She Went Missing After a Bitter Marriage Fight… Then Police Uncovered a Dark Secret | True Crime Doc 

Today’s story takes us to Logan, Ohio, the Hocking Hills region of southeastern Ohio, roughly 45 miles from Columbus. It is a city of about 7,000 people, small enough that everyone’s faces are familiar and news travels like wildfire. On an ordinary evening of Tuesday, the 22nd [music] of March, 2011, 25-years-old Summer Inman left for work.

She was employed as a night janitor at the Century National Bank in downtown Logan, Ohio, a night shift she was scheduled to finish at 11:20 p.m. When Summer didn’t come home that night, her parents were so worried. Her father, Michael, set out to look for her, but only found her coat and iPod left in the alley behind Century National Bank, the same alley she left through every [music] night, the way out of the building.

 Confused and unsure of what might have happened, he called the police. >> Hello, I’m Logan emergency. >> I’m calling about my daughter, Summer Inman. She’s nowhere to be found. We found her coat and her iPod. >> Logan police began working the case that night. Officers canvassed the area. Surveillance footage from inside the bank had captured Summer in the hours before her disappearance, still in the black T-shirt, hair in its ponytail, looking exactly like herself.

 Then the footage ended and she was not anywhere on the other side of it. Pretty soon, people started talking. Two different witnesses told the same story. Late that night, near the bank, they saw two men forcing a woman into a white car driven by a blonde woman. The woman being forced inside was small, blonde, maybe 5 ft 3, and it was clear she didn’t go willingly.

 The attackers had brought a taser. That came out right away. They knew what they were there to do. The investigation moved fast. It wasn’t just that police worked quickly, the kidnappers had left a trail. Maybe they figured no one would figure it out so soon or at all. The car everyone described, a white Ford Crown Victoria, an ex-police car, and someone close to Summer had just picked one up two days before she vanished.

 Less than 2 days after the 911 call, officers arrested three people. Summer’s estranged husband, William Inman II, his father, Bill Inman, and his mother, Sandra Inman. All three faced kidnapping charges. None said a word about where Summer was. >> Story tonight, a woman from Southern Ohio has been missing for a week with her husband and in-laws behind bars for kidnapping.

 [music] Now the search has taken investigators nearly 200 miles north to Cleveland. [music] NewsChannel 5’s Dan Haggerty spoke with M >> For a week, Logan waited anxiously. No one wanted to ask the question that troubled the community. People knew, even if they hoped they were wrong. Neighbors and friends formed search parties scouring four counties.

 The FBI stepped in. Chief Aaron Miller kept giving updates, but everyone was really listening for the one thing nobody wanted to hear. Then, on March 29th, Sandra Inman broke her silence and told detectives where to find the body. She led them to Faith Tabernacle Church, a small brick building just north of Nelsonville, about 10 miles from Logan.

 The Inmans had spent years there. Bill even helped build the place, literally laying the foundation himself. He played piano and guitar in the services. He knew every inch of that land in a way you only do if you’ve helped create it. Out back, investigators found an old septic tank half buried and sealed tight. They removed the screws and opened the heavy lid.

 Inside, headfirst, was Summer Inman. She wore the same black t-shirt and pants she’d left the house in. Her purse was still slung over her arm. The next morning, Chief Miller faced the press. >> It would appear that she was killed um very quickly. That evening. >> He meant Summer didn’t make it past the first night. While the whole town searched and held candlelight vigils and prayed for a miracle, she was already gone.

>> Summer Dawn Cook was born on Logan, Ohio on the 31st of December, 1985, the last day of the year. She was the daughter of Michael and Debbie Cook, Mike and Debbie to anyone who knew them. She grew up in Logan attending its schools, running in the particular geography of a small Ohio city. She was vivacious.

 As a little girl, she took ballet and jazz classes, 3 years of them. She threw herself into it with the enthusiasm that characterized most of what she did. Sports were another story. Her mother, Debbie, recalled Summer simply could not throw a baseball, not with any accuracy, not in any intended direction. It would just go its own way, Debbie said.

 She graduated from Logan High School in 2004. That same year, at 18 years old, Summer married William Inman II, known as Will. He was 19. They had met as teenagers through the same church community that had given Summer her earliest sense of belonging. His father, William Inman Sr., called Bill, had been a central figure at Faith Tabernacle Church near Nelsonville, helping build the structure and playing music at services.

 Sandra, his mother, was a constant presence at Bill’s side. They were a family unit of the tightest kind, held together not just by blood, but also in appearance. The young couple settled into a house next door to Bill and Sandra. In the early years, it looked stable. Family nearby, children arriving, the rhythms of ordinary domestic life.

 Three children came in those years: Alexander, Kaylee, Alana. Summer loved them dearly with a daily fierce specific attention that did not require anyone to observe it to be real, but the marriage, as the years passed, became something else. In the divorce filing Summer would eventually submit in June of 2010, after 6 years, she described what had been happening inside that household with a precision.

 She painted a picture of a husband who threatened to kill her if she ever tried to take the kids. He’d grab her car keys, her wallet, her phone, basically everything that gave her any independence and hold them so she couldn’t even leave the house. It was like the doors themselves needed a permission she didn’t have. Her in-laws didn’t help either.

 Instead of supporting her, they pressured her to stick with the marriage, constantly pushing her back into it whenever she tried to see past it. They would gang up on me, she wrote, and try to get me to just work things out. There’s this chilling report about Will. He took her cats, drove off, and came back without them.

 She never learned what happened to them. Media coverage of her case was everywhere, and most of it was accurate, but the reporters rushed through the everyday details of what Summer Inman was actually doing in the year before she died. Probably because the murder and the investigation were so extraordinary. You see, Summer wasn’t just filing papers and hoping for the best. She filed for divorce.

 She did everything you’re supposed to do. For every child handoff, she went to the sheriff’s office in Logan, right there in the law enforcement building, because that was the safest place for her. The news called it a bitter divorce and a contentious custody dispute. Sure, accurate words, but they barely touch the actual logic guiding Summer’s choices.

 She was dealing with a man who’d told her outright and in writing that leaving him was a death sentence. She believed him. She documented it. Adam Peters, who later became her fiance, gave her hope for something new and good. She took her kids to her parents’ house in Logan and started over. She was running towards something better. That matters.

 In the early hours of March 23rd, detectives were already piecing it together. Sometimes cases like this move fast if the evidence isn’t buried. Witnesses saw Summer forced into a white Crown Victoria. The description was clear, a former police car, just like ones law enforcement used. The driver was a blonde woman, according to witnesses.

 Sandra Inman, Summer’s mother-in-law, had blonde hair at the time. The car matched, so did the timeline and the places. It all lined up. The morning after Summer vanished, March 23rd, surveillance footage saw William Inman II at a car wash at 7:30 a.m. with the Crown Victoria. He wasn’t alone. The family was right there, working on the car, trying to clean it, systematically removing whatever needed to be removed.

They hit up an auto parts store, then drove to a junkyard in Cleveland, about 140 miles from Logan, and swapped nearly new tires for four much worse ones. These were not the behaviors of a family with nothing to hide. Investigators obtained a warrant and seized multiple cell phones and Garmin GPS units from the family’s home in Akron.

 It was the GPS that provided the clearest account of the night of March 22nd. The device placed the family in Logan at the time Summer was taken. It then traced their route south toward Nelsonville, toward Athens County, then north again, back toward Akron. Faith Tabernacle Church, just north of Nelsonville, the church where Bill Inman had helped before he announced that he felt called to preach and left to start his own ministry, an effort that had never successfully taken root. He knew that too well.

 William Inman II, Sandra Inman, and William Inman I were arrested on the 24th of March, two days after Summer disappeared. Each was charged with kidnapping. None of them cooperated. None of them told investigators anything that was helpful. Bill Inman’s relationship with law enforcement, it turned out, had its own history in this case.

 Several months earlier, in December of 2010, officers had come to the Inman family home. Summer was there with her boyfriend Adam Peters and a sheriff deputy to collect more of her belongings during end of eviction proceeding. What unfolded that day had been captured on a police cruiser dash cam. Bill Inman squared off directly with Deputy Ryan Cain.

 It was so bad that a taser was required to bring the situation under control. When Deputy Cain later heard that the Inmans were being investigated in connection with Summer’s disappearance, he was not surprised. “William Inman is their leader,” he told reporters, “like their king. They’ll do what he says. They’re blinded by loyalty and he’s blinded by rage.

” The investigation proceeded with the GPS evidence at its center. Investigators had a timeline and a route. They had a vehicle the family had attempted to clean and then refit with different tires, but in custody they were saying nothing. Six days after the arrests, Sandra Inman broke during an interrogation with detectives. >> Tell me where she’s at right there.

Is there a pipe that she’s inside of, anything like that? >> No, it’s a thing. >> Like cistern? >> I don’t >> A lid that you pop up? >> No. >> So, it’s like a cistern that leads to the tank and she’s inside the tank. >> Yeah. >> Um When did you guys put her in there? The same night that It was the >> Yeah. >> Yeah.

After the discovery, an autopsy was conducted by Brian D. Castell, forensic pathologist and deputy coroner of Montgomery County. His findings were methodical and devastating. Summer Inman had been strangled. A plastic zip tie had been pulled tightly around her neck. Zip ties also bound her wrists. Based on the evidence, Logan Police Chief Miller confirmed publicly that she had been killed very quickly after being taken.

The more investigators pieced together the sequence of events, the purchase of the vehicle, the route on the GPS, the car wash the following morning, the tire exchange in Cleveland, the less any alternative version of events could hold. One thing was for certain, this had been planned. Three members of the Inman family were in that car.

 All three were eventually brought before a court of law. The process was neither quick nor straightforward. William Inman II, Will, stood trial first in Hocking County Common Pleas Court in June of 2012. Hocking County Prosecutor Lena Featherhoff presented the state’s case with the direct focus of someone who had the evidence and knew exactly where it led.

Josh Durst took the witness stand and described what he had found behind Faith Tabernacle Church. Photographs of the scene were shown to the jury. The jury deliberated for approximately 3 hours. They returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. Two counts of aggravated murder, one count each of murder, kidnapping, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse.

They recommended life in prison without the possibility of parole. William Inman II was 27 years old when the sentence was imposed. Sandra Inman did not go to trial. She stood before the court and pleaded guilty to all charges. Murder, kidnapping, abduction, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse.

She wept throughout the proceedings. She apologized to Summer’s family. The court sentenced her to 15 years to life in prison. Sandra Inman’s guilty plea carried weight. She was in that car. She drove it. She knew from the moment it happened where Summer was. And for 6 days, while Michael Cook made phone calls and a town of 7,000 people searched and Jamie Richards waited for a phone that wasn’t going to ring, Sandra Inman said nothing.

She broke eventually. The investigation got there because she spoke and that matters. The body was found, the family was charged, the case was made in part because she finally told someone what she knew. The 15 years to life sentence reflects the guilty plea, the cooperation, and the court’s evaluation of her role in the crime.

 It does not, cannot reflect what it cost the Cook family to live inside a week of not knowing when one of the three people in custody already knew exactly where Summer was and was choosing hour by hour not to say so. That is not a legal observation. The court made its assessment and it is not in my place to second-guess it. It is simply an observation.

William A. Inman Senior, Bill, was the last to face the court and he did not make it easy. His first trial held in Hocking County in August of 2012 ended in a mistrial. The case had been so extensively covered throughout the region that finding an impartial jury in Hocking County was not possible.

 The proceeding was moved to Ross County Common Pleas Court in the city of Chillicothe where in January of 2013 jury selection began. Two men and 10 women were eventually seated to hear the case. The evidence presented in Chillicothe was the same evidence that had been there from the beginning. The GPS, the car wash, the tire exchange in Cleveland, the witnesses, the vehicle, the church.

 Bill Inman’s defense attempted to introduce testimony from a Hocking County Sheriff’s Deputy arguing that Sandra had told that Deputy their son was solely responsible for the strangling. The trial court denied the motion. The evidence the defense sought to use could not be admitted under the court’s rulings. Bill Inman denied killing Summer.

 He did not take the witness stand. The jury found him guilty on all counts including two counts of aggravated murder. In the sentencing phase, the prosecution sought the death penalty. The jury considered it and declined. They recommended life in prison without the possibility of parole instead. When Bill Inman spoke during the sentencing phase, he apologized to Summer’s family.

He said he was sorry for killing Summer Inman, the same man who had through the entirety of his trial maintained he was not responsible. Hocking County Judge John Wallace imposed sentence in February of 2013, life without the possibility of parole plus 14 additional consecutive years. 10 years for kidnapping, 3 years for tampering with evidence, 1 year for gross abuse of a corpse.

 At the time, Bill Inman was 48 years old. Judge Wallace addressed the courtroom when the sentence was complete. This has been a long and unpleasant road for the people of Logan and Hocking County and obviously for Summer Inman’s family. I have nothing but sorrow about this whole matter. The motive, as it had been from the beginning, was custody.

 Summer had filed for divorce. She was pursuing custody of Alexander, Kaylee, and Alana. And so they went to the alley behind Century National Bank with a Taser and a zip tie, and they took her before she could finish what she had started. A memorial fund was established in Summer Inman’s name at Century National Bank, the same institution where she worked.

 The Summer Inman Fund was created to support her three children. Summer Inman had a civil protection order when she died. She’d written in her own words that her husband threatened to kill her. She followed every step the system recommends for someone facing this kind of danger. Still, on a Tuesday night, the people behind those threats took her.

A civil protection order is just a piece of paper. It changes the charges a perpetrator might face, but it doesn’t actually stop them from acting. That gap between what the law says and what happens in real life isn’t a rare mistake. It’s a known, documented issue with how these orders really work, especially when domestic violence spills into custody battles.

 What made Summer’s situation even worse was the nature of the threat. It wasn’t just her husband, it was an entire family, a patriarch, wife, and son working together under one controlling presence. Deputy Cain got it right about Bill Inman. They’ll do what he says. They’re blinded by loyalty and he’s blinded by rage.

 The order named one person, but three people ended up killing Summer. Nothing about this case changed Ohio’s protection order laws in any clear way, but her story proves just how wide the gap is between legal orders and genuine safety. Summer’s case matters not because she made mistakes, but because she did everything right and it still wasn’t enough.

Thank you for watching. Please leave your thoughts in the comments. [music] Like and share the video to someone you think needs to watch it and we’ll see you in on the next one. Stay safe.