Nolan Wells' Friends Gave THIS Excuse For Leaving Him

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Robin Drake** (0:09)
Hey there, welcome to Hidden Killers Live. I'm Robin Drake filling in for Tony this week while he's still on his honeymoon. And today, we're going to be discussing two stories.
One, the tragic events that happened over the 4th of July in Mississippi with the young man that went missing and tragically came to his end. And the second, we're going to be diving deeper again on the Nancy Guthrie case and all what's going on with the letters, the ransom notes, and the recent prosecution of someone connected to those but not connected to her. Anyway, joining us normally on today is Jennifer Coffendeffer. But today, we're not quite sure she's going to be able to make it because, again, we're all on vacation and coming back from that. But with me, as always, behind the scenes, but front man, as always, is the great Todd Michaels. And so-

**Todd Michaels** (0:52)
Man, I'm glad to be your wingman. Anything you need today, I got it.

**Robin Drake** (0:56)
And for everyone, I love giving behind the scenes about how the sausage is made, as Bob Mata says. And so, normally, it's Tony, Todd, and me going back and forth on all these cases nonstop, really, in the off hours too. And to Todd's credit, with Tony being on vacation, we haven't bothered Tony, although he's weighed in a little bit on some socials, but Todd and I have been going forward nonstop and really diving deep on these cases.
Because this first one, man, it's a really interesting optics challenge on many fronts on this. And Todd, you and I have been going back and forth on this one a bit. So let me kick off with this and bring everyone up to speed. Over the weekend, well, over the 4th of July weekend, an 18-year-old kid goes to a barrier island for the 4th of July and doesn't come home. Nolan Wells was his name, and he's last seen talking to a girl on the north end of Horn Island, Mississippi around 3 in the afternoon. And by the time his friends and boat pulled away an hour and a half later, he wasn't on it. Two days of searching by the Coast Guard, the National Park Service and half of Jackson County ended Monday morning when a park ranger found his body in the water, almost exactly where he was last seen.
With me to break it down would have been Jennifer, but instead I have the amazing Todd Michaels been with us behind the scenes and also front man from time to time as well. So Todd, when we see this, my first question I was gonna ask Jen, I'm gonna ask you the same thing, what was your take when you first heard about this case and saw this?

**Todd Michaels** (2:24)
Well, I'm gonna be very upfront and honest about this and I wanna be very careful about what I say because there's a lot of optics here that we could be going on and I wanna be careful that we're certain about details before we talk about them. But I will be honest that the first thing I thought of was group of young guys out having fun, who knows, probably having a few beverages or other stuff and maybe something went horribly wrong.
Another piece that really did stand out to me was the fact that he was the only black guy in the group, right? He was the only person of color in that group. And so there was in the back of my mind some thought too, boy, I hope we're not gonna find out later on down the road that that played some sort of role in his demise.

**Robin Drake** (3:13)
Yeah, me too. So my first take was pretty similar to that. I hadn't seen photos of the case yet or anything. And when this first came in, it actually, I wish I could remember the case I just covered on on Nancy Grace's show, but it was a young teenage girl. She went missing very, very similar circumstances. She had gotten off the boat to go to the bathroom on shore with a few other people, boat left, they get back to, and they find out she wasn't on the pontoon boat. They circle back.
But different from this case was everyone was the same color, yet it drew that kind of attention because she's a young, attractive young girl, then later find out that maybe there have been adults on the boat anyway. It got a little more complicated, kind of like this one, but if I think for different reasons. Yeah, you definitely would hope that race doesn't play into it, but as we've seen before, the optics make you go, and it's a little puzzling because there are some other facets of this that have become a little even more interesting. That's why I'm curious about your take on as well. The first one, I think, is the fact that he got off and was talking to a girl.