Nolan Wells’s family attorney, Ben Crump, has released details from a forensic examination of his cellphone and findings of the official autopsy.
The move came just days after the grand jury announced its decision of not indicting anyone in the death of an 18-year-old Mississippi teen.
Nolan Wells vanished on the Fourth of July during a boat trip with his friends on Horn Island.
Two days later, his body was discovered on the shore of the island.
Before releasing the phone data and details of the official autopsy on Thursday, September 24, Crump held discussions with his team.
However, multiple media reports suggest he did not release a full report of all the messages sent and received in the days leading up to and on the day of Wells’s death.
While Crump claimed the forensic examiner tracked messages received and sent and linked them to the location of Wells’ phone from the day before he vanished right up until his family got the phone back.
“The messaging, as I said, was very telling…some of his own friends were concerned about people on Horn Island can be racist,” Crump said.
Wells’s family and their legal team have been pushing to keep the probe open and active and called for federal authorities to investigate the circumstances surrounding Wells’ death on July 4.
Crump and Wells’s parents have raised questions as to how the grand jury can determine Wells probably drowned when both the official and independent autopsies concluded the cause of death couldn’t be determined.
The grand jury concluded that the panel found the “position of, condition of, time of discovery, and location” of his body was “consistent with drowning”.
The 23-member grand jury heard from 43 witnesses presented by the prosecution.
2026-09-26 17:07:00
