**Active AMBER Alert since June 16, 2021**
Jan. 10, 2022, by Kelli Gunn
Introduction to the Case:
According to Candus Bly, her daughter, five-year-old Summer Moon-Utah Wells was last seen on June 15, 2021, entering her home in the rural Beech Creek area of Hawkins County, Tennessee.
According to Candus, Summer and herself were helping her mother, Candus “Miss Candus” Harer repot some plants for Miss Candus outside of her camper, which is parked on the edge of the Wells’ front yard. Candus says Summer had asked to go inside with her brothers, who were watching TV and Candus agreed, walked Summer to the front door (which is visible from the steps of the camper where Candus says she was standing), then Candus returned to the camper to help her mother with her knee brace.
Candus says “within two minutes” she was done helping Miss Candus with her knee brace, she went inside and that’s when the boys told her Summer had gone down to the basement to play with her toys. Candus says that when she called down to check on Summer, there was no answer and she went to the basement to look for Summer, she was gone.
In the minutes that followed, Candus describes a frantic search for Summer in the home and the surrounding yard, before calling her husband, Donald (“Don”) Wells, to report Summer missing and ask him to come home immediately from where he was working as a drywaller in Rogersville, TN. According to Don and Candus, they ended their call and each placed a call to 911.
Don reports that he arrived at home to find Summer’s brothers looking in the creek for their sister–a search that was soon taken over by professionals and trained volunteers and lasted over a week, covering the creek bed, the roadways, and miles of the terrain surrounding the Wells’ property.
Search Efforts have yielded few clues:
Currently, the FBI, Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) are all involved in the search for Summer. After the initial search back in June, Hawkins County Sheriff Ronnie Lawson confirmed that search dogs “had a pretty good trail that tracked for a little while, but then … disappeared.” Don claims the scent alert happened on a dog trail found on a steep hill below the house created by a pack of dogs that lived on the property, a trail that he and Candus both claim they didn’t even know was there until the search dogs discovered it.
Besides the scent alert, two of the Wells’ neighbors—who live in opposite sides of the Wells’ property from each other—claimed they found a small bare, footprint the could possibly be Summer’s.
Search teams did return to Ben Hill Road on November 30 and December 1, 2021 to search again, after much of the heavy underbrush had receded. Despite the heavy volume of searchers over those two days, sadly, there were no new clues to report.
On December 15, the six-month anniversary of Summer’s disappearance, TBI Public Information Officer Leslie Earhart released this statement about the search: “We’ve used a plane, helicopters, divers, canines and every resource available to us during search efforts … Despite the countless hours of tireless work, the circumstances surrounding her disappearance remain unclear.” Earhart goes on to say “all avenues continue to be explored including foul play and the very real possibility that she wandered off and got lost in the mountains and rough terrain surrounding her home.”
In November, Hawkins County Sheriff Ronnie, who stated in July that “everybody is a suspect” in Summer’s case, also had a message to members of the public who are voicing concerns that not enough is being done to search for Summer: “From the manpower, the search, helicopters, the airplanes, tremendous amount of dogs, cadaver dogs, search dogs, search and rescue teams. We did everything humanly possible up there … Everything is on the table, and everything is being looked at.”
The parents maintain the belief that Summer was targeted and abducted from their property, a theory that has no known supporting evidence.
Parents in the Media:
Don Wells and Candus Bly agreed to appear on a two-part Dr. Phil show (which aired in October 2021) where they were interviewed by body language experts, Scott Rouse and Greg Hartley from The Behavior Panel, before sitting down to talk with Dr. Phil. The show did not go as planned, however, as Candus refused to stay in the interview with Scott and Greg after becoming emotional and claiming that she felt “interrogated.” Don remained alone and finished the interview. Candus did appear on the second episode with Dr. Phil, but was not open to further questions, even when Dr. Phil suggested he might help her remember or realize something she “knows but doesn’t even know she knows.” Again, Candus refused, stating, “There’s nothing else to remember.” In a YouTube video posted the Official Wells Family YouTube channel, run by their “media manager,” Tim Mullen, “Candus” explains that she had many reasons for walking off the set, including an alleged sighting of Summer in Texas. Candus claims her emotions were thrown into a state of distress.
After the couple left the stage, Dr. Phil invited his guests from The Behavior Panel on stage where they analyzed the short segment of footage that included Candus before she walked off. All three men agreed that Candus shows signs of having “guilty knowledge” in Summer’s disappearance. In a similar assessment of Don’s recorded interview, Scott and Greg tell Dr. Phil that, in their opinion, Don does not possess guilty knowledge of Summer’s disappearance.
The Dr. Phil show was far from the last time that Summer Wells’ parents appeared on screen since their daughter disappeared. They have become regular guests on several YouTube channels where web sleuths, true crime content creators, informal investigators, and thousands of passionate followers have been hard at work analyzing and fact-checking any new information pertaining to the case that becomes available, including the content generated from Summer’s parents’ nightly appearance on YouTube lives.
Having Don and Candus online every night and available to read comments from the general public, as well as answer any questions people may have, has brought the search for Summer to a fever pitch. Often appearing intoxicated or high, Don and Candus have both added fuel to popular theories amongst the YouTube sleuths with inflammatory statements about each other and those involved in the investigation and their drunken emotional outbursts.
This story is filled with inconsistencies, bad parenting, drug use, domestic abuse, and a long list of colorful characters from the hills of Tennessee. The motives are many, the grievances are long, everyone is a suspect.
I will be posting on this case every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until Summer is found.
The Gunn Journal 