Hunter claims it says, “It’s done.” We don’t know exactly what that means or if it’s true, but that’s what Hunter said that he saw that day. Later, he says Candace asked him nervously if he was looking at her phone, and since that day, police have told the Wells and Hunter to stay away from each other.

When Don was also asked if his and Candace’s phone could give more accurate data as far as a timeline, he said, “Magically, our phone records from 3:30 onwards that day all got erased.” And that’s going to be one of the most suspicious things in this case to me. How does that happen?

Another thing Don said that seemed a little odd was he said that Summer always had to be outside, and that was ultimately her downfall. So if Summer was such an outdoorsy girl, why was Candace hovering over her and walking her halfway from Grandma’s trailer back to the house like she wasn’t outside on her own all the time? Also, why does Don refer to Summer’s downfall being going outside when she supposedly got kidnapped from inside the house, not from outside?

Three days after Summer went missing, Don was interviewed and he started telling them about how Summer had gone downstairs to play with her toys, and then Candace had come back to look for her later. He says that the basement door was unlocked and we haven’t seen her since. So Don stated that the basement door was unlocked, and Candace said that she was not sure. Well, Candace was the one that was there and actually looking for Summer at the time, so you’d think that she would have a clearer memory of if the door was locked or unlocked than Don does, because he wasn’t even there—it’s just what he heard from Candace, so it should be the same, right?

Don did say that the boys would often leave it unlocked, “and we would cuss him and cuss him, and they would still leave it open.” Don also said that most likely Summer could have opened the door on her own. Not to mention, Candace had said that she left the boys at home and locked them in, which would have meant the basement door would have been locked too, and nobody said that they went down there and unlocked it when they got home. So the only person that could have unlocked it, had it been unlocked, would have been Summer.

If someone had taken Summer like the Wells were thinking, there was also at least 13 dogs that lived on their property. Now, they said they weren’t their dogs; they were actually strays that had just bred and now they were wandering around. When someone asked Don what the probability was that someone could have snuck onto their property that day with all those dogs—they would have started barking or something—Don said, “Oh well, they weren’t there that day, they go off for days sometimes and come back all beat up and hungry.” Law enforcement, though, says that there were dogs on the property when they got there, because these dogs created an issue with their search and cadaver dogs that they had brought to the scene.

So, someone lurking in the woods could have seen Candace walk Summer halfway back to the house and could assume that Summer had gone in the house alone and Candace had walked back towards Grandma’s trailer. However, the basement door is one-way glass, so if someone was lurking outside, they wouldn’t have been able to see inside and know that Summer was down there. So she couldn’t have been lured out of the basement, and even if she was, it would have had to be split-second timing that this abductor had to have known that she was going to be there—just like it would have been pretty impossible, in my opinion.

Police searched the areas near the Wells home, and in just a week, approximately 2,400 acres had been searched on foot and by helicopter. Authorities had also asked neighbors for their home security footage, but unfortunately, it came up with nothing useful.

The Hair Controversy and Family Background
So Summer’s picture and description were being posted everywhere, and in the picture they put out, she had blonde hair that was to her shoulders. However, the Wells had actually shaved Summer’s head at the beginning of the summer time, and there were plenty of pictures that were taken of her with this shaved head. But somehow, the family’s church gave them the picture of Summer with the longer hair because they said they had no idea that her hair had been cut that way. When the parents were asked about Summer’s hair—if it was something that she wanted or if it was some sort of punishment—both Candace and Don started talking at the same time, but their stories weren’t making sense.

Candace had shaved the heads of the three boys at the beginning of the summer because it would keep them cooler. Summer, wanting to fit in, asked if she could get hers shaved as well. She also saw that her mom, Candace, had her head shaved, so then she really wanted to get hers done. So Candace says that at that point, she shaved her head for her. Don says that Summer wanted her head shaved like the boys, so she took the razor and shaved a spot in the back, and he said it looked so bad that at that point they decided just to shave her whole head, but she was upset about it. So Candace says that she shaved her head as well so that Summer wouldn’t be so upset about it. So was she upset about it, or did she want her head shaved? It’s a hmm.

So Don has a bit of a record. He was arrested in October of 2020 for domestic violence (DV). Candace, however, later dropped those charges. He pleaded guilty and received 11 months and 29 days in jail, and was released the following year—didn’t get out early for good behavior or anything, I guess. Candace had also filed an order of protection against him, but then later asked for it to be dropped. This is what Candace wrote in her order of protection application that she filed against Don in October: “He drinks and throws things. I am afraid of being hurt. He is physical and mental 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.”

He was arrested again after Summer’s disappearance in October of 2021 for a DUI. Two weeks after Summer’s disappearance, her three brothers were removed from the family home by Child Protective Services (CPS), according to Don, because of the danger posed by YouTubers and psychics coming onto his property. On both Don and Candace’s side of the family—and I’m not saying this is what happened, but this is something to be noted—there was a history on both sides of their family of child abuse (CA), domestic violence (DV), and drug and alcohol abuse. The Wells family was actually known by Child Protective Services prior to Summer’s disappearance, but it’s not said what kind of action plan was taking place or what was going on as far as their interference with the family.

The couple actually appeared on Dr. Phil in 2021, but Candace ended up walking off stage crying, saying that she felt like she was the one being interrogated.

Aftermath and Final Thoughts
It’s been a little over two years since Summer disappeared, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation recently released an age-progressed photo of Summer, though they said they have no new information at this time. The Wells said that they had to move out of their small community of less than 5,000 people because of all the threats of violence that they were getting after Summer disappeared. Since her disappearance, Don says that they have constantly been harassed by people online who think that they’re responsible for Summer’s disappearance. People would even show up at Don’s job sites telling him they were there to speak to him about his missing daughter. He said it got so bad they ended up having to move out of state completely. The last I heard, the two were living in a motel in Arkansas, where Don was able to find a job.

Both Candace and Don also did pass polygraph tests, but law enforcement is still saying that everyone is a person of interest. There was also a tip from a neighbor in 2021. The neighbor says that very shortly before Summer disappeared, she heard a very loud scream that was almost animalistic, but not at the same time. Don says at this time, the family is working with a private investigator to help find Summer. On the two-year anniversary of Summer’s disappearance, there was a vigil held in Kingsport for her.

Summer is described by investigators as being 3 feet tall, weighing about 40 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing gray pants and a pink shirt. Anyone with any information about her whereabouts is asked to call the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-TBI-FIND or the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office at 423-272-7121.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Summer’s story today. There’s definitely a lot of things that are not matching up in this case, but it’s hard to say what did actually happen. There’s just not enough evidence yet, at least that we know about. Hopefully, there’s an update in this case soon. Someone out there is responsible for Summer’s disappearance; someone knows something. One of the oddest things to me is that Candace and Don’s phone records are magically gone after 3:30 that day. I really hope that forensic investigators have either already looked at them or are going to look at them and recover some information, because why would those have disappeared? They had to have been erased, and they had to have been erased by the owners of the phones.

If I hear any updates in this case, I’ll let you guys know. I’m actually thinking about posting case updates on TikTok, which I just started, so if you want to head over there and follow me there, you can get some case updates. I’m going to have an Alexis Trevizo one soon, too, hopefully!