What Went Wrong For Both Nolan Wells AND Siders' 16 Kids

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
Nolan Wells went to Horn Island with his friends on the 4th of July. His friends came back. He did not. His body was found in the water two days later. And before the autopsy was finished, before toxicology could come back, before the FBI touched his phone, the sheriff told the country, no foul play was suspected.
The question is whether this investigation is structured to follow the evidence wherever it leads, or whether that early statement already pointed it somewhere and it's been walking in that direction ever since. I'm here to say, I don't know. But words do matter. You may remember another sheriff, Mr. Nanos, who had that harsh reality check earlier in the year where his words matter, wasn't used to people taking him so seriously. This is a different sheriff, different words, but no foul play is suspected before an autopsy, before toxicology, before the FBI touches the digital evidence. I don't quite know how you get there.
That's the question I think we're going to start with this morning. Eric Faddis, defense attorney, former prosecutor with myself and Robin Drake, former FBI Special Agent, Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. Let's start there. Eric, what does a statement like that do to the direction of an investigation? That it's in its super early stages. They didn't have all the data. So how do you go and make a statement like that to the public? What's going on here?

**Eric Faddis** (1:46)
Tony, I'm worried that such a statement issued prematurely can have a chilling effect on the investigation. If there are multiple agencies involved, they're all hearing this and they're saying, oh, well, perhaps we can put this on the back burner. We've got a lot of other work we got to do.
So I'm worried that it would take away from the dedication of resources and manpower and everything else that is required to really unearth what happened here, because it's still obviously an ongoing mystery. They don't know the answers. And if you don't know the answers, how can you say whether foul play is suspected or not? I just thought it was terribly premature.

**Robin Drake** (2:26)
Yeah, you definitely lay down an early confirmation bias with that. And it happens in multiple layers where now they're going to move in a direction, again, totally potentially unconsciously, but just move in a direction where they're trying to confirm that there is no foul play involved. And then also you cascade on top of that, the position of the sheriff, position of authority, you're looking for promotion. You really want to go against what your boss already said. So it really sets things up for potential, not goodness.
So how do you think they walk that back? How do you walk something back, if you're the sheriff, to now go back into the world that we should be living in, the world of maybe. The world of maybe opens up all possibilities that we can explore all the tendrils that go out from this and go, like we said at the opening, where the investigation takes us.

**Eric Faddis** (3:14)
Robin, very true. And I think that they certainly, law enforcement needs to be now kind of overly diligent. I think they need to sort of overcompensate for this statement that they made in the sense of, you know, we need to interview everybody under the sun we can possibly find. We need to seize digital devices where appropriate, that might have information revealing what happened here. We need to talk to all of these businesses. We need to scour all of the premises for potential video evidence. All of those things, I think they really need to be overly diligent now because of that statement that was issued.

**Tony Brueski** (3:51)
Yeah, I mean, it's a really tone deaf statement to make. I mean, especially in the atmosphere we're in, in the state they're in with the track record of the state that we're in. And it's just like, come on, dude.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:07)
Come on.

**Tony Brueski** (4:08)
Even, I mean, even, I mean, you just, there's no room for that just sort of flippant-ness in something like this, where everything is ripe to explode very quick and people want to go down this road of a narrative or that road of a narrative. Words matter. I don't know what it takes. I want to take these sheriffs and just shake them. Like, come on, you are words matter. You're in the position. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm somewhat trying to give a benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's just another one of these. I'm not used to saying shit in public and people listening because I don't know. I would think once you have that title, once you've worked your way up to sheriff, you kind of got to take your job and what you say seriously. Is this, was this just a slip of the tongue, just a bad way of describing something? We've all done it. We've all said things like, I wish I would have said it more that way.