What Nolan Wells' Independent Pathologist Was Never Given

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
All right, comments are open. Nolan Wells' independent autopsy came back undetermined. No fractures, no deep tissue injuries, no lacerations. But the pathologist couldn't rule out foul play either, because Mississippi retained the next structures from the first autopsy, which by the way is 1000% normal and protocol basically for an autopsy of how these these sort of things function. It's not an outlier as some may try to present it to be. This is how it works. You can't peel an orange two times. You get one first chance at it and then a second autopsy is kind of like that. We're going to go through where things are at from the middle and still saying, we don't know, because the autopsy is just one piece of this puzzle. The phone is going to tell us a lot. There's other things that are going to tell us a lot, but this is definitely a piece that's in. Joining myself and Robin Drake, retired FBI special agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program, is defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis to help us break down what's going on to autopsies deep and nobody can say how this kid died. The first autopsy results, we do not have the results from as of yet or the toxology as of yet because it does still take some time. So what exactly, once we do convene a grand jury here, what does a grand jury do with we don't know? Now that we have one of the autopsies in the independent pathologist, has Mississippi kept the neck structure so we can't rule out strangulation? They're going to look at that.
Does undetermined actually help the family get answers or does it just keep this door open basically forever? Eric?

**Eric Faddis** (1:58)
You know, I lean more towards keeping the door open indefinitely at this point. You know, the autopsy does not make any affirmative conclusions that would be overly helpful to a grand jury. In another sense, it doesn't rule things out. So there are options to consider in terms of trying to ascertain what happened here, but doesn't really move the needle. Is it going to be the difference between a grand jury indictment and what's called a no true bill?
It's not going to be that difference.

**Robin Drake** (2:27)
What's a no true bill?

**Eric Faddis** (2:29)
That's where a grand jury reviews the evidence and determines that there is not probable cause to bring any criminal charge.

**Robin Drake** (2:36)
What do you think it would take to get to there, vice the other other directions? And I'm going to layer multiple questions. So take whatever you want, Eric, on this one. You know, in that area, as well as what do you think the family and the public could want to see between these two autopsy results to say, and for the public to say, yeah, there's nothing here other than a tragic event.

**Tony Brueski** (3:00)
Or if there is something there, what would, I guess, pull that needle in whatever direction it goes?

**Eric Faddis** (3:08)
Something that is evidence of something more than just what could be interpreted as an accidental drowning. If there's evidence of some sort of injury, some sort of damage to the body, and I think we'll talk a little bit more about the findings in detail, but that would be helpful.
Also, some sort of evidence of criminal activity, meaning like a witness saw something, heard something, there was an altercation, there was an argument, something like that, that they can actually tie in a compelling way to this incident right now. We just don't have that stuff.

**Tony Brueski** (3:41)
How important is it to a grand jury? Because that is step one for folks who are playing along at home. A grand jury, you're not convicting someone. It's basically the next step to going down a criminal path if there is one to go down or determining, no, there's nothing criminal here. That's the true bill or not true bill determination.
But to get there, when they're looking at all the evidence here in an autopsy being one of many pieces of evidence that a grand jury will look at, they're not convening one until the investigation essentially has come to a bit of a close. So that'd be when we have the toxology and when they have the first autopsy results and when they have the phone data in, when they have all that, they will convene the grand jury and put it out there. So there will be a lot in front of them. But one of those things will be the autopsy. So when we get to a grand jury and they're looking at all the evidence, how much weight does a grand jury put on an autopsy? And how readily smart are they, for lack of a better term, how good are they at deciphering typically the weight of the autopsy versus digital evidence, digital footprints and information that's out there? How do grand juries deal with autopsies today?