Nolan Wells' Last Day In Full — What Every Minute Shows

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Nolan Wells, the timeline, the complete timeline as we know it right now. That is what we are about to embark upon going through, because there's a lot of information out there, and misinformation out there, and opinions out there. Let's work our way through it, shall we? And as we do, your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube. Love for you to weigh in.
A GPS unit does not have a story to protect. It doesn't get nervous. It doesn't lawyer up. It doesn't quietly revise what it recorded once it finds out somebody died. On July 4th, a boat pulled off a private dock in the OceanSprings area at 9.56 in the morning. It hit Horn Island at 11.14. That's Mississippi Department of Marine Records data obtained by CBS News. And nobody's disputed a second of it so far. Just about everything else from that day seems to be up for grabs. The night before, there's no data log. There's a kitchen. On July 3rd, Nolan Wells cooked dinner for his parents, according to his mother, Christine Wonsley. He was 18, six foot one, a wide receiver who'd signed with Southwest Mississippi Community College. He told her he was heading out. He said he loved her, gave her a kiss and a hug, and left for a friend's house where he was spending the night. Wonsley says that's the last time she heard from her son. He drove himself over. His car stayed at that house, set out his keys. Horn Island sits about 10 miles off the Mississippi Coast, south of OceanSprings. It's federally protected land inside the Gulf Islands National Seashore. There's no shelter out there, no drinking water, no staff, no way to react if something goes wrong with any sort of official capacity on hand like that and no way to reach it except by private boat. On the 4th of July, it is packed.
Tristan Shepard, a long time friend of Nolan's, who was out there that day, told ABC News that multiple boats carrying their friends came in that morning and that the group had been drinking since late morning. Shepard described roughly 300 people crowded under their stretch of island, a lot of them former OceanSprings High classmates. He called it one of the last hurrahs before everybody went back to school or work. Shepard also explained what happened to everybody's phone. And it turns out that one of the loudest fights here is about the phones. He said Nolan set his phone on the dash of a friend's boat next to maybe 15 others. Nobody was texting. Everybody was in the saltwater, according to the friend. Around three in the afternoon is where the record goes soft. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office says Nolan was last seen near the island around three. His friends say the same. Ashley Cole, a Jackson County judge and the stepmother of Warren, one of the boys on the boat, said her stepson last saw Nolan around three. Mississippi Today reported that witnesses told authorities three or four. Nobody at a beach party is checking a watch. So a little slack there is going to be normal. What isn't normal is what happens to the story. At that exact hour. Okay. Two accounts exist for why Nolan didn't get back on that boat. And before we get there, let's talk about the phones for just just a second here, because that is a big point of contention in this entire story. And it's understandable if you're if your mom and you know, Nolan uses his phone all the time and documents all portions of his life, as so many people do.
To see a gap in that that window, especially at an event where there's a lot of people around where normally you would be take or you think you would think one would be taking photos. And it's dead and there's nothing there on that Snapchat. You're going to look at that you're gonna go, God, this looks like it was deleted. That'd be my initial reaction. But I think it's important to look at the context here.
People on a boat, everyone's saying their phone is on the boat. Everybody's saying nobody's using their phone out in the water. Well, then that gap is fairly explainable. I guess it should be tested, though, to see if that is in fact true against everybody else's phone. Is everybody else's phone on that boat at the exact same place where Nolan's was? That could be looked at. That could be tracked with GPS data. That could be tracked with the phone data. If they are to compare other people's phones. I'm not saying it's true this way or that, but I'm saying there's your logical explanation as to why there may not be anything on his phone for a gap of time leading up to his death. Not necessarily things deleted, but a phone not being in use because he was an environment in which you wouldn't be using your phone.