NOLAN WELLS PHONE FORENSICS NEWS CONFERENCE — SEPTEMBER 24, 2026
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[00:00] Good morning, I'm attorney Ben Crump along with attorney Lisa
[00:06] Park, attorney Eric Hertz, attorney Ahmaud Smith, attorney Christian Clark, and attorney
[00:14] Julie Winter, attorney Camila Moore.
[00:19] We have the honor of representing the family of Nolan Xavier Wells.
[00:26] As we told you on Tuesday, we would be having a press conference with our forensic expert
[00:39] and that time is now.
[00:42] We wanted to make sure that we continue to try to be very transparent and laser focused
[00:56] on what really happened to Nolan Wells.
[01:02] It's what everybody is talking about all across America and I found out yesterday while I was
[01:10] in New York at the United Nations General Assembly, I spoke on some panels where when
[01:21] Al Sharpton also addressed some dignitaries while at the UN during UN week and it was
[01:32] fascinating to me that diplomats from England, diplomats from France, and diplomats from Germany
[01:43] and diplomats from many African nations all came up to me and said, attorney Crump, we read
[01:56] the news accounts of the grand jury, we read the report.
[02:02] What really happened to Nolan Wells because we don't think that he drowned either.
[02:11] These are people all across the world asking what happened to Nolan Xavier Wells and so
[02:20] we continue, as I told them, we won't quit until we get to the truth.
[02:32] Today is another step on the journey to get to truth because I understood with our legal
[02:43] team to get to the truth of what happened to Nolan Wells on day one.
[02:50] It was going to take primarily two things to get to the truth of what happened to Nolan
[02:58] Wells on Horn Island in Mississippi on July 4th.
[03:06] It was going to, number one, take courage to speak truth to power and it was going to
[03:17] take courage to make sure you got the truth.
[03:24] Secondly, I knew for us to get to the truth, we were going to have to work with the very
[03:33] best experts and that's why we sought out through attorney Eric Hertz who is leading
[03:44] the investigation on behalf of our legal team, Andrew Garrett, and Garrett Discovery, one
[03:56] of the leading forensic experts as it relates to Discovery in all America.
[04:06] Attorney Hertz will go into further detail about his credentials and about why the Department
[04:15] of Defense and the Department of Justice calls on Garrett's discovery when they have important
[04:22] matters, important matters of national interest.
[04:27] They call on Garrett Discovery and so did we.
[04:32] And you all know about Dr. Roger Mitchell who we will be talking with later about the
[04:43] mounting cause of death.
[04:45] But today it is about the extraction of the cell phone, the process that he did, the interactions
[05:00] that happened with Nolan's cell phone after he, after it left his possession and before
[05:14] it was returned to his family.
[05:20] We know that the last text message that Nolan Xavier Wells sent was on July 3rd around 8.30
[05:34] p.m. where he said thank you to his Auntie Gabby and what his parents and family shared
[05:47] with us, this was common because many, Nolan was like many teenagers.
[05:57] They don't use their mother and father text messaging.
[06:02] They use Snapchat and so they went through this process of the traditional text messaging
[06:14] and then they painstakingly and you're going to hear in detail how they manually had to
[06:22] retrieve the Snapchats and the fact that him and all of his friends, all his friend groups,
[06:33] all these high schoolers and young college students, they communicate on Snapchat.
[06:41] And so we have all of the Snaps, I mean all of them from his friend group, the district
[06:52] attorney office has them and soon as we got them finished from Andrew Garrett and his associates,
[07:03] we got them over to her.
[07:06] So they held all 282 pages of the Snaps and that's really important because there's Snaps
[07:17] between Nolan's friend groups and now we won't divulge any of their names for privacy
[07:24] purposes but they were very telling and very enlightening, these Snaps between their
[07:31] friend groups.
[07:35] It's really profound because not only did we retrieve the Snaps but also Andrew Garrett and
[07:49] his associates at Garrett Discovery were able to use location tracking of Nolan's cell phone.
[07:59] So we have a definitive timeline now based on the movement of the cell phone and Mr.
[08:11] Garrett and you will see it with him and attorney Hertz goes through an automation video
[08:23] of the tracking of the movements of Nolan Wells cell phone because it is crucial that we find
[08:34] out what happened to Nolan Xavier Well's Snaps.
[09:00] The messaging as I said was very telling.
[09:09] I know a lot of people talked about people making about race, talking about race.
[09:20] You heard that from the district attorney statements.
[09:26] Well it is very interesting to note that not only were people across America concerned with
[09:36] the history of the state of Mississippi, whether race would be an issue but the messages
[09:45] on his phone in the Snaps will show some of his own friends were concerned about people
[09:55] on Horn Island can be racist.
[10:01] That's his friends discussing that on Snap.
[10:08] So yeah, a lot of people were thinking about whether there was a racial component in this
[10:18] tragedy of Nolan Wells being unalived and as we said, we don't know if it was racist
[10:29] or not, but what we do know is that his parents have never accepted that it was simply an accidental
[10:41] drowning and that nobody knows nothing, that nobody saw nothing.
[10:52] I mean with the blunt force trauma to his head, the abrasions to his back, those factors,
[11:03] our medical examiner believe cannot be discounted, cannot be just swept away.
[11:16] Not when you have a young 18 year old college student, football scholarship athlete in tip
[11:21] top shape who you say drowned and you look at the statistics of when the last person
[11:34] drowned on Horn Island and the depth of the water they claim he drowned in.
[11:43] Dr. Roger Mitchell is going to discuss all of that with you all next week and as we
[11:54] said, we're just trying to get to the truth.
[11:58] We haven't accused anybody and we would hope that everybody who says they're Nolan's
[12:07] friends won't deal with distractions but would be laser focused like us and get to the truth
[12:18] of what happened to Nolan and Xavier Well's, their classmate.
[12:25] We hope that everybody will focus on that and not focus on distractions.
[12:33] So we have snaps again from friends in the friend group, the snaps disappear but thankfully
[12:46] because we have one of the best forensic experts in America, he was able to go and retrieve
[12:53] those snaps, snaps that probably the people who sent them can't even get now because
[12:59] they disappear and so one of the snaps conversations talked about, do you all remember real sketchy
[13:15] looking guys behind us in two boats?
[13:20] I mean like, yeah, that one that looked like, and I won't say the name, maybe, apparently
[13:30] the guy was real skinny, the ones that were right behind us, yes, yes, one was black and
[13:41] one was white.
[13:43] Well those guys were apparently like felons or something, at least one of them and they
[13:53] were there when we were all gone, I think, are you sure, yes, they were.
[14:06] My dad, and I'm not calling any of the names because we're trying to protect the privacy,
[14:13] my dad had to walk this lady to her boat because she knew one of them and sheriffs
[14:21] talking to my dad said something like, you wouldn't want to be left alone with them, especially
[14:29] if they're really drunk, what the, there are so many people out there so I don't know if
[14:40] they could have even done something but I don't know, nobody's accepting that it was
[14:49] accidental drowning, even the friends are talking about, they are concerned about what
[14:57] really happened to Nolan Wells, y'all let's don't be distracted, let's stay focused on what
[15:06] the real issue here, the real issue is what caused the blunt force trauma to the back
[15:15] of Nolan Wells head, what caused Nolan Wells to be found two days later face down on the
[15:26] shores of Horn Island after he had went with his friends on 4th of July celebrating, we
[15:45] are going to now have attorney Liza Park who's leading this effort for us talk to you a little
[15:54] bit about the process leading into the phone extra case, extra, I'm sorry, extraction,
[16:08] everything that led up to it because that was important, you remember we we desired to do a joint
[16:16] extraction of the cell phones and so we wanted to make sure you knew from Mr. Garrett's perspective
[16:25] the things that they were very willing to work with Mississippi law enforcement and the district
[16:33] attorney to do just that, to honor our agreement and so I'm going to have attorney Liza Park come
[16:41] now present to you, attorney Park. Thank you, so I'm going to talk about how we got to today
[16:51] with the presentation of the extraction of Nolan Wells' cell phone and the reason why
[16:58] we're going to address this is because this became a big controversy, it was filled with
[17:06] misinformation and a lot of assumptions. The first thing that I want to clear up is that
[17:14] the parents of Nolan Wells never kept the phone intentionally so they would keep it away
[17:24] from the district attorney or any law enforcement. I've explained before in a previous press conference
[17:32] that there was a meeting of the district attorney and the attorneys and the family of Nolan Wells
[17:40] on July 15th in Mississippi at the DA's office. That meeting was incredibly important because it
[17:50] was the first time that the family and their attorneys, their representatives were in person
[17:56] meeting with the DA in her office and it was setting the parameters of where do we go from here,
[18:06] how do we work with each other because we think we have the same goals. We all want to find out
[18:16] what happened with Nolan Wells so in that meeting it was decided with respect to the cell phone
[18:24] that there would be an extraction of the phone and that everybody would do it together, right?
[18:35] One time full extraction and you'll find out an extraction isn't like when you go to
[18:40] your cell phone carrier and you get it kind of copied over, you get a new phone, no it's not
[18:47] that. It can take hours and hours. It can take more than a day. A full extraction. We'll let Mr.
[18:57] Garrett go through this more in detail but that's one of the reasons why you want to do it one time.
[19:04] You also just want to make sure like we handle evidence in lots of cases that you're there
[19:13] representing your folks and anybody else, any other interested party is there too
[19:20] so your witnesses for each other, right? You know what's happening with that extraction.
[19:25] You're not wondering oh we got it first and then we downloaded things, we're going to do it another
[19:30] time and was it done the same way? Did they somehow delete anything? No questions, right? It's
[19:36] the best, most efficient and fair way of doing things so everyone agreed to it. This was the
[19:42] July 15th meeting. A date was not set though on July 15th. Everybody needed to figure out
[19:49] what times were and because the experts weren't at that meeting we had to find out from our experts,
[19:57] they needed to find out from their law enforcement when could this happen, right? What was decided
[20:05] was that it was going to happen in Mississippi. Specifically it was going to happen at a
[20:11] community college there in that district, right? We weren't familiar with this community college.
[20:22] It's not our backyard so if you're going to agree that something's going to take place
[20:29] at your house, that person that has the house, they kind of need to invite others,
[20:35] right? They need to take the lead on when is this going to happen because they have the
[20:39] location. We never had the location. We agreed to go to their location.
[20:47] Dates never matched up. Communication happened but never got a date. Then comes July 29th
[20:56] and we get a letter from the DA basically saying you guys aren't communicating with us
[21:02] so we need that phone and then later she sends another letter to the Welles Wandsley saying
[21:10] you have 48 hours to get the phone over and so we can extract. Nothing about this joint meeting
[21:19] because the parents have that's their phone. They had already set up where they lawfully have the
[21:29] phone. Lawfully have the phone and as the DA explained in one of her letters which you should
[21:36] all have access to, if she had the authority to take that phone she would already have done so
[21:45] but she didn't have that authority so what we should have done which was in that original
[21:52] meeting, meet together, extract the phone. Somehow the wheels fell off on that and communication
[21:58] became strained and when at around that point is when we started to communicate with her via
[22:10] letter and then we would send that letter out to the media because that's when people started to
[22:18] accuse the Welles Wandsleys about holding on to the phone or what were they doing with the phone.
[22:25] Nothing they were just holding waiting for it. What we had done after the July 15th meeting
[22:33] is that we contacted this man Andrew Garrett and said we're going to have a phone extraction.
[22:40] Is that something that you can do and can you be ready at any moment's notice to go
[22:48] to Mississippi to do that? Their office is here. That's where you're at right now in Orlando.
[22:55] Yes, they could. We just needed to know when. We just didn't get that. We never really got it
[23:02] is the thing and so when we got a letter saying again here you've got this certain amount of time
[23:11] to get this phone in we asked that Garrett Discovery go ahead and come in and extract
[23:20] the phone for the parents and then we could hand off the phone but as we explained
[23:30] extracting the phone can take a long time and it did. It took almost 24 hours.
[23:39] So what we're wanting you to understand for America to understand again is that the Welles
[23:48] Wandsleys were cooperating as much as they could possibly could with respect to this phone and
[23:55] be right. So Ben is reminding me that the facility that they chose
[24:07] at this community college happens to be under the authority of law enforcement
[24:14] and although at the time of the meeting on July 15th they didn't quite explain this
[24:21] and the only people that could go in were current law enforcement not the family
[24:27] not attorneys not former law enforcement only current law enforcement so basically no one from
[24:39] the Welles Wandsleys that would just be giving away their phone. So
[24:44] when we've been asked by some media what happened with the extraction did the grand jury get
[24:56] the extraction information we did give it to the district attorney all the pages everything
[25:06] we don't know what happened in the grand jury we don't know how it was presented how any of the
[25:13] information was used or disseminated but what we are going to do now is explain what the extraction
[25:22] means and give you the information that we can and when I say the information that we can
[25:29] it's because we still need to protect people's privacy right so this is what we hope to achieve
[25:36] today we know that it's taking some some time but there was a lot that we wanted to dispel
[25:43] but because even up until we got the word that the grand jury had finished their work
[25:52] and here was their result a no bill up until that time we've been playing by the rules
[25:59] we haven't been putting anything forth that we had it's done so here we are and that's why
[26:07] we're going to have these press conferences to finally reveal what may or may have been revealed
[26:14] in the grand jury this is what we know with that I think that I'm going to yes
[26:24] okay let me give it back to bed okay thank you uh attorney part and to be clear
[26:33] the agreement was to do a joint extraction of the phone
[26:39] mr garrett troy their associates were ready to do it but then was told no you can't come in
[26:48] you have to give the phone to us at that point the wiles wesley family said well no download the
[26:57] stuff before you give my baby phone because we don't know when we would get it back they were
[27:02] concerned as any parent would and so that's where garrett discovery went and they started downloading
[27:12] the phone and it took about 30 some hours to do so and then at that point we were going
[27:20] to give the phone district attorney said okay well the family has decided to do their own
[27:26] extraction that's fine with us we said well we were going to give you the phone but if you
[27:33] say no y'all always started to download it y'all just give us the report that's exactly what
[27:40] we did and she wanted it as soon as possible we gave her a preliminary report and we kept saying
[27:48] you know this is preliminary because they were doing everything they could to get into the snaps
[27:58] and all the other social media because we know that's how young people communicate that the
[28:04] traditional uh your mother and father text messaging is not what they do and so they sent
[28:11] that there or that preliminary report and it had limited you know um discoveries and so forth but
[28:20] they kept working and that's how they got to deleted messages on snapchat and different things
[28:28] and so with that we're going to have attorney eric hurts talk to you uh about his investigation
[28:38] and introduce our forensic expert andrew gear who i have to commend him in his office
[28:48] they worked tirelessly to try to help christine and elmore wansley find out what happened
[28:58] to their child and i thank them for it um attorney hurts thank you for leaving this investigation
[29:06] thank you mr crump i'm eric hurts thank you all for showing up here today and taking interest in
[29:12] this this is a very important case as mr crump just told you not only is the nation wanting to
[29:19] know what happened to young nolan but the world is and what better time to introduce you to andrew
[29:26] garrett from digital forensic expert from garrett discovery and we're here today in his building
[29:34] mr garrett is not just a national renowned expert he's an international renowned expert
[29:41] he has worked with the department of defense he has worked with the department of justice
[29:47] he recently worked for the district attorney of louisiana and even the district attorney
[29:54] in mississippi cannot say a bad thing about him he's worked with our country to stop terrorism
[30:02] by helping to digitally for new forensic work as an expert to help stop the terrorism that
[30:09] we have in this country um i'll tell you that um he's testified over 300 times um he's helped jurors
[30:20] judges legislators understand cases that couldn't be understood and he does not have a dog in this
[30:27] fight and he has no opinion as to who or what should be done he's just going to tell you the
[30:36] science and there's no advocacy in math math is math two plus two equals four and he's going
[30:44] to show you how two plus two equals four here today um let's get uh i call him andrew because
[30:53] i've been working with him on this case for a while but mr garrett if you can come up here
[30:57] where the screen is and let's first talk about the interactions with the phone before um knowing
[31:08] wells on the fourth interactions with the phone after Nolan Wells hadn't no possession of the
[31:14] phone anymore and the interactions of the phone after the parents retrieved it and tell us what
[31:19] you found first of all i'd like to say thank you to ben crump and his legal team um i've worked
[31:25] with a lot of attorneys over my years about 1500 different law firms this is one of the most serious
[31:30] law firms i've ever worked for um they want the truth 100 and that was their goal right from the
[31:36] beginning i explained my job is to analyze digital evidence and tell you the facts no spin no
[31:42] conjecture no opinions i lay it out on the table let other people formulate those opinions
[31:47] as to what it means so for nolan's phone we went almost immediately i mean next day straight to
[31:55] his house and my team thank you detroit christian i actually took took the early morning flight the
[32:01] head there and forensically copied the phone during the process of forensic forensically
[32:06] copying the phone it takes a while sometimes you plug the phones in it's an hour or two
[32:10] sometimes it's going to take quite a bit of time this took about 30 hours so that meant we
[32:16] blew our deadline by about 12 hours with the government we let them know that by text message
[32:22] i was communicating with technical field officer reiner we communicated they said that's fine we
[32:28] can bring in the phone the next day or bring in the forensic image and they would accept it as
[32:32] is they were completely fine with it there was no nefarious acts there was no contention between
[32:38] the parties it was completely agreeable what would have happened if you would have stopped
[32:43] and tried to make this arbitrary deadline to the bonus data yeah so we notified the government
[32:50] that if we stop the extraction during the process to meet their deadline there's a high possibility
[32:55] it could break the phone that is just the process that happens when you hook up a phone to forensic
[33:00] equipment this is specialized forensic equipment this is not somebody doing like an itunes backup
[33:05] to their mobile phone it takes time specialized tools specialized expertise to copy these phones
[33:12] but understand that's a complete copy of the phone that includes data you can't see
[33:16] cached data stuff that the user themselves can't see interactions with the phone what time you
[33:22] woke the screen up hit the screen and took an app and swiped it away all those details come out
[33:28] from a forensic examination so in that examination the first thing we did is we issued a preliminary
[33:34] report because we knew everybody needed something very quick now our job is always about accuracy
[33:41] speed doesn't matter to us we're going to do it accurate every time and if i have to tell a client
[33:45] it's going to take longer that's just the way it's going to be because i can't put my name on
[33:49] something and neither will any of my experts at work in my firm unless it's absolutely accurate
[33:54] so we issued a preliminary report that explains some things in the phone but there's one thing
[34:02] that we know no one doesn't use text message but rarely only with people that he doesn't know
[34:08] has snapchat he uses snapchat and instagram for 95 of his communication okay there are groups
[34:17] that he's part of that have many many people communicating in okay that process that we use
[34:26] to get those messages out is using two software tools one's called Cellebrite and one's called
[34:32] Magnet AXIOM these are the predominant tools that over 95 of law enforcement uses worldwide
[34:39] unfortunately this phone had a newer version of snapchat in which the software did not support
[34:45] that required us to manually process the data manually decrypt all the messages and put them
[34:53] back together that took time a substantial amount of time so it was about a week or so later we
[34:59] issued a second report that had a swiped himself in use face id communicated and looked at certain
[35:09] applications then locked the phone again and from that point forward we knew the rest of the data
[35:14] we need to look at was gps data before you get there can you explain how when somebody swipes the
[35:21] phone touches the phone whether they're attempting to open it or accidentally how the phone would
[35:27] track that yes so there are databases and logs in the phone that you can't see unless you add
[35:33] forensic tools that will tell you whether somebody swiped an app away it actually your phone actually
[35:39] keeps track of what apps were open and the screenshots you see of the apps you're swiping
[35:45] away so even if somebody was to delete a message if they had swiped the app away beforehand that
[35:51] picture that was on screen will be in the forensic image that we created the phone so
[35:56] we can see what was happening on the phone there's also logs that show whether the power was turned
[36:01] on or off whether an application was in the front of the screen in the background of the screen so
[36:06] there's just a ton of information in these phones in Nolan's phone there was over one million
[36:11] artifacts of data and I'm not talking about a million pictures I'm talking about million
[36:15] artifacts that tell us forensically what was going on in the phone and that is something
[36:20] my team Lena Gill, Troy Christian, and Chris Stark and Charon Darththith all worked tirelessly
[36:30] to try to reconstruct a timeline of events and then we put those things on screen on a 3D video
[36:37] as well but one of the things we do know is there was interactions with the phone before and after
[36:43] his death up until the time that his family retrieved the phone from the other young men
[36:48] that were with him that day and it's really important if you can tell the news whether it
[36:54] was intentional or non-intentional no that's not your decision your decision is a science
[36:59] were things deleted from that phone yes there were things that were deleted from the phone
[37:05] I can't talk to intent unfortunately that's not my field of expertise to psychology but I could
[37:10] tell you from a digital standpoint things were deleted on the phone from the time he last had
[37:15] the phone up until the time that his parents got the phone and was it snapchat things they
[37:20] were snapchat correct now you want to I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you but I thought that
[37:26] was important that everybody understood that was science and you can't put an intent onto it
[37:31] no I don't I don't talk in the world of intent unfortunately so we can say that in order for
[37:36] that to be done somebody had to take a user action to delete data with so his parents said
[37:42] that when they got his phone they thought that things have been deleted and the question is
[37:51] are they crazy to think that no I think if you were to look at the phone like we did and
[37:56] look through the message threads and stuff it's you could pit together that things were deleted
[38:02] now you you did you make a video of where the phone went are you ready to talk about
[38:07] we took the GPS data from the phone now understand a phone has a GPS chip set in it that receives
[38:14] signals from outer space and it's pretty accurate you and I use the GPS every day probably on our
[38:19] phone to navigate so it's pretty accurate usually within 20 to 30 meters at worst on a mobile phone
[38:27] we have every moment of Nolan's phone from morning to night that day until even into
[38:32] the next morning until his parents got the phone of everywhere it went that means the boat dock
[38:38] that means the boat ramp leaving horn island so we have a perfect timeline of where that phone
[38:43] traveled to how fast it was traveling and where it went to and whose houses we've put together a
[38:49] video to show the travel patterns of Nolan's phone now understand in this video we did blur
[38:56] out streets entire streets actual houses and we blurred out names with this to protect some of
[39:03] the privacy of these individuals that was involved the district attorney has unredacted data they
[39:10] could look at this they could use this data all they want it's so I'm gonna play it for you here
[39:19] you actually have the redact the redacted copy that you can give all the news in case their camera
[39:26] is that correct yes we prepared today because this is voluminous data
[39:31] usb drives for the media to take with them so you will have a copy of this video to take with you
[39:36] and some of the reports I just want to make it clear in your final report you gave all the snaps
[39:43] all the 282 pages all your information to the district attorney's office as well as an
[39:50] unredacted video that you're about to show us yes they have all the snaps they have every bit
[39:58] it well first of all they have a forensic image of the phone they could do all this work themselves
[40:02] they have their own forensic staff and in mississippi i've worked at their district
[40:06] attorney's office on cases before and the attorney general's office and both and i've
[40:12] worked for worked pretty closely with their lab director charlie rubisoft for the last 15 years
[40:17] on various cases where we've been involved in so we've had a relationship there they have
[40:22] the same tools we have they I don't know if they have the same expertise but I would hope that
[40:27] somebody over there in law enforcement has the same expertise to be able to look at the same
[40:30] stuff but to make it easier on them we gave them all of our hard work we gave it to them we gave
[40:36] it to them on a silver platter so they didn't have to do much work at all they could go in
[40:40] and validate the data instantly and they could look at all the reports and look at the digital
[40:45] evidence and say these match 100 percent and therefore it saved them a lot of time and a lot
[40:49] of effort and especially because they were forming a grand jury my job is not about the grand jury
[40:55] my job is to give the family truth and honesty and talk about the data the grand jury is not what
[41:00] i'm there for and and i've told everybody that from the beginning and nobody's ever asked me hey
[41:05] make sure this is prepared for the grand jury the district attorney never called the state's
[41:09] attorney's never called anybody that's ever commented about this has never called our office
[41:14] i know i've never called van krump saying hey get care discovery to move faster
[41:17] that's not it it was all about the truth and that takes time and you weren't asked to come
[41:22] and testify before the grand jury no i was not asked to come testify none of my team was and
[41:27] there's been no communication the only communication we've had with law enforcement is about the
[41:31] delivery of the phone making sure they knew it was going to take an extra day which they agreed
[41:36] to and um i do know the district i know that the prosecutor put out some stuff about
[41:42] they would have met any agreement the parents had for analyzing the phone that's untrue they set the
[41:47] venue as a place and then told us only law enforcement can come in i mean it's like getting
[41:51] invited to a party you come to the front lawn but you can't get through the front door
[41:55] it's not a joint inspection at that point so that's why we felt it's important
[41:59] for two reasons the family needs to know their last moments of their son they need those photos
[42:05] they need those communications if it becomes evidence in a law enforcement case if the phone
[42:10] is handed over there is no legal mechanism whatsoever to get that unless there's a case
[42:15] filed or a criminal defendant is charged we can't get the phone back it has gone in the wind it could
[42:20] be locked up for years i work on cases all the time where law enforcement has held a phone for nine
[42:25] ten years and nobody can get answers that's why it's important to make a forensic copy
[42:30] before they would not have ever agreed to us making a forensic copy if they thought for a
[42:35] minute that we would alter any of the data or change anything or it wouldn't be a true and
[42:40] accurate copy today we're going to show a video this is a video reconstruction i can say that
[42:48] this is about as accurate as you could get when it comes down to accuracy the accuracy rating inside
[42:54] the gps points is very very high so that means somewhere within about a 10 meter radius of each
[43:01] one of the points we plotted shows what was going shows the location of nolan's phone at
[43:06] the time you can go ahead and hit play if you can you can see here in the early morning
[43:19] that's before 8 24 a.m you went to mcdonald's there is messages you will see pop up here on
[43:28] the right hand side these are the snapchat communications that was happening between nolan
[43:33] and his friends and people that were part of these various groups that he was part of
[43:38] through 837 they traveled to another another location i'm not going to tell you whose house
[43:44] or who that is but they did travel another location and you can see that in a vehicle
[43:49] based on the speed and direction travel still traveling here last snapchat messages
[44:00] asking about a jewel pod and can i get one these are young men they were having conversations
[44:05] there were some women in this chat group as well you can see here where they're traveling
[44:14] by a boat at 10 30 10 30 10 40 10 54 and you can see here still there's messages and phone calls
[44:30] being made then they were at horn island it's about 11 18 then the boat stayed on horn island
[44:40] and you can see here it says device enters lock state that means he clicked the button to lock
[44:46] the phone phone unlocked in application activity resumes at 217 pm that is when nolan was last
[44:55] using his phone we have about 218 in order to do that by our calculations he was on the boat
[45:03] when that happened then there's a reported call to see a call to Sea Tow
[45:10] at 436 there's also messages there's a message that says captain pull the bilge they had a bilge
[45:19] pump problem they called Sea Tow i think the news has done a great job at reporting on the phone call
[45:26] that was made then afterwards you can see the boat went up to somebody's house to their dock
[45:33] then they left the dock and traveled to a boat ramp
[45:48] the phone was on a boat and the reason we can make that assumption is
[45:51] phones don't travel on a car by walking over water so on the boat
[45:57] could be jesky but we would say boat and given the pictures there's actually videos from some
[46:03] of these boats from that day that we were able to recover there's photos from that day
[46:09] that we were able to recover that lets us know he was on the boat you can see here at 724 pm
[46:20] there at a boat ramp yes the phone was traveling over water at a speed and direction that would
[46:34] have to be from a boat plus we also have videos from another neighboring boat of traveling in the
[46:40] same direction about the same speed and you can see here this goes up to 730 then on land the phone
[46:48] is traveling to an individual's residence there is more messages in the chat groups that are not
[46:59] part of this presentation there are hundreds and hundreds of messages in these chat groups
[47:04] from various other individuals that aren't the individuals talking about nolan necessarily
[47:09] are talking about what was going on understand a lot of the individuals in the in the chat groups
[47:15] didn't know what was going on at the time yet no you know so here's the second thing i have to say
[47:20] the extraction we made of the phone also includes messages after nolan was dead
[47:27] that is up until the time we collected the phone the individuals that are part of this
[47:31] chat group continued talking after he was dead not understanding that their messages were also
[47:37] sinking onto nolan's phone so we have the messages up and through the date and time we collected the
[47:44] phone and this goes on until the parents come and pick up the phone at about 3 am in the morning
[47:53] roughly and that concludes our video presentation as to the activity of the phone and the travel
[48:00] pattern of the phone thank you very much mr gary if you and your entire staff for helping the family
[48:10] get answers they so desperately want and i think the world wants quite frankly um it is also
[48:23] important to note that nolan's parents still are baffled that nolan if he chose to stay on the island
[48:36] would not want his cell phone they said nolan harley went anywhere did anything without his cell phone
[48:46] so these are things that still concern them at this time before we get into your questions
[49:02] have recently been able to get this state
[49:10] state medical examiner's autopsy and as we said we are going to present evidence pertaining to
[49:25] the death of nolan wells to the public in an effort to be transparent again we there's only
[49:36] one issue everything else is a distraction if you really care about nolan wells if you
[49:42] really care about his family getting to the truth let's don't deal with his distractions
[49:47] let's just go ahead and deal with getting the evidence out so we we were told that we could
[49:54] get the autopsy uh when the district attorney released the grand jury report and that was news
[50:02] to us and so that day attorney amad smith who is or the next day attorney amad smith who is our
[50:14] local council in the state of mississippi sent a letter to the district attorney dear attorney
[50:26] McIlrath good afternoon in your statement following the grand jury's no-bill decision you indicated
[50:34] that you had offered to provide the state's autopsy report to nolan's family on the family's
[50:42] behalf i now ask you please send us a copy they are eager to review its findings sincerely amad
[50:53] are smith esquire district attorney Angel Myers McIlrath responds and read death investigation of
[51:05] nolan wells grand jury report mr smith the law provides for you to request all types of report
[51:14] through the department of public safety website that's all y'all have to do i didn't realize
[51:23] you and mr buffkin were not aware of the law to be clear i reached out to christine and when i
[51:32] did not hear back from her i shared the results with mr buffkin doing a phone call if you have
[51:41] difficulty obtaining it pursuant to the statute let me know and i will assist sign uh angel sent
[51:52] from my iPhone and so so you you can see this change here about this autopsy report
[52:12] that dr roger mitchell asked for two when he visited and so mr attorney smith responds
[52:21] dear attorney McIlrath we are aware that the law provides a means to request the autopsy report
[52:31] and mandates that a copy be provided to the family or a legal representative
[52:39] obtaining it still requires a process however particularly in this case
[52:46] i suspect that many members of the public may have submitted the state's request form
[52:55] claiming to be council of record in an effort to obtain nolan's autopsy report from the state
[53:03] of Mississippi on September 8th christine wells wisely his mother christine wells wisely submitted
[53:13] a request using the state medical examiner's form i remember attorney part helping her to fill that
[53:22] form out two weeks later she has received neither the report nor an acknowledgement that her request
[53:31] was received when my office contacted the state medical examiner's office the receptionist advised
[53:41] that a state issued subpoena would be necessary given the family's desire to review the report
[53:51] and your office possession of a copy i thought a direct request to you would be the most
[54:01] expedient way to obtain it also in light of your public comments regarding transparency
[54:11] i thought you might be willing to provide the family with a copy as a courtesy we have already
[54:18] begun the process of obtaining the report and would appreciate any assistance you could provide
[54:26] in securing a copy for the family cordially Ahmad R Smith Esquire Mr. Smith i've been advised that
[55:11] the request made did not include proof of next of kin as required for that reason the request cannot
[55:21] be fulfilled by dps without all necessary information in light of this and as i had not
[55:31] been made aware of this issue i've asked my staff to send you our copy of the report please confirm
[55:39] that it is to be sent to you at this email address if it is to be sent to miss
[55:47] wisely directly please provide her email address i hope this was helpful so we thank the district
[55:57] attorney for providing us with the autopsy report issued by the jackson county medic examiner
[56:06] in the state of mississippi and at this time we're going to release that report to you all in the
[56:15] public attorney Liza Park is going to go over that report at this time we hope to have dr roger
[56:25] mitchell have both of the autopsies next week to be able to go through those reports as a medical
[56:37] expert so just to explain what mr kant just read out was from last night and around 6 30
[56:50] eastern time is when we received this medical examiner's autopsy report uh it's about
[57:02] three pages um much shorter than the independent autopsy but there are some things of note that
[57:10] we just want to go ahead and share with the media evidence of injury two dark red purple
[57:21] subcutaneous scalp contusions over lie the superior nuchal line area of the posterior skull
[57:30] each measures approximately two inches now we talked about this two days ago in our press
[57:36] conference um but we didn't have this report then what it also says is that in the neck
[57:48] the larynx and hyoid bone are without hemorrhages or fractures the interior cervical spine is
[57:55] unremarkable lungs no fluid or debris is within the airways gi track unremarkable the stomach is
[58:10] empty what this means is that there's no water in the stomach there's no water in the lungs
[58:20] there's no water in the throat and yet the grand jury if you read through that especially at the
[58:27] end what they want to determine is an accidental drowning but this is their own medical examiner's
[58:39] report it is signed august 17th is the date that it signed and it still even this medical examiner
[59:05] concluded that the death was undetermined what we noticed as well even though the medical examiner
[59:16] did not take a photograph of the contusions she drew a picture and this is what the contusions
[59:25] look like to her on the back of the head right here on the lower back of the head you've already
[59:36] seen dr mitchell's diagram of where the red tissue was exactly the same place but on the interior
[59:47] muscle underneath the skin and that he had determined it was blood these even on her diagram
[60:00] seemed very significant i mean two inches and link two inches in width we are still trying to determine
[60:10] who or what caused the blunt force trauma to the back of Nolan Wells head additionally uh we want to
[60:30] again explain that what dr mitchell found was that there was no white blood cells and what that
[60:38] means is that this injury this bleeding happened within a short period of time
[60:46] from the time that the body expired so there's just a window of time before white blood cells
[60:55] start to become developed so we want everybody to keep this in mind and look at this through
[61:04] the eyes of the evidence through the eyes of what science can tell us and because of that we do want
[61:12] to present dr mitchell himself um we are expecting next week trying to coordinate with his schedule
[61:20] because he is the medical expert one of the best in the country and he's going to do a better job
[61:28] than us attorneys trying to explain medical things but we anybody a child can understand bruises
[61:41] are an injury internal bleeding is serious and with that we hope that you all are able to join
[61:51] us again next week when we're able to unfold this in um a manner where dr mitchell can join us
[62:01] thank you thank you very much attorney park so with the extraction of the phone and the
[62:10] revelation of the snaps and the chats in the friend groups you see that this uh this mystery
[62:21] still needs to be investigated we simply cannot close the chapter and say
[62:31] wash our hands of it put a ball on it and say nothing to see here would any parent
[62:43] would any parent white black brown or red would any parent accept those findings of the grand jury
[62:55] and say thank you case over no parent would do that so why are they asking christine and elmore
[63:12] wansley to do that don't know what happened to nolan wells we're not accusing anybody
[63:31] of anything nefarious even with the phone extraction we mr garrett said he doesn't know
[63:39] the intent of any of that stuff but what we are saying if you care anything about nolan wells
[63:54] if you know anything come forward if you care anything about nolan wells let's focus on what
[64:02] killed nolan wells let's don't focus on the distractions it is beneath our shared humanity
[64:14] it is beneath our shared humanity everybody loves their children we love our children too
[64:26] and if it was the governor the district attorney i have no doubt no doubt they would be doing
[64:35] exactly what we are doing and don't attack people for not accepting the grand jury
[64:47] decision we're in america we still have the first amendment i mean
[64:53] america we've just done it recently with lindsey clancy's trial several people across the country
[65:02] didn't agree with the verdict and they expressed that i mean historically when you think about
[65:12] the oj simpson trial people expressed that they disagreed with it so why are supporters of nolan
[65:24] wells been attacked because they disagree with the grand jury's decision this is america
[65:32] we can disagree and still not be disagreeable we can accept facts we can accept evidence
[65:44] we can apply common sense and we can have a robust discussion debate if you will
[65:57] about what really happened to nolan wells and all still respect the humanity of nolan
[66:06] xavier wells and his family because if it was your family i promise you
[66:15] we will be doing the same thing for you with that we will answer your questions if you have any
[66:24] from media
[66:46] it appears that it was stayed on the boat the entire time but it appears nolan was
[66:50] on and off the boat because it required his face to unlock it so he had gone back on yes
[66:56] correct yeah
[67:12] you know apply your common sense this dr mitchell raised these issues
[67:19] and then apparently this witness came and said what he said
[67:24] uh but look at what he said he said he awkwardly fell into the water he didn't say anything about
[67:33] he saw him hit anything and he said afterwards nolan just kept socializing as if he was fine
[67:43] man if i got two
[67:45] contusions in the back of my head two inches wide two inches long i'm not going to be talking about
[68:00] my head i'm not going to be having my head on my the back of my hand on the back of my head
[68:06] where everybody out there on horn island could see nolan's grabbing his head now there's no
[68:12] testimony of that apply your common sense apply your common sense this is blunt force trauma
[68:21] to the back of the head i mean when you barely bump your hand it causes you to be dazed can you
[68:27] imagine impact that causes two inch length two inch width contusions bleeding it's significant
[68:42] it's significant it can't be just simply discounted we have reasonably believe that
[68:49] this could be a factor a significant factor into what happened to nolan wells and how he ended up
[69:00] unalived well we we acknowledge those there and we would leave it at that but it was just
[69:19] significant to note that even his friends group and snapchat was talking about people on horn
[69:28] island as racist they can be racist so that's them having that conversation on july 5th
[69:37] so then to say oh we're making it about race yeah it's a distraction it's all a distraction
[69:45] what matters what really matters is what happened to this 18 year old college student
[69:52] any other questions yes ma'am well what we're going to do is have our medical expert
[70:03] opine to that and we're going to give all the evidence people can draw their own conclusions
[70:20] no no but what they all both agree there was evidence of injury to the back of his head
[70:28] and every medical official every medical expert the state of mississippi
[70:36] medical examiner and dr mitchell who was the former chief medical examiner of washington dc
[70:44] they both agree that the manner and cause of death is undetermined and so we're not going to
[70:52] simply just let them say what the sheriff said on day one it's accidental drowning no foul play
[70:59] nothing to see here would you accept that if that was your child uh any last questions yes
[71:14] yes dr turner is the medical examiner and we're going to release it to you also everybody if you
[71:19] go to press at bencrump.com or go to our social media we will have the autopsies uh placed on
[71:27] those uh platforms last question okay yes are turning curves who's leading my
[71:44] thank you for the question but the real question is why has this investigation not answered these
[71:52] questions were investigated to look into these questions that we are presenting to you today
[71:57] the real question is if you look at the grand jury bill it says july 14th uh
[72:03] It says 14th through 18th, that's four days.
[72:10] You have to first give them instructions, then you have that to end, September 14th, thank you.
[72:16] Then you have to, after they get some witnesses, and if you look at all the witnesses, not many showed up.
[72:22] And then you have to give them instructions again, then you have to write out the bill.
[72:27] And the next question is, who wrote that bill?
[72:31] Who physically wrote that bill, or no bill?
[72:36] I think everybody should ask themselves that, and when you ask yourself that, I think a lot of enlightenment will come.
[72:42] Thank you all.
[72:44] Mr. Garrett said if you all are interested,
[72:49] you all can come upstairs to the facility and see where they did a lot of the work on this case.
[72:56] They will keep it open for one hour for you all if you so desire.
[73:00] And I want to again thank you and your entire staff for the hard work,
[73:07] the tireless work, for helping the family get answers, and helping all of us get answers.
[73:14] Thank you, we'll keep you informed.
[73:15] We hope that Dr. Roger Mitchell can come and
[73:21] present to the media on next Thursday in Atlanta, Georgia.
[73:26] We'll keep you updated, press at bencrump.com, can answer your inquiries.
[73:31] We'll try to get the medical examiner's report up on social media,
[73:35] add attorney crump on IG and Facebook and TikTok and all platforms.
[73:42] Thank you all.
[73:43] Thank you.
[73:48] For you that are still here, we're going to be open for an hour.
[73:50] It's suite 210.
[73:52] We ask if the hallway's full, coming in, give it a minute.
[73:56] People can cycle through the forensic laboratory if you want to see some of the equipment that's used
[73:59] and all the big computers, Lincoln and all that stuff, come on up.
[74:04] Yes, when you come up, I have a team.
[74:07] Hey, who's got the thumb drives?
[74:11] He's got some.
[74:11] I don't know if we have enough for everybody, so please share and copy.
[74:15] It's not that large.
[74:16] Thank you.