Nolan Wells Case: New Evidence Comes To Light?

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Branson Quirk (0:38)

Hey, welcome to the TMZ Podcast Afternoon Edition. I'm Branson Quirk.

Kara Rainwater (0:43)

I'm Kara Rainwater.

Branson Quirk (0:44)

And I hope, you know, you know, I hope you had a good day.

SPEAKER_2 (0:47)

I did.

Kara Rainwater (0:48)

What about you?

Branson Quirk (0:48)

You know, I was actually going to say, I hope that no one's mad that I'm back, but they probably are.

Kara Rainwater (0:54)

Hopefully not.

Branson Quirk (0:55)

They are. Trust me. Just trust me. Well, I hope you had a good day. We have a few stories today we're going to go through. So Nolan Wells, his family, they still want answers. And Charles made a good point on the show a couple days ago.

You know, them ruling that this was, you know, no foul play and that it was just a drowning. It's a very unsatisfying result for the family. It's like they don't have anything to really grasp to in terms of closure. And closure is really important, right? And that's just what they don't have, because people still just don't know exactly what happened, other than, you know, what the authorities said, in which the discovery was that he had drowned, allegedly.

That's the official report. Well, his family and the attorneys have now released a autopsy report themselves, saying it raises new questions about the official theory of his death. The report found no fluid or debris within the airways of Nolan's lungs. It documented bruising in the scalp tissue on both sides of, hit the back of his neck. The report said there was no other external or internal injuries. It also stated that no internal organ abnormalities contributed to Nolan's death. The state report was signed on August 17th and said Nolan's body was examined on July 7th. Nolan's cause and manner of death remained undetermined. So the manner of death meaning, you know, what happened. How it happened. So now there's this whole question around text messages.

So Nolan Wells' phone, messages were allegedly deleted after his final use. And the friends are speaking out about these Snapchat messages that they're talking about. So Nolan Wells' cell phone allegedly contained deleted text messages from after he last used the device. The records reportedly include conversations about quote, sketchy people on Horn Island. His attorney, Ben Crump and Nolan's family, family's digital forensic team presented their findings at a Thursday press conference today live.

Investigators said Nolan last used his phone at 2:18 p.m. on the day that he died. The team showed GPS data tracing the phone's movement from Horn Island to the point when Nolan's parents retrieved it. So now let's get into the text messages, because that's something that we knew about. And they called out, you remember this from the beginning. Yeah. And that was one of the conversations. Why were these text messages allegedly missing from the phone? So, Andrew Garrett, the forensic examiner, hired by Nolan's parents, said that messages were deleted between Nolan's final phone activity and the time his family regained access to the device. Garrett said his team cannot determine who deleted the messages or why. He used Snapchat and Instagram for approximately 95% of his communications. The examination produced 282 pages of records, most of which consisted of Snapchat data. Garrett said people in one group chat continued messaging after Nolan's death, apparently unaware that their messages were still syncing to his phone.

So, Yav in front of you, do you want to go through what the friends are saying? They're now denying all of this.

Kara Rainwater (4:30)

Yeah, so the friends, well, did we read the messages? Actually, I don't think we touched on that. The two really sketchy looking guys in boats, which is, that's crazy. I mean, I feel like it's kind of blatant. It's pretty clear what's going on here. And then, there was another message described, a sheriff allegedly warning Nolan's father, wouldn't want to be left alone with them, especially if they're really drunk. But this basically shows there's a lot more to the story. But the friends are pretty much denying everything. They're saying, they did not erase anything and never had access to his phone. If anything was erased, they didn't do it.