BLAME 9Wants To Know

An unintelligible start to a 911 call begins the short and incomplete investigation of the death of Jill Wells. There are very few official records created in the case. A two-page police report. Crime scene photographs. Several recordings, including the only two interviews with the only witnesses to the crime, Mike Wells and his son Tanner, the 6-year-old boy blamed for shooting his own mother. Mike Well’s interview lasted less than a minute. The interview with Tanner took place with the boy on his father’s lap and lasted 1 minute and 31 seconds. But those who responded to the scene say something that wasn’t recorded that day has lingered with them all of these years. Doubt.

No fingerprints, no ballistics, no autopsy. And now, 9Wants to Know uncovers several life insurance policies, one taken out just before the shooting. Jill Wells sisters have been asking questions about how their sister died for years but they’ve never heard what we are about to tell them. Investigative reporter Kevin Vaughan walks them through the evidence and the back story he’s uncovered that brings into question Mile Well’s theory that 6-year-old Tanner Wells is the one to blame.

What did investigators really know the day Jill Wells died? Did they know enough to definitively put the blame on a 6-year-old boy? We pull the one box of evidence off the shelf of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s department to see what investigators knew and didn’t know. Then, we put a veteran law enforcement officer on the spot, does he think enough was done to investigate the death of Jill Wells?

The three people who accepted Mike Wells account of how his wife Jill died, reflect on the investigation that they left behind 15 years ago. What do they remember about that day? Did they question the story that her son pulled the trigger? Why didn’t they ask more questions? Whose ultimate decision was it to accept that 6-year-old Tanner Wells was to blame?

They say hindsight is always 20/20. But in this case hindsight could mean the difference between an accident and murder. Years after her death, Jill Well’s sister convinced a new investigator to look into the case. He did all the work investigators didn’t do in 2001. Ballistics. Interviews. And, an autopsy. He was ready to ask his prime suspect “the ultimate question” when the investigation changed forever. What that new investigation uncovered, and what those involved think could still happen to change, who’s to BLAME.

“She was so positive, and that’s why we never knew anything was going wrong”




To understand everything that was going on prior to Jill Well’s death her friends say you need to know about who she was and what she talked about in her most intimate moments with friends and family. With her faith playing a more and more important role in her life, those closest to her talk about the chasm forming in a marriage that ended with a gunshot her husband said was fired by the couple’s 6-year-old son.