Ashley Summers

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1:53Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics including violence, abuse, and murder. This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

2:26Today, I'm telling you about the case of a 14-year-old girl from Cleveland, who left a party at her uncle's house on the 4th of July in 2007 and never made it home. This is the case of Ashley Summers.

2:46Ashley's been described as a typical teenager. Sweet but strong, and loved watching horror movies with her mom Jennifer. She also spent a lot of time with her five younger siblings at their home on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. While Ashley's dad was never really in her life, she does have a huge extended family. Tons of cousins, more than ten aunts and uncles, and of course her grandparents. And Ashley was the first baby in the family, so she was absolutely adored by all the adults and eventually younger siblings and cousins. But as Ashley's 14th birthday approached in the summer of 2007, her family noticed her talking back a little bit more, becoming a little bit more rebellious like a lot of teenagers.

3:33She also started dating a 16-year-old boy named Jean who she met in the neighborhood, and Ashley's mom did not approve. In her interview with Disappeared, she explains that she just thought Ashley was too young to be dating Even after she turned 14 in June So, Ashley does what a lot of teenagers do And instead of not seeing her boyfriend, she just hides it Or at least she tries to hide it She begins sneaking Jean into the house while her mom's at work But again, Ashley does have five younger siblings So of course Jennifer finds out Ashley also begins to start stealing money from her mom At first, Jennifer says it was just small amounts that she basically let slide But then Ashley took all the money in her drawer Basically Jennifer's entire paycheck Then she comes home with a tattoo on her arm of a heart and her boyfriend, Gene's name Jennifer is understandably upset and it's clear that Ashley does not plan to stop seeing Jean anytime soon despite her wishes.

4:38So Jennifer decides to send Ashley to live with her maternal grandma for the rest of the summer. Ashley loves her grandma and Jennifer's hoping that she'll listen to her and that maybe a little bit of distance would keep her away from her boyfriend. It was only four miles away but it seems like Jean didn't have a car so that distance did seem to be enough to make it work for a little bit or at least slow things down a bit. But while Ashley was technically staying at her grandma's house, she did bounce around between her aunt's and uncle's homes too, and mostly spent a good amount of time at her uncle Kevin's house.

5:14This seems to be the gathering spot for the family, especially the younger cousins. And according to Ashley's family, Kevin was known to spoil Ashley. But Ashley does also ask her Aunt Deborah if she can come live with her. Deborah does agree, but the plan never really happens. During this time, Jennifer is trying to give Ashley some space. She does check up on her about every other day as Ashley bounces around that summer. During the last week of June, she even sees Ashley in person at her Aunt Christina's house. And the week after that was the 4th of July. And this is a really special holiday for Ashley's family.

5:53not just to celebrate America's Independence Day, but it was also her Uncle Keith's birthday. Every year on the 4th, they'd have a big party with all the family to celebrate, and 2007 was no exception. On the 4th, Ashley walks about two miles from her Uncle Kevin's house to her Uncle Keith's house to celebrate. Ashley comes alone, and from what I could find, it doesn't look like her mom or siblings attended this party for some reason. When Ashley gets there, she's visibly upset. But they don't really know why. Ashley is 14, she's going through a lot right now, so it may just be kind of par for the course at this point.

6:33But Ashley does eventually shake it off and enjoys the party. She jumps in the pool with her cousins, they're dancing, they're laughing, she's eating. Everything seems fine. After a few hours, at about 6pm, Ashley decides to call it a day. She makes her rounds, telling everybody goodbye, and says that she plans to walk to her Aunt Christina's house. It's only a few blocks away, about a 10-minute walk. But Ashley never makes it to her Aunt Christina's house. On July 6, Jennifer tries to reach out to Ashley to check in, but she can't get a hold of her. She calls around to the family, Ashley's aunts and uncles, but no one has seen her.

7:15But when Jennifer reaches out to Ashley's uncle Kevin, she realizes why Ashley might have been upset at that party. Kevin says that he saw Ashley the morning before the party, and he says that they got into a fight. Apparently, Ashley was engaging in some type of family gossip on her cell phone. Kevin tells her to stop, Ashley ignores him, and Kevin grabs her cell phone and breaks it. So we don't know for sure, but this is probably why Ashley was upset at the party. But now it's been two days and no one has seen her. So Jennifer goes to the police station to file a missing persons report. They ask her some questions, and Jennifer explains the situation.

7:57Them arguing, her boyfriend, Ashley's uncle, the phone, and we know what police said. They tell her to hold tight, they're sure that Ashley's just upset and she'll probably be home soon. So we have a 14-year-old who has been missing for two days, and the investigation falls on her family. Without any help from police, Ashley's family creates and prints some flyers, and they get to work putting them up all around town. Really, around the areas that Ashley was known to be. Her grandma's, again, her aunts and uncles, her mom's house, anywhere they can think of. Now, at this point, many of Ashley's family members assume that she's probably somewhere with her boyfriend.

8:39And it makes sense. Ashley is forbidden to see her boyfriend, but she's madly in love, gets this tattoo. It does seem natural to think that she could be with her boyfriend. But at first, they don't really outright ask him, they just start putting up flyers around his house too. Their hope is that Ashley and Jean see these flyers and realize how serious the issue is. but then, as they're putting up these flyers, they notice that someone is taking them down shortly after. They immediately assume that it's Ashley or Jean, or both of them, and it does give them some hope. At this point, Jennifer even starts following Jean to see if he'll lead her to Ashley.

9:21One night, Jean walks into an abandoned house, and Jennifer reports it to police, hopeful that maybe Ashley is staying there. But after a search, there's no trace of Ashley. Eventually, the police do take the time to ask Gene what he knows about Ashley. He explains that he last saw her a few days before the 4th of July. He and his dad dropped her off at her Uncle Kevin's house. But after that, Gene was out of the area for a family reunion. He says when he back, Ashley was gone. A few weeks after Ashley goes missing, her mom gets a phone call from an unknown number. Luckily, she was on her break at her job, so she was able to answer.

10:02And the caller says that they're Ashley, that they're fine, but they hang up before Jennifer can say anything. In her interview with Disappeared, Jennifer says that she immediately began telling the family that Ashley called and that she was okay. But in other interviews with a variety of news outlets, it seems that the hope she had quickly soured as she began to believe it was not Ashley who called.

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12:08them. The Ohio Attorney General's office helped share her flyer. Not long after this, in November, Ashley's grandparents are driving down the street when they do a double take. They see a young girl that looks just like Ashley. Well, at least what they've been told she may look like now. They'd gotten a tip that Ashley may have cut her hair and dyed it blonde. The girl they see does have short blonde hair, and apparently, according to them, her face is a complete match for Ashley's. They said they were only going about 25 miles an hour, and they were sure this was their granddaughter. So they book it, they turn around, and they go back to speak to this girl.

12:52But she's gone. They're devastated. Always wondering if maybe that was Ashley. The holidays come and go without Ashley there. a noticeable absence for the entire family. And really, there's almost no movement in the case until May 2008, when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reaches out to the FBI to take a look. This is when the FBI begins to consider that Ashley's disappearance may be linked to two other girls in the area, 16-year-old Amanda Berry, who went missing in April 2003, and 14-year-old Gina DeJesus who went missing in 2004. All three went missing from West Cleveland, were close in age, and at one point, they even all attended the same school.

13:44So they basically start the investigation into what happened to Ashley from scratch. The FBI begins re-interviewing people with a heavy focus on the older males in the family as well as Gene. Polygraph tests are administered, but the FBI never releases those results. They start going door-to-door, and with permission, searching many of the homes and properties in the area. They also look into sex offenders and really anybody with a criminal history in the area, but they come up short. They also finally try to trace that call from Ashley, but it had been too long, and Jennifer wasn't able to remember the date, and really, it doesn't seem to have gone any further.

14:28Now, this really becomes this huge task force for all three girls, and in June, Ashley's case is officially relabeled as an endangered juvenile. Though, the FBI does tell the media that they still haven't found any indication of foul play. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, they don't find Ashley. In the summer of 2012, she would have turned 18, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children releases an age-progressed photo of her About a year later, her family is floored, and has more hope than ever, when there's a breakthrough on the two other cases the FBI was investigating alongside Ashley's Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus are found on May 6, 2013 Along with them is a third woman whose identity is not released immediately And all of these women were found in a home less than two miles away from Ashley's uncle's house Where her family last saw her They have every reason to hold out hope that this third woman is Ashley And they wait for hours to get confirmation But it wasn't Ashley The third woman was Michelle Knight who has since changed her name to Lily Rose.

15:47She went missing in 2002 when she was 21, but unlike Amanda and Gina, no one reported her missing. All three were being held captive by a man named Ariel Castro who did horrific things to them. If you want to learn more about their stories, I highly recommend supporting them directly and reading the books that they've all written. I'll have links in the episode description for you. but of course there was still hope that maybe Ariel Castro knew something about Ashley the FBI did speak to him about her case and there didn't appear to be any connection Gina, Amanda, and Lily Rose all denied knowing anything about Ashley too and while there were rumors that Ashley's name or initials were found in Castro's basement the FBI has dispelled this rumor so without any real connection to Ashley I am hesitant to go into a solved case in this episode, but Castro was sentenced to life in prison and died by suicide four months into his sentence.

16:51There is a silver lining though. This generated a lot of media for Ashley's case and is definitely one of the most discussed aspects of it, given how little information we actually know. Ashley's grandmother goes on Anderson Cooper that same year to talk about her, and her case is picked up by more media outlets who dubbed Ashley as the girl who was not found in the light of others. The next movement we see in the case is in 2015, when a picture of a woman who was wanted for credit card fraud in Rhode Island begins to circulate. While Jennifer's not quite sure that it is Ashley, many other members of the family and police do think it's her.

17:34Her family even goes on the Dr. Phil show who brings one of their experts on, and they tell them that based on their science, there's an 80 % chance that the woman in the picture is Ashley. But it's not. But our heroes at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children do not stop being innovative with Ashley's case. They make a video about her, and specifically about her tattoo, asking if any artist in the area may have seen it or covered it up at some point. I mean, I do think the likelihood of getting your boyfriend's name tattooed on you when you're 14 and getting it covered up later on is pretty high, but unfortunately no one comes forward.

18:19July 2017 marked 10 years that Ashley had been gone, and there's a new age-progressed photo showing what she might look like at age 24. Then in 2018, Ashley's case gets the biggest media break yet. She's featured on an episode of Disappeared, and this causes a flood of new leads for the FBI, and they announce what they called a case review and interview surge, directly crediting Ashley's feature on the show. Because we know media pressure moves mountains. It really does, you guys. and by November, things really heat up. The FBI says that they have new leads in the case though they don't exactly share what those leads are.

19:04But they say that once again, they're going back to square one in Ashley's case. They're breaking it apart, re-interviewing people and getting new information. They begin canvassing West Cleveland again and put a lot of manpower behind this. They have over 30 agents on it. Then, they announce that they're searching Ashley's Uncle Kevin's old home. The home she was at the morning of the party when he broke her phone. Special Agent Vicki Anderson explains that Ashley was known to be here, and they want to take a look. It's been a while, and now the house does have a new set of residents. But they're completely cooperative.

19:44The FBI essentially removes everything from the house and puts it into a big U-Haul. I assume this is to look for any evidence that may be lingering on the floors, walls, or just the bones of the house. We don't know exactly what was found, but in December, Ashley's uncle Kevin is arrested and charged with rape. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded, so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. like tea time you or this tea time you or even this tea time you said you hear about Dave or even tea time tea time tea time you so update on Dave it's up to you we'll take the laundry rinse it's time to be great this episode is brought to you by eBay before all the algorithm fed blah and the endless sea of dupes shopping used to feel more fun Find that feeling again on eBay.

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21:35According to the FBI, Kevin Donathan was actively abusing young children. He initially pleaded not guilty to charges of rape, attempted rape, and five counts of gross sexual imposition, though he did later change his plea to guilty, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison in February 2020. He was never named a suspect in Ashley's case. The next year, in 2021, another search was conducted in relation to Ashley, but after searching for two hours, they only found animal bones. While I have found some reports that vaguely mention other searches, nothing has come from them. Over the years, the FBI has made many statements about searches, where Ashley may have been last seen, where they want the public to look, but these really bounce around all over the place.

22:27I found so many different dates and locations, though most areas they do mention are in West Cleveland. Some reports say that she was seen a few days after the 4th, but there's no explanation attached. And then I'll see the dates change across different reporting. So while it does seem possible and likely that Ashley was spotted after the 4th, I can't tell you where or on which date. In July 2023, they believe that Ashley was last seen on July 8th in the area of West 44th Street and Toe Bridge. But a few weeks before this episode airs, they asked the public to now focus in the Pittsburgh area.

23:08And that's pretty much where Ashley's case is today. So what happened to Ashley Summers? Well, in the latest reporting that I could find, the FBI says that they're still considering all possibilities. Since Ashley's phone was broken on the morning of the 4th, no information was gathered from that. And while the FBI does say that there have been sightings of Ashley after this date, all activity on her social media stopped on the 4th, which her family says is very telling given how much she enjoyed being on MySpace basically 24-7. Ashley's boyfriend Gene maintains his innocence, and her uncle Kevin has still never been named a suspect, though of course his charges are obviously extremely concerning.

23:56If Ariel Castro was involved, we may never know. Unfortunately, Ashley's case being treated as a simple runaway absolutely hindered evidence collection early on, like tracing that phone call. It's also extremely worth noting that when Ashley went missing, Cleveland was in hot water for not keeping up with best practices when it came to missing person investigations. They didn't even have a dedicated unit. But they did eventually institute some changes, like creating that unit and entering information into databases. It's definitely not the improvement I was looking for, but it's a start. Like I always say, we don't know what happened to Ashley, but I do know that she's dearly missed.

24:44In probably one of the most heart-wrenching videos I have ever watched in true crime, her younger sister Vicky made a plea for her to come home, showing each of Ashley's siblings with signs expressing how much they love and miss her, including a new sister Ashley's never met. It really does seem like their last hope is for the public to help. In July 2024, FBI Cleveland Special Agent Christy McCaskill told WKYC News, quote, This is still very much an active investigation. We still hope to bring resolution to Ashley's family, and I believe the only way we're going to be able to do that, at this point, is through tips.

25:27And the only way to generate those tips is by getting Ashley's out to the public. I am certain there are individuals out there who we have not spoken to yet. If someone believes they saw Ashley or knows where she may be, we welcome all tips. End quote. Which brings me right to our call to action. No surprise here, I'm going to ask you to share Ashley's case just like Agent McCaskill asked. We've seen how media sparked movement in the past. Maybe we can make that happen again. Please share.

26:06As a reminder, Ashley Summers was 14 years old when she went missing from Cleveland, Ohio on July 4th, 2007. She is white, with brown hair and blue eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was 5 foot 5 inches tall and weighed approximately 130 pounds. She has a tattoo of the name Jean in black over a red heart on her upper right arm. If you have any information about Ashley's case, please contact the FBI Cleveland office at 216-522-1400 or you can submit a tip online anonymously at tips.fbi.gov. Crime Stoppers is also offering reward money in this case. You can submit tips there by calling 216-25-CRIME.

26:58But as always, thank you, I love you, and I'll talk to you next time.

27:07Voices for Justice is hosted and produced by me, Sarah Turney, and is a Voices for Justice Media Original. If you love what we do here, please don't forget to follow, rate, and review the show in your podcast player. It's an easy and free way to help us and help more people find these cases in need of justice.

27:42Thank you.