MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: The Day-Stewart Family

Hi, Grime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers and I'm Brett in 2023 a fire tore through a Chicago family home and killed everyone inside a mother and her three kids it seemed like an especially cruel way for them to go considering that the woman's husband the kids father was a Chicago firefighter who was on duty that night fulfilling his oath to protect and serve the city that same community rallied around the surviving family who had been torn apart by what seemed to be a terrible accident but not everyone believed it was an accident within weeks of the fire someone emailed me and told me to watch this case closely as it unfolded because everything might not be what it seems three years and one back and forth legal fight with a Chicago police department later what I'm gonna share with you might make you agree that something isn't right here but I'll let you be the judge this is the never before told story of the day Stuart family house fire it's shortly after nine p.m. on March 7th 2023 when a call for a multiple alarm fire comes through the radio at the Chicago Firehouse firefighter Walter Sean Stewart who everyone calls Sean is on duty that night and he recognizes the address coming through over the speaker to 554 North Rutherford Avenue that's his house now his station is hearing the message over dispatch even though their unit isn't the one designated to respond but I mean if you think he's not going you're out of your mind he rushes to the battalion chief tells him that he has to leave an as if he'll go with him and within minutes the two are in the chiefs SUV speeding across Chicago's Montclair neighborhood the chief behind the wheel and Sean staring at just this smoke rising in the distance the 20-minute drive probably took less if they had their emergency light on but it must have still felt like an eternity it didn't take responding engines long though two minutes after the neighbor had called 911 firefighters were on the scene breaking through the front and back doors and from the back door one team went into the homes enclosed back porch and that's where they found the family dog Mabel in a crate and the smoke had already gotten to her which meant that they were running out of time to get to the family that the neighbors said lived there the back porch leads directly into the kitchen where the firefighters who entered through the front door were already there fighting flames and to the left of the kitchen was a room with a single mattress on the floor and they almost missed seven-year-old Ezra because he wasn't on the mattress trying to run from the flames that had already laughed up his body and given him second degree burns he had collapsed and was unconscious on the floor near the foot of the staircase that led from that room that he was in to the second floor as one firefighter scooped him up to take him outside others ascended the staircase and found out to check the rooms upstairs in the first room on the right they found a two-year-old boy Emory unconscious in his crib in the next bedroom painted pink and full of soot covered stuffed animals they found nine-year-old autumn unconscious on the floor near the window by now Sean and his chief had arrived at the chaotic scene and he watched as fellow firefighters came out of the house one by one carrying all of his children and laying them on the lawn to be tended to by paramedics but his wife wasn't there where was 36-year-old summer firefighters hadn't seen her in the house but between the flames and the smoke visibility was like next to nothing and she could still be there I mean if the kids were there she had to be there so they were sent back in to do a second sweep and that is when they found summer in her first floor bedroom unresponsive on the floor near the side of her bed now when she's finally carried out of the house and placed on the lawn with the children Sean runs to her and begins performing CPR until the EMTs are able to load her and the kids up in ambulances and take them off but they will never be coming back home one by one like the way they came out of that house over the next few days they succumbed to their injuries and pass away without ever waking up without ever being able to say what happened that night or what caused the fire that ravaged their home that was a mystery left for the Chicago Fire Department investigators and Chicago police and anyone who is familiar with fire investigation will know that they are notoriously difficult because the entire scene is one giant ball of contamination I mean everything on the first floor is covered in water and soot and debris there is no drywall even left to speak of and even the support beams of the house in this fire the ones that are exposed those are all charred but despite everything that is ruined by the fire there is some evidence that the fire itself provides like where it started and what could have caused it pretty quickly everyone hones in on the kitchen actually one particular area on the east half where the fire patterns indicate that it originated and a couple of key clues right around there are interesting to them the stove and this outlet on the stove there was a pot on the rear left burner and a pan kind of sitting like on the right side and even though the plastic knobs on the stove had melted away investigators could see that the leftover metal stem was clearly turned to high you know have you like take them off and near the stove that had clearly been turned on they also saw a melted water cooler plugged into a charred extension cord that ran all the way to the wall so they know the what and where the fire started in this general area of the kitchen what they don't know is how and why like was there a spark from this outlet did something bubble over on the stove when who put it there well and I assume they tested for accelerants and stuff like that too right well according to the reports that we have from the Chicago police there is only one piece of evidence that they sent off to the lab in this case for testing there was this metal can that was on the floor near the stove and they had that tested like seeing if there was any kind of accelerant or anything or like anything in it but they found out this had nothing to do with the cause of the fire so that is the scene side of things the what the where the how that's being handled by the Chicago fire department Chicago police detectives are trying to collect anything that might give them the who or the why and the first person they turn to is Sean when they speak to him on March 19th this is like nearly two weeks after the fire he tells them that obviously he wasn't at the house that night because he was on duty at the fire station he says he got there like six o'clock in the morning did some grocery shopping at two local stores at around eight so that he could make dinner for the crew that night and he was there until he heard the call come over the radio at around 9 p.m. and there are a couple subsequent interviews that they conduct with other people on duty who all confirm this now I don't know how in detail they get with him about his family's lives or what could have contributed to the fire because all that is in this file is an investigators quick write up summarizing the conversations they had with them but the investigator makes note of something that I assume he thinks is important John tells him that summer abused alcohol and was often intoxicated so maybe that's the contributing factor here right I mean at the scene near summer on the floor where she was found in her room they also found a mostly full bottle of Jack Daniels and then on the side table in her room there were a few soda cans a styrofoam cup a red solo cup and if that wasn't the tip off that she'd been drinking the blood that they took from her when they first got her to the hospital was summer's blood alcohol level was one of the probably highest I've ever seen in a case 0.312 almost four times the legal limit so she could have very easily forgotten that she was cooking and passed out another thing I don't see mentioned in any of the reports but we learn from talking to summer sister Sarah and Sarah's wife Amber is that Ezra their middle child had nonverbal autism the reason he was sleeping downstairs instead of upstairs with the other kids is because he had trouble sleeping which seems pretty common for children with autism and he would often roam around downstairs sometimes escape if no one was looking in just like be lying into traffic it was super dangerous so summer had converted their dining room into a bedroom for him so that they would be on the same floor and she actually had these security latches installed on the doors to prevent him from getting out so what if it's this combo of everything summer passes out maybe she left something on the stove maybe not maybe Ezra is still awake and moving about the house he goes into the kitchen summer sister told us that in the past summer had issues with Ezra playing with the stove knob so sometimes she took them off the stove completely to prevent him from messing with them but that night March 7th it looks like those knobs were on. So was it possible that Ezra was playing with the stove, and it was just all this tragic accident? Please make no mention of this in their narrative reports, but I do think it's relevant. And do they have an idea of how that day and night played out for them, like, after Sean left for work? Do they see anyone? Do anyone see them? Like, are there phone records of anything? They don't pull any of that as far as I can tell. I mean, like, at least from the reports that we have, it doesn't look like they even talk to anyone besides Sean and his co-workers. They just get the info from him, work to confirm his alibi, and then wait for the autopsy reports to come in. But even when they get those, I mean, there's not a ton that helps, like, no surprise injuries, like, all four died as a result from the fire. There was, though, one strange detail that came back in the autopsy. Two-year-old Emory had a tiny amount of the drug lorazapam in his system. Now, the autopsy report says it wasn't enough to be fatal or even close to an overdose, but everything I read is that pediatricians would only give this drug in, like, a clinical setting, not at home, and usually it's given for things like seizures, or severe anxiety episodes, or in emergency situations where they need to sedate a young child. To my knowledge, none of this applies to Emory, so how did it get in this baby's system? Yeah. The autopsy report makes no attempt to answer that question, and neither do investigators, according to the documents we have. Once they know the deaths were caused by a fire, and that fire is ultimately concluded to be a result of either an electrical malfunction or what they call human action, meaning someone left that stove on. CFD decides to make their final ruling on the fire, undetermined, suspended, and CPD classifies the deaths as non-criminal, meaning they're done investigating unless some big new piece of evidence comes to light. But why not just call it an accident? That's basically what they're saying, because it seems like there is more investigating that could be done if they wanted to, right? Like, have we canvas the neighborhood? You said they never got call records? Like, I'm really interested in those. I don't think this was truly like a lack of investigative leads, and we have no idea what happened. It seems like they have a pretty good idea of what they think happened, but I learned that it's not unusual for fire investigators to be a little vague in their cause, if they're not immediately sure if it's criminal in nature, because they like to leave the door open for insurance agencies to do their own investigations. So, by August, this case is closed, and family and friends of the day Stewart family are left reeling. Local headlines ran with stories about Sean's unimaginable loss, and the whole community really rallied around him. I mean, strangers and neighbors covered their sup-blackened back porch with stuffed animals and flowers, while the Chicago Fire Department launched the Stewart Family Fund to raise money for Sean. And there was a massive showing for the two separate funerals held in Chicago, one for the public, which the Fire Department showed up for in droves, and another that was a Jehovah's Witness Service to honor summer's religion. There were even two celebrations of life back on the West Coast, where summer had a lot of friends and where her sister lives. But while people were grieving across the nation for this senseless loss, someone in the Chicago area was emailing me. The tip was, it was vague, and the source said that they couldn't go on record. But they told me to pay attention to this story as it unfolds, because though it looks like a tragic accident on the surface, there might be more if I dug deeper. That is like such an Ashley Bates email that's like the perfect way to kidnap you, honestly. It was. But listen, at that moment, I didn't jump. I did what the tips were told me to do. I waited. I watched to see how this unfolded, but it didn't. The story just kind of faded from the headlines in 2023 and 2024. And in the chaos of running two weekly shows, I almost forgot about it. Almost. Until March of last year. That's when I put our reporter Jen and Mel on this case. Wait, like just off of this email two years ago, or was there like something else that kind of like peaked your interest, something happened? Nothing else. Just an email. And then this feeling that I had. So I asked Jen, like go talk to Summer's family, pull some records, tell me if there is a there there. See if you can find any indication that we should keep digging. I mean, maybe this is totally off base. And you want to know the first thing she came back to me with? It turns out, Summer was planning on taking the kids and leaving her firefighter husband Sean on March 8. But she never got the chance because the day before she was set to leave, a fire broke out in her home that killed them all. So as you can imagine, we kept digging. And you will not believe what we found. All the stories about this tragedy in the local papers painted Sean as the grieving husband and father who had suffered an unexpected and monumental loss. And yes, that might have been true. But what the stories all left out was the tumultuous relationship between Sean and Summer and the years of alleged abuse that she and their kids suffered at his hands. And I don't know why because it's not something that Summer hid. I mean, she told most of her loved ones about this and we have the receipts. I'm talking pages upon pages of Summer's text to her friends and her sister. Pictures of bruises on her and the kids allegedly from Sean and videos that Summer took that paint a concerning picture. The earliest video her sister shared with us comes from 2013, 10 years before her death. Tell me all about it. I'll never, ever, ever ever hurt me again. And this time I'm going to videotape that when he does, he'll be able to watch this. That's not really fair. But I guess I wouldn't have been that fair to you. So I understand. I love you, baby. And I'm really sorry for what you have done to you. I'm really sorry that I've done so much to hurt you. I love you so much. He loves me so much. I hear that. And he's sorry. Look, if there's even a little grin on his face, it's because he likes being on video. You mean? See? You're mean. He's smiling now. No, because you're making jokes. Very serious subject matter, but he's like, I love being on video. He's nice trying everything you can to not smile. You're making me laugh. It's not fair. Three seconds before this video, he was laying down with tears in his eyes, telling me I was never going to hurt me again. And I'd heard it so many times before that I thought to myself, I wish I could videotape this. Oh, wait, I can. He's definitely going to joke out of there. All right. I love you. I love you so much. I'm really I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry about I know like I was supposed to be like a nice guy. I was supposed to break your heart. It was supposed to make you feel all those pain and distrust. I'm sorry for lying to you. I love you and I don't want you to have to worry every time, you know, when you have to think, is he lying? Is he telling me the truth? I don't want you to think like that. I never wanted that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you. I love your face. I love being with you. What's that? What? I wanted to be more serious. I love you. Why are you smiling over there? Well, smiley face. Because that was the most unsensory thing that I've ever seen. And every time I feel like I'm believing you all over again, I'm going to watch this video. I don't know if she ever showed him that video again or what they each thought looking back on it. But the cycle of abuse is textbook. Violence, apology, violence again. And the kids don't seem to have been spared. I mean, here is one video that Summer took of their daughter, Autumn. It was filmed on September 14th, 2021, when Autumn was only seven. Tell me, Abin, what you told me earlier. Okay, that you were sitting in the bed and saw me laughing. Okay, first Papa. So, he was talking to you and I was on the phone, right? He was talking to you on the phone and I started making a lot of sound. He's like, okay, do you feel anything? And the nice standing, I was sitting on it and then I made some call to sound and then I sat down and then he took my neck. and pushed it down into the bed, and it-- And you felt keep back onto the bed? And I told Papa that I heard it, and now my neck is sore. After that incident, three months later in December 2021, Summer secretly recorded a fight between her and Sean that she sent to her friend, Chloe. Now, you can't see much in the video. She sets the phone down, but Summer's sister identifies Sean as the second voice. Now, the only parts I cut from this one are some silences at the beginning, and in this brief moment where the two seem to leave the room, where the phone is, and you can't really make out what it is they're saying until they come back in. And I do want to give a bit of a warning. I am not going to censor this video clip, because I think it is important that you get the full picture unfiltered. Did you take the car keys? I don't know. You did, didn't you? You took my car keys to keep me from leaving after all of that, didn't you? What do you know what I was? I think it is. You don't want to worry about it. You don't want everyone to work on shit. You just want to treat me like shit. You're going to suck yelling at me. You've been yelling at me for over an hour. I'm shaking. It's not an hour. I just don't like it now, because-- Shaking, please stop. Yeah. I didn't get you, though. It's probably better than I can tell you how I feel. My hands are around my face and sneezes, and wouldn't let me go. I was more than willing to do your favor as we did all of that to me. No, no, no. Yeah, do you a favor, Charlene? It's such a hard thing. You're going to get me out of the hole. I'm not lying. You can do all these things for me. And you can wake up and take care of the kids, and I can sleep at-- I need you to offer the take care to get some more. And then I'm just going to say, no, no, because-- You have been yelling at me and scaring me. You pushed your daughter. You won't leave me alone. And now you want me to do you a favor. Yes. It just-- no, my daughter's outside crying, because I can't have her in the house near you right now. It's your problem. That is my problem. It's your problem. Why do you have to be mean to me? Is it make you feel good? Please push my butt and get this going. Get to this point. Do the fucking you want me to be here? Do you want me to fucking be here? Do you feel good when you do this when you're fucking-- No, you can't do anything except you're mad about it. You're making fun of me. You always make fun of me. You're like a bully. You're a little bitch. You're so fucking cool. It's a funny thing. You make fun of me. You feel like shit. You don't want me to be something alone. You think it's OK? I'm just like, hey, yeah, I'm fucking with Todd. I'm fucking with Todd. Yeah, Todd. You're just fucking with you a little more. You're fucking taking this. And this. And this. Let me go. Todd. I-- Who's causing it? You. Because you can't be nice. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. If something happens to you in favor before you go-- That's what's causing this. No, you don't want-- That's what's causing this. It's not causing this. You're freaking out because you think I'm not going to get you in your pot. You're having a severe meltdown. I'm asking you so many times to leave me alone. I'm telling you I'm shaking. I'm telling you our daughter's outside in the cold freezing because she's too terrified to be inside with you. And you can't even go in your room and shut the door for a few minutes. You're just going to keep yelling at me. How do you-- you think you're going to bully me into doing this? Just-- No. I'm just so tired. And I know you're nagging. Fuck you. You get it. You see? I'm going to be flooded by myself. sure that there was oil in that pot. How long would it have needed to heat up before it caught fire? Well, quicker than you'd think. So Dale said that it depends on what type of oil it was and how much was in the pot. Something like new canola oil could flash in a matter of 10 minutes, and if it was reused oil, it'd be even quicker. So when you put this in terms of a timeline, just like reorientus, the 9-1-1 call about the fire comes at 9-09 PM. Based on the conditions, they believed that the fire started some 20 to 30 minutes before that call tops. Then, say it was this oil scenario. You need 10 minutes for that. Someone starts heating the oil around 830-ish, maybe? And I think this scenario rules out an accent because of something like Ezra did. He might accidentally play with the knobs, but he's not filling up hot with oil. Like, that's just not happening, and I don't think it's something that just gets left out on the stove. I mean, I know some people might leave it out if they're like very in to deep frying things. I mean, you deep fry things, so you don't leave a pot of oil out, right? I don't have smells like you don't want that out. Yeah, and I don't think summer specifically would leave something like that out, knowing that Ezra played with the knobs. You mean, you never know, but we actually asked summer's mom Maria about this, and she told us that summer wasn't in to deep frying, she was pretty adamant about cooking healthy for her kids, and she even remembers giving summer an air fryer as a housewarming gift. I have an air fryer like so much easier, so much cleaner. I don't use anything else. So quicker, yeah. Yeah. All that to say, it is a scenario where she put oil on the stove is still not impossible, though. And that's like a cooking situation, so what time was dinner? She's got, I don't personally see her whipping up a labor intensive, deep fried meal for them at 8.30. That's right. In my opinion, like bedtime range for little kids. Yeah, and when you think about it, they're all in their respective sleeping areas, when the fire happens anyway, right? Like to me, if this is an accident where she was going to make something and then like fell asleep and forgot about it, then maybe it was like just something for herself, a late night snack. And we kind of played this scenario out with Dale, like suggesting that. And that's when he pointed to something else from the scene photos in Summer's bedroom. He said there is what looks to be a recently made sandwich on her bedside table, which is like right there. You can see it clear as day when you look at the photos. And I know that's not exactly evidence, but it's like, but it's very curious. Yeah. So if she wasn't making something to eat, why would there be a pot of hot oil on the stove? Well, we asked Dale that and he's like, well, listen, as someone who knows about fires, if you wanted to make a fire look like an accident, a pot of oil is one of the best ways to do it. You just set the oil on high heat and walk away. If no one is around to catch the blaze right away or the smoke detectors don't alert people in the house loud enough or fast enough, it's over before you know it. Though that is assuming you have working smoke detectors in your house, which we assume the day's to your house would have, right? Yeah, Sean's a literal fireman. Well, that might not be the case here. Something that continued to nag our reporter Jen and me is how the family died of smoke inhalation before they could get out of the house. I mean, this wasn't a huge house. Even if the kids had been put to bed before the fire started around 838-40, how hadn't the smoke alarms woken anyone up? Well, the first answer is that there may not have been enough. According to Sean in a court affidavit, there were two smoke detectors in the house, one on the second floor in the hallway, and a second one in the hallway right by the kitchen. And he also had one carbon monoxide detector in his basement. All of these were the brand kit up. And let me read you this from this CFD response report. It reads, quote, "Smoke detectors were observed and heard alerting in the structure during suppression and the investigation, particularly sounding on the second floor." But there's something up with all of this, especially with the smoke detector on the first floor. You see, after the fires, Sean sued Kira, the manufacturer of the smoke alarms in the CO detector. He alleges that the smoke alarms didn't alert at all. The report said they heard an alarm noise, but he basically says that his family was sleeping and they should have woken up with the alarms failed. Now maybe we're all saying the same thing, kind of. It's very possible that the alarms didn't go off soon enough to wake them. And this is actually a very real issue and should be a huge takeaway from this episode for everyone listening. I just learned this. There are actually two different kinds of smoke alarms. You have photoelectric and ionization only. Now luckily, turns out we have our own in-house expert on this, our director of reporting Courtney Stewart. She did this whole expose for her former newspaper on smoke alarms. Oh, basically the deal is ionization only smoke alarms detect fires with flames, but they do not detect smoldering fires, which ends up causing so many unnecessary deaths. You need the photoelectric ones for that. Kira has actually been the subject of a recent class action lawsuit for advertising smoke alarms that don't alert early enough during smoldering fires. So you guys, go home, check your smoke alarms. This could save your life. Oh, Sean is saying there are two smoke alarms that just didn't go off or didn't go off early enough or whatever. Report says they hear at least one upstairs by the time they're there. And we can see the one that is upstairs in the scene photos that we have. Where I get really tripped up is this second one, the one by the kitchen where there actually would have been the biggest blaze. Even if these were ionization only detectors, it should have detected. It should have recognized the flames, but the question is, was there actually one there? We can't see any evidence of it. I mean, we have photos of that area of the ceiling where it should be, but it's pretty like soot covered and fire damaged in that hallway. But Dale, the fire expert said that he would still expect to see some kind of like circular impression or melted plastic evidence that it had. Yeah, he expects to see that in the photos. So what he did point to though, two double A kidda branded batteries found laying on the floor near the kitchen. Shut up. Yeah, the fire department didn't take any photos of these. They were only in photos taken after CFD went through. So either by police investigators who came through after or maybe by an insurance company. Now one of the batteries was laying in the first floor hallway and then the other one was in the first floor bathroom. And they're not just any batteries, right? They're for sure. A kidda brand. Clear as day. You can see kidda written on the side. Okay. If there was a detector there, could they have just fallen out when the alarm itself like melted? Like maybe that's why no one heard the lower level, the main level alarm go off. This is what I'm saying. So we even asked that. Dale said that the batteries wouldn't just fall out like that. Like if the fire was hot enough to melt the plastic of the smoke alarm, then it was also hot enough to melt the batteries. And the batteries like when I'll show you the pictures, they just look like they've been like sitting there. There's like a layer of black soot, but they're not even like char. Right. They've just been through a fire. Yeah. Which means someone took them out. I mean, that at least seems very possible. Because we reached out to kidda's attorney and they said that experts from kidda and from the Chicago Fire Department did investigations and determine that the smoke alarms were operating properly. But their lawsuit wish on is still pending so we didn't get much more from them. But the real question I think is if someone took those batteries out, when and who would have done that? And let me answer that rhetorical question for you because I have played this out a million ways in my head. Like scenario one. Someone like summer took them out for some innocuous reason and never got around to replacing them. Or someone took them out because they didn't want the alarm to go off because they didn't want just the house to burn. They wanted the people inside of the house to die. If it is scenario number two, I think there are three options. One. Some of herself did this. Two. And let me walk you through each theory and what works and what doesn't work. In theory number one, summer herself did this. Dale said that we have to consider what are some investigators call "fill aside by fire," meaning you kill your children by fire and as horrible as it is to even suggest maybe summer was the one who said it. She was the one who was home at the time maybe on the cusp of leaving and starting over like it could have seemed Insurmountable, but also so did staying. I mean she was clearly going through a hard time especially in the last like week or so Leading up to her death. She I didn't tell you this but she had a bad fall like a week before the fire She hurt her hip and her knee because she like slipped in the basement or something There was actually this like ongoing Water leak and she texted her friend Chloe and another friend that Sean's dad had given them money to Fix this leak or whatever Sean ended up spending that money on weed instead So like again like not a good situation and then three days before the fire She sent one of her friends a text that said quote a few things have been going on with me that have just made me Want to let people know that I'm thinking about them now what specifically those things are or were will never know And all of those things I just mentioned like all the things she had going on were probably compounded by her drinking which her sister Sarah Confirmed to us that she struggled with and we know that her alcohol level were super high that night maybe she just couldn't take it anymore and Broke and thought that this was the only way out Every version of summer being responsible for this accident or otherwise is kind of predicated on the idea that she was drunk But what if that wasn't the case I mean she had to have been drunk because her B.A.C. was I mean it was off the charts No, yes, she had a high B.A.C There was a lot of alcohol that got into her system I think what I'm saying is like what if she hadn't been drinking all night Okay, walk me through that then okay So when we were trying to like build a timeline of summer's last movements We actually found a friend of hers who may have been one of the last people to have had contacts with her before she died And I don't know what she told us it threw me for a bit of a loop So this woman's name is Cleo and she says that she spoke to summer on Facebook messenger like on a Facebook Bester call specifically about an hour and a half before the fire likely started oh Well at that time Cleo said that summer sounded totally normal to her like not Giving signs are not inebriated at all which like take with a grain of salt because maybe summer was just really good at hiding it or Cleo just didn't notice right but in this call Summer also told her about going to Oregon in the morning Which was the first time that Cleo was hearing about this plan so she was like surprised But that shows that she's still planning on leaving like 90 minutes before the fire starts right summer even Promise to call her from the road tomorrow. Now that was the only standout thing in this call Nothing else was like out of the ordinary summer seemed good. They hung up She expected to hear from her the next day except a half hour later Which would have been 8 8 30 right about the time the fire would have started Cleo told us that a Facebook message popped up from summer and it read Can you call me back and Cleo thought it was weird like we just spoke and it's kind of for a long time And it's not like summer tried calling her back before sending that message She just wanted Cleo to call her for some reason but Cleo couldn't right then she said to listen at work So like I'll give you call back in like 10 when I get off and true to her word Cleo did call back in 10 minutes But summer didn't answer Cleo waited another 10 minutes try it again no answer So that's when Cleo fired off a message like be safe and Cleo thinks that at the time she was calling back The fire had probably already started. Okay, so 7 30 to 8-ish she's still fully planning the trip to Oregon. Mm-hmm. Her friend talks her says she doesn't seem drunk and Right about the time the fire started or is believed to be started Summer sends this message to her friend that says hey call me. Yeah, I like I don't think it makes much sense No, so okay one thing at a time How did summer get so drunk like so quickly from like this call zero to see yeah Especially thinking that like and not and like Cleo isn't also saying like I heard her drinking She was sipping something like none of that is coming up or like like yeah and listen There is the option that she was drunk, but just like good at like this was just like her her baseline Yeah her baseline like her sister Sarah said that her tolerance was probably pretty high for like years of drinking on and on But she also said that summer wouldn't get that drunk with the kids around like she and that she says she has enough experience to know her limit But here's the thing we looked at summer's medical record and we found out that she was also prescribed a stimulant for weight loss Which is believed to mess with your ability to tell how intoxicated you are so I don't know Maybe she'd been drinking all night like building up to the level that she was at when the fire started Which by the way, we don't actually know that level exactly. We only know her level when her blood is taken at the hospital hours later So it might have actually been even higher and that number that we have from the hospital is actually in the middle of coming down Yeah, but if she hadn't been drinking like all night Then like then there's is there a world where she started drinking like right after Cleo called her or like a little bit before and if you do the calculations there If like all of this was in like a truncated time to reach a BAC of point 312 and thinking that summer's drinking like whiskey Which was her drink of choice she would have had to have about 10 full shots in an hour So she basically would have had to hang up with Cleo just like knock him back one after the other and I don't know It's it seems like not that she couldn't have even like hidden it or whatever but a little bit of like a different state of mind It's like a shift because she's like planning this trip. She's talking to Cleo. She's doing I don't know now I want to give you the big caveat to all of this Cleo did not show us evidence of these calls or messages directly. She just told us about that Now she also told summer's Mamaria about like this exact same information just a week or two after the fire back in like March of 2023 So like the information it's on she's just coming forward for us. It came for her back then. It's the same info But we like wanted to corroborate right so we asked to see the messages on Facebook ourselves But she said she'd been locked out of her account. She couldn't provide them So our reporter Jenne Bell put her in contact with someone at meta who might have been able to help unlock the account I know that Cleo took some steps to do that But then she just stopped responding to us. Okay Can't we get verification from Summers side of things like this was through Facebook. So what about summers Facebook? So amber that summers sister-in-law She says that by the time they like learned of this summer's Facebook had been put into legacy status Which happens after someone dies and then no one can access the messages. I mean police probably could subpoena it if they wanted to dig deeper So if this is this interaction is true like what do you think that the call me back message meant like why would she send it? What's that scene right? Yeah, I mean well first of all I think I should say that like if this scenario is true I think we can rule out an accident Where summer just like passed out because she's like sending this like call me back at the same time, right? That so then you go into like another scenario I mean first there is a world where it means nothing and the timing is just Wildly unfortunate Maybe she forgot to tell her something right if it's a scenario where this is like purposeful at the hands of summer Maybe she's like reaching out for help To like the last person she spoke with if it was done by someone else Maybe summer was looking for help in a way that didn't seem To someone else that she was like looking for help right like the way that like you get out of a bad day like hey Text me by this time. Yeah, like get me out of this. Let's like make up an emergency whatever Which brings me to theory number two right in all of this like that is the like summer did this one theory number two What was this someone else was someone else there? Maybe someone came over and summer fell unsafe or annoyed or something like not enough to call police But enough to be like girl call me so I can have excuse to make this person leave The problem with this theory is that the lack of investigation makes this almost impossible to prove or disprove at this point Based on what I've been able to see there was no canvas of the neighborhood to look for security footage That might show someone coming or going from summer's house before the fire started That same footage would also show if no one did which would help a lot too right the footage Regardless what it shows would it would be some answer, but we got nothing they never collected any phone records They never mapped out a timeline of her evening Oh, and you know what I would have loved if they had done collected and tested the kid of batteries for finger prints Like you know what forget collecting tests the city didn't even document these in their report And we asked y'all like could these have yielded anything right or like had them like what would they? Yeah, maybe that's why they didn't maybe the fire would have damaged everything No, Dale said that if there was a fingerprint left on the batteries that The smoke would have actually preserved the fingerprint So a fingerprint is left because we secrete oils and the smoke would have like coated those oils It would have given you so we potentially yeah lost a crucial piece of evidence here and if it wasn't summer I mean the suspect pool is Endless because they didn't really dig into her life or the neighborhood like it it could be Anyone this is Chicago. This isn't a time to town. This could be it could be anyone But they barely look looked at one someone, and statistically, this one someone posed the biggest threat to her as she was about to leave. So that brings me to theory number three. Sean. But Sean's on duty when the fire started, and even if it was this boiling pot of oil that you can set and leave and walk away from before it starts, he is at work all day before the fire starts. Yes. But you know crime junkie life rule number 13 always go a layer deeper, right? But don't think that's an easy task because after months of back and forth with lawyers, we came this close to filing a lawsuit against the Chicago police department for refusing to release the records we requested. I mean, it got so bad I started to wonder what they were so afraid we might see, which of course, only made me push that much harder to break through the red and blue line. Sean told detectives when he was interviewed back in 2023 that on March 7th, he left for work at quarter to six in the morning, arriving for his ship at the firehouse at about 6am. He said that he was assigned as the cook for the firehouse that day, so he left the station at 8am to go to a grocery store called Jerry's fruit and garden, and then to another place called Tony's, both in a village named Niles and how far are these grocery stores from the house? They're like 10 miles apart in total, like pretty far in the opposite direction from his house. But Sean never specifies when he gets back to the firehouse. And surely the detectives got a firm time for when others saw Sean get back to the firehouse. Yeah, like the only work that they did was confirming his alibi. Nope. All the other firefighters say something to the effect of like Sean got back a short time later. So he says he spends the rest of the day cooking and doing drills with his crew until he hears this call come over the radio about the fire at 9pm. The battalion chief and all of the firefighters on duty that day back up Sean's story. And each statement is almost identical, same beats, same times. It's actually not surprising though. Dale said that if firefighters have to give statements, they basically just like read off the call log and make sure everyone's saying the same thing. The detective says in his notes that he collected surveillance video from one of the grocery stores that aligns with what everyone is saying. And the footage was from Jerry's fruit and garden. And his report says that the footage shows Sean on that morning of the fire going into the store at 8.29am and then leaving with groceries at 8.47am. Now this video wasn't included with our initial records request. And we wanted to see it for ourselves. Because like honestly the thing that we were looking at is like the tiniest typo in this account would have huge consequences. If we're talking AM, this is no big deal, right? But if God forbid someone got it wrong and he went shopping at around 8.30pm, it would change everything. It's exactly why we had to be sure. Especially when summer's mom Maria told us something wild. She said that after the fire, she got a lawyer to potentially pursue a wrongful death suit against Sean. She ended up dropping it just out of like sheer emotional exhaustion. But she told us that her lawyer spoke to an insurance investigator and was told that Sean went to a different grocery store in the evening. What? Yeah. And knowing how important that is, Maria asked the lead CPD investigator who's like, oh no, no, no, it was the morning. So then she goes back, followed up with her lawyer and the lawyer doubled down. He's like, no, this was the evening. Now we tried to reach this lawyer for comment or to like get this story from the horse's mouth, right? But he didn't return to our calls or messages. So we made getting this video and seeing it for ourselves like our holy mission, our reporter Jenna Malfoy had the Chicago police for this video and then waited and then waited and like by law, they're supposed to respond within a specific time. Yeah. So when they were like more than a month delinquent, she looped in our legal counsel and we contacted CPD and were like, hey, like what's to go guys? Like are you going to give us this video or what? And they're like, oh yeah, yeah, for sure. Here you go. And Britt, they sent us three videos that were completely blurred out. Like, I mean, you couldn't see the date. You couldn't see the timestamp. You couldn't tell what grocery store this was like time, date, like or critically who was in the video. So we went back and forth three times and each time they would like send us the video again with like fewer things blurred. But even after like version two or three, we were like still getting videos where the person that they say is Sean was blurred. And CPD were like, oh, you know, we're doing this because we're concerned about the person, like the person in the video, they're right to privacy. And we're like, no, yeah, for sure. But like CPD already named Sean in the police report that you made public to us. We had to ask for an official review by the office of the Illinois attorney general. And then fourth times a charm, I guess, nearly five months into our legal back and forth. We won. We got the videos totally unredacted. And I don't know. I was convinced there was going to be some big bombshell on it. It shows exactly what the police report said. There is a person in a Chicago fire uniform who looks a lot like Sean in the grocery store on March 7th, 2023 in the morning. And even if the time stamp was wrong for whatever reason, you can clearly see daylight coming through the windows. So I have no idea why it was so difficult to get this video unredacted. It's either the red tape that burns a hole through our tax dollars or maybe they were afraid that it would shine an even bigger light on the fact that the rules weren't being followed. And what could that imply? Apparently leaving a post is actually against CFD's mandate unless there is an emergency call out. I mean, it is black and white. But a fellow Chicago firefighter told police as documented in their reports that it was totally normal for a person on cookduty to leave the station go by groceries. So the question is like, are they covering for him or are they just like way too loose with the rules over at CFD? The same can be asked about this whole investigation and why CFD and CPD even had it in the first place. I mean this, when you think about it, like take a step back for them to be investigating this is a huge conflict of interest. Oh, yeah. According to Illinois's own policy, the city of Chicago should have called in a state fire marshal to do this investigation right away, because it checked, not one, not two, but three boxes on the response criteria. The fire involved a death or serious injury, check. Local authorities can't determine the cause or origin of the fire, check. Or would otherwise be a conflict of interest for the local agency investigating? Big check. Big check. John was an active Chicago firefighter. I mean, you don't have to be a stickler for the rules to see how a fire department might have trouble remaining unbiased when investigating one of their own. So there should have been some independent agency in charge here. Dale says it should have been either the Illinois fire marshal or the ATF, which is like a federal bureau that sometimes investigates ours in cases. But none of that happened. No. The only investigations done here were done by the city fire and police. And we reached out to CFD and asked them why this didn't happen, and they had no comment. I'm sorry, to me, it's still a conflict of interest across the board. And with the protection order, they drove him to this place where he's not even supposed to be, right? Oh, so, okay, quickly with the protection order. So when he got arrested back in 2022, and she got the order against him, right? So yeah, they know about it. They're driving him there. There was an internal affairs investigation on Sean. That inquiry was like completely closed before all of this. And when they looked into it, his department, they basically said they agree that his conduct and all that, like, wasn't a good look for CFD, but it doesn't say that any disciplinary action was taken. And to go back to your thing about conflict, I still think there's a conflict of interest, but I don't think like this is an example of it because the protection order that they knew about, and it's the only one, that allowed Sean to be on the property. Whenever he wanted, unless he was intoxicated, which he just came from work, he's not. They're with him the whole time, right? Right. So it wasn't a violation or anything for the chief to drive him there the night of the fire. And he was also allowed contact with summer as long as it wasn't unlawful. So he's allowed to be there. He's allowed to show up. I mean, technically, he's even allowed to give summer CPR, which he did. I kind of forgot that happened. Yeah. So not a violation of the order, but it like, I don't know, it might be an ethical issue, right? I mean, especially if like, when you think about contamination and like, he's the husband, we asked CFD if they like, officially knew about the protection order and what they thought of it and they said, no comment. Oh, but get this. Speaking of Sean giving summer CPR, Dale looked at summer's autopsy and found that she had a fractured sternum and broken ribs. And he says, that's not right. If you're doing CPR correctly, it is a possible sign of excessive force. Now, Sean is a trained EMT. He knew how to do CPR correctly. Yeah. And Dale said, maybe the emotion of the situation might have gotten to him. He didn't realize how hard he was pushing on her chest or maybe it was something more. Okay, but to believe both of these agencies are protecting a guy with an active order of protection against him for abusing his wife, that's a stretch, right? It happened before. We found an October 2020 RJ. from CBS News Chicago about a Chicago firefighter who left his station and, according to him, accidentally ran over his wife and killed her. And then his crew lied about him leaving and then someone changed the time card illegally to cover it up. Yeah, and get this. CBS reporter Dana Kauslov, who broke this story, confirmed with us that the firefighter who ran over his wife worked at engine 91. And Sean actually worked at that same firehouse before. It's not the one he was at the day of the fire. That was engine 119. But according to the Internal Affairs report, engine 91 is where he was working back in January of 2022. Now, we tried to get confirmation from Chicago fire on whether he was fully transferred to another engine station, whatever, or if he was just like visiting that station for duty on that day. But the personnel records that we asked for are still pending. So all of that to say is there is a precedent for the most wild theory here. And though we can't prove that someone else was involved in the fire, I think I've proven today that this needs another investigation. Oh, definitely. An agency without conflict should step in and use subpoena power to get phone records. I mean, we know there were a number of insurance investigations done. There needs to be some subpoena power to get that data. I mean, I would want to know if Sean and Summer spoke that day on the phone or what Summer was doing on her phone the day of the fire. I would want to know if there's video footage from the neighborhood or the fire station itself. All of this could be answered and put to bed with a proper police investigation. We reached out to the Chicago Police Department and Cook County State's attorney's office for comment and as of this recording, both agencies have not replied. And of course, we tried to ask Sean himself what he has to say about all of this. And though he had no comment on some other things earlier, he did write something back that I'm going to have you read, Britt. He wrote back, quote, "I don't want to interview. Personally, I don't think it would help change the minds of the people accusing me. I do hope that they find closure. If opening up the case and reinvestigating gives them that opportunity, then it is worth it. I miss my family every day. I regret. I think about things that could have done differently. I cry a lot. This whole situation is bad. I wish I had the power to change it. I can't though. All I can do is to keep working on myself." We put all the hard questions to Sean and an email. We asked if he ever abused his wife or his children, where he was the evening of March 7. And just like Point Blank asked him if he set the fire or asked someone else to set the fire. And he declined to address any of those. Instead, he said, quote, "If someone keeps picking at a wound, will it ever heal?" As of this recording, Walter Sean Stewart has not been implicated in any misconduct or charged with any crime in the deaths of Somerday or his children. Last we heard Sean is on extended leave from the Chicago Fire Department. We were told hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised for him by the Fire Department before Somers family asked them to shut down the online donations, which they did. Now we weren't able to get an exact figure, but Somers' sister-in-law told us that CFD raised almost half a million dollars, although we can't confirm the money actually made it to Sean. We also don't know if Sean received any insurance claim payouts. As of now, Sean still owns the home on Rutherford Avenue. No matter what actually happened the night of the fire, this family deserved more. Somer, who was a great friend and who loved her kids so much, Autumn, who had a zillion stuffed animals and called them all her babies. Ezra, who really liked to look at leaves in the park, an emery who is just a little bubbly baby boy. They all deserved more from the people who are supposed to protect and serve. Their dad included. It breaks my heart that just as Somer was about to do the hardest thing imaginable to leave the man she claimed abused her. Her house, her life and her children's lives, their futures all went up in smoke. We asked Maria Somers' mom if she had any final words that she wanted us to close out this episode with, and this is what she wrote to us. God saw everything, and God can read the heart. I believe I will see Somer and the kids again in the resurrection, and they will be alive and safe and healthy then. But in the meantime, I miss them so much, too much. There are days when I cannot function, when I don't even leave my apartment. There are days when I just cry on and off through the day. It is said that time heals all wounds, but that is not true. The more time that goes by, the more I miss them. If you have any information on the deaths of Somer Day, Autumn Day Stewart, Ezra Day Stewart, and Emory Day Stewart, please contact us. [email protected]. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkey.com, and you can follow us on Instagram @crimejunkeypodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. [Music] Crimejunkey is an audio chuck production. I think chuck would approve.