Nolan Wells: Investigation Takes New Turn

**SPEAKER_1** (0:13)
Obey your thirst, Sprite.

**Branson Quirk** (0:23)
Hey, welcome to the TMZ Podcast. I'm Branson Quirk.

**Charlee Nath** (0:26)
I'm Charlee Nath.

**Branson Quirk** (0:27)
It's always so hard starting this podcast because we have such a really tragic story to dive into.
Nolan Wells, the investigation into his death continues, and it's only Thursday this week, and I think every day there has been at least four to five developments in this. I mean, just yesterday, Ben Crump, the family attorney, came out with the findings in the second autopsy, which included a potential head injury and so forth, which is interesting because it directly contradicts the first autopsy. I've just found this fascinating that the friends who are the ones who should be talking are not. And now we're like looking elsewhere, looking for answers, the family wants answers, including you. You talk to someone as well in that zeitgeist. So I'm just gonna throw it to you, Charlie. You've been really involved in this.

**Charlee Nath** (1:17)
Yeah, I mean, look, I think in a way, like TMZ reporters are also kind of equivalent to like investigators. I would say we're investigative reporters because we're also trying to piece together exactly what happened to this 18-year-old boy. Such a mysterious death. If you guys don't know exactly what has been going on. Nolan Wells went out to an island off of the coast of Mississippi on the 4th of July with a bunch of friends. They took three boats out to this island. Initially, it was thought that he only went out with about three to four friends on one boat. Now we're learning, as things are developing, that he went out with about 30 people, which included three different boats, all to this island called Horn Island. We know that he did not return with the friends that same day. And of course, I'm sure you guys know this, his body was found later and his parents are looking for answers. And they have turned to Attorney Ben Crump. He's been representing the family, trying to help this family put together the pieces as to what exactly happened to their son. And some of the things that we found out recently is that, or actually today, we broke the story, that the boat owners allowed a police search in the boats. Now, they came, investigators came, they collected GPS data from the boat. That's important because, you know, there's so many theories as to what exactly happened. Was there a fight? Did maybe this boat go out and dump Nolan into the water when maybe there was a struggle on the boat? Maybe he was thrown out and when he was alive, maybe he was, his body was, like, there's so many things that people are having theories about because we really just don't have a whole lot of information. But when you look at the GPS data, at least for one specific boat, now, this was the main boat that everyone's kind of been targeting during this whole thing.
This boat got to the land and we know that there was some technical issues with this specific boat where there was water that was pouring into the boat.
The boat and a bunch of passengers, about seven different passengers, left the island early on 4th of July, around like four-ish. And we know that this boat got into the ocean, left the island and was taking on more water. And they had to place a call, which we have also obtained to officials, telling them that they needed help. And we do know that an official did come out, they ended up towing the boat part way, got the boat to run. And you can see all of that from this GPS that was collected by investigators.

**Branson Quirk** (4:09)
This is a very important piece of the investigation, the boat, because if he fell off the boat, or if there was a fight, or if they even find, like, even a droplet of blood from Nolan Wells on the carpet of those boats, or anything, rubbed the DNA against the side of it, whatever it is, very important.

**Charlee Nath** (4:29)
Yeah, and we know that the owner of the boat signed over paperwork and permission for the investigators to search. So we know that a lot of the people that haven't been speaking publicly, like Branson has been saying, have been working with authorities under wraps. The only thing we really do know is that kind of the narrative among this group was that Nolan wanted to stay behind, that this boat that was taking on water, they had to leave the island because of the technical issues they had asked Nolan if he wanted to come on the boat. Nolan said he wanted to stay behind to talk to a girl. Now there's been some kind of miscommunication because people around the girl, I believe specifically the mother, had said that she thought that Nolan was going to hitch a ride with some guys and go back to the island. And it was explained to me that it's not uncommon for a bunch of people to go out to this island, especially on a holiday weekend. And whoever you drive out there with, isn't necessarily the same boat that you come back with. Like it's very common to come back on somebody else's boat. Also, regarding the phones, remember there was a whole thing that Nolan's phone was left on this specific boat. People thought it was very suspicious. Ben Crumpside had claimed that there was text messages that had been deleted. Further adding to the suspicion that maybe the friends were trying to hide something. It was explained to us that's very normal to leave your phone on the boat. In fact, you go out there, you don't even have service. So people think if I don't have service, I'm sometimes neck deep in this water, why would I have my cell phone on me? So we know that this specific boat had about 10 people's different phones on this boat. In fact, when they got back to the land, they're like, whose phones are these? Like they didn't even know whose phones they had.