04-03-2011, 02:47 PM
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Summer's thoughts
Summer Cook Inman kept journals from the time she was a girl. She wrote an entry shortly before she left her husband, Will Inman, in June. The entry became part of their divorce file. Following are excerpts:
"I'm so tired of having to please everyone else but leaving myself high and dry. Don't I deserve to be happy, too? Don't I deserve to fall in love with someone again and feel love from someone again? I think so ... I don't know if it's the right time to tell Willy or not ... I feel bad not telling him because I think he deserves to know the truth and to know that I don't want to be with him right now.
"I want to be alone for a while and find out who I am again. I'm just some slave that runs around and does as she's told ... I'm so used to just doing whatever everyone else wants to that I've forgotten who I am.
"I love my kids with all my heart and I wouldn't trade them for anything, but I don't want them to grow up remembering their mom as someone that just did as she was told. ... I would be OK with shared custody and wouldn't try for full custody unless he wanted me to or forced me to. I think that the kids should see both of us the same amount of time.
"I just don't know how Willy will react to all of this. I don't know if he will get mad and try to take the kids and run, if he will threaten to hurt me, or worse yet actually do it, or if he will be civil about it and let us try a separation and see what happens ... I know his parents will gang up on me and try to get me to just work things out and not want me to leave.
"But I don't think that I can work things out unless we are separated. I can't focus on myself and what I really want unless I don't have to focus on what he wants. He asked me last night during an argument what I wanted. I couldn't answer that because I don't know what I want. I know that I don't want this ... I don't want to be unhappy and feel trapped. I don't want to not know who I am anymore. But I couldn't tell him that. So I just sat there in silence. ...
"All I want to do all day is cry and sleep. I just don't know how to get out of this situation and have it end well. Maybe by the next time I write I'll have figured it out."
Bill Inman considered himself a man of God. BUT HE WAS A FUCKING LOSER.
Tiring of playing the piano and strumming his guitar at Faith Tabernacle Church near Nelsonville, where he had married his wife, Sandy, in 1983, he set out to shepherd his own flock.
He converted a garage at his rural Hocking County home into a church around 2004. It never attracted many of the faithful.
Bill then led his family - Sandy, their son, Will; their daughter-in-law, Summer; and the grandkids - to Florida for two years in search of construction work for himself and Will. But they lost their home in Arcadia to foreclosure.
Bill returned to Ohio in mid-2008 with the family in tow and new designs on the ministry, this time in rural Vinton County.
He obtained a minister's license last spring, listing himself as the leader of Mercy Tabernacle Church and creating Mercy Ranch - a nonprofit organization - with Sandy.
Bill envisioned Mercy Ranch as ministering to orphans and widows, "to help people who has lost their jobs or been cut back on hours keep their homes," he wrote in an incorporation document filed with the Ohio secretary of state's office.
To fund his charity, Bill set out to sell $10 raffle tickets, promising on a website to award a new home or $200,000 and 99 other big-ticket prizes in September, once 100,000 tickets had been sold and $1 million raised.
But it all soon collapsed. Mercy Ranch went nowhere. Summer left Will in June, taking the grandkids with her. Bill and Sandy were thrown out of their Vinton County home on Dec. 1 for failing to make the payments. It was against this backdrop of personal and family failures - as recounted in interviews, police reports and court records - that Summer Inman was killed. She was snatched in a Logan parking lot by two men wearing ski masks on the night of March 22 and wrestled into a car driven by a blond woman.
Summer was bound, strangled and stuffed in the underground septic tank behind Faith Tabernacle, the church her father-in-law had helped build with his carpentry skills and had filled with his music.
It ultimately was mother-in-law Sandy who pointed police on Tuesday to Summer's unholy grave after striking a deal with prosecutors. The three Inmans have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, and the deal Sandy made has not been revealed. No one has been charged in Summer's death yet.
Yellow, purple and green ribbons in Summer's memory flutter throughout Logan, where friends and family will gather at 1 p.m. Monday for her funeral at First Church Praise and Worship Center.
Summer's thoughts
Summer Cook Inman kept journals from the time she was a girl. She wrote an entry shortly before she left her husband, Will Inman, in June. The entry became part of their divorce file. Following are excerpts:
"I'm so tired of having to please everyone else but leaving myself high and dry. Don't I deserve to be happy, too? Don't I deserve to fall in love with someone again and feel love from someone again? I think so ... I don't know if it's the right time to tell Willy or not ... I feel bad not telling him because I think he deserves to know the truth and to know that I don't want to be with him right now.
"I want to be alone for a while and find out who I am again. I'm just some slave that runs around and does as she's told ... I'm so used to just doing whatever everyone else wants to that I've forgotten who I am.
"I love my kids with all my heart and I wouldn't trade them for anything, but I don't want them to grow up remembering their mom as someone that just did as she was told. ... I would be OK with shared custody and wouldn't try for full custody unless he wanted me to or forced me to. I think that the kids should see both of us the same amount of time.
"I just don't know how Willy will react to all of this. I don't know if he will get mad and try to take the kids and run, if he will threaten to hurt me, or worse yet actually do it, or if he will be civil about it and let us try a separation and see what happens ... I know his parents will gang up on me and try to get me to just work things out and not want me to leave.
"But I don't think that I can work things out unless we are separated. I can't focus on myself and what I really want unless I don't have to focus on what he wants. He asked me last night during an argument what I wanted. I couldn't answer that because I don't know what I want. I know that I don't want this ... I don't want to be unhappy and feel trapped. I don't want to not know who I am anymore. But I couldn't tell him that. So I just sat there in silence. ...
"All I want to do all day is cry and sleep. I just don't know how to get out of this situation and have it end well. Maybe by the next time I write I'll have figured it out."
Bill Inman considered himself a man of God. BUT HE WAS A FUCKING LOSER.
Tiring of playing the piano and strumming his guitar at Faith Tabernacle Church near Nelsonville, where he had married his wife, Sandy, in 1983, he set out to shepherd his own flock.
He converted a garage at his rural Hocking County home into a church around 2004. It never attracted many of the faithful.
Bill then led his family - Sandy, their son, Will; their daughter-in-law, Summer; and the grandkids - to Florida for two years in search of construction work for himself and Will. But they lost their home in Arcadia to foreclosure.
Bill returned to Ohio in mid-2008 with the family in tow and new designs on the ministry, this time in rural Vinton County.
He obtained a minister's license last spring, listing himself as the leader of Mercy Tabernacle Church and creating Mercy Ranch - a nonprofit organization - with Sandy.
Bill envisioned Mercy Ranch as ministering to orphans and widows, "to help people who has lost their jobs or been cut back on hours keep their homes," he wrote in an incorporation document filed with the Ohio secretary of state's office.
To fund his charity, Bill set out to sell $10 raffle tickets, promising on a website to award a new home or $200,000 and 99 other big-ticket prizes in September, once 100,000 tickets had been sold and $1 million raised.
But it all soon collapsed. Mercy Ranch went nowhere. Summer left Will in June, taking the grandkids with her. Bill and Sandy were thrown out of their Vinton County home on Dec. 1 for failing to make the payments. It was against this backdrop of personal and family failures - as recounted in interviews, police reports and court records - that Summer Inman was killed. She was snatched in a Logan parking lot by two men wearing ski masks on the night of March 22 and wrestled into a car driven by a blond woman.
Summer was bound, strangled and stuffed in the underground septic tank behind Faith Tabernacle, the church her father-in-law had helped build with his carpentry skills and had filled with his music.
It ultimately was mother-in-law Sandy who pointed police on Tuesday to Summer's unholy grave after striking a deal with prosecutors. The three Inmans have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, and the deal Sandy made has not been revealed. No one has been charged in Summer's death yet.
Yellow, purple and green ribbons in Summer's memory flutter throughout Logan, where friends and family will gather at 1 p.m. Monday for her funeral at First Church Praise and Worship Center.