Summer Wells Missing From East Tennessee

Summer Wells is missing -and it is not the first time someone in the family has simply vanished. The Wells family hope someone out there can help them find the 5-year-old girl last seen in her East Tennessee home in June.

Summer Wells Description

Summer Moon-Utah Wells is described as 3’ tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was last seen on June 15 walking near her home on Ben Hill Road in the Beech Creek community of Rogersville, Tennessee, located about an hour away from Knoxville. She wore a pink t-shirt and gray shorts. Summer was planting flowers before her disappearance.

The Wells family reported Summer missing to the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office at 6:30 pm.

Dad Talks to Reporters

Donald Wells, Summer’s father, spoke with News Channel 11 about the night his daughter went missing.

“She was planting flowers with her mother and her grandmother and she wanted to go into the house, so my wife watched her go into the door and she went into the house,” Wells said. “And the boys were on the internet of course, and she wanted to go downstairs and play with her toys. So when her mother [came] in and she says, ‘Summer’ and she went down into the basement and she didn’t answer. So she went down there and she was gone.”

Circumstances Surrounding Disappearance “Unclear”

The circumstances surrounding Summer’s disappearance are unclear. David suspects that someone “snuck up on her and grabbed her,” though TBI Public Information Officer, Leslie Earhart, says there is no evidence to point to an abduction and that it is possible that Summer simply snuck off on her own. Foul play has not been ruled out. The TBI said they cannot discuss everything going on to find Summer in their office in order to “preserve the integrity of the investigation.”

The search for the missing girl has threaded through land, water, and air with more than 106 agencies from Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio actively involved. Thus far, crews have covered more than 3,000 acres searching for Wells.

Past History of Domestic Violence

In Oct. 2020, Summer’s mother, Candus Bly, filed for an order of protection against David, stating that she was “afraid for my children and myself.” The protection order came after an Oct. 14, 2020, domestic violence dispute where Wells lived with Bly and her four children in Rogersville, Tennessee. He pleaded guilty to those charges and the protection order was later dropped.

In Aug. 2021, the Tennessee Highway Patrol responded to the home where they found Wells hiding in a storage room. He was wanted on a parole violation in Utah, where he spent a brief time after the domestic violence incident with Bly.

Do You Have Information About Summer Wells?

Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office at 423-272-7121 or the TBI at 800-TBI-FIND.

Rose Marie Bly Cold Case

Summer is the second member of the family who has disappeared. In 2009, Rose Marie Bly, Summer’s aunt, disappeared from St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. She left her home to meet a cousin at a bar, telling her husband she would return at midnight. She never made it to the bar.

The vehicle belonging to Rose Marie, the sister of Summer’s mother, was located in a parking lot by truckers five days later at a location about 30-miles from her home. There was no sign of foul play.

Rose Marie and her husband had a troubled relationship in the weeks before she went missing. He had filed for divorce from the woman and obtained an order of protection against her. He had physical custody of the couple’s two children. He later passed a polygraph test and has never been a suspect in her disappearance.

The Rose Marie Bly case remains unsolved.