Summer Inman
"I believe that most humans have within them the capacity to commit murder."
-Richard Ramirez
It was the 22nd of March 2011. A Tuesday. Summer worked as a janitor at the Century National Bank. The 25 year old worked at night and cleaned the bank when everyone had left for the day. She wanted to work at night to support her three children. She had two girls and one boy and they were all very young. They were 5 years old , 3 years old and one was about to turn 2 years old.
Summer
Summer lived with her parents and three children in Logan, Ohio, United States. That night, the 22nd of March, she was due to finish work at 11.20pm. Her routine was always the same. She left all the trash at the back door until she was finished and when she clocked out, she brought it to the dumpster in the car before before driving home. While she was at work, she was texting her boyfriend Adam Peters but her texts stopped and when she didn't arrive home, he went to the bank to see if she was still there. Adam found Summer's iPod, car keys and her cell phone battery beside the dumpster. He rang her parents, Debbie and Michael Cook, and they both reported her missing.
Police didn't just receive calls from Summer's parents, they also received calls from worried witnesses who believed they saw an abduction take place outside the bank that night. A man saw two men wearing ski masks tasing a woman and putting her into the back of a car. Two other women saw two men putting a woman in the back of a car also and heard harrowing screams. They told police the car was a white Ford Crown Victoria.
Police began looking for clues as to what may have happened to Summer. They looked through her cell phone records and diary. They discovered that Summer divorced her husband William in June 2011 and a bitter custody battle followed for the three children.
William and Summer
William and Summer met through Church when they were both teenagers. William was 17 years old and Summer was just 15. They were still teenagers when they married and had three children together. William and Summer lived next door to William's parents, Bill and Sandy. Bill and Sandy loved having grandchildren. They had also met at a young age through Church and had William shortly after so they wanted William and Summer to have the same relationship as they had.
As William and Summer were young, they enjoyed going out and having fun so Bill and Sandy had the grandchildren nearly every weekend. They adored them. But that arrangement was about to come to an end. Summer had fallen out of love with William.
Bill and Sandy
Summer's diaries revealed that William and Summer viewed marriage differently. He wanted a polygamous marriage and seemed to already be on the lookout for potential new wives. As soon as they married, he became possessive, violent and controlling. William expected his dinner on the table when he came home and Summer could only go to bed when he gave permission.
William and Summer
Summer couldn't take it anymore. She wanted more from life. She saw excitement and hope in a man called Adam Peters. Adam was a drifter and Bill hired him to do odd jobs around the two houses. Bill was a minister and wanted to open a halfway house one day. Summer was instantly attracted to Adam and before the divorce was finalised, she began dating him. Summer left her marital home and moved in with her parents. She took the three children with her.
William, Bill and Sandy did not take the news well. Bill threatened and assaulted Adam. Summer posted a picture online of Adam with the children which caused even further rage. William tried to get full custody of the three children but the Judge refused just one month before Summer was abducted.
When Summer left, William moved in with his parents. The police called to their house to speak with them and found a white Ford Crown Victoria on their driveway. They told police they were in Cleveland the night Summer went missing. Police got a search warrant and took possession of the car. The GPS system revealed they were not in Cleveland that night. They were in Logan. The GPS also revealed a location they were in the next morning. Police discovered they went to a car wash at 7.30 am the morning after Summer was abducted. Surveillance footage showed William, Bill and Sandy getting out of the car at the car wash. There was no sign of Summer. After they washed the car, they bought new car tyres for it. Police took the three of them in for questioning. Summer had now been missing for eight days.
William and Bill did not answer any of the questions the police asked. But Sandy did not stay silent. Almost immediately she told police that Summer was dead. It was the news everyone feared but hoped would not be true. Sandy said that they didn't mean to kill Summer. They had taken her because they wanted to scare her so that she would be reasonable and allow them to see the children.
Sandy claimed that she thought she would be able to talk to her and reason with her . According to Sandy, it was her idea to take Summer. When they had Summer in the car, William tied three zip ties around her wrists and tied a fourth zip tie around her neck. The zip tie around her neck was too tight and Summer began to suffocate. Sandy claimed they wanted to cut it off but they didn't have a knife and as a result Summer died in the car.
Sandy
Sandy accepted a plea deal. She would serve 15 years in prison and Prosecutors would not pursue the death penalty for William and Bill if she revealed the location of Summer's body. She agreed.
William
Police found the body in a septic tank behind Faith Tabernacle Church in Nelsonville, Ohio. It was over 20 miles from where Summer was last seen alive.
Septic Tank
William and Bill were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
It is clear the Inmans were a controlling family and Summer was not someone who was about to spend her life being controlled. They were willing to get what they wanted by doing anything they believed was necessary which included killing Summer. The harrowing part of this crime is that if an amicable custody arrangement could have been reached, the outcome may have been very different.
4 comments
I was friends with Summer. Her children were adopted by family members on her side.
Sandy was just as controlled as Summer was. I absolutely do not believe it was her idea to kidnap Summer, I am certain that it was Bill and Will. Will believed that women were property, and he learned that from his father.
Summer was a beautiful and creative soul and is still missed every day by those who loved and knew her. She was an amazing cook.
Will said months before he was going to kill her but we always said he didn’t have the guts to even try it. I wish every day I could take those words back, and that we had taken the Inman’s seriously.
I hope they all rot and die in their cells.
What happened to the babies? Her parents must have gained custody I assume
It beggars belief that these three stupid perps thought for a moment they could get away with this; either that Summer wouldn’t report the kidnapping to police (in which case they’d have lost any contact with the grandchildren), or that, if murdered, that they wouldn’t be principal suspects in her disappearance (as if she’d leave her children willingly). But that it likely occurred to them that if (when) she reported the kidnapping it would indeed have the aforementioned effect, it supports the contention that they intended her murder. The ligature round her neck would have been pointless otherwise, when she had other restraints.
I agree it’s appalling that the mother cheated justice with her plea’s inadequate sentence. Overall, though, with the other two getting LWOP an almost sufficient price is being paid. And if she is a Christian believer she will be scourged by the fear that in the premeditated murder of a young mother, and the terrible price her children pay in losing her, she may well be damned. My perception, too, is that Sandy was the prime mover, having considerable influence over the two men (ironic that she gets the least punishment) and likely being the most disturbed that Summer was ‘stealing’ her grandchildren.
That’s some kind of screwed-up religion they subscribed to that they thought could be commensurate with their deadly actions – or maybe they’re all hypocrites and believed nothing, or just the grossest of sinners, who knew their plan was terrible but did it anyway per moral weakness.
For some of these families, the only “acceptable” custody arrangement is for them to have exclusive custody. There have been quite a few cases where the paternal grandmother of the kid(s) in question sees the kid(s)’ mother as nothing more than a surrogate womb to carry HER son’s children. Several of these cases are topics of true crime shows (in fact just this morning I saw the rerun of The Piketon Family Murders on Oxygen, in which the working hypothesis is that one baby’s paternal family members’ desire for full custody led them to kill EIGHT members of the baby’s maternal family).
In Summer’s case, I get the sense that Sandy likely spearheaded this. She comes across as a narcissist and I bet she decided to “talk” because she was confident she was smarter than the investigators and they’d believe her story (I don’t…they clearly meant to eliminate Summer), and unfortunately it looks like that possibly was the case for her getting a measly 15 years. Unless Summer’s family agreed to it in order to get her daughter’s remains, but even then that sentence is way too light.
FWIW, Logan is a beautiful area, in Hocking Hills Ohio. I used to go for work and enjoyed it so much that we started taking vacations there.