Hi, crime junkies.
I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt.
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 kid's 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 the Chicago Police Department later, what I'm going to 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 Stewart family house fire.
It's shortly after 9 pm 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.
2554 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 and asks if he'll go with him.
And within minutes, the two are in the chief's 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 home's 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 lapped 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 fanned out to check the rooms upstairs.
In the first room, on the right, they found a two-year-old boy, Emery, 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 succumb 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 rubble.
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 hot.
You know how you like take them off?
Mm-hmm.
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 seen 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 Shawn.
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 at 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 investigator's quick write up summarizing the conversations they had with him.
But the investigator makes note of something that I assume he thinks is important.
Sean 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.
.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 learned from talking to Summer's 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 and just like beeline 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's sister told us that in the past, Summer had issues with Ezra playing with the stove knobs.
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?
Police 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, did they see anyone?
Did 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 coworkers.
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 autopsies.
Two-year-old Emery had a tiny amount of the drug lorazepam 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 Emery.
How did it get in this baby's system?
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 canvassed the neighborhood?
So 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 soot-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.
I That is like such an Ashley Bate 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 tipster 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.
Almost.
Until March of last year.
That's when I put our reporter Jen Amell on this case.
Wait, like just off of this email two years ago?
Or was there like something else that kind of like piqued your interest, something happened?
Nothing else.
Just this email.
And 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 8th.
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 texts 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 how he'll never, ever, ever, ever hurt me again.
And this time I'm going to videotape it, that when he does, he'll be able to watch this.
That's not really fair.
But I guess I haven't been that fair to you, so I understand.
I love you, baby.
And I'm really sorry for everything I've 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, you 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.
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 trying everything he can to not smile.
Shut up.
Shut up.
You're mean.
You're making me laugh.
That's not fair.
Three seconds before this video, he was laying down with tears in his eyes, telling me how he's 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.
Please stop making a joke out of it.
Alright?
I love you.
I love you so much.
I really am sorry.
I'm sorry about everything.
I'm sorry about... I know, like... I was supposed to be like a nice guy.
It wasn't supposed to break your heart.
It wasn't supposed to make you feel all this pain and distrust.
I'm sorry for lying to you.
But I love you and I don't want you to have to worry every time.
You know and 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 love you.
I love your face.
I love being with you.
I love you.
What's that?
What's that?
What?
I wanted this to be more serious.
I love you.
Why are you smiling over there?
My little smiley face.
Because that was the most insincere thing that I've ever seen.
And every time I feel like I'm believing you all over again.
I'm gonna 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 what happened, what you told me earlier okay, that you were sitting in the bed and tell me what happened.
Okay first papa uh, so he was talking to you and i was on the phone right, he was talking to you on the phone and uh, I started making some loud sounds and he's like okay, can you hear me?
And then I was standing, I was sitting, and then I made some quieter sounds, and then I sat down, and then he took my neck and pushed it down onto the bed.
And you fell back onto the bed?
And I told Papa that it hurt, and now my neck is sore and weak.
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 then 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?
You did, didn't you?
You took my car keys to keep me from leaving after all of that, didn't you?
You don't ever want to work on shit.
You just want to treat me like shit.
Sean, I need you to stop yelling at me.
You've been yelling at me for over an hour.
I'm shaking.
It's not an hour.
I'm shaking.
Please stop.
Yeah.
I didn't hit you, though.
It's probably better that I can tell you how I feel.
You put your hands around my face and sneezed and wouldn't let me go.
I was more than willing to do you a favor until you did all of that to me.
No, no, no.
Can't do you a favor, Sean.
It's such a hard thing.
You're going to get me alcohol.
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.
And you can even offer to take care and get some more.
And then I'm just going to say no.
No.
You have been yelling at me and scaring me.
You pushed our daughter.
You won't leave me alone.
And now you want me to do you a favor.
Yes.
Yes.
Because it's not fair.
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.
What's your problem?
Why do you have to be mean to me?
Does that make you feel good?
Please, I'm begging you to leave me alone.
Get to this point.
Do you want me to be here?
Do you want me to fucking be here?
I want you to go away.
Does this feel good when you do this?
I haven't done anything.
And you know I can't fucking do anything except get mad about it.
I haven't done anything.
No, you haven't.
Sean, I am begging you to leave me alone.
You've been making fun of me.
You always make fun of me.
You're like a bully.
You're a little bitch.
You think it's so fucking cool to fucking make fun of me and make me feel like shit.
I really want you to please leave me alone.
I'm so fucking depressed.
You don't care.
You don't care.
You just keep fucking with me.
You think it's okay.
I do not mess with you.
You think it's okay.
Don't say anything.
Yeah.
I'm fucking with Sean.
I'm fucking with Sean.
Yeah, Sean, you're a piece of shit.
You're a piece of shit.
Let me just fuck with you a little more.
You're fucking sucking this and that and this.
Let me open.
Damn, that one sucks.
Oh, that one sucks too.
You suck there.
And who's causing it?
You.
Because you can't be nice.
I'm going to go.
I'm going to go.
I need in favor before you go.
That's what's causing this.
No, you know what?
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 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.
You think you're going to bully me into doing this?
No, I'm just so tired.
And I know you're not going to go fucking get it.
I'm going to be fucking by myself all over again.
And all I'm trying to do is to have a good day!
Stop!
I'm trying to help you, but he's asleep!
Please go in your room for a minute!
I don't want to!
Artisan is still watching you!
I don't want to just have a good day, but you fucking can fuck with me!
Right, yes, I know.
I'm a fucking bitch.
I've heard it a million times.
I hate it when you keep fucking with me!
I hate it when you don't respect me!
I don't care if you even believe me!
This is not about that.
You are- Now Ezra's gonna start crying.
Please!
This and more was par for the course.
Summer told her friends and noted on official court documents that Sean would put his hands around her neck or cover her nose and mouth with his hand.
And in that video of Autumn you have her saying dad went after her neck too.
Now we don't know if Summer asked Autumn to say those things in the video about her dad squeezing her neck, and we can't ask.
But this behavior, even if it was just against Summer, is deeply concerning.
I mean, he may have said he was sorry, that it would never happen again.
We asked Sean about all three videos directly and the abuse allegations Summer made to her friends, but he wouldn't comment.
He also didn't comment on if he'd ever been physically violent with the kids.
But we obtained police records showing that Summer called the cops on him in January of 2022.
She told police that Sean pinned her against the wall and shook her head from side to side.
So Sean was arrested, charged with domestic battery and then, in March 2022 Summer, got a protective order against him.
And I assume all of this is public record.
Like, where was this in the police files?
So the arrest and domestic battery charge is public record.
Police knew about it.
And Sean even referenced it in their first interview.
He told detectives that he was living in the little coach house behind the main house because of the whole protective order thing.
But remember, police didn't talk to her family or anything.
Or at least they didn't include that in the reports that we have.
But you still know this man is charged with abusing her.
I mean, she's got an open case against him and she's just about to leave him when she and her kids suddenly die.
Which is why I assume they worked so hard to establish his alibi.
But two little points of clarity.
Number one.
It's unclear if Sean knew that she was actually going to be leaving for good.
So a lot of the people knew that she was going to be spending the evening of March 7th packing up for a trip that her and the kids were going to go on on the 8th.
She told a few friends and family, including Sean, that this was just like a temporary thing though, that she was just going to care for a good friend in Oregon who'd gotten diagnosed with cancer.
And that part was true.
Her friend's name was Chloe Boyle.
And Summer had like booked Airbnbs along the route to Oregon.
She even wrote her kids school saying that they would be away for three weeks due to a family emergency.
But it was after Summer died that Chloe reached out to her family to tell them the full plan.
That Summer was coming to help, sure, yes.
But she did not think Summer intended to go home.
She wasn't making the trip just because she was a good friend.
She said that Summer had been planning this for months.
She had gotten her tax return.
She'd gotten some cash.
She was going to take the kids and leave Sean and move in with her.
So that's thing one.
Number two, yes, she had an active case against him.
But guess what?
Those charges all got dropped after the fire in March 2023.
So none of this answers the logistical questions that we had earlier.
Not the how did this fire get started, but the why.
I mean, was it an accident?
Purposeful?
I mean, this is timing that literal research says should not be ignored.
And yet this case is a closed case.
The city of Chicago couldn't tell us how the fire started.
So we hired our own arson expert to take a look and tell us what he sees.
His name is Dale Rison of Rison Fire Consultants.
This guy's investigated over 1,200 fires in his career, so he knows what he's talking about.
And right away, when Dale looked at the photos of the kitchen, he says that it is pretty obvious what likely caused this fire.
He's not super interested in the water cooler or its extension cord going into the wall outlet.
He hones right in on that pot sitting on the stove, the one still standing upright on the back burner.
Dale said that he can't be certain without doing any tests, but based on his experience that pot shows signs of a greasy or oily substance.
So he thinks that whatever was in this pot was heated to a boil that bubbled over the side.
And when it reached a flashpoint, it then caught the ceiling on fire and spread into the attic from there, emitting toxic levels of black smoke throughout the house.
And can they test for that?
They could, but there's nothing in the report saying they did.
So we can't be 100% sure that's what happened.
But based on everything he's seen past and present, and looking at these scene pictures, which we do have, Dale is pretty 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 think.
So Dale said that it depends on what type of oil it was and like 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 reorient us, the 911 call about the fire comes at 909 pm.
Based on the conditions, they believe 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 8.30-ish, maybe.
And I think this scenario rules out an accident because of something like Ezra did.
He might accidentally play with the knobs, but he's not filling a pot 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 into deep frying things.
I mean, you deep fry things, but you don't leave a pot of oil out, right?
Smells like you don't want that out.
And I don't think Summer specifically, would leave something like that out, knowing that Ezra played with the knobs.
I mean, you never know.
But we actually asked Summer's mom, Maria, about this.
And she told us that Summer wasn't into 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 much 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 like deep fried meal for them at 830.
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.
But 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-Stewart 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 830 840, 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 Kidda.
And let me read you this from the CFD response report.
It reads, quote 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 Kidda, the manufacturer of the smoke alarms and the CO detector.
He alleges that the smoke alarms didn't alert at all.
The report said they heard an alarm noise.
Right.
I mean, they even call out the one upstairs.
So I don't know how that plays into his allegations.
But he basically says that his family was sleeping and they should have woken up, but 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.
Kidda 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.
Yeah.
So 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.
Some sort of evidence that it had been there.
Yeah, he expects to see that in the photos.
Know what he did point to, though?
Two AA Kita-branded batteries found laying on the floor near the kitchen.
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 KIDA brands.
Clear as day.
You can see KIDA written on the side.
OK, 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 charred.
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 determined that the smoke alarms were operating properly.
But their lawsuit with Sean 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 did?
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, Summer herself did this.
Two, someone yet to be identified is responsible.
Or three, it was Sean.
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 arson investigators call filicide 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, we'll 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 levels 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 BAC was, I mean, it was off the charts.
No, yes, she had a high BAC.
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?
OK, walk me through that then.
OK.
So when we were trying to 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 contact 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 Messenger call, specifically about an hour and a half before the fire likely started.
Oh, okay.
Well, at that time Cleo said that Summer sounded totally normal to her, like not giving signs or 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, right?
But that shows that she's still planning on leaving like 90 minutes before this fire starts.
Right.
Summer even promised 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, 830... 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 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, listen, I'm at work, so like I'll give you a 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 patiently.
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.
Her friend talks to 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, like, I don't think it makes much sense.
No.
So, okay, one thing at a time.
How did Summer get so drunk recently?
Like, so quickly.
From, like, this call.
Zero to six.
Yeah.
Especially thinking that, like, Cleo isn't also saying, like, I heard her drinking.
She was sipping something.
Like, none of that is coming up.
Or, like, yeah.
And listen, there is the option that she was drunk but just, like, good at high.
Like, this was just, like, her baseline.
Yeah, her baseline.
Mm-hmm.
Like her sister, Sarah said that her tolerance was probably pretty high for like years of drinking on and off.
But she also said that Summer wouldn't get that drunk with the kids around like 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 0312 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 them back one after the other.
And I don't know.
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 seems like a shift because she's like planning this trip.
She's talking to Cleo while she's doing it.
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 them.
Now she also told Summer's mom Maria 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 actually just coming forward for us.
It came forward back then.
It's the same info.
But we like wanted to corroborate it, right?
So we asked to see the messages on Facebook ourself, but she said she'd been locked out of her account.
She couldn't provide them.
So our reporter, Jenna 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 Summer's side of things?
Like this was through Facebook.
So what about Summer's Facebook?
So Amber that's Summer's 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.
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.
Yeah.
Maybe she forgot to tell her something, right?
If it's a scenario where this is purposeful at the hands of Summer, maybe she's reaching out for help to 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 date, like, hey, text me by this time.
Yeah, like get me out of this.
Let's like make up an emergency or 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 felt unsafe or annoyed or something like not enough to call police, but enough to be like girl, call me, so I can have an excuse to make this person leave.
The problem with this theory is 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 of what it shows, would be some answers.
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 KIDA batteries for fingerprints.
Yes.
Like, you know what?
Forget collect and test.
The city didn't even document these in their report.
And we asked Yale, like, could these have yielded anything, right?
If we had them, like, what would they even mean?
Maybe that's why they didn't.
Maybe the fire would have damaged everything.
Yeah.
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 on a silver platter.
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 could be anyone.
This is Chicago.
This isn't a tiny town.
This could be anyone.
It could be anyone.
But they barely looked inside.
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 like 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, exactly.
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 6 am.
He said that he was assigned as the cook for the firehouse that day.
So he left the station at 8 am 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 9 pm.
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.
So 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 829 am and then leaving with groceries at 847 am.
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 a.m., this is no big deal, right?
But if, God forbid, someone got it wrong and he went shopping at around 8.30 p.m.
It would change everything.
That'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, no.
It was the morning.
So then she goes back, followed up with her lawyer and the lawyer doubled down.
He's like, no, 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 our calls or messages.
So we made getting this video and seeing it for ourselves, like, our holy mission.
Our reporter Jenna Melfoya, 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 frame.
So when they were like more than a month delinquent, she looped in our legal counsel and we contacted CPD and we're like hey, like what's the deal 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, their 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.
Yeah.
We had to ask for an official review by the Office of the Illinois Attorney General.
And then, fourth time's 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.
But 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 timestamp was wrong, for whatever reason, I mean, 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 cook duty to leave the station and go buy 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.
Yeah.
According to Illinois' 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 arson 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 like with the protection order, like they drove him to this place where he's not even supposed to be right.
Well, 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 like 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 there 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.
OK.
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 like when you think about contamination and like he's the husband.
Yeah.
We asked CFD if they like officially knew about the protection order, what they thought of it.
And they said no comment whatsoever.
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 four 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.
Dale said maybe the emotion of the situation might have gotten to him.
Maybe 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 article from CBS New 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 Kozlov, 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 or 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, All I can do is to keep working on myself.
We put all the hard questions to Sean in an email.
We asked if he ever abused his wife or his children, where he was the evening of March 7th.
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 Summer Day 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 Summer's family asked them to shut down the online donations, which they did.
Now we weren't able to get an exact figure, but Summer's 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.
Summer, 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.
And Emery, who was 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 Summer 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 Summer's 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 Summer 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 Summer Day, Autumn Day Stewart, Ezra Day Stewart and Emery Day Stewart, please contact us.
You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkie.com.
And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.
I think Chuck would approve.
