Why Nolan Wells' Medical Examiner Still Has Her Job

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:16)
Let's go and talk about another case that we continue to follow. The medical examiner who performed Nolan Wells' autopsy, Dr. Staci Turner, Mississippi's chief medical examiner, has a few skeletons in her closet. Ruled a previous in-custody death undetermined despite her own findings documenting neck injuries consistent with deputy compression. Three independent pathologists reviewed the same evidence, called it a homicide. A grand jury used Turner's ruling and closed the case. One of the deputies at that arrest, Hunter Elward, was never charged. He walked free until federal prosecutors caught up with him and for something else entirely. Elward was part of the Rankin County Goon Squad, a group of deputies who broke into a home, assaulted two black men, shot one of them in the mouth and tried to cover it up. Federal charges, federal convictions, federal prison, same sheriff's department, same deputies, and the medical examiner who helped them avoid accountability for the first death is the same one sitting on Nolan Wells' sealed autopsy right now. Great! Great! We, we, again, this is just kind of like, you know, the people you put in places of power, if they, if they have track records like this, let's not, let's not, you know, go into adding curiosity or conspiracy where there doesn't need to be. But I understand why there would be some curiosity and people wondering of conspiratorial thoughts considering the track record of Mississippi.
I'm not saying that that's what's going on here, because we, at the end of the day, right now, we just don't know the answer to that question. I'm not saying his friends had anything to do with it. I personally don't feel like they did.
But it's optics. Optics matter. Optics are important. Why is this person the chief medical examiner still for the state of Mississippi with this sort of shit behind her?
Jen, how do you think that affects this case?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (2:17)
Not good. Look, Gigglio Brady.
Gigglio Brady exists for a reason. And what that is to say is whether it's a law enforcement officer or an ME, if you have issues in your past, anything that even rubs in the direction of not being forthright in your findings, which that case did, right? I mean, it was convenient. Wasn't it convenient that it was just undetermined? That's always a convenient. I'm always with the ME going, don't give me undetermined, just give me what it is.
But a lot of it, we saw it in Karen Reed case, undetermined, undetermined.

**Tony Brueski** (3:05)
Yeah.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (3:07)
It just messes everything up for everybody because you have an ME that can't make a decision. In this case or in that case, I mean, that was a bad situation and I can't believe she is the one. Is she the one though that performed it or the one? Yes.
She actually performed it.

**Tony Brueski** (3:28)
From what I understand.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (3:29)
I haven't seen the reporter.

**Tony Brueski** (3:31)
I could be wrong, but from everything I've absorbed, that's where my mind is at this moment.
There's so much stupidity here with the local law enforcement. The sheriff immediately coming up, we don't think it was this. You don't even have any evidence to say either way yet. Shut the fuck up. Then when you do have the body, you pick the person that's got this track record and this skeleton in her closet coming along, gee, nobody's going to question that shit.

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (4:09)
Poor Tony. He's off the rails. Okay, Tony, a couple of things.
She might just be the chief, and they have put her in an administrative role more. An overarching role, but she didn't precisely perform the autopsy. Because I haven't seen that report, and I don't think it's out there. It's not. So because of that, we don't know who was the hands-on person, cracking the chest, cutting everything open, weighing all the parts, doing all the work. We really don't. She signs off on it. Typically, that's how it works. You don't have the chief performing the autopsy. I'm hoping that's the case here. I'm hoping she's more of an executive role with her hands on anything anymore.
I'm not saying that mitigates the wrongdoing she did in the past. I'm just saying as long as this was done by somebody else and it's their decision, I think that it will look much better.

**Robin Drake** (5:09)
Also, I'm just hoping still that there's congruency between that medical examiner and the independent one. I'm hoping that there's congruence here and I'm hoping with all the effort they're making to dig out everything from cell phones, to GPS data, to examining everything, that everything just keeps coming up to tragic accident and not something much worse and darker than that.