What Nolan Wells' Friends Did After They Left Him Behind

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Nolan Xavier Wells cooked his mother a baked salmon dinner on the evening of July 3rd. Christine Wansley had a long day at work, and her 18-year-old son wanted to do something nice for her before he headed out for the night. He was sleeping at a friend's house. In the morning, they were going out to Horn Island for the 4th of July, and Christine hugged her son good night. She will never hug him again. The next morning, Nolan and three friends from high school took a boat 10 miles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Horn Island. And if you haven't heard of it, picture this, a federally protected barrier island with no buildings, no running water, no cell service, no staff, and no way to get there or leave except by private boat. It is a popular local spot on holidays. You've probably seen pictures of it by now. It looks like a paradise. Nolan had been there before on the 4th of July, the beach at the northwest tip. It was packed. Boats along the shoreline, young adults drinking, swimming, hanging out of the sand like they have forever.
It's the summer before everybody goes off. When I was first absorbing this story, it kind of made me think of, for those of us of a certain age in our 30s, 40s, American Pie. Remember that movie? Summer Before You Go Off. Crazy things happen.
Not this crazy. But that's, to give you an idea of the environment, if you will, of that point in everyone's life and what's going on, that's the energy, okay? Kind of set the scene there. In photos from the boat that day, Nolan towers over his friends at 6'1. Arms draped around their shoulders, big smile, blue swim trunks and sunglasses. He was from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a coastal town just east of Biloxi, a wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, good swimmer, standout athlete, due back at school for football training on Monday. His best friend, Yvonne Williams, tried to get on the same boat, but it was at capacity. Yvonne took a different boat and met the group on the island. When they met up on the beach, Nolan told Yvonne they loved him, you know? Love you, man.
So good to see, you know, that love camaraderie, the feeling you have with friends. 18 years old, 4th of July, standing on the sand with his best friend and he says those words. Hold on to it because it's going to mean something different by the end, maybe. Nolan's friends say he was last seen around 3 p.m. He had been talking to a young woman named Katie on the beach, allegedly. Around 4.30, the group left the island without him. The explanation came days after from Ashley Cole, the mother of one of the friends who posted on Facebook that the boat had a bilge pump issue and was taking on water. She said Nolan made a decision to stay on the island and return inland later with another group of friends. I want to preface this in this piece here. This is the current information as of this recording. Could you be watching this when more information has come out? Without a doubt. As of this recording, here's where the alleged, I don't want to say facts, but the allegations, I guess, sit, the stories, the alleged stories sit. Okay?
I need to stop here because this is where the story starts falling apart. I want to be clear about what we might be looking at here. I don't know. I don't know. Could it be a conspiracy? Maybe.
Is it an organized criminal act? Probably not.
What it looks like to me? And look, I am fine with being wrong.
But my gut, as of right now, it looks like a group of young people who let something happen or were involved in something that went wrong and panicked. And everything that's come out since looks exactly like what it looks like and people are more afraid of the consequences than they are sorry about the outcome. Could I be wrong? Yes. My opinion doesn't really matter. But when I'm looking at the facts, looking at this story, looking at it all, people who don't want to be accountable is what comes to my gut. Could it go darker? Could it go worse? Sure. I hope to God, it doesn't. But if it does, we're going to hear it, and we're going to talk about it. But as of this moment.
Incompetence often does look like conspiracy. Incompetence being not wanting to be held responsible for anything, anything that might put somebody on the wrong end of the law on this. Does it go worse? Does it get darker? Again, we don't know, but we'll certainly talk about it should those facts pop into the ether. The story they told doesn't hold up. Nolan's parents don't buy a word of it. His father, Elmore Wansley, said it plainly, we always taught him if you go with a group, you stay with the group. Christine said she can't fathom why her son would choose to stay alone on an uninhabited island. No phone, no way to call for help, no guaranteed ride home. That wasn't who Nolan was. Everyone who knew him says the same thing. Well, the story doesn't just not make sense to his parents. It contradicts the only other witness, Ben Crump. A civil rights attorney now representing the family laid out a contradiction. That should be the single most important fact in the case. The young woman, Katie, told Crump's team that Nolan said he was going back to the boat with the boys. The boys told investigators that Nolan said he was staying with the girl. Those two statements both cannot be true. Somebody is lying about that last conversation that they had with Nolan Wells. And it's not a small discrepancy. That's the kind of lie you tell when you're trying to explain why you left someone behind. Now the reason for the lie, covering someone's ass or something darker? I don't know the answer to that question. And I'm not accusing anyone of anything. But again, objects in the rear view mirror may be closer than they appear.