The basement door stood open.
That’s what her brothers noticed first—the door to the lower level of their home on Ben Hill Road, swinging wide in the summer breeze. They’d been upstairs, doing what kids do on a June afternoon in rural Tennessee. Their little sister had gone down to play with her toys maybe an hour before. Maybe less. Time moves differently when you’re young, when the days stretch long and lazy under the Appalachian sun.
But now the door was open. And Summer Moon-Utah Wells, just five years old with blonde hair and bright blue eyes, was gone.
It was June 15, 2021. The time was somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 in the evening. And in that single hour—in those precious sixty minutes—a little girl vanished from her own home in Hawkins County, Tennessee, triggering one of the most haunting missing persons cases the state has ever seen.
Four years later, her family still doesn’t have answers. But what investigators found in the hours, days, and months after Summer disappeared would raise more questions than anyone could have imagined.
The Last Normal Day
June 15, 2021, started like any other summer day in the Wells household.
Summer woke up that morning in the small home she shared with her parents, Don and Candus Wells, and her three older brothers. The property on Ben Hill Road sat tucked into the hills of Hawkins County, a rural stretch of northeastern Tennessee where neighbors know each other by name and the nearest town—Rogersville—is a fifteen-minute drive down winding country roads.
The Wells family didn’t have much. Don worked construction jobs when he could find them. Candus stayed home with the kids. Their house was modest, weathered by mountain winters and humid summers. But it was home. And on that Tuesday morning, nobody could have imagined it would be the last day Summer would ever see it.
That morning, Candus took Summer on errands. They went to town—just a regular trip, the kind mothers and daughters make together all the time. They stopped at a few places. Summer was excited, the way five-year-olds get excited about anything that breaks up the routine of a summer day.
Later, they went to visit Summer’s grandmother. Candus’s mother lived nearby, and the visit was pleasant, unremarkable. Summer played. She laughed. She helped her grandmother plant flowers in the garden, her small hands pushing dirt around the roots while the adults talked.
At some point that afternoon, they stopped at a local swimming hole—a place where kids cool off in the creek when the Tennessee heat gets too thick to bear. Summer got in the water. She played. She was happy.
Everything was normal. Everything was fine.
They arrived back home on Ben Hill Road sometime in the late afternoon. The sun was still high, the air thick with humidity. Summer was tired from the day’s adventures, but she was in good spirits. She went inside the house.
And then—somewhere in the next hour—everything changed.
The Hour She Disappeared
The timeline is frustratingly vague, the way timelines often are when nobody realizes something terrible is happening until it’s already too late.
Summer went down to the basement. That much everyone agrees on. The lower level of the Wells home wasn’t a finished basement with carpet and drywall—it was more of an unfinished space, the kind of half-underground room common in homes built into hillsides. Cool in summer. Dark. A place where kids might keep toys or play when the upstairs gets too hot.
Summer’s brothers were upstairs. Her mother was somewhere in the house. Her father, Don, wasn’t home yet—he was still out working.
The time was somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m..
Summer went down to the basement to play.
And then—nothing.
When her brothers went to check on her, she wasn’t there. The basement was empty. The door—the one that led outside from the lower level—was open.
Had she gone outside? Was she playing in the yard?
They looked. Called her name. Checked the usual places a five-year-old might wander. The woods behind the house. The driveway. The neighbor’s property.
Summer didn’t answer.
That’s when panic set in. That cold, terrible realization that something is very, very wrong. The kind of panic that makes your hands shake and your voice crack when you dial 911.
At 6:30 p.m., Candus Wells called the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office to report her daughter missing.
Summer Moon-Utah Wells—five years old, three feet tall, forty pounds, blonde hair, blue eyes—had vanished from her own home.
The Search Begins
What happened next was a mobilization unlike anything Hawkins County had seen in years.
Within minutes, sheriff’s deputies arrived at the Wells property. Within an hour, dozens of officers, volunteers, and search-and-rescue teams descended on Ben Hill Road. By nightfall, the woods surrounding the Wells home were filled with flashlights, voices calling Summer’s name, and the sound of boots crashing through underbrush.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation took over the case almost immediately. This wasn’t just a lost child—this was a potential abduction. An AMBER Alert was issued. Summer’s face appeared on news stations across Tennessee and beyond.
Search dogs were brought in—trained cadaver dogs and tracking dogs, their noses pressed to the ground as they tried to pick up Summer’s scent. And they did. The dogs tracked something.
The trail led from the basement door, across the yard, and into the woods. Deep into the woods. The dogs followed the scent for a considerable distance, weaving through trees and over rough terrain, their handlers struggling to keep up.
And then—the trail went cold. The dogs lost the scent. Just like that, it was gone.
What did that mean? Had Summer walked into those woods on her own? Had someone carried her? The dogs couldn’t tell them. All they knew was that Summer’s scent had been there—and then it wasn’t.
Helicopters circled overhead, their thermal cameras scanning the dense Appalachian forest for any sign of a small body, alive or dead. Dive teams searched nearby ponds and creeks. Volunteers walked shoulder-to-shoulder through fields, their eyes on the ground, looking for anything—a shoe, a piece of clothing, any clue that might lead them to Summer.
Days passed. Then a week. Then two weeks.
They found nothing.
The Red Truck
Then came the detail that would haunt investigators—and Summer’s family—for years.
Someone had seen a truck.
It was a red—or maybe maroon—Toyota Tacoma pickup. Older model. It had a white ladder rack on top and a white toolbox in the bed. The kind of truck you see all over rural Tennessee, driven by construction workers and handymen.
But this truck had been seen in the area around the Wells home on June 15. Around the time Summer disappeared.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation put out a public appeal. They needed to find the driver of that truck—not as a suspect, but as a potential witness. Maybe the driver had seen something. Maybe they’d noticed a little girl walking along the road, or someone carrying a child, or a vehicle that didn’t belong.
The appeal went out across local news stations and social media. Investigators were careful with their language—they didn’t want to accuse anyone, didn’t want to start a witch hunt. They just needed to talk to whoever was driving that red Tacoma.
But nobody came forward.
Weeks passed. Months. The driver of the red truck never identified themselves. If they saw the appeals, they never responded. If they had information, they never shared it.
Was the truck connected to Summer’s disappearance? Or was it just a coincidence—a worker passing through the area, unaware that a little girl had vanished just minutes after they drove by?.
To this day, nobody knows.
The Scream
There was something else. Something the investigators didn’t release to the public right away.
A neighbor—a woman who lived not far from the Wells property—told police that she’d heard something that day. Around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m., an hour or so before Summer was reported missing, she’d heard a scream.
It wasn’t a playful scream. It wasn’t the sound of kids roughhousing or squealing with laughter. It was different. Sharp. Urgent. The kind of scream that makes you stop what you’re doing and listen.
But then—nothing. No follow-up sound. No commotion. The neighbor thought maybe it was just kids playing after all. Maybe someone had gotten startled or scraped their knee. She didn’t think much of it at the time.
It wasn’t until later—after Summer was reported missing, after the search began—that the neighbor remembered the scream. She told police. They took note.
Was it Summer? Had she screamed? Had she been taken? Had she seen something that frightened her?.
Or was it unrelated—just another sound in a rural neighborhood where kids play outside and voices carry through the trees?.
Nobody knows.
A Father’s Nightmare
Don Wells wasn’t home when Summer disappeared.
He was at work—or finishing up a job, depending on which interview you read. He came home to find his property surrounded by police cars, search teams trampling through his yard, helicopters overhead, and his youngest child gone.
In the days and weeks that followed, Don Wells became the face of the search for Summer. He gave interviews. He made appeals. He stood in front of news cameras with exhausted eyes and a trembling voice, begging anyone with information to come forward.
“She was taken,” he said. Over and over, he said it. “My daughter was taken. She didn’t wander off. She was taken”.
He didn’t believe Summer had gotten lost in the woods. He didn’t believe she’d wandered away and succumbed to the elements. He believed—knew, in his gut—that someone had taken his little girl.
But who? And why?
Don Wells had theories. He talked about human trafficking. About strangers watching the property. About people who might have wanted to hurt his family. Some of his statements seemed frantic, desperate—the ramblings of a father trying to make sense of the senseless.
The public didn’t know what to make of him. Some sympathized. Some suspected. In cases like this, the family is always under scrutiny. Always.
Don Wells felt that scrutiny. He felt the eyes on him, the whispers, the accusations lobbed at him on social media by armchair detectives convinced they’d cracked the case.
“They call me a child killer,” he said in one interview, his voice cracking. “People I’ve never met, calling me a murderer. I lost my job because of it. I can’t go anywhere without people staring at me”.
The weight of it crushed him. The not knowing. The accusations. The endless, gnawing fear of what might have happened to Summer.
And then—on top of everything else—the state took his other children away.
The Boys Are Gone
In the months following Summer’s disappearance, Child Protective Services stepped in.
The three Wells boys—Summer’s older brothers—were removed from the home. The state deemed the environment unsafe. Don and Candus Wells had to sign over custody.
For a family already shattered by the loss of their daughter, it was another unbearable blow. Don Wells spoke about it in interviews, his voice hollow, his eyes empty.
“I lost Summer. And then I lost my boys. They took my boys”.
The reasons for the removal weren’t made fully public—child welfare cases rarely are. But the implication was clear: whatever investigators found at the Wells home, whatever the family dynamics were, the state decided the boys were better off somewhere else.
Don Wells now lives alone in the house on Ben Hill Road. The same house Summer disappeared from. The same property that was once filled with search teams and news cameras and volunteers handing out flyers.
Now it’s quiet. Empty. A place haunted by absence.
The Investigation Stalls
As the months turned into years, the investigation into Summer Wells’ disappearance began to slow.
The initial burst of activity—the searches, the interviews, the press conferences—gave way to a quieter, more methodical process. Investigators followed leads. They interviewed dozens of people. They combed through tips that poured in from across the country.
But nothing led them to Summer.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation maintained that the case was still active. Still a priority. They assured the public that they hadn’t given up, that they were still pursuing every lead.
But by 2022, the updates had become infrequent. Press conferences stopped. The media attention faded. The case that had once dominated local news cycles slipped into the background.
For the people of Hawkins County, life moved on. For Don and Candus Wells, it never would.
By March 2022, Don Wells stopped cooperating with investigators. He’d answered their questions for months. He’d submitted to interviews, polygraphs, scrutiny. And still, they had no answers. Still, people accused him. Still, his daughter was gone.
He stopped talking to the police. Stopped doing interviews. He retreated into the house on Ben Hill Road and shut the door.
Candus, too, fell silent. The couple—already strained by grief and suspicion—seemed to collapse inward, their pain too much to share with the world anymore.
And Summer remained missing.
June 2025: Four Years Later
This past June marked four years since Summer Wells disappeared.
Four years of searching. Four years of waiting. Four years of hoping against hope that somehow, someway, Summer would come home.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation marked the grim anniversary with a renewed push for information. They announced new search efforts—teams would return to the area around Ben Hill Road, using updated technology and fresh eyes to look for anything that might have been missed in 2021.
They also released something else: an age-progression photo of Summer.
The image, created by forensic artists, shows what Summer might look like now at nine years old. Her blonde hair is longer. Her face is less round, more defined. She’s not a toddler anymore. She’s a little girl on the cusp of adolescence.
The photo was shared across social media, on news stations, in police bulletins. The hope—fragile, but persistent—is that someone, somewhere, might see the image and recognize her. Might see a girl who looks like Summer living under a different name, in a different state, with people who have no right to call her their own.
“We want people to know that we haven’t forgotten Summer,” a TBI spokesperson said. “We will never stop looking for her”.
Don Wells, in a rare public statement, echoed that sentiment. “I’ll never stop looking for my daughter. Never”.
But four years is a long time. Long enough for hope to start feeling like denial. Long enough for the questions to start outweighing the answers.
What Really Happened?
That’s the question everyone asks. The question that hangs over this case like a storm cloud that never breaks.
What happened to Summer Wells?
The theories are endless, each one more heartbreaking than the last.
Theory One: She wandered into the woods and got lost. It’s possible. She was five years old. The terrain around the Wells property is rugged, densely wooded, full of ravines and creeks. A small child could easily become disoriented, fall, get trapped. But search teams spent weeks combing those woods with dogs, helicopters, and trained volunteers. They found nothing. No body. No clothing. No trace of her. And the search dogs lost her scent—if she’d simply wandered off, wouldn’t they have followed her trail all the way to where she stopped?.
Theory Two: She was abducted by a stranger. The red truck. The open basement door. The scream. These details suggest that someone could have taken Summer. But who? And how did they get onto the property without being seen? The Wells home sits on a rural road, but it’s not isolated. Neighbors are within shouting distance. How could someone snatch a child in broad daylight and vanish without a trace?.
Theory Three: Something happened inside the home. This is the theory that haunts the darkest corners of the internet, the one whispered in true crime forums and Reddit threads. The idea that Summer didn’t leave the property at all. That something happened inside the house—an accident, a moment of rage, a tragedy—and that someone covered it up. But there’s no evidence. No body. No confession. Just speculation fueled by the family’s troubled history and the scrutiny that always falls on parents in cases like this.
Theory Four: She drowned at the swimming hole. Some online sleuths believe that Summer died earlier in the day—at the swimming hole where Candus took her before they came home. They point to inconsistencies in the timeline, to unanswered questions about who was there and what happened. But again, there’s no evidence. No body. No proof. Just theories.
The truth is, nobody knows.
Not the police. Not the TBI. Not the family. Not the volunteers who spent weeks searching. Not the internet detectives who’ve dissected every interview and every photo.
Four years later, the mystery of what happened to Summer Wells remains unsolved.
A Community Comes Together
In the days after Summer disappeared, something remarkable happened in Hawkins County.
People came. Not just neighbors—though neighbors came by the dozens—but strangers. People from across Tennessee, from neighboring states, from all over the country who heard about a missing five-year-old and felt compelled to help.
They arrived with search dogs and flashlights. They brought food and water for the volunteers. They organized supply stations and command posts. They printed flyers and posted them on every telephone pole, storefront window, and community bulletin board they could find.
The Mt. Carmel Freewill Baptist Church opened its doors and became the command center for the search operations. Tables were set up inside the church hall, covered with maps, clipboards, sign-in sheets. Outside, volunteers gathered in clusters, receiving assignments, dividing into search teams, heading out into the woods.
Local businesses donated supplies. Restaurants sent trays of sandwiches. Gas stations provided free coffee. Hardware stores handed out batteries and flashlights. It was the kind of community response you see in small towns—the kind where people know each other’s names and take care of their own.
Don Wells, standing outside his home in those early days, spoke to reporters with tears in his eyes. “I just want to thank everybody,” he said, his voice breaking. “The support has been overwhelming. We just want our little girl back”.
But as the days stretched into weeks, the volunteers thinned. The news cameras left. The command post at the church closed down. Life, as it always does, moved on.
Except for the Wells family. For them, time stopped on June 15, 2021.
The Search Organizations
In July 2021, a month after Summer disappeared, a new group arrived in Hawkins County: Texas EquuSearch.
EquuSearch is a non-profit search-and-rescue organization that specializes in finding missing persons. They’ve worked on high-profile cases across the country, bringing trained volunteers, specialized equipment, and decades of experience to searches that have gone cold.
When EquuSearch arrived in Beech Creek, they brought hope. Fresh eyes. New strategies.
Volunteers battled the brutal Tennessee summer heat—temperatures soaring into the 90s, humidity thick enough to choke on—as they combed through the rugged terrain surrounding the Wells property. They searched creek beds. They checked abandoned structures. They walked grid patterns through dense forest, their eyes on the ground, looking for anything that might have been overlooked in the initial search.
Dave Rader, the director of EquuSearch, spoke to local media about the challenges. “This is some of the toughest terrain I’ve ever seen,” he said. “The woods are dense. The ground is uneven. There are ravines and drop-offs everywhere. But that’s what we do. We don’t give up”.
But the search wasn’t without controversy.
Some of the EquuSearch volunteers reportedly searched private property without permission. Landowners complained. The Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office stepped in, asserting that all searches needed to be coordinated with law enforcement. There were tensions—accusations that EquuSearch wasn’t communicating with the TBI, that they were overstepping boundaries.
Eventually, EquuSearch left. They’d searched as much as they could. They’d found nothing.
To date, law enforcement has received more than 7,000 tips about Summer’s disappearance. Seven thousand people who thought they saw something, heard something, remembered something that might help. Seven thousand leads that investigators had to follow up on, one by one.
Detective John Pruitt, the lead investigator on the case, described his daily routine in a 2022 interview. “My day starts with checking the tipline and voicemail. Then I make phone calls. I follow up on any credible leads. I go back to anything from the day before that didn’t reach a good conclusion. And then I work my other cases, because the work doesn’t stop. I’ve never worked a missing child case with this many entities and agencies involved. The pressure is immense”.
Not a single one of those 7,000 tips has led to Summer.
The Dark Side of Social Media
If there’s one thing that’s made this case harder—one factor that’s caused immeasurable pain to everyone involved—it’s social media.
From the moment Summer’s face appeared on news stations and Facebook pages, the internet detectives descended. YouTube channels sprouted up, dedicated entirely to “solving” the case. Reddit threads filled with theories, speculation, accusations. TikTok videos dissected every interview, every photo, every perceived inconsistency in the family’s story.
Some of it was well-intentioned—people genuinely trying to help, to piece together the puzzle. But much of it was toxic. Vicious. Cruel.
Don and Candus Wells became targets. Armchair sleuths picked apart their lives, their pasts, their parenting. They accused them of everything from neglect to murder. They called them “child killers” and worse. They harassed anyone associated with the family—friends, employers, extended relatives.
“These social media groups would attack anybody that we knew,” Don Wells said in a 2025 interview. “Any employer that we worked for. It made it really hard for us to obtain employment and all these things”.
He lost his job. People recognized him in public and confronted him. Strangers sent him death threats. The harassment was relentless.
Candus fared no better. Online sleuths scrutinized her every word, every movement on the day Summer disappeared. They accused her of lying about the timeline. They claimed she’d hurt Summer at the swimming hole and covered it up. They posted videos and blog posts with titles like “Candus Wells Knows EXACTLY What Happened”.
There was no evidence for any of it. Just speculation. Just people on the internet, playing detective, convinced they’d cracked a case that law enforcement couldn’t solve.
In June 2022, TBI spokesperson Leslie Earhart addressed the issue directly in a press conference. Her frustration was palpable.
“This has had a major impact on the investigation, and not in a good way,” she said. “We’ve had people report tips based on things they saw in a YouTube video or read on Facebook. That information is not credible. It’s not helpful. It only slows us down”.
She continued, her voice firm. “There are vloggers out there who are profiting off this case. They’re posting false allegations about the family, and people are treating that information as fact. Please help us. Only call if you have direct, specific information about the disappearance of Summer”.
But the damage was done. The online circus surrounding the case had made it harder for investigators to sift through real leads. It had destroyed what was left of the Wells family’s privacy. And it had turned a tragedy into entertainment.
The Unimaginable Loss
Losing Summer was devastating. Losing their three sons was unbearable.
In the months after Summer disappeared, Child Protective Services conducted their own investigation into the Wells household. What they found led them to remove the three boys from the home.
Don and Candus Wells were faced with an impossible choice: fight for custody and risk prolonging the children’s time in the system, or sign over their parental rights and give the boys a chance at stability.
They signed. They gave up their sons.
In a 2025 interview, Don Wells spoke about it with the kind of exhaustion that comes from years of grief. “They searched and tore our house apart eleven times. Eleven times. I’ve never even heard of that before. The whole thing has really hurt me and Candus. But we’re still hanging in there for our kids. We’re trying to do what’s right. And we’re holding out hope that Summer will be found”.
He hasn’t seen his sons much since they were taken. The boys, according to reports, don’t want to see their parents. They’re safe now. They’re in a stable environment. And maybe that’s for the best.
But it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
Don and Candus Wells now live alone in the house on Ben Hill Road. The same house where Summer disappeared. The same yard where search teams once gathered. The same driveway where news vans once parked.
It’s quiet now. Too quiet.
“We’d like to see them come home,” Don said of his sons. “We want to see them involved in our church, worshiping our God. We love them very much”.
But for now, the house on Ben Hill Road stands empty of the laughter of children. Empty of the chaos and noise that comes with raising four kids. Empty of everything except memory and grief.
Holding On to Hope
Despite everything—the failed searches, the lack of answers, the accusations, the loss of their sons—Don and Candus Wells refuse to give up hope.
“Summer was there one minute, and the next she wasn’t,” Don said. “It’s just—there’s no telling where she’s at. But I believe she’s still out there. I believe she was taken. And I believe we’ll find her”.
It’s been four years. Four years of not knowing. Four years of wondering. Four years of lying awake at night, imagining the worst and praying for the best.
Don clings to his faith. “We’re holding on through our faith in God,” he said. “That’s what’s keeping us going”.
In June 2025, on the fourth anniversary of Summer’s disappearance, the community gathered again. Not in the massive numbers that showed up in 2021, but a smaller, quieter group—people who still remember, who still care, who still hope.
There have been vigils. Prayer gatherings. Birthday celebrations held in Summer’s honor, marking the years she’s been gone with candles and tears and songs.
At Cedar Grove Baptist Church in February 2024, the community came together for a “birthday event” to pray for Summer and other missing and exploited children. It was a somber gathering—people holding hands, bowing their heads, asking God to bring Summer home.
And in August 2025, when the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation released the age-progression photo of Summer—showing what she might look like at nine years old—the image was shared thousands of times across social media.
People still care. People still remember. People are still looking.
What the Case Reveals
The disappearance of Summer Wells isn’t just a mystery. It’s a window into something deeper—something uncomfortable that we don’t like to talk about.
Hawkins County, Tennessee, is beautiful. The mountains are breathtaking. The people are kind. But it’s also a place shaped by poverty, isolation, and generational trauma.
Rural Appalachia has struggled for decades—generations without adequate education or healthcare, cycles of abuse and addiction that get passed down from parents to children. It’s a secretive world, a place where outsiders aren’t always welcome, where people protect their own and don’t trust authorities.
The Wells family is a product of that world. Don and Candus both had troubled pasts—arrests, substance abuse issues, previous involvement with child protective services. Candus had lost custody of children before. Don had a history that raised red flags.
Does that mean they hurt Summer? Does that mean they’re guilty of something?
Not necessarily. But it does mean that Summer was growing up in a home that was already fragile, already under strain. A home where poverty and instability were constants.
And when a child disappears from a home like that, the questions multiply. The suspicions deepen. The investigation becomes infinitely more complicated.
Some people believe the Wells family knows exactly what happened to Summer. They point to inconsistencies in the timeline, to the family’s refusal to continue cooperating with police after 2022, to the troubled history.
Others believe Summer was a victim of circumstance—a child who wandered off or was taken by a stranger, and whose family is being unjustly vilified.
The truth is, nobody knows. And until someone comes forward with real information, nobody will.
The Investigation Continues
The TBI insists the case is not cold.
“Investigative work continues to occur almost daily,” they said in a statement. “We want to assure everyone who has been part of this investigation or has been following this case that it is not cold. We continue to follow up on potential leads and will not give up on finding Summer”.
The AMBER Alert issued for Summer on June 16, 2021, remains active. An AMBER Alert stays active until a child is located.
That means, technically, law enforcement still believes there’s a chance Summer could be found alive.
It’s a slim chance. After four years, the odds are not good. But it’s a chance.
The TBI has stated that there is no evidence Summer was abducted. But they also haven’t ruled it out. They’ve explored every avenue—foul play, abduction, the possibility that she wandered off and got lost in the rough terrain.
They’ve interviewed hundreds of people. They’ve searched the property eleven times. They’ve followed up on thousands of tips.
And still, they have no answers.
Detective John Pruitt, the lead investigator, said it best in his 2022 interview. “I will follow up on everything I can to try and bring closure for this”.
Closure. That’s what everyone wants. That’s what Summer’s family deserves. That’s what the community of Hawkins County is waiting for.
A Message to Summer
If Summer Wells is out there—if by some miracle she’s alive, living under a different name, unaware of the search that’s been ongoing for four years—there are people who want her to know something.
Your family loves you. Your father thinks about you every single day. Your mother has never stopped looking for you. The people of Hawkins County have never forgotten you.
Your face is on missing person posters across the country. Your age-progression photo has been shared by thousands of people who are hoping—praying—that someone, somewhere, will recognize you.
You are not forgotten. You are not lost to memory. You are loved.
And if something terrible happened—if Summer is no longer with us—then her family still deserves answers. They deserve to know what happened. They deserve to lay their daughter to rest.
Don Wells said it plainly in his 2025 interview. “We just want to know. We just want closure. We want to bring Summer home”.
The Red Truck Still Haunts
Four years later, the image of that red Toyota Tacoma still lingers.
Who was driving it? What were they doing in the area? Did they see something? Did they know something?.
The TBI still wants to talk to that driver. If you were driving a red or maroon Toyota Tacoma pickup truck with a white ladder rack and white toolbox in Hawkins County on June 15, 2021, law enforcement wants to hear from you.
You’re not in trouble. You’re not a suspect. But you might have seen something. You might hold the key to solving this case.
All it takes is one piece of information. One detail. One memory that didn’t seem important at the time but could change everything.
Four Years of Questions
What happened to Summer Wells?.
Did she wander into the woods and get lost, her small body succumbing to the elements in a place searchers couldn’t reach?.
Was she taken by someone—a stranger, an opportunist, someone who saw a vulnerable child and acted on impulse?.
Did something happen inside the home—an accident, a moment of violence, something that was then covered up?.
Was there a darker reason—debts owed, people crossed, a world of drugs and desperation that Summer got caught in the middle of?.
Nobody knows.
And that’s the horror of it. Not the knowing, but the not knowing. The endless questions. The terrible possibilities that play out in your mind at 3 a.m. when you can’t sleep.
For Don and Candus Wells, that not knowing is a living nightmare.
For the people of Hawkins County, it’s a wound that hasn’t healed.
For law enforcement, it’s a case that haunts them.
And for Summer—wherever she is—it’s a story that deserves an ending.
How You Can Help
If you have information about Summer Wells’ disappearance, please contact the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-TBI-FIND.
You can also email tips to [email protected] or call the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office at 423-272-7121.
Your tip could be the one that brings Summer home. It could be the detail that solves this case. It could be the answer that a family has been desperately searching for.
Don’t assume someone else has already reported what you know. Don’t assume your information isn’t important. If you saw something, heard something, or know something about June 15, 2021, or the days surrounding it—call.
Summer Wells is still missing. But she’s not forgotten.
And somewhere, somehow, there’s someone who knows what happened to her.
The House on Ben Hill Road
The house still stands on Ben Hill Road, tucked into the Tennessee hills.
The basement door that was found open that June evening—still there. The yard where Summer played—still there. The woods where search dogs followed her scent—still there.
But Summer is gone.
And every day that passes without answers is another day that her family lives in agony, that the community carries the weight of her absence, that the case grows a little colder.
Don Wells walks through that house alone now. He looks at the basement door. He remembers his daughter’s laugh. He wonders—like he does every single day—what happened.
“She was there one minute,” he says. “And the next she wasn’t”.
Never Forgotten
In February 2024, on what would have been Summer’s eighth birthday, the community gathered at Cedar Grove Baptist Church to pray.
In June 2025, on the fourth anniversary of her disappearance, her father gave another interview, his voice steady but his eyes betraying the pain he carries every moment of every day.
In August 2025, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation released an age-progression photo, showing Summer as she might look now—nine years old, her face more mature, but those blue eyes unmistakable.
The photo was shared across the country. Thousands of people saw it. Thousands of people are still looking.
Because Summer Wells—five years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, three feet tall, forty pounds—didn’t just disappear into the Tennessee woods.
She disappeared into one of the most haunting unsolved mysteries in the state’s history.
And until someone comes forward with the truth, her story remains unfinished.
Summer Moon-Utah Wells. Born February 4, 2016. Missing since June 15, 2021. Still loved. Still searched for. Still remembered.
If you know something, say something. Call 1-800-TBI-FIND.
