Everything written here is my opinion. I’m not an investigative reporter or a law enforcement professional. I’m writing to keep Summer’s name and face out there by sharing my thoughts on her case.
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TRIGGER WARNING!! THE POST CONTAINS CONTENT ABOUT CHILD ABUSE THAT MAY DISTURB SOME READERS. These theories are nothing more than speculation, discussed for the purpose of examining their validity and should not be taken as fact.
Main theories of what happened to Summer Wells:
She was abducted from the road where she had been playing unsupervised
She was “abducted” from the basem*nt by a friend or acquaintance they won’t name
She went into the woods to play or hide and got lost or injured and couldn’t get home
She was murdered and her body was hidden
She was injured or killed accidentally and her body was hidden
Each theory has different implications.
Theory One: She was abducted from the road where she had been playing unsupervised
In this theory, Summer was playing down by the crick or the road--somewhere down off the hill--and was nabbed by an opportunistic person. This person maybe dreamed of doing something like that for a while but never acted upon it until opportunity presented itself on June 15.
I know adoption rings exist that snatch kids to sell on the black market, but would a scout for such a transaction be in the hollers of East Tennessee looking for random, neglected children? I’m going to say someone connected to organized crime would NOT do that. But what about a delusional weirdo who can’t get a date with another adult? Someone who downloads huge amounts of child p*rnography to his devices for his viewing pleasure...someone exactly like Donald Sherfey Jr. That type of person is likely sick enough in the head to follow through with an abduction if they saw Summer alone down on the main road, as neighbors claim is entirely possible based on where they have previously seen her playing away from the house.
Sherfey Jr. had a reason to visit the property extremely close to the Wells’ because the mother of his father's girlfriend lives there. Donald Sherfey Sr. told YouTubers who had gathered on Ben Hill Road last year that he and his girlfriend had seen Summer and her brothers playing on the road on numerous occasions, even having to stop for them to get out of the road.
So Summer and her brothers had a reputation among locals for playing out supervised and we know of multiple sexual offenders who live in the area or had reason to be there.
That's one possibility.
There is also the freak chance that Summer was abducted by a person who saw her and wanted a child and somehow had a living arrangement that would allow them to hide her and raise her as their own. It's not unheard of. Of course, this is the dream scenario we are all hoping for, as remote as it may be, because it's the one theory where Summer is alive and well.
Theory Two: She was “abducted” from the basem*nt by a friend or acquaintance they won’t name
When people use meth, their values change quickly, as I understand it. Don B uploaded a video last week where he discloses that an unnamed source revealed to him that Don and Candus may have had a wild party the night before Summer went missing. If that is true, which we have no way to prove right now, that opens a big door for a sleepy guest to be still snoozing in the dungeon and when Summer went down there, the person was waiting there and took her. Or perhaps that scenario happened but the person waiting down there was Don, just like his step-sister Mary told Chris McDonough she feared had happened to Summer.
Michelle After Dark has said time and again that the only thing Candus might be guilty of is falling asleep while Summer went out to play and woke up to find Summer gone. That may be true. But why, then, did Candus lie? Why did they come up with “the script” about planting flowers if none of that happened? They are trying hard to hide something, I’m just not sure what the “something” is. I can’t shake the feeling that they had unsavory guests sleeping in close quarters with their children and one of those guests decided they wanted to take Summer and so they did, but then again, I could be overcomplicating the situation. Certainly Summer was in enough danger while she was in her mother's care without any outsiders in the picture.
Still, some of the characters who have had contact with the Wells are frightening. We’ve got Andrew Hilts, Hunter’s biological father, who proudly displayed his new panda bear tattoo on the community tab of his YouTube channel. The reason he did that is because his Facebook profile picture was a panda bear and people pointed out that it was a famous symbol for child trafficking, which apparently Andrew found funny, so he tattooed a panda bear on his skin… Yep, I know.
And again, we’ve got Jose Roman. It appears that he has no contact with Candus anymore, but I am not sure where his is now or what he's doing there. He says the TBI has questioned him and made out like they didn’t have any problem with him, but I doubt that’s true. He's given confused stories, I'll put it that way. I can't say that he outright lied because I am not in possession of the truth for comparison. But again, as I said in my previous post, all the red flags require attention, but not necessarily in connection to Summer's disappearance. Being creepy and making questionable choices isn't a crime, lucky for Andrew and Jose.
Theory Three: She went into the woods to play or hide and got lost or injured and couldn’t get home
If Jose can be believed at all, he shared important information about Summer’s habit of running away and hiding in the woods and on neighbor’s properties. Don and Candus both adamantly deny that Summer would have walked off the property on her own, but Jose says the complete opposite. Unless Jose has Summer and wants to deflect attention from abduction and make it more believable that she would wander off, while also making her parents look like liars, he was likely being honest when he said she ran away quite a few times and it took them over an hour sometimes to find her. I can't think of any other reason he would say that Summer ran off.
Perhaps Candus didn’t want CPS finding out that she lost Summer on a regular basis, which is understandable. I wouldn’t want them knowing that about me, either.
If Summer DID run into the woods, even if she was chasing after her brothers on their dirt bikes, she could have easily followed them too far down a certain path and couldn’t find her way back. A small child would keep walking, most likely, because they are too young to know to know the safety rules about staying in one place if lost in the woods. Summer likely wouldn’t be where her brothers saw her last if they turned around to check on her, in that situation. It’s possible she may have fallen down a ravine, or into a crack in a cave ceiling. She may have even been bitten by a snake and or got scared and crawled into a small space to hide, but search dogs and eventually cadaver dogs would have surely found her. Unless her body was moved before any scent of death could be deposited.
If she was hurt by accident and her family found her body, why did they hide it? What didn’t they want an autopsy to reveal?
Was Summer sick with something that wasn’t being treated because they didn’t have insurance and Candus knew she would be in trouble for not getting Summer medical treatment? Did she have a virus or infection that day and that’s why Grandus allegedly reported to friends that she wasn’t feeling well? Did Candus try and treat Summer with Grandus’s prescription pills because Summer was injured at the party they allegedly had?
It’s possible that Summer simply walked off and just kept walking for miles. The search concentrated on 3.5 square miles around the Wells’ home and property, but technically Summer could have gone much, much further than that. She may have crossed the road and continued through the woods on the other side. We don’t know. Especially if Candus was medicating her with opoids or whatever to keep her happy, she may have been wandering in the woods high as a kite, not knowing where she was going.
She also could be close to the house in a freak spot that dogs and searchers missed over and over. Not an ideal scenario, by any stretch, but it's better than many alternatives.
It’s more likely, I believe, that Summer was hurt accidentally and Candus brought her to Don and her made the problem disappear, because her body WAS a problem for some reason.
It’s also a remote possibility that some creep like Sherfey, Jr, heard on the scanner that Summer was missing and went out to find her first. I don’t know what kind of person it would take to do that but I assume someone like Westley Allan Dodd, that Chris McDonough talked about, who is highly motivated to commit crimes against children. Although, Chris said Dodd was opportunistic, not highly skilled in surveillance or abduction and most likely wouldn't have undertaken an abduction on that hill in the way Don and Candus want us to believe happened to Summer.
Candy Harer, Summer's grandmother, told Anslee Daniel she took a nap on June 15 after they returned home from the swimming hole. Many people have commented about her changing the timeline by adding that she napped after she got home that day, which is a detail never shared before by anyone. Candy says she woke up from her nap and “we went out,” insinuating that someone else was in the camper with her, whoever that was. I believe it was Candus, her daughter, just my gut feeling, and that Candy let it slip. Candus could have come home, sent Summer in the house with the boys, locked in again, and went to the camper with her mother to have a nap where it was quiet.
Again, perhaps Don WAS at work as he claimed and Candus went to have a nap with her mom and when she woke up and tried to find Summer, she couldn’t and doesn’t actually know what happened, just that she is responsible for not watching her. Candus could be afraid to tell Don the truth that she wasn’t watching Summer, because she knew he would hold it over her head.
On the other hand, Don may have come home, found the women asleep, and took Summer.
If Summer had passed away on the property and her body was moved quickly, within minutes, perhaps scent dogs or cadaver dogs would detect nothing abnormal. There are the footprints to consider, but again, do the footprints indicate anything besides that Summer ran through there as we now know she probably did on a regular basis? Scent dogs can’t tell us how old the prints are OR the scent they followed down to the road, so it may have been completely unhelpful to find any of those clues.
Maybe.
Theory Four: She was murdered and her body was hidden
The common denominator in the last two theories is obviously that Summer’s body was concealed after she passed. If her body was concealed, there could be only two reasons for that. One is to conceal the manner of death, or, two, in the case of an accident, to conceal evidence of abuse that could easily be detected on her body.
“Abuse” in this case could be signs of neglect like rotting teeth, bones that had been broken and not set properly because medical attention was not sought, a virus or infection, even a bladder infection. If a fever is left untreated and climbs, things can go downhill quick. All these ideas are just that, my ideas that I've thought of or listened to others mull over and I don't know what actual factors would be considered in a CPS case because I have no experience in that field.
Perhaps Summer has scars from injuries that should have been stitched close or perhaps there would have been evidence of drugs and alcohol in her bloodstream that would have sent mommy and daddy straight to jail and ended all their fun.
Reasons she could have been murdered:
Candus flew into a rage and beat her
Don flew into a rage and beat her
Hide evidence from CPS
Prevent Summer from talking when she went to school
She was hurt by someone who was abusing her accidentally on purpose
There is one thing Don and Candus can’t hide and that is the fact that neither of them have been looking for Summer. Don B talked about this in the video linked above. He mentioned that if he thought his child was lost in those woods, he would get a “good pair of snake boots” and be in the woods every day looking for his child. I think most parents would echo that with no hesitation, but Don never went out looking for Summer. What possible reason could there be for him to do that unless he knew she wasn’t out there? How else could he live with the thought of his baby girl lost outside in that terrain, trying to get back home, and not lose his minds with fear and grief trying to find her?
When I was eleven, my parents bought me a horse. He was a twelve year-old gelding named Charlie. He was a bit of a sudden acquisition and it took several days to build a fence to keep him in. The first day, he was loosely tied to the barn while my father started the preparations to house him. Our family dog, Buffy, came out of the house and immediately barked at Charlie, who snapped his rope and took off galloping down through the yard, into the field, then into a stand of young alders and that was the last we saw of Charlie for three days. My father spent every daylight hour of the next two days tracking Charlie through miles of woods. He found him on day three, just before deer hunting season was about to begin in Nova Scotia. If he would do that for a horse that he just met, imagine how hard he would look for one of his children if they were missing instead. I guarantee he wouldn’t have been sitting in the house drinking whiskey every night instead of planning his next search.
Theory Five: She was injured or killed accidentally and her body was hidden
Again, I have to reference Jose, who told us that there was a copperhead snake living in that famous shed on the side of the yard that Candus wouldn’t let Chris McDonough search. Possible dangers lurk everywhere outside that house. That’s the nature of country living in that part of the world. Summer also liked to run and play on her swing. She was active and active children never stay in one place when left alone. Point is, Summer was a high risk child. She was not supervised properly, she lived in a rough terrain, and had drug addicts and alcoholics for parents, a combination that never ends well.
Even inside the house dangers were lurking. Summer was alone with three older brothers who could could easily hurt a small girl just by playing rough, as boys so often do. The stairs down to the dungeon were dangerous. They didn’t have railings at the time Summer went missing and one theory is even that she broke her neck on those stairs. I don't feel that theory holds much water, though, because five-year-olds are pretty nimble, especially on familiar structures. They aren't wobbly like toddlers, unless, as I speculated above, the rumors are true that Candus gave Summer alcohol or drugs and she was off balance.
Again, a left-over straggler from a party the night before could have been lurking or waiting just over the hill for Summer to come home. Perhaps the person who took Summer (if it was an abduction) was sending a direct message to Don or Candus by taking her that had nothing to do with Summer directly. She may have been the casualty of a transaction or friendship gone terribly wrong.
Don told The Behavior Panel that he thought it was so weird the day Summer went missing that he and Candus were talking on Facebook messenger and the call never dropped while Candus was driving around the holler looking for Summer. Don said that call lasted 40 minutes, in an area that is known to have poor cell signal. It would make more sense if Candus was actually driving back toward Rogersville to meet Don and hand off Summer after Candus discovered something was wrong.
Ways she might have been fatally injured accidentally:
Snake bite
Suffocated while hiding (possibly in that old fridge)
Fell down stairs
Fell down the hill and broke neck or struck head
Chased boys into woods on their dirtbikes and got lost/fell down
Hurt riding on back of one of the boys’ bikes (piggy backing)
Struck by car in driveway or road
Some other freak accident
There was no report of any blood found on the property to suggest something like any of the above suggestions took place, however, if she was badly injured and Candus took her to meet up with Don before she passed away, like a job site, then like I said before, no scent of death would have come home in either vehicle, but what are the chances that no blood or other evidence would be detected?
Again, the reasons why an accident was covered up are more important, possibly, then what actually happened, especially if it WAS a freak accident that no parent could have prevented. We are still left asking why Summer’s body wasn’t handed over to proper authorities.
Josh from The Lab stated his opinion that people who don’t like police won’t call them and suggested that perhaps Don and Candus wanted to deal with their child their way. In an outlaw sort of reasoning, I can see that making sense to them.
Another possibility that isn’t discussed much because it’s not something that typically happens to five year olds, but Summer possibly could have died because Candus left her sleeping in the truck and Summer didn’t wake up and expired as a result of the heat. Summer WAS dressed too warmly for the day, especially if she was left sleeping in the truck. The windows were up when Candus dropped off Hunter, according to Ally, so were they left up when they got home? Or did Candus leave the windows down so Summer would keep sleeping and went to have a nap in Candy's trailer, but when she woke up, she discovered that Summer had not woken up and called Don for help. Or did she wake up and run off and when Candus woke up (assuming Candus had a nap too), Summer was gone?
I know all this is heavy stuff, as is everything in relation to this case. Thank you for reading through. I know that I am in good company with people who truly want nothing more than to find out what happened to Summer Wells and figure out how we can better support other humans in making sure that it happens less and less to our babies.
