Ashley Summers -- Missing From Cleveland Since 2007

Author: Shane Lambert
Original Time of Writing: December 30th, 2020
All articles are subject to editing after the original posting.

Missing person: Ashley Nicole Summers (birthday: June 16th, 1993)

Last-seen date: July 4th, 2007 (a Wednesday) at about 6pm (At time of writing, NamUs says July 9th, 2007)

Where last seen: Cleveland, Ohio near West 96th Street and Madison Avenue

The case of Ashley Nicole Summers is one that might have a red herring. When a known child abductor (Ariel Castro) popped up as active in her neighborhood that lead was investigated but it did not turn up any evidence of what happened to Summers. Accordingly, her whereabouts remain a mystery.

One source on the topic, News 5 Cleveland, posted an article that contained information that would make you think that she is, in fact, safe (or was in the weeks after her disappearance): "Summers packed all of her clothes and took them with her. She reportedly called her mother one month after she went missing, telling her not to worry and that she would be okay" (July 11 2017/Bretton Keenan).

If that information is correct, then the runaway hypothesis carries a little more weight than normal. It is hard to picture a reasonable scenario where someone who isn't Ashley makes that phone call. If that phone call wasn't Ashley then it would have to be a person with a small conscience or someone with an interest in obstructing the investigation. Either scenario is possible but what a coincidence that such a person had a voice that sounded enough like Ashley's to make her mother a little bit of a believer.

But it's here that there is some weight added to the guess that Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro has something to do with Summers' disappearance. The phone call after the kidnapping sounds like the Amanda Berry case, one that Castro was responsible for.

According to that case's history, a man made a phone call using Berry's cellular about a week after she disappeared. This phone call contained comments that seemingly were meant to reassure the mother of the missing person that the missing person was safe. That is similar to the phone call that Ashley's mother received, albeit from a different source.

There has also been an unconfirmed sighting of Ashley. Her step-grandmother thought she spotted the girl on west 44th Street in November 2007 with short and dyed-blonde hair. What does one make of that? It's simply food for thought.

Another news event that is often reported in conjunction with Ashley Nicole Summers is the 2020 conviction of her great-uncle, Kevin Donathan. He received a 35-year sentence for sex offenses related to minors in 2020. The FBI searched his home but say he isn't a suspect -- which takes us back to the runaway hypothesis or the abducted-by-Castro guess.

What sits heavily with me, in this case, is the description of events leading up to the disappearance that had to do with her packing all of her clothes. When working on this case, I'm proceeding as though she's a runaway that was alive as of 2007. However, I assign a 60% probability for that in this difficult case with the uncle and Castro taking a heavy portion of the balance of the chances. 

If she is alive and if she went missing voluntarily, then marriage is a possibility. "Ashley [Any Last Name] nee Summers" would be an interesting hit in a database.

NamUs # and Link: #MP1687
Ethnicity/Race: White

Sex: Female

Age at time of disappearance: 14 years old
Hair: Brown, long
Eye color: Blue
Height and weight at the time of disappearance: 5'5" and 130 pounds
Clothing: White t-shirt and blue jeans

Other: tattoo of the word Gene in black ink over a red heart on her right upper arm