FULL PRESS CONFERENCE: Forensic examiner details data recovered from Nolan Wells' phone

[0:02] Good morning. I'm attorney Ben Crump, along with attorney Lisa Park, attorney Eric Hertz, attorney Ahmaud Smith, attorney Kristen Clark, and attorney Julie Winter, attorney Camila Moore. [19:55] We have the honor of representing the family of Nolan Xavier Wells. As we told you on Tuesday, we would be having a press conference with our forensic expert, and that time is now. [20:18] We wanted to make sure that we continue to try to be very transparent and laser-focused on what really happened to Nolan Wells. It's what everybody is talking about all across America. [20:43] And I found out yesterday, while I was in New York at the United Nations General Assembly, I spoke on some panels. Reverend Al Sharpton also addressed some dignitaries while at the U.N. during U.N. Week. [21:08] And it was fascinating to me that diplomats from England, diplomats from France, and diplomats from Germany, and diplomats from many African nations all came up to me and said, [21:28] Attorney Crump, we read the news accounts of the grand jury. We read the report. What really happened to Nolan Wells? Because we don't think that he drowned either. These are people all across the world asking what happened to Nolan Xavier Wells. [21:56] And so we continue. As I told them, we won't quit until we get to the truth. Today is another step on the journey to get to truth. Because I understood with our legal team, to get to the truth of what happened to Nolan Wells on day one, [22:26] It was going to take primarily two things. To get to the truth of what happened to Nolan Wells on Horn Island in Mississippi on July 4th. It was going to, number one, take courage to speak truth to power. And it was going to take courage to make sure you got the truth. [22:59] Secondly, I knew for us to get to the truth. Secondly, I knew for us to get to the truth, we were going to have to work with the very best experts. And that's why we sought out through Attorney Eric Hertz, who is leading the investigation on behalf of our legal team, Andrew Garrett and Garrett Discovery, one of the leading forensic experts as it relates to discovery. [23:38] In all America, Attorney Hertz will go into further detail about his credentials and about why the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice calls on Garrett's discovery. When they have important matters, important matters of national interest, they call on Garrett discovery. And so did we. And you all know about Dr. [24:12] Dr. Roger Mitchell, who we will be talking with later about the man and cause of death. But today, it is about the extraction of the cell phone, the process that he did, the interactions that happened with Nolan's cell phone after he left his possession and before it was returned to his family. [24:53] We know that the last text message that Nolan Xavier Wells sent was on July 3rd, around 8.30 PM, where he said thank you to his auntie Gabby. And what his parents and family shared with us, this was common because many, Nolan was like many teenagers, they don't use the, their mother and father text messaging. [25:38] They use Snapchat. And so they went through this process of the traditional text messaging. And then they painstakingly, and you're going to hear in detail how they manually had to retrieve the Snapchats. [26:01] And the fact that him and all of his friends, all his friend groups, all these high schoolers and young college students, they communicate on Snapchat. And so we have all of the snaps. I mean, all of them from his friend group. [26:27] The district attorney office has them. As soon as we got them finished from Andrew Garrett and his associates, we got them over to her. So they held all 282 pages of the snaps. And that's really important because they're snaps between Nolan's friend groups. [26:56] And now we won't divulge any of their names for privacy purposes, but they were very telling and very enlightening. These snaps between their friend groups. It's, it's really profound because not only did we retrieve the snaps, the snaps, but also Andrew Garrett and his associates at Garrett Discovery were able to use location tracking of Nolan's [27:34] cell phone. So we have a definitive timeline now based on the movement of the cell phone. So we have a definitive timeline now based on the movement of the cell phone. And Mr. Garrett, and you will see it with him and attorney Hertz goes through automation video of the tracking of the movements of Nolan Wells' cell phone because it is crucial that we find out what happened to Nolan Wells' cell phone. [28:14] Nolan Xavier Wells' cell phone. [28:16] Nolan Xavier Wells' cell phone. The message, as I said, was very telling. I know a lot of people talked about people making about race, talking about race. You heard that from the district attorney's statements. Well, it is very interesting to know that not only were people across America concerned with the history of the state of Mississippi, whether the [29:16] race would be a race would be an issue, but the messages on his phone in the snaps will show some of his own friends were concerned about people on Horn Island can be racist. That's his friends discussing that on snap. So yeah, a lot of people were thinking about whether there was a racial component in this tragedy [29:58] or not. And as we said, we don't know if it was racist or not. But what we do know is that his parents have never accepted that it was simply an accidental drowning and that nobody knows nothing, that nobody saw nothing. I mean, with the blunt force trauma to his head, the abrasions to his back, [30:40] our medical examiner believe cannot be discounted, cannot be just swept away. Not when you have a young 18 year old college student, football scholarship athlete in tip top shape, who you say drowned. [31:05] Dr. And you look at the statistics of when the last person drowned on Horn Island and the depth of the water they claim he drowned in. Dr. Roger Mitchell is going to discuss all of that with you all next week. [31:23] And as we say, we're just trying to get to the truth. We haven't accused anybody. And we would hope that everybody who says they're Nolan's friends won't deal with distractions, but will be laser focused. [31:49] And get to the truth of what happened to Nolan and Xavier Wells, their classmate. We hope that everybody will focus on that and not focus on distractions. So we have snaps again from friends in the friend group, the snaps disappear. [32:20] But thankfully, because we have one of the best forensic experts in America, he was able to go and retrieve those snaps, snaps that probably the people who sent them can't even get now because they disappear. [32:36] And so one of the snaps conversations talked about, do you all remember real sketchy looking guys behind us in two boats? I mean like, yeah, that one that looked like, and I won't say the name, maybe apparently the guy was real skinny. The ones that were right behind us. Yes. Yes. One was black and one was white. [33:18] Well, those guys were apparently like felons or something. At least one of them. And they were there when we were all gone. I think. Are you sure? Yes, they were. My dad and I'm not calling any of the names because we're trying to protect the privacy. My dad had to walk this lady to her boat because she knew one of them. And sheriffs talking to my dad. [34:01] I didn't want to walk this lady. I didn't want to walk this lady. I didn't want to be left alone with them, especially if they're really drunk. What the? There are so many people out there. So I don't know if they could have even done something. But I don't know. [34:23] Nobody's accepting that it was an accidental drowning. Even the friends are talking about. They are concerned about what really happened to Nolan Wells. [34:37] Y'all, let's don't be distracted. Let's stay focused on what the real issue here. The real issue is what caused the blunt force trauma to the back of Nolan Wells head. [34:52] What caused Nolan Wells to be found two days later face down on the shores of Horn Island after he had went with his friends on 4th of July celebrating. We are going to now have attorney Lisa Park, who's leading this effort for us, talk to you a little bit about the process leading into the phone extracation. [35:37] Okay, extra dish. I'm sorry, extraction of everything that led up to it, because that was important. You remember we, we desire to do a joint extraction of the cell phones. [35:55] And so we want to make sure you knew from Mr. Garrett's perspective, the things that they were very willing to work with Mississippi law enforcement and the district attorney to do just that, [36:11] to honor our agreement. And so I'm going to have attorney Lisa Park come now present to you. [36:19] Attorney Park. Thank you. So I'm going to talk about how we got to today with the presentation of the extraction of Nolan Wells cell phone. [36:33] And the reason why we're going to address this is because this became a big controversy. It was filled with misinformation and a lot of assumptions. The first thing that I want to clear up is that the parents of Nolan Wells never kept the phone intentionally so they would keep it away from the district attorney or any law enforcement. [37:03] I've explained before in a previous press conference that there was a meeting of the district attorney and the attorneys and the family of Nolan Wells on July 15th in Mississippi at the DA's office. That meeting was incredibly important because it was the first time that the family and their attorneys, their representatives were in person meeting with the DA and her office. [37:32] Right? And it was setting the parameters of where do we go from here? How do we work with each other? Because we think we have the same goals. Right? We all want to find out what happened with Nolan Wells. So in that meeting, it was decided with respect to the cell phone that there would be an extraction of the phone. So in that meeting, it was decided with respect to the cell phone. [38:01] That there would be an extraction of the phone. And that everybody would do it together. Right? One time, full extraction. And you'll find out an extraction isn't like when you go to your cell phone carrier and you get it kind of copied over. You get a new phone. No, it's not that. It can take hours and hours. It can take more than a day. [38:29] A full extraction. And we'll let Mr. Garrett go through this more in detail. But the reason why, that's one of the reasons why you want to do it one time. You also just want to make sure, like we handle evidence in lots of cases, that you're there representing your folks and anybody else, any other interested party is there too. [38:56] So you're witnesses for each other. Right? You know what's happening with that extraction. You're not wondering, oh, we got it first and then we downloaded things. We're going to do it another time. And was it done the same way? Did they somehow delete anything? No questions. Right? [39:12] It's the best, most efficient and fair way of doing things. So everyone agreed to it. This was the July 15th meeting. A date was not set, though, on July 15th. Everybody needed to figure out what times were. And because the experts weren't at that meeting, we had to find out from our experts, they needed to find out from their law enforcement, when could this happen? Right? [39:39] What was decided was that it was going to happen in Mississippi. Specifically, it was going to happen at a community college there in that district. Right? We weren't familiar with this community college. It's not our backyard. [40:00] So if you're going to agree that something's going to take place at your house, that person that has the house, they kind of need to invite others, right? They need to take the lead on when is this going to happen because they have the location. We never had the location. We agreed to go to their location. [40:21] So dates never matched up. Communication, you know, happened, but never got a date. Then comes July 29th and we get a letter from the DA basically saying you guys aren't communicating with us. So we need that phone. And then later, she sends another letter to the Wells Wadsley saying you have 48 hours to get the phone over and so we can extract nothing about this joint. [40:54] Think about this joint meeting because the parents have, that's their phone. They had already set up where they lawfully have the phone, lawfully have the phone. And as the DA explained in one of her letters, which you should all have access to, if she had the authority to take that phone, she would already have done so. [41:21] But she didn't have that authority. So what we should have done, which was in that original meeting, meet together, extract the phone. Somehow the wheels fell off on that and communication became strained. [41:36] And when around that point is when we started to communicate with her via letter and then we would send that letter out to the media because that's when people started to accuse the Wells Wadsley's about holding onto the phone or what were they doing with the phone? Nothing. [42:03] Nothing. They were just holding, waiting for it. What we had done after the July 15th meeting is that we contacted this man, Andrew Garrett, and said, we're going to have a phone extraction. Is that something that you can do? And can you be ready at any moment's notice to go to Mississippi to do that? [42:26] Their offices here. That's where you're at right now in Orlando. Yes, they could. We just needed to know when we just didn't get that. We never really got it is the thing. And so when we got a letter saying again here, you've got this certain amount of time to get this phone in. [42:50] We asked that Garrett discovery, go ahead, come in and extract the phone for the parents. And then we could hand off the phone. But as we explained, extracting the phone can take a long time. And it did. It took almost 24 hours. [43:15] So what we're wanting you to understand for America to understand again, is that the Wells Wadsley's were cooperating as much as they could possibly could with respect to this phone and be right. [43:37] So Ben is reminding me that the facility that they chose at this community college happens to be under the authority of law enforcement. And although at the time of the meeting on July 15th, they didn't quite explain this. And the only people that could go in were current law enforcement, not the family, not attorneys, not former law enforcement, only current law enforcement. [44:11] So basically no one from the Wells Wadsley's that would just be giving away their phone. [44:20] So when we've been asked by some media, what happened with the extraction? Did the grand jury get the extraction information? We did give it to the district attorney, all the pages, everything. [44:41] We don't know what happened in the grand jury. We don't know how it was presented, how any of the information was used or disseminated. But what we're going to do now is explain what the extraction means and give you the information that we can. [45:03] And when I say the information that we can, it's because we still need to protect people's privacy, right? [45:10] So this is what we hope to achieve today. We know that it's taking some, um, some time, but there was a lot that we wanted to dispel. [45:19] But because even up until we got the word that the grand jury had finished their work and here was their result, a no bill, up until that time, we've been playing by the rules. [45:35] We haven't been putting anything forth that we had. It's done. So here we are. And that's why we're going to have these press conferences to finally reveal what may or may have been revealed in the grand jury. [45:52] This is what we know. With that, I think that, um, I'm going to, yes. Okay. Let me give it back to Ben. [46:04] Thank you, uh, attorney part. And to be clear, the agreement was to do a joint extraction of the phone. Mr. Garrett, Troy, their associates were ready to do it. [46:20] But then it was told, no, you can't come in. You have to give the phone to us. At that point, the wise, the Wells wisely family said, well, no, download the stuff before you give my baby phone. [46:35] Because we don't know when we will get it back. They were concerned as any parent would. And so that's when Garrett discovery went and they started downloading the phone and it took about 30 some hours to do so. [46:53] And then at that point we were going to give the phone. District attorney said, okay, well, the family has decided to do their own extraction. That's fine with us. [47:05] We said, well, we were going to give you the phone. But if you say, no, y'all always started to download it. Y'all just give us the report. That's exactly what we did. And she wanted it as soon as possible. [47:20] We gave her a preliminary report and we kept saying, you know, this is preliminary because they were doing everything they could to get into the snaps and all the other social media because we know that's how young people communicate that the traditional your mother and father text messaging is not what they do. [47:46] And so they sent that there or that preliminary report and it had limited, you know, discoveries and so forth, but they kept working. And that's how they got to deleted messages on Snapchat and different things. [48:04] And so with that, we're going to have attorney Eric Hertz talk to you about his investigation and introduce our forensic expert, Andrew Garrett, who I have to commend him in his office. [48:24] They worked tirelessly to try to help Christine and Elmore Winsley find out what happened to their child. And I thank them for it. [48:37] Attorney Hertz, thank you for meeting this investigation. [48:42] Thank you, Mr. Crump. [48:43] I'm Eric Hertz. [48:45] Thank you all for showing up here today and taking interest in this. [48:49] This is a very important case. [48:51] As Mr. Crump just told you, not only is the nation wanting to know what happened to young Nolan, but the world is. [49:00] And what better time to introduce you to Andrew Garrett from digital forensic expert from Garrett Discovery. [49:07] And we're here today in his building. [49:09] Um, Mr. Garrett is not just a national renowned expert. [49:14] He's an international renowned expert. [49:17] He has worked with the Department of Defense. [49:20] He has worked with the Department of Justice. [49:23] He recently worked for the District Attorney of Louisiana. [49:27] And even the District Attorney in Mississippi cannot say a bad thing about him. [49:33] He's worked with our country to stop terrorism by helping to digitally do forensic work as an expert to help stop the terrorism that we have in this country. [49:46] Um, I'll tell you that, um, he's testified over 300 times. [49:53] Um, he's helped jurors, judges, legislators understand cases that couldn't be understood. [50:01] And he does not have a dog in this fight. [50:04] And he has no opinion as to who or what should be done. [50:11] He's just going to tell you the science. [50:13] And there's no advocacy in math. [50:17] Math is math. [50:19] Two plus two equals four. [50:20] And he's going to show you how two plus two equals four here today. [50:24] Um, let's get, uh, I call him Andrew because I've been working with him on this case for a while. [50:31] But Mr. Garrett, if you can come up here with a screen. [50:34] And let's first talk about the interactions with the phone before the interactions with the phone after Nolan Wells had no possession of the phone anymore. [50:51] And the interactions of the phone after the parents retrieved it and tell us what you found. [50:56] First of all, I'd like to say thank you to Ben Crump and his legal team. [51:00] Um, I've worked with a lot of attorneys over my years, about 1500 different law firms. [51:05] This is one of the most serious law firms I've ever worked for. [51:08] Um, they want the truth a hundred percent. [51:11] And that was their goal right from the beginning. [51:13] Um, I explained my job is to analyze digital evidence and tell you the facts. [51:17] No spin, no conjecture, no opinions. [51:20] I lay it out on the table. [51:21] Let other people formulate those opinions as to what it means. [51:24] So, for Nolan's phone, we went almost immediately, I mean next day, straight to his house. [51:32] And my team, thank you to Troy Christian, that actually took the early morning flight that had there and forensically copied the phone. [51:39] During the process of forensically copying the phone, it takes a while. [51:44] Sometimes you plug the phones in, it's an hour or two, sometimes it's going to take quite a bit of time. [51:49] This took about 30 hours. [51:51] So that meant we blew our deadline by about 12 hours with the government. [51:56] We let them know that by text message. [51:58] I was communicating with a technical field officer, Rainer. [52:02] We communicated. [52:03] They said that's fine. [52:04] We can bring in the phone the next day or bring in the forensic image. [52:07] And they would accept it as is. [52:09] They were completely fine with it. [52:10] There was no nefarious acts. [52:12] There was no contention between the parties. [52:15] It was completely agreeable. [52:16] What would have happened if you would have stopped and tried to make this arbitrary deadline? [52:21] Yeah, so we notified the government that if we stopped the extraction during the process to meet their deadline, [52:30] there's a high possibility it could break the phone. [52:33] That is just the process that happens when you hook up a phone to forensic equipment. [52:38] This is specialized forensic equipment. [52:40] This is not somebody doing like an iTunes backup to their mobile phone. [52:44] It takes time, specialized tools, specialized expertise to copy these phones. [52:49] But understand, that's a complete copy of the phone. [52:51] That includes data you can't see. [52:53] Cache data. [52:54] Stuff that the user themselves can't see. [52:57] Interactions with the phone. [52:58] What time you woke the screen up. [53:00] Pit the screen and took an app and swiped it away. [53:03] All those details come out from a forensic examination. [53:06] So in that examination, the first thing we did is we issued a preliminary report because we knew everybody needed something very quick. [53:15] Now, our job is always about accuracy. [53:18] Speed doesn't matter to us. [53:19] We're going to do it accurate every time. [53:21] And if I have to tell a client it's going to take longer, that's just the way it's going to be. [53:25] Because I can't put my name on something and neither will any of my experts at work in my firm unless it's absolutely accurate. [53:31] So we issued a preliminary report that explained some things in the phone. [53:37] But there's one thing that we know. [53:40] Nolan doesn't use text message but rarely. [53:43] Only with people that he doesn't know has Snapchat. [53:46] He uses Snapchat and Instagram for 95% of his communication. [53:51] There are groups that he's part of that have many, many people communicating in. [53:58] That process that we use to get those messages out is using two software tools. [54:07] One's called Cellbrite and one's called Magnet Axiom. [54:10] These are the predominant tools that over 95% of law enforcement uses worldwide. [54:16] Unfortunately, this phone had a newer version of Snapchat in which the software did not support. [54:22] That required us to manually process the data, manually decrypt all the messages and put them back together. [54:30] That took time, a substantial amount of time. [54:34] So it was about a week or so later we issued a second report that had these Snapchat messages. [54:40] These Snapchat messages are important to not only build a timeline but to see when the last time Nolan was communicating using that phone. [54:51] Nolan did use the phone that day, swiped himself in, used Face ID, communicated and looked at certain applications then locked the phone again. [55:03] From that point forward, we knew the rest of the data we need to look at was GPS data. [55:09] Before you get there, can you explain how when somebody swipes the phone, touches the phone, whether they're attempting to open it accidentally, how the phone would track that? [55:20] Yeah, so there are databases and logs in the phone that you can't see unless you add forensic tools. [55:26] That will tell you whether somebody swiped an app away. [55:29] It actually, your phone, actually keeps track of what apps were open and the screenshots you see of the apps you're swiping away. [55:37] So even if somebody was to delete a message, if they had swiped the app away beforehand, that picture that was on screen will be in the forensic image that we created the phone. [55:47] So we can see what was happening on the phone. [55:50] There's also logs that show whether the power was turned on or off, whether an application was in the front of the screen, in the background of the screen. [55:57] So there's just a ton of information in these phones. [56:00] In Nolan's phone, there was over one million artifacts of data. [56:04] And I'm not talking about a million pictures. [56:06] I'm talking about a million artifacts that tell us, forensically, what was going on in the phone. [56:10] And that is something my team, Lena Gill, Troy Christian, and Chris Stark, and Charon Darthiv, all worked tirelessly to try to reconstruct a timeline of events. [56:24] And then we put those things on screen on a 3D video as well. [56:30] But one of the things we do know is there was interactions with the phone before and after his death, up until the time that his family retrieved the phone from the other young men that were with him that day. [56:42] And it's really important if you can tell the news, whether it was intentional or non-intentional. [56:48] I know that's not your decision. [56:50] Your decision is a science. [56:52] Were things deleted from that phone, yes? [56:54] There were things that were deleted from the phone. [56:57] I can't talk to intent. [56:58] Unfortunately, that's not my field of expertise, the psychology. [57:01] But I could tell you from a digital standpoint, things were deleted on the phone from the time he last had the phone up until the time that his parents got the phone. [57:10] And was it Snapchat things? [57:12] They were Snapchat, correct. [57:14] Now if you want to, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. [57:17] Nope, go right ahead. [57:18] But I thought that was, you can't put in there. [57:24] I don't talk in the world of intent, unfortunately. [57:26] So we can say that in order for that to be done, somebody had to take a user action to delete data. [57:31] So his parents said that when they got his phone, they thought that things had been deleted. [57:40] The question is, are they crazy to think that? [57:44] No. [57:45] Yeah. [57:46] I think if you were to look at the phone like we did and look through the message threads and stuff, you could put together that things were deleted. [57:53] Did you make a video of where the phone went? [57:58] Are you ready to talk about that? [57:59] Yes. [58:00] We took the GPS data from the phone. [58:02] Now understand a phone has a GPS chipset in it that receives signals from outer space and it's pretty accurate. [58:08] You and I use the GPS every day probably on our phone to navigate, so it's pretty accurate. [58:14] Usually within 20 to 30 meters at worst on a mobile phone. [58:18] We have every moment of Nolan's phone from morning to night that day until, even into the next morning, until his parents got the phone of everywhere it went. [58:28] That means the boat dock, that means the boat ramp leaving Horn Island. [58:32] So we have a perfect timeline of where that phone traveled to, how fast it was traveling, and where it went to and whose houses. [58:39] We put together a video to show the travel patterns of Nolan's phone. [58:45] Now understand in this video we did blur out streets, entire streets, actual houses, and we blurred out names with this to protect some of the privacy of these individuals that was involved. [58:57] The district attorney has unredacted data, they can look at this, they can use this data all they want. [59:04] So I'm going to play it for you here. [59:07] Before you play it I just want to redact it. [59:14] Yes, we prepared today because this is voluminous data. [59:22] USB drives for the media to take with them so you will have a copy of this video to take with you and some of the reports. [59:29] And I just want to make clear, in your final report you gave all the snaps, all the 282 pages, all your information to the district attorney's office, as well as an unredacted video that you're about to show us. [59:45] Yes, they have all the snaps, they have every bit of, well first of all they have a forensic image of the file. [59:52] They could do all this work themselves, they have their own forensic staff. [59:55] And in Mississippi I've worked at their district attorney's office on cases before, in the attorney general's office. [1:00:02] And both, and I've worked for, worked pretty closely with their lab director Charlie Rubisop for the last 15 years on various cases where we've been involved in. [1:00:12] So, we've had a relationship there, they have the same tools we have. [1:00:16] They, I don't know if they have the same expertise, but I would hope that somebody over there in law enforcement has the same expertise to be able to look at the same stuff. [1:00:23] But, to make it easier on them, we gave them all of our hard work. [1:00:27] We gave it to them, we gave it to them on a silver platter so they didn't have to do much work at all. [1:00:32] They could go in and validate the data instantly and they could look at all the reports and look at the digital evidence and say these match 100% [1:00:39] and therefore it saved them a lot of time and a lot of effort and especially because they were forming a grand jury. [1:00:45] My job is not about the grand jury. [1:00:47] My job is to give the family truth and honesty and talk about the data. [1:00:51] The grand jury is not what I'm there for. [1:00:53] And I've told everybody that from the beginning and nobody's ever asked me, hey, make sure this is prepared for the grand jury. [1:00:59] The district attorney never called, the state's attorneys never called, anybody that's ever commented about this has never called our office. [1:01:05] I know I've never called Ben Crump saying, hey, get Gary Discovery to move faster. [1:01:09] That's not it. [1:01:10] It was all about the truth and that takes time. [1:01:12] And you weren't asked to come and testify before? [1:01:15] No, I was not asked to come testify. [1:01:17] None of my team was and there's been no communication. [1:01:20] The only communication we've had with law enforcement is about the delivery of the phone, making sure they knew it was going to take an extra day, which they agreed to. [1:01:27] And I do know the district, I know that the prosecutor put out some stuff about they would have met any agreement the parents had for analyzing the phone. [1:01:37] That's untrue. [1:01:38] They set the venue as a place and then told us only law enforcement can come in. [1:01:42] I mean, it's like getting invited to a party. [1:01:44] You come to the front lawn, but you can't get through the front door. [1:01:47] It's not a joint inspection at that point. [1:01:49] So that's why we felt it's important for two reasons. [1:01:52] The family needs to know their last moments of their son. [1:01:55] They need those photos. [1:01:57] They need those communications. [1:01:59] If it becomes evidence in a law enforcement case, if the phone is handed over, there is no legal mechanism whatsoever to get that unless there's a case filed or a criminal defendant is charged. [1:02:09] We can't get the phone back. [1:02:11] It has gone in the wind. [1:02:12] It could be locked up for years. [1:02:13] I work on cases all the time where law enforcement has held a phone for nine, ten years and nobody can get answers. [1:02:19] That's why it's important to make a forensic copy before. [1:02:22] They would not have ever agreed to us making a forensic copy if they thought for a minute that we would alter any of the data or change anything or it wouldn't be a true and accurate copy. [1:02:32] Today we're going to show a video. [1:02:36] This is a video reconstruction. [1:02:38] I can say that this is about as accurate as you could get when it comes down to accuracy. [1:02:44] The accuracy rating inside the GPS points is very, very high. [1:02:49] So that means somewhere within about a ten meter radius of each one of the points we plotted shows the location of Nolan's phone at the time. [1:02:59] You can go ahead and hit play if you can. [1:03:09] You can see here in the early morning, that's before 824 AM, he went to McDonald's. [1:03:17] There is messages you will see pop up here on the right hand side. [1:03:21] These are the Snapchat communications that was happening between Nolan and his friends and people that were part of these various groups that he was part of. [1:03:31] Through 837, they traveled to another location. [1:03:35] I'm not going to tell you whose house or who that is, but they did travel another location and you can see that in a vehicle based on the speed and direction traveled. [1:03:43] Still traveling here. [1:03:48] Last Snapchat messages asking about a jewel pod and can I get one. [1:03:54] These are young men. [1:03:55] They were having conversations. [1:03:57] There were some women in this chat group as well. [1:03:59] You can see here where they're traveling by a boat at 1030, 1040, 1054. [1:04:16] And you can see here still there's messages and phone calls being made. [1:04:25] Then they were at Horn Island. [1:04:26] It's about 1118. [1:04:27] Then the boat stayed on Horn Island. [1:04:32] And you can see here it says device enters lock state. [1:04:35] That means he clicked the button to lock the phone. [1:04:38] Phone unlocked and application activity resumes at 217 PM. [1:04:44] That is when Nolan was last using his phone. [1:04:49] We have about 218. [1:04:51] In order to do that, by our calculations, he was on the boat when that happened. [1:04:56] Then there's a reported call to sea, a call to sea tow at 436. [1:05:05] There's also messages. [1:05:06] There's a message that says, Captain, pull the bilge. [1:05:10] They had a bilge pump problem. [1:05:12] They called sea tow. [1:05:13] I think the news has done a great job at reporting on the phone call that was made. [1:05:18] Then afterwards you can see the boat went up to somebody's house to their dock. [1:05:24] Then they left the dock and traveled to a boat ramp. [1:05:33] The phone was on a boat. [1:05:40] And the reason we can make that assumption is phones don't travel in a car by walking over water. [1:05:46] So on the boat. [1:05:48] Could be jet ski, but we would say boat. [1:05:51] And given the pictures, there's actually videos from some of these boats from that day that we were able to recover. [1:05:59] There's photos from that day that we were able to recover that lets us know he was on the boat. [1:06:05] You can see here at 724 p.m. [1:06:10] They're at a boat ramp. [1:06:12] Yes. [1:06:22] The phone was traveling over water at a speed and direction that would have to be from a boat. [1:06:27] Plus we also have videos from another neighboring boat of traveling in the same direction about the same speed. [1:06:34] And you can see here this goes up to 730. [1:06:38] Then on land the phone is traveling to an individual's residence. [1:06:43] There's more messages in the chat groups that are not part of this presentation. [1:06:52] There are hundreds and hundreds of messages in these chat groups from various other individuals that aren't the individuals talking about Nolan necessarily or talking about what was going on. [1:07:03] Understand a lot of the individuals in the chat groups didn't know what was going on at the time yet. [1:07:10] So here's the second thing I have to say. [1:07:12] The extraction we made of the phone also includes messages after Nolan was dead. [1:07:18] That is up until the time we collected the phone. [1:07:21] The individuals that are part of this chat group continued talking after he was dead, [1:07:26] not understanding that their messages were also sinking onto Nolan's phone. [1:07:32] So we have the messages up and through the date and time we collected the phone. [1:07:37] And this goes on until the parents come and pick up the phone at about 3 a.m. in the morning roughly. [1:07:46] And that concludes our video presentation as to the activity of the phone and the travel pattern of the phone. [1:07:55] Thank you very much, Mr. Garrett and to you and your entire staff for helping the family get answers they so desperately want. [1:08:05] And I think the world wants, quite frankly. [1:08:10] It is also important to note that Nolan's parents still are baffled that Nolan, if he chose to stay on the island, would not want his cell phone. [1:08:30] They said Nolan hardly went anywhere, did anything without his cell phone. [1:08:37] So these are things that still concern them. [1:08:42] At this time, before we get into your questions, we have recently been able to get the state medical examiner's autopsy. [1:09:06] And as we said, we are going to present evidence pertaining to the death of Nolan Wells to the public in an effort to be transparent. [1:09:24] Again, there's only one issue. [1:09:28] Everything else is a distraction. [1:09:30] If you really care about Nolan Wells, if you really care about his family getting to the truth, let's don't deal with the distractions. [1:09:39] Let's just go ahead and deal with getting the evidence out. [1:09:43] So we were told that we could get the autopsy when the district attorney released the grand jury report. [1:09:53] And that was news to us. [1:09:56] And so, that day, Attorney Ahmaud Smith, who is, or the next day, Attorney Ahmaud Smith, who is our local counsel in the state of Mississippi, sent a letter to the district attorney. [1:10:18] Dear Attorney Michael Ralph, good afternoon. [1:10:21] In your statement, following the grand jury's no bill decision, you indicated that you had offered to provide the state's autopsy report to Nolan's family. [1:10:32] On the family's behalf, I now ask you, please send us a copy. [1:10:38] They are eager to review its findings. [1:10:42] Sincerely, Ahmaud R. Smith, Esquire. [1:10:47] District Attorney, Angel Miles McElrath, responds in re-death investigation of Nolan Wells. [1:10:58] Grand jury report. [1:11:00] Mr. Smith, the law provides for you to request an autopsy report through the Department of Public Safety website. [1:11:09] That's all y'all have to do. [1:11:12] I didn't realize you and Mr. Bufkin were not aware of the law. [1:11:19] To be clear, I reached out to Christine, and when I did not hear back from her, I shared the results with Mr. Bufkin during a phone call. [1:11:30] If you have difficulty obtaining it pursuant to the statute, let me know and I will assist. [1:11:41] My son Angel sent for my iPhone. [1:11:45] And so, so you, you can see this change here about this autopsy report that Dr. Roger Mitchell asked for too when he visited. [1:12:07] And so Mr. Attorney Smith responds. [1:12:13] Dear attorney McElrath, we are aware that the law provides a means to request the [1:12:21] autopsy report and mandates that a copy be provided to the family or a legal [1:12:30] representative. Obtaining it still requires a process. However, particularly [1:12:38] in this case, I suspect that many members of the public may have submitted [1:12:45] the state's request form claiming to be counsel of record in an effort to obtain [1:12:51] Nolan's autopsy report from the state of Mississippi. On September 8th, Christine [1:13:00] Wells Wansley, his mother, Christine Wells Wansley, submitted a request using the [1:13:07] state medical examiner's form. I remember Attorney Park helping her to fill that [1:13:14] form out. Two weeks later, she has received neither the report nor an [1:13:21] acknowledgement that her request was received. When my office contacted the [1:13:28] state medical examiner's office, the receptionist advised us that a state-issued [1:13:35] subpoena would be necessary. Given the family's desire to review the report and [1:13:44] your office possession of a copy, I thought a direct request to you would be the [1:13:53] most expedient way to obtain it. Also, in light of your public comments regarding [1:14:01] transparency, I thought you might be willing to provide the family with a copy as a [1:14:08] courtesy. We have already begun the process of obtaining the report and would [1:14:14] appreciate any assistance you could provide in securing a copy for the family cordially. [1:14:22] Ahmaud R. Smith, Esquire. Mr. Smith, I've been advised that the request made did not include [1:15:05] proof of next of kin as required. For that reason, the request cannot be fulfilled by DPS [1:15:15] without all necessary information. In light of this, and as I had not been made aware of this issue, [1:15:24] I've asked my staff to send you our copy of the report. Please confirm that it is to be [1:15:33] sent to you at this email address. If it is to be sent to Ms. Wansley directly, please [1:15:42] provide her email address. I hope this was helpful. So we thank the district attorney for [1:15:51] providing us with the autopsy report issued by the Jackson County Medicare Examiner in [1:15:58] the state of Mississippi. And at this time, we're going to release that report to you all in the [1:16:07] public. Attorney Lisa Park is going to go over that report at this time. We hope to have Dr. Roger Mitchell have both of the autopsies. Next, we're going to go over that report at this time. [1:16:13] Uh, we hope to have Dr. Roger Mitchell have both of the autopsies next week to be able to go through those reports as a medical expert. Attorney Park. So just to explain what Mr. [1:16:36] Komp just read out was from last night. And around 630 Eastern time is when we received this medical [1:16:48] examiner's autopsy report. Uh, it's about three pages, um, much shorter than the independent autopsy. But there are some things of note that we just want to go ahead and share with the media. Evidence of injury to dark red purple subcutaneous scalp contusions overlie the superior [1:17:18] nuchal line area of the posterior skull. Each measures approximately two inches. Now we talked about this two days ago in our press conference. Um, but we didn't have this report then. What it also says is that in the neck, the larynx and hyoid bone are without hemorrhages or fractures. The interior cervical spine is unremarkable. [1:17:48] Lungs. No fluid or debris is within the airways. GI tract. Unremarkable. The stomach is empty. What this means is that there's no water in the stomach. There's no water in the lungs. And there's no water in the throat. And yet the grand jury, if you read through that, especially at the end, what they want to determine is an actual [1:18:25] accidental drowning. But this is their own medical examiner's report. It is signed August 17 is the date that it signed. And it still even this medical examiner concluded that the death was undetermined. What we noticed as well, even though the medical examiner did not take photograph of the contusion, [1:19:12] she drew a picture. And this is what the contusions look like to her on the back of the head right here on the lower back of the head. You've already seen Dr. Mitchell's diagram of where the red tissue was exactly the same place, but on the interior muscle underneath the skin and that he had determined it was blood. [1:19:45] And these even on her diagram seem very significant. I mean, two inches and length, two inches and width. We're still trying to determine who or what caused the blunt force trauma to the back of Nolan Wells head. Additionally, we want to again explain that what Dr. Mitchell found was that there was no white blood cells. And what that means is that there was no white blood cells. And what that means is that there was no white blood cells. And what that means is that there was no white blood cells. [1:20:30] And what that means is that this injury, this bleeding happened within a short period of time from the time that the body expired. So there's just a window of time before white blood cells start to become developed. [1:20:49] So we want everybody to keep this in mind and look at this through the eyes of the evidence, through the eyes of what science can tell us. And because of that, we do want to present Dr. Mitchell himself. [1:21:07] We are expecting next week trying to coordinate with his schedule because he is the medical expert, one of the best in the country, and he's going to do a better job than us attorneys trying to explain medical things. [1:21:24] But we, anybody, child can understand bruises or an injury. Internal bleeding is serious. And with that, we hope that you all are able to join us again next week when we're able to unfold this in a manner where Dr. Mitchell can join us. [1:21:52] Thank you. Thank you very much, Attorney Park. So with the extraction of the phone and the revelation of the snaps and the chats and the friend groups, you see that this mystery still needs to be investigated. [1:22:15] We simply cannot close the chapter and say, wash our hands of it, put a ball on it and say nothing to see here with any parent with any parent, white, black, brown or red, would any parent except those findings of the grand jury and say, thank you, case over. [1:22:53] Case over. No parent would do that. So why are they asking Christine and Elmore Wansley to do that? We, we don't know what happened to Nolan Wells. We're not accusing anybody of anything nefarious. Even with the phone extraction, we, Mr. Garrett said he doesn't know the intent of any of that stuff. [1:23:33] What we are saying, if you care anything about Nolan Wells, if you know anything, come forward. If you care anything about Nolan Wells, let's focus on what killed Nolan Wells. Let's don't focus on the distractions. [1:23:59] It is beneath our shared humanity. It is beneath our shared humanity. Everybody loves their children. We love our children too. And if it was the governor, the district attorney, I have no doubt, no doubt, they would be doing exactly what we are doing. [1:24:29] And don't attack people for not accepting the grand jury decision. We're in America. We still have the first amendment. I mean, America, we've just done it recently with Lindsey Clancy's trial. Several people across the country didn't agree with the verdict. And they expressed that. I mean, historically, when you think about the OJ Simpson trial, people expressed that they [1:25:08] disagreed with it. They disagreed with it. So why are supporters of Nolan Wells being attacked? Because they disagree with the grand jury's decision. This is America. We can disagree and still not be disagreeable. We can accept facts. We can accept evidence. We can apply common sense. And we can have a robust discussion, debate, if you will. [1:25:49] about what really happened to Nolan Wells. And I'll still respect the humanity of Nolan Xavier Wells and his family. Because if it was your family, I promise you, we will be doing the same thing for you. With that, we will answer your questions if you have any from media. [1:26:18] Thank you, Justin. [1:26:29] It appears that it was stayed on the boat the entire time. But it appears Nolan was on and off the boat because it required his face to unlock it. [1:26:45] So he had got back on the boat? [1:26:46] Yes. Correct. He got back on the boat. [1:26:49] You know, apply your common sense. This, Dr. Mitchell raised these issues. And then apparently this witness came and said what he said. But look at what he said. He said he awkwardly fell into the water. He didn't say anything about, he saw him here. He said he awkwardly fell into the water. [1:27:23] He didn't say anything about, he saw him hit anything. And he said afterwards, Nolan just kept socializing as if he was fine. Man, if I got two contusions in the back of my head, two inches wide, two inches long, I'm not going to be talking about my head. I'm not going to be having my head on my, the back of my hand on the back of my head where everybody out there on Horn Island could see. [1:28:00] Nolan's grabbing his head. No, there's no testimony of that. Apply your common sense. Apply your common sense. This is blunt force trauma to the back of the head. I mean, when you barely bump your head, it causes you to be dazed. [1:28:19] Can you imagine impact that causes two inch length, two inch width, contusions, bleeding? It's significant. It's significant. It can't be just simply discounted. [1:28:37] We have reason to believe that this could be a factor, a significant factor into what happened to Nolan Wells and how he ended up unalived. [1:28:52] Well, we acknowledge those there and we would leave it at that. But it was just significant to note that even his friends group at Snapchat was talking about people on Horn Island as racist, that can be racist. [1:29:23] So that's them having that conversation on July 5th. So then to say, oh, we're making it about race. Yeah, it's a distraction. It's all a distraction. What matters, what really matters is what happened to this 18 year old college student. [1:29:44] Any other questions? Well, what we're going to do is have our medical expert opine to that. [1:29:57] And we're going to give all the evidence. People can draw their own conclusions. [1:30:03] No, but what they all both agree, there was evidence of injury to the back of his head. [1:30:19] And every medical official, every medical expert, the state of Mississippi, medical examiner and Dr. Mitchell, [1:30:31] who was the former chief medical examiner of Washington, D.C., they both agree that the manner and cause of death is undetermined. [1:30:41] And so we're not going to simply just let them say what the sheriff said on day one. [1:30:47] It's an accident of drowning. No foul play, nothing to see here. Would you accept that if that was your child? [1:30:54] Any last questions? Yes, ma'am. Yes, Dr. Turner is the medical examiner. [1:31:08] And we're going to release it to you all. So everybody, if you go to press at Ben Crump dot com or go to our social media, [1:31:15] we will have the autopsies placed on those platforms. Last question. [1:31:21] Okay. Yes. Attorney Hurst, who's leading on? [1:31:34] Thank you for the question. But the real question is why has this investigation not answered these questions or investigated to look into these questions that we are presenting to you today? [1:31:48] The real question is, if you look at the grand jury bill, it says July 14th, what date was it? It says 14th through 18th. That's four days. [1:32:01] You have to first give them instructions. Then you have that to end September 14th. Thank you. [1:32:08] Then you have to, after they get some witnesses. And if you look at all the witnesses, not many showed up. And then you have to give them instructions again. Then you have to write out the bill. [1:32:19] And the next question is, who wrote that bill? Who physically wrote that bill or no bill? I think everybody should ask themselves that. And when you ask yourself that, I think a lot of enlightenment will come. [1:32:33] Thank you all. Mr. Garrett said, if you all are interested, you all can come upstairs to the facility and see where they did a lot of the work on this case. [1:32:47] They will keep it open for one hour for you all if you so desire. And I want to again thank you and your entire staff for the hard work, the tireless work for helping the family get answers and helping all of us get answers. [1:33:06] Thank you. We'll keep you informed. We hope that Dr. Roger Mitchell can come and present to the media on next Thursday in Atlanta, Georgia. [1:33:18] We'll keep you updated. Press at Ben Crump dot com can answer your inquiries. [1:33:22] We'll try to get the medical examiner's report up on social media at Attorney Crump on IG and Facebook and TikTok and all platforms. Thank you all. [1:33:34] Thank you all for you. They're still here.