Christine LeTourneau Summers, 53, was killed in the predawn hours of August 19, 2020, while stopped on Interstate 59/20 near the Valley Road exit in Fairfield, Alabama. Driving an 18-wheeler, she told her husband she thought she might have hit someone or something, pulled onto the shoulder, called 911 and was heard screaming on the emergency call. A fellow truck driver found her unresponsive just after 3 a.m.; she was pronounced dead at the scene and investigators concluded she had been brutally beaten to death.

Within an hour police located and arrested 39-year-old Charles Levester Gipson nearby; he was charged with Summers’ murder. While in custody he faced separate charges for assaulting two officers and flooding his jail cell. At a preliminary hearing testimony described Gipson as reportedly too unstable to appear in court, and his attorneys requested a mental evaluation, saying he could not recall details of the offense. He remains a pretrial inmate with a most recent booking on these charges in February 2022 and no convictions reported.

Did anyone in the Fairfield or trucking community see Summers’ rig or notice anything on Interstate 59/20 that morning?