How Nolan Wells' Phone Got Off That Island Without Him

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:06)
Nolan Wells' phone came home on July 4th. His car keys came home on July 4th. Nolan Wells did not come home on July 4th. An 18-year-old college football player was left on an uninhabited barrier island 10 miles off the Mississippi coast. No phone, no keys, no way to call for help, no way to drive home, even if somehow he made it back to shore. And the friends who had his phone and his keys in their possession didn't tell his family.
Is there an innocent explanation for this?
I don't know.
And that's where we said his mother, Christine Wonsley, had to track that phone down herself. Nobody volunteered it.
Self-indulged teens focusing on themselves and no one else. Not an entirely far-fetched idea that they're unaware of this little factoid. If they're thinking that their friend is going to come back and somehow get over and pick up his phone and keys, that might be the thought process.
I don't know. But it is a question worth asking and looking into a bit. There may be an innocent explanation. There may not be. We don't know the answer to that. That phone is key to this case. That phone is now headed for a joint forensic inspection. Ben Crump's team and Jackson County DA Angel Meyers' office agreed to examine it together. The FBI is assisting with digital evidence, and when forensic examiners open that device, they won't just see what's on the screen. They'll see what was removed from the screen, if anything. They'll see what was never on the screen in the first place, too. And the difference between those two things is the difference between a cover up and a tragedy.
We're going to work through this about the phone, because the phone at the end of the day, just look, speaking from experience of covering hundreds of cases, phones end up being like almost the end all be all in so many things. In so many cases, they tell us so much. In my opinion, they tell us more than DNA. Sometimes, they tell us more than eyewitness accounts. They tell us sometimes what people are thinking in their minds, because that's how they search, that's what they look up, that's what they type.
And sometimes, they leave us with big empty voids, or maybe there should be information. One would expect there to be information, because of how this young man allegedly used his phone regularly. But then there's times, odd times in life where you set your phone down. I know, what a concept. But we do sometimes, and one of those times does tend to happen to be statistically on a boat. When you're going to go in the water and hang out with your friends, a lot of times people put their phone in the boat, and they don't touch it for a while. And it looks like a void. If he came back fine and somebody is looking at his Snapchat going, what the hell? There's no snaps here. What was going on? Oh, I was in the water with the friends. Oh, okay. That's the end of that conversation. But when you're missing and you come watched up on shore, deceased, that void holds a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But again, that's what digital forensics will tell us. If there was, in fact, deleted Snapchat posts, if there was, in fact, items on that phone, they are no longer there. Digital forensics will answer that question. That will not be up for dispute. What the ether does with that information? Well, that's going to be an interesting thing to watch because we just don't know where it goes. But where it goes is where it goes. There is also a disputed video that was supposed to settle whether Nolan was arguing about his phone on Horn Island before he disappeared. It didn't really settle anything. It actually made the picture worse. But first, you need to understand who Nolan Wells was the night before everything changed. On July 3rd, Nolan allegedly cooked his parents baked salmon for dinner because his mom had a busy day at work. Lovely. That's the kind of kid he was. 18 years old, a student athlete at Southwest Mississippi Community College, and his instinct after a long day was to cook for his mother. The next morning, he slept over at a friend's house, went to Horn Island for the 4th of July and never came home. That salmon dinner was the last normal thing Christine Wonsley, his mother, experienced with her son. Here's what matters about the phone and why. The sheriff said on July 6th that no foul play had been identified. The investigators had interviewed approximately 60 witnesses. According to the SunHerald, the FBI is examining digital evidence. The DA has committed to presenting the case to a grand jury once the investigation is complete and the digital evidence from that phone may be the single most concrete body of evidence the grand jury sees. That's how much weight this single device carries. That phone made six stops between Nolan's hand and the forensic lab. Every one of them is a decision somebody made. The phone starts with Nolan on Horn Island. He traveled there by boat with three friends, including Warren Hudson, the stepson of Jackson County, Judge Ashley Cole. And according to multiple reports, roughly 200 people were partying on the island that day. Nolan was last seen at approximately 3 p.m. on July 4th, according to Crump, the sheriff and Judge Cole's own Facebook statement. Now, I want to be very clear. I am not accusing anyone of doing anything criminal, harmful, in any way, shape or form in this. So do not go down that road with me. I'm saying we don't know. We do not know what happened. I would say, as I've said in other statements, in other monologues, there isn't a lot of evidence that points to there being anything of that nature that happened here. There is conflicting stories on what he told people. That seems to be a little more easily explainable. Again, my conjecture, then suddenly his close friends that he's been friends with forever suddenly turned on him because of his skin color and decided to murder him at sea. Seems a little out of character from everything we know about these friends and everything that's come out. And with that many people, if there was something like that happened publicly in front of people, I think I would venture to guess it may have come out by now. But did something else happen? Did something happen where other people didn't see? Were other people involved? Maybe a few saw something, or maybe no one saw anything, and that's what makes this case so perplexing, that the sea stole Nolan through a riptide and carried him out, and no one noticed. Not an impossibility. Back to all too real possibility on that very specific island, or really anywhere in the ocean. Hundreds of deaths every single year because of riptides, and people suddenly gone.