The disappearance of Ashley Summers

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During the summer of 2007, when 14-year-old Ashley Summers suddenly vanished, she had been surrounded by family, friends & the familiar places around her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Because Ashley often stayed with various relatives on the west side of town with no particular schedule, days went by before anyone realized that she was missing. When the police got involved, they theorized that she had just left on her own, but as the days & weeks stretched on, this theory was forgotten.

During the timeframe that Ashley went missing in Cleveland, many young girls were vanishing & in the years that followed, horrifying crimes against women & girls were uncovered only miles from where Ashley was last seen.

As investigators began to take a closer look at her case, it became increasingly complicated. There were conflicting accounts by those who knew Ashley in terms of when & where she was last seen. Even more concerning were the dark discoveries that involved someone in her extended family as well as questions that she could somehow be connected to one of Cleveland’s most infamous crimes.

Despite the passage of nearly twenty years, the question still remains, what happened to Ashley Summers?

Ashley Nicole Summers was born on June 16, 1993 in Cleveland, Ohio. Throughout her childhood, she was raised by various family members since her mom, Jennifer, had only been 14-years-old when she gave birth to Ashley & her dad was never involved in her life. Her grandparents, aunts & uncles all lived nearby, so it was very common for Ashley to bounce around to different relatives for overnight stays.

According to her step-grandmother, Linda Summers, Ashley was always a very friendly, outgoing girl who loved scary movies, acting silly & making people laugh, but as she hit her teenage years, she started to rebel. Each morning, there would inevitably be an argument between Ashley & Jennifer since she didn’t want to go to school. To add to the turmoil, Jennfier also didn’t approve of her daughter’s 16-year-old boyfriend while Ashley wasn’t a fan of her mom’s live-in, long-term boyfriend who helped raise her.

Since Ashley was the oldest of the kids, she often stayed home to watch them while their mom was at work. Little did Jennifer know, but during these times, her daughter was secretly inviting Gene over to the house. After she found out from her younger son, she confronted her daughter, forbidding him from coming over moving forward.

Not long before she turned 14, Ashley stole rent money out of her mom’s bedroom drawer so she could get a heart tattoo on her right arm with the name Gene in the middle in honor of her boyfriend. When she came home with the tattoo, Jennifer was furious. During their argument, they came to the decision that it would be best if Ashley went & stayed with her grandma over the summer so they would have a little space in hopes of healing their relationship.

Jennifer’s mom lived four miles away & since the rest of the extended family was close by as well, Ashley could visit with them while her grandma was at work during the day.

Regardless of them living apart during this time, Jennifer checked in with her daughter every day on the phone.

On Saturday, July 7, 2007, Ashley was dropped off to stay at her great uncle Kevin Donathan’s home since a lot of their cousins hung out there. Two days later, she walked two miles from Kevin’s house to her great uncle Keith’s house on the west side of Cleveland for a pool party on Monday, July 9.

According to her relatives, Ashley was initially in a low mood, but over time, she started to perk up. During the 3-4 hours she was there, she got in the pool & chatted with everyone. When she left at about 6 pm with all of her clothing, she told them she was going to make the ten minute walk to her aunt Christina’s house, but she never arrived.

She was last seen walking away on the city’s near-west side on Holmden Avenue.

Although Ashley owned a cell phone, it wasn’t working at the time as earlier that day, when her uncle Kevin Donathan heard her bad-mouthing their family on the phone, he confronted her, pulled the phone out of her hand & smashed it.

When Jennifer didn’t hear from her daughter for the next two days, she started to worry so she called Kevin, who explained that he hadn’t seen Ashley since before the pool party on July 9th. Knowing that she also wasn’t at her mom’s house, Jennifer called around to all of their relatives & realizing that no one had seen her, she reported her daughter missing two days later on Wednesday, July 11, 2007.

Investigators initially theorized that Ashley had run away despite Jennifer’s protests, designating her as an endangered runaway.

Feeling disappointed about the police’s response, Jennifer & her family organized search parties & posted fliers around town about Ashley’s disappearance. By the next day, when someone had taken them all down, at the time they thought that either Ashley or someone she knew could have been responsible.

When investigators questioned Gene, her 16-year-old boyfriend, he was cleared from the case after they learned he had been out of town that week for a family reunion in Alabama.

A month after she was last seen, Jennifer received a phone call from a blocked number at work on August 6, 2007. Before the call suddenly ended, a voice on the other end that she was sure was Ashley, said, Mom, it’s me. I’m okay. Don’t worry. By the time the FBI got involved in her case, too much time had passed to trace the call.

When Ashley’s step-grandma Linda was driving downtown at night a few months later on November 17, she thought she saw Ashley. Although the girl’s hair was shorter & had been dyed blond, she still thought it was her. By the time she turned her car around, the girl had disappeared down an alley.

The FBI joined the investigation in May 2008 when Ashley had been missing for nearly a year after the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children alerted the FBI Cleveland Field Office about her case.

The Cleveland police were under a great deal of pressure to solve cases because women around the city had been vanishing during the timeframe that Ashley went missing. Convicted rapist Anthony Sowell, who came to be known as the Cleveland Strangler, had been released from prison in June 2005 after serving fifteen years.

In September 1990, he pleaded guilty to kidnapping, rape & attempted rape after he lured a 21-year-old woman from a motel to his home on July 22, 1989. The woman, who was three months pregnant, was bound with a belt & tie before she was raped.

Following his release, he was found guilty of killing 11 African American women who he lured to his home with drugs & liquor, then hiding their bodies in & around his home on Imperial Avenue on Cleveland’s east side. His arrest came after officers found the first two bodies at his house in October 2009. After he was sentenced to death in August 2011, he died eleven years later in 2021 of an undisclosed terminal illness at 61-years-old.

Three other young women had also vanished from the same area as Ashley between 2002-2004, which led investigators to question if a serial offender was responsible.

On August 23, 2002, 21-year-old Michelle Knight was on her way to a case management meeting, desperate to get her son back. Before she vanished, she stopped in a store to ask for directions when a man who she recognized stopped to offer her a ride.

Less than a year later, 16-year-old Amanda Berry vanished on April 21, 2003 only one day before her 17th birthday when she was on her way home from her job at Burger King.

One year later on April 2, 2004, 14-year-old Gina DeJesus went missing when she was on her way home from Wilbur Wright Middle School where she was last seen in the area of West 105th Street & Lorain Avenue.

On May 6, 2013, six years after Ashley went missing, a man heard screams coming from his neighbor’s house across the street on Seymour Avenue. When he went over to see what was going on, he found a frantic woman & her daughter begging him for help, telling him they had been held captive for a long time.

After he brought them back to his house to call 911, he realized that the girl was 27-year-old Amanda Berry, who had been missing for 10 years. She was alongside her daughter, Jocelyn, who was born in 2006 during her captivity.

Sadly, Amanda’s mom had died seven years earlier from a massive heart attack in September of 2006 when her daughter had been missing for 3 ½ years, she never knew that her daughter was alive & had been in Cleveland all along. Many people believe that she died from a broken heart after losing her daughter.

Police responded to the two-story home at 2207 Seymour Avenue on the west side of Cleveland in a working-class neighborhood that was owned by a 52-year-old man named Ariel Castro. The four bedroom, 1 bathroom 1,400 square-foot house, which had no air conditioning, was built in 1890. The bedrooms on the second floor were very small, one as little as 6 feet by 6 feet.

From the outside, it may have looked like a typical home along a tree-lined street, but on the inside, it looked like hell. There were makeshift alarms rigged to the front & back doors while a large porch swing was hung to block easy access to the stairway that led to the second-floor. Heavy fabrics were hung to obscure the kitchen & the second floor as well. Instead of handles on the upstairs bedroom doors, there were padlocks, dead bolts & slide locks. Solid wood covered every window upstairs, blocking out any bit of natural light.

From one of these bedrooms, they found a now 30-year-old Michelle Knight peeking out from a slightly opened bedroom door. Seeing the officers, she leapt into their arms after being held captive for 11 excruciating years. A now 23-year-old Gina DeJesus, who had been missing for 9 years, also emerged into the hallway.

Earlier that day, Amanda realized that for the first time in ten years, her bedroom door was unlocked. Not only that, but the house was quiet as Castro had left to go to a nearby McDonald’s. As Amanda & her daughter bolted downstairs, they found that the front door was open, but wired with an alarm. Beyond that, the storm door was padlocked shut, but she managed to squeeze her arm through.

Unsure if he had just set a trap for them or when he would be back, Amanda took her opportunity & began screaming & frantically waving her arm, crying out for help. Although one neighbor noticed her, Amanda’s heart sank when they were too afraid to intervene. That’s when Charles Ramsey showed up & began pulling on the door. Unable to open it, he kicked through the door, allowing Amanda & her daughter to escape.

52-year-old Ariel Castro had owned the home since 1992 when he purchased it for $12,000. Two days after the three women as well as Amanda’s daughter were rescued, Castro as well as his 50 & 54-year-old brothers, Onil & Pedro Castro, were arrested. While Ariel was held on $8 million bond on charges of rape & kidnapping, his brothers were not charged.

Neighbors were stunned to learn that he had been holding these women captive for so many years as they had known Ariel Castro & had spent time with him. He was a father of three children who didn’t live with him, a son & three daughters.

When Castro offered Michelle Knight a ride back in August 2002, she never hesitated to accept it since she knew his daughter, Emily & she was familiar with him. Instead of taking her to her appointment with a case manager as he promised, he drove her to his house, inviting her to pick out a puppy for her son. Once inside, he restrained her with an extension cord & dragged her down to the basement where he shackled her with chains. He put a motorcycle helmet on her head & raped her for the first time of what would be too many to keep track of.

Eight months later, on April 21, 2003, as had been the case with Michelle, when he stopped to offer Amanda Berry a ride, she agreed since she knew his other daughter, Angie. He brought her to his house under the guise that she could say hello to Angie, but instead, he bound her with duct tape, put a motorcycle helmet on her head & chained her to a pole in the basement.

During the spring of 2004, Gina DeJesus, who was close friends with yet another daughter of Castro’s named Arlene. Arlene & Gina had hoped to spend the afternoon together at Gina’s house, but when the plan didn’t work out, they walked their separate ways. As Castro spotted the girls together, he drove past his own daughter to get to Gina.

When he stopped to see if she would help him find Arlene, she agreed. Once in the car, he asked if she would help him carry a speaker from his house to his car. As soon as they got into the house, Gina immediately felt uncomfortable with the situation & wanted to leave. Castro got her down to his basement where he restrained & then sexually assaulted her.

With three young women being held captive, he wired his house with alarm clocks that served as a makeshift alarm system. The girls were kept in two rooms that locked from the outside while the windows were boarded over by heavy closet doors.

According to Castro’s daughter, Angie, who had known Amanda Berry, her father had been very abusive toward their mother, Grimilda Figueroa, who died of brain cancer in 2012. When Angie would come for a visit, she noticed that her dad would take a very long time to answer the door & he often played loud music while she was there. He wasn’t able to vacation with them because he never wanted to leave his house for more than a day. When Angie asked if she could see her childhood bedroom one day, her dad told her that there was too much junk up there.

When one of Castro’s friends visited him not long before the women were rescued, he heard noises that sounded like banging on a wall. He also found it strange that he had four or five locks on the outside door. While he was there, little Jocelyn came into the kitchen & stared at him without saying a word.

Unlike Michelle, Amanda & Gina, Castro did occasionally take Jocelyn out into public, introducing her as his granddaughter. He forbade the women from telling her their real names for fear that Jocelyn would say something while they were out & expose his crimes.

While Amanda shared a room with her daughter, Michelle & Gina shared another smaller room. They were all restrained by chains attached to their ankles & given plastic toilets that were rarely ever emptied. They were fed one meal per day & allowed two cold showers per week.

The women were sexually abused on a regular basis & when one would attempt an escape, Castro would assault her in front of the others, forcing them to watch. As a result of one of the many assaults, Amanda gave birth to her daughter on Christmas Day 2006 in a plastic baby pool to contain the mess. Michelle, who served as the midwife, saw that the baby wasn’t breathing so she performed CPR on her. All the while, Castro was watching, threatening to kill her if the baby didn’t survive.

Michelle had gotten pregnant five times during her 11 years in captivity. Each time, Castro used violent methods to terminate her pregnancy, including starvation & beatings that were focused on her abdomen. He’s the reason why she’s no longer able to have children.

On her rescue, Michelle was taken to the hospital where she was experiencing severe gastrointestinal bleeding. Doctors told her she might only have days to live as the antibiotics weren’t working & they struggled to find the exact source of her bleeding. After determining that she was suffering from a massive bacterial infection as a result of severe physical trauma, malnutrition & ongoing medical neglect, she was placed on 14 different medications before she eventually got better.

According to clinical psychiatrist Dr. Frank Ochberg, the women were so badly manipulated & emotionally abused that they developed Stockholm Syndrome, slowly bonding with their captor when he showed a rare moment of kindness.

When Ashley’s family first heard about the women being rescued after so many years of captivity, they hoped & prayed that she was one of them. Realizing that she wasn’t, they held onto hope that they might know where she was, that her case was somehow connected.

Ashley had vanished only blocks from where the three other girls had gone missing & not far from where Castro lived. However, Castro claimed to have no involvement in Ashley’s disappearance & the FBI concluded there was no evidence linking them.

Castro pleaded guilty to 937 criminal counts of rape, kidnapping & aggravated murder. On August 1, 2013, he was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole plus a thousand years. During his sentencing, the court room was sickened when he proclaimed that he was not a monster, that he had treated the women well, that their home together was harmonious & that he gave them a normal life. He described the countless rapes he committed as consensual & claimed that although he had terminated Michelle’s pregnancies, that had also been a mutual decision.

Michelle Knight was there to read her victim impact statement while Amanda & Gina chose not to attend, but their statements were read in court for them.

Only 33 days after his sentencing, Castro was found hanging by his bed sheets from his prison window on September 3, 2013. He became the 10th Ohio inmate that year to commit suicide.

Moving forward to January 2015, when Ashley had been missing for 7 ½ years, Linda Summers saw a photo of a woman online that she felt looked exactly how she would expect her granddaughter to look at this point in time. Police in Rhode Island had been looking for the woman in question in connection to a string of check & identification threats in Rhode Island as well as Massachusetts. In the photo, the woman was leaning out of a car window at an ATM in Rhode Island.

When Linda contacted the Warwick, Rhode Island police department, she sent a photo of Ashley to them & they could see that the similarities were obvious. Although Warwick authorities publicized the case locally, nothing ever came of it.

When the FBI broadened the search for the mystery woman, a billboard featuring a photo of her & her male companion was posted in states along the eastern seaboard.

Moving forward six months to July 2015, the FBI announced that law enforcement had identified & located the individuals in the photo & determined that it was not Ashley.

Throughout Ashley’s investigation, law enforcement interviewed her family members, neighbors & anyone who could potentially offer information that led to her whereabouts.

In 2018, during a series of inquiries regarding her disappearance, investigators discovered that Ashley’s great uncle Kevin Donathan had been actively abusing young children for decades. In February 2020, the 55-year-old was sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to a long list of charges including rape & gross sexual misconduct of several minors that happened over the span of 25 years.

After the FBI searched his home in 2019 in relation to Ashley’s disappearance, they determined that he is not a suspect in her disappearance despite the fact that investigators were told that he was one of the last people to have spoken to her, Ashley had been staying with him shortly before she went missing & they had gotten into an argument on the day she vanished.

There has been no official confirmation or evidence that Kevin physically or sexually abused Ashley before she went missing.

In 2022, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children released an age progression of what Ashley could potentially look like at 29-years-old.

When Jennifer spoke with the media in 2023, she voiced that through it all, the hardest part has been the ups & downs of the potential sightings of her daughter & then learning that it’s not her. She also struggles with the fact that their last interaction was a negative one since they had been arguing at the time.

With a disappearance, there is no final moment to grieve, no place to visit & loved ones who are left suspended between hope & fear, wondering if the next phone call is the one that changes everything.

Although Ashley’s case is nearly two decades old, according to the FBI, it remains a very active investigation. Someone might recall something they once dismissed as insignificant; a person Ashley was with or something she said before she vanished. Anyone with information is asked to contact the FBI in Cleveland at 216-522-1400.

Ashley would be 33-years-old today. When she went missing, she was 5’5”, 130 pounds with brown hair, blue eyes & a tattoo on her upper-right arm with the name Gene in black ink over a red heart.

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