Summer Wells Case Analysis | Rural Home Mystery

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the case of summer wells just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel consider supporting me on patreon and check out my podcast on youtube bellagrande media i will put the irrelevant links for those items in the description for this video so first i'll look at the background in this case including the timeline of the disappearance then i'll move to my analysis on june 15 2021 five-year-old summer wells was at her family's home in rogersville tennessee she lived there with her father donald wells who goes by don her mother candace bly and her three older brothers apparently her grandmother lives on the property as well according to candice at about 5 30 p.m summer was planting flowers with candace and her grandmother about 20 feet away from the family home at this time summer entered the home and informed her brothers she wanted to play with toys in the basement of the house her mother entered the house just a few minutes later but could not locate summer candice called don at work to tell him she could not find summer it appears as though both candace and don called 9-1-1 at about 6 30 p.m don told the dispatcher that candace had been out for a walk came home and was unable to find summer this is a little different from what candace said later candace would say that she does not walk around the property due to fear of wildlife like bears five and a half hours later at midnight on june 16 the tennessee state bureau of investigation published an endangered child alert this was upgraded to an amber alert just after 11 am on june 16. the officials believed there was eminent danger over the next few days volunteers and members of law enforcement searched the area a high level of foliage mountainous terrain and poor cell phone service limited the effectiveness of the search law enforcement encouraged residents to check any type of surveillance camera footage they may have and inspect any outbuildings like sheds or detached garages they also said look in crawl spaces and barns on june 18 summer's father made his first public statement to the media he said he was at work when summer went missing he insisted that summer would never leave on her own someone must have taken her on june 26 the authorities requested that the driver of a pickup truck seen in the area of summerwell's home on june 14 or 15 come forward they believe the driver may have witnessed something that could be helpful the truck was a 1998-2000 toyota tacoma with a full bed ladder rack search operations were scaled back on june 27 by july 12 the authorities had received over 900 tips they suggested that all options were still available everybody was a person of interest on the same day donald gave an interview where he implied that there was little hope that summer was alive he also indicated that he his wife and his mother-in-law passed lie detector tests on july 15 don said that statistically speaking there was a good chance that summer was already dead he went on to say quote i hate to think that i love her with all my heart if nothing else i'll see her in the resurrection unquote on july 26 according to don summer's three older brothers were removed from the home and placed in custody with the department of child protective services don well said the house was not safe trespassers were approaching the house and the family has received threats on july 27 the authorities said that the search effort will not be scaled back anymore but it will be changing they will be taking control of the search schedule they were worried about people interfering in the investigation now moving to my analysis don and candace both have criminal records don wells has been convicted of a number of felonies he has been convicted of charges including burglary theft forgery and many others he has spent time in prison apparently he was criminally active in several different states including utah in october of 2020 don was arrested for domestic assault he allegedly was drinking and throwing objects according to the police report he knocked candace down and injured her knee after believing she was cheating on him candace applied for an order of protection only to withdraw it a few days later according to don candice dropped the charges against him don implied the whole incident was based on a lack of communication and candace has apologized to him in addition to don's criminal past we know that his 34 year old son is a convicted sex offender and as i mentioned candace has a criminal record as well she was convicted of domestic abuse and disorderly conduct in wisconsin this case has generated a lot of rumors some of which the police have addressed for example some people believe that the police were using psychics to help locate summer the police have denied this claim the police have asked for people to stop speculating online about what could be happening in this case i guess there's this idea that they are reading these different speculations and they're forced to investigate each one this doesn't make any sense to me i can understand them asking for people not to call in unhelpful or inappropriate tips but as far as speculation i don't really know how that could be a problem it sounds as though the authorities are simply letting themselves get overwhelmed probably because they don't have a lot of experience with this type of investigation it's not a common problem in rural tennessee maybe the authorities simply need help finding the off switch on their electronic devices perhaps they should consider spending less time on the internet worried about speculation and more time focused on collecting actual evidence let's look at the theories in this case what could have happened here essentially there are really only four possible theories of the disappearance of summer wells theory number one during the few minutes when summer was unsupervised she walked out of the house into the rugged terrain it appears as though there is a door directly out of the basement into the yard like the house is built on a slope so it's not like she would have had to come up steps into the first floor and then exit this is also important to keep in mind when considering the other theories like that somebody may have entered the house and taken her as far as this theory the one where she walked out on her own i think it's quite possible that people searching have missed her in the terrain around the house but i don't think it's likely with this explanation summer would have had to do something that she never did before walked off into the woods or down the driveway what would be her motivation also it is believed that she was barefoot it's hard to imagine that she would have made it too far in that state very number two something happened the summer in or around her house like an accident or maybe something intentional which resulted in her death the whole story of her disappearance is to cover up whatever happened there's not a lot of evidence that supports this theory the parents have been interviewed by the media many times and they really don't seem like sophisticated criminals i imagine the police have searched the house for any evidence of a person being killed or injured there's been no report of them finding anything like that also her older brothers and grandmother would have probably seen something it would be difficult to get all parties not to reveal any information it would take a relatively sophisticated conspiracy to keep this secret some people pointed out that both don and candace have referred to summer in the past tense i don't really think this means anything again these individuals do not seem particularly sophisticated they are not used to speaking as precisely as would be required to avoid criticism they are probably accustomed to casual conversations which do not lead to a great deal of scrutiny it's important to remember that there is no baseline established in terms of what don and candace were like before the disappearance i imagine they had the same mannerisms and speech patterns at that time there's no way to know if they are acting out of the ordinary without seeing how they acted before some have pointed out that they both have criminal records don's history is particularly worrisome these criminal histories are not a great sign like it doesn't help them but it also doesn't indicate they would necessarily do something more serious if anything it appears as though don is more experienced with getting caught for crimes than getting away with them there are a few concerning factors that support this theory including the fact that child protective services removed the other children we don't know why they did that but it would stand to reason that it's a bad sign as far as the safety of living in that house it was mentioned in the october 2020 police report that don was found intoxicated alcohol can lead to accidents and crime candace and dunn passing polygraphs doesn't really mean anything it only means the police chose not to accuse them of anything at that time polygraphs are nonsense they are simply part of an interrogation technique they don't reveal if somebody has lied or not it's a fantasy that police invest in that is not based on any science an examinee could be hooked up to a refrigerator or a sewing machine and get the same result as far as knowing something about deception it appears as though candace and summer were swimming earlier on the day that summer disappeared presumably in a tennessee state park called warriors path pool there was also this mention of two other people who were there a 15 year old boy and candace's mother who is also named candace there was a report which indicated the 15 year old boy had to rescue summer after she experienced some difficulty in the water one possibility would be that summer was the victim of dry drowning this type of death has a delayed effect the individual dies sometime after the incident she would have seemed fine only to die hours after swimming candace has denied that summer went under the water while swimming moving to theory number three a random abduction occurred so summer was not targeted rather a person who just happened to be around decided to kidnap her here's the problem with this theory the location of the family home in this case is such that we would not expect an abduction to occur there it's in a rural part of tennessee and off of a road that not many people would drive on in addition the house itself is on a hill and about a half mile away from the road when people hear that a child was abducted from the house they may think it's some random act where an assailant pulls right up in front of the house grabs the victim quickly pulls the victim into the car and takes off that doesn't seem to be what happened here again this is not some place where people would just happen to drive by this brings me to theory number four summer was kidnapped by someone who wanted her specifically like she was targeted by an assailant it was premeditated this theory explains how the assailant or assailants knew she was on the property how somebody could have abducted her from that rural property and how they could have maneuvered past any potential witnesses like they had scoped out the situation in advance they understood where people were and where objects were this allowed them to manage the logistics of the kidnapping don said in one interview that he thought human traffickers probably abducted summer this is pretty unlikely there is a higher probability that the assailant was someone who wanted to directly harm her rather than sell her to someone else when considering these theories if i were to rank them from the most probable to the least probable here's what i would say i would go with the most probable as theory number four summer was abducted by an assailant who specifically wanted her then theory number two a cover-up of an accident or homicide these two theories are really close in my opinion but based on what's available right now i would put the assailant theory ahead of the cover-up theory next would be number three a kidnapping that was random this is very unlikely and the last theory is number one summer wandered into the woods on her own this is an extremely low probability event it's important to keep in mind that this is only my opinion and there is probably evidence the police have not released which could greatly affect the probabilities associated with each explanation one thing that occurs to me is that the police suspected the parents they probably would want to keep that a secret the police would want the parents to keep talking to the media and blocking themselves in as far as their story my final thoughts in this case i think what's so scary about this case is that a five-year-old girl went missing in the early evening from a rural house and the last time she was seen was in the house how'd this happen all possible explanations are terrifying it's hard to know if there's really any lesson to be learned here one would think that a child would be quite safe in the basement of a rural house on a hill in the middle of the woods especially when considering there were several other people in the area i guess the lesson here could be that one can never be too careful those are my thoughts in the case of summer wells please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always hope you found my analysis of this topic to be informative thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 225,089

Rating: 4.8553858 out of 5

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Id: B4CmwM2AC6E

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/spoiledrichwhitegirl]

It appears Don is more adept at getting caught for crimes than for getting away with them. 😭😭😭😂

[u/Defying_Gravitas]

Just started listening to this video. This is minor, but I kinda wish he'd said, "The 911 dispatcher reported that mom [Candus] had been out for a walk" since it seems like this detail has caused confusion and distraction about the honesty of the parents when it could've easily been a misunderstanding. Other than that, I really appreciate his level and cerebral perspective.

[u/Shockedsystem123]

That was pretty good! I really hope authorities find out what happened to little Summer.

[u/AntiqueCurrency7275]

I been watching Dr Grande for a long time... I don't think I ever clicked a video so fast!

[u/FathersRightsHelp]

Thank you for this! I love his case analysis. Dry af but always factual.

[u/spoiledrichwhitegirl]

I’ve been hoping he’d do one. He makes me lol bc he’s so monotone & dry with his humour.

[u/CamaelKhamael]

I like Dr Grande!! Glad he commented!

[u/Crazy-Pudding-5100]

“They really don’t seem like sophisticated criminals.” Nice way of saying that D & C aren’t the brightest bulb’s in the box😜

[u/LilArsene]

I like his videos for how sober and neutral they usually are. This was a good one, thanks for posting!