Nolan Wells' Case Could Be Cracked Open With THIS One Page

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Right now, evidence in the Nolan Wells case is disappearing.
Let that sink with you for a moment. Not being destroyed by some villain in the shadows, just expiring. It happens in every case. And oftentimes, it's weeks, it's months, it's years later where people are like, oh, if only, if only they did this in the early days and weeks of the investigation, we would know X, we would know this, we would know that. Things that can exonerate people, if there's anything shady going on here, and things that could also incriminate people, if there is something shady going on here, we as of this moment of this recording, just don't know the answer as to which road that goes down. But evidence, evidence tells that story, and it's powerful, and it's important that it still exists, that it gets examined, that it gets looked at, and isn't not looked at for stupid reasoning like, well, we didn't consider it that type of an investigation at the time.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:27)
If we did, we would have checked this box, but at the time we didn't think that, so we didn't.

**Tony Brueski** (1:31)
Let's just, let's just not go down that road right now.
Deleted content on a Snapchat server sits in a recovery window, measured in days and weeks. Location history on apps gets purged on rolling schedules, cell carrier records cycle out, and memories, the honest kind, the ones people have before lawyers in group chats and viral theories, smooth every story into alignment, those degrade fastest of all. Every death investigation runs against a clock. The question in this case isn't just what happened to Nolan Wells on Horn Island, it's whether the people responsible for finding out are treating the clock like it exists. Because one person treated it like it existed from the very first hours.
At 6 o'clock in the morning on July 5th, while every agency with a helicopter was still deciding whether this was urgent enough, Elmore Wonsley was on a borrowed boat heading out to Horn Island to search for his own son, a father and a football coach out on the water in the early light doing the job before anyone with a badge showed up to do it. Hold that image. It is not the last time in the story that the family does the state's work.
And I'm not saying that this is a rare occurrence where individuals take it upon themselves to do the work of the police. It happens in 80, 90 percent of the cases recover.
If you're just catching up on this case, here's what you need. Nolan Wells, 18 years old, went to Horner Island off the Mississippi coast with three friends on the 4th of July. The friends came home without him. His phone came home without him. His body was found two days later, face down, in the water, at the same spot where the searchers had already looked and found nothing. The friend story contradicts the only other witness. Both autopsies are still pending. That's the case. This isn't about relitigating what happened on that island. This is about what should be happening right now, while the answers still exist. It begins with a classification decision that most people scroll right past. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office is running this as a death investigation, not a homicide. And now that sounds like a technicality. Right now, it is the whole ball game. And as of this recording, things may have changed in the hours after we did this. As of this recording, that's where it sits. Classification determines tools. A homicide investigation gets search warrants, subpoenas, compelled testimony, seized devices. A death investigation gets requests. Would you like to participate? Could we see that maybe, please? Oh, no? Okay. Oh, have a great day. Heard they got the McRib back. Voluntary cooperation, please and thank you. The Sheriff's Office asked the young men who were on the boat to voluntarily surrender their phones. And any investigator will tell you that a voluntary surrender request also functions as exactly that. Voluntary. A courtesy notification. We would like your phone. Take your time.

**SPEAKER_1** (5:07)
You do what you do.

**Tony Brueski** (5:10)
Now, I'm not saying that people haven't volunteered devices. I'm not saying that. And I'm not accusing anyone of doing anything inappropriate here. But I'm telling you, there isn't a whole lot to compel specific information, specific evidence that could, in fact, clear people to do so. And it's not so great when a lot of people bunch up, circle the wagons out of fear, not knowing where this could possibly go, thinking, well, I'm protecting myself right now. Well, if there's nothing to protect, honesty is usually the best answer. And the facts will lie where they lie.