Law&Crime Sidebar - Nolan Wells Mystery: Data Demand & Drinking Claims Rock Case

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

After 18-year-old college football player Nolan Wells went missing during a Fourth of July outing on Horn Island off the coast of Mississippi, his body was later found on the island, leaving his family desperately searching for answers. This episode dives into the newest developments in the death investigation, including subpoena filings by his mother, Christine Wonsley, newly surfaced boat footage, and critical audio analysis that could challenge existing theories about what happened. Law&Crime's Jesse Weber breaks down the complex case details alongside retired detective and law enforcement instructor Matt Irvine.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: The Korean skincare brand everyone is talking about. Our listeners get 20% off their entire order by using code SIDEBAR at https://www.jiyuskin.com #JIYU #adHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson, Heather Berzak & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrimeTwitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From a mother filing off subpoenas to tech companies, to audio furthering conspiracy theories that may now be debunked, to video that may change what this whole case is about, there are a lot of updates and developments in the Nolan Wells' death investigation we need to talk about. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Okay, got new developments in the Nolan Wells case that we need to talk about as the family is desperately. seeking answers. The public has been invested in this. It's all about the truth of what happened to this 18-year-old young man. There are developments about subpoenas, audio, video, official documentation, possibly drinking. And we're going to get into it all with a former detective. I want an investigator on this to make sense of this, what's happening behind the scenes,

how we should put it into our overall context. It's important conversation. Now, even before we get started, I want to let everybody know, you know we've been following this case, right? So if you want more details, if you want more of the documentation, if you want everything we have so far, you can go to our Long Crime Plus app because we have a case file section and we have everything on the Nolan Wells story. So check it out there if you want to look at the documents yourself, see the information for yourself. It's just a great way to become even more educated on this case. Okay. This is the bottom line. What happened to Nolan? Was it a tragic accident or was it foul play? Context first before we get into the developments. So 18-year-old Nolan Wells from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, he was a college student, football player. On the 4th of July, he went with a group of friends to Horn Island, a barrier island off the Mississippi coast to celebrate. At some point, he disappeared. He was reported missing that night, and you had this massive search that was launched. Two days later, July 6th, that is when his body was found on the island, washed ashore.

Question, of course, is what happened to him. It remains a question. Nobody has publicly been able to answer it. The results of the family's independent autopsy listed Nolan's cause and manner of death as undetermined. The pathologist found that pieces of his body, were talking portions of the neck, had apparently been removed by the state medical examiner during that first examination. So this second autopsy, this second examiner couldn't determine what exactly happened to Nolan. Couldn't rule out foul play. Couldn't say whether there was injury to his neck, whether there was trauma to his neck.

And that leaves many questions on the table. raises a question of whether the state ME is conducting further testing of those components or whether that will definitively conclude what happened to Nolan. Was there trauma? Was there drowning? Was it accidental or not? Perhaps tough given those conditions. You're also talking about decomposition. Oh, and there's the red discoloration apparently found on the back of the head. I spoke to medical experts about that. Some say it could be from decomposition. Some say maybe it could be blunt injury before death because the body wouldn't discolor like that after death. And remember, what's going on here. The family wants answers. The family hired attorney Ben Crump and his team

to navigate this, to do an independent investigation. And there seems to be a distrust of law enforcement here. And they're looking for answers that they may feel they're not going to get from official channels. So let me get into all these new developments. And before they do that, I want to bring in Matt Irvine, retired detective law enforcement instructor who's going to help us break it all down. Matt, good to see you. Thanks for taking the time. Thank you, Jesse. Okay, first I got to talk about these subpoenas. Just came out last night. I definitely wanted to cover this. So Nolan's mother, we've talked about a lot on this program. Christine Wensley has appeared to file subpoenas for records, records from TikTok, Snap, so Snapchat, WhatsApp, Meta, Life 360.

They are part of this legal case regarding the estate of her son, the estate of Nolan Wells. And these are a very specific subpoenas, court order requiring a witness to produce documents or records or evidence. And it appears that they were filed by attorney Gary Buffkin, who is apparently working with Ben Crump, who we know the family has retained as counsel in this matter. And this was filed in the Chancery Court of Jackson County. So, for example, here's just the WhatsApp subpoena to give you an idea. It says, quote, you're hereby commanded within 21 days from the receipt of this subpoena, but no sooner than 15 days from the receipt of this subpoena,

to produce and permit inspection and copying of all documents, electronically stored information, records, and tangible things designated below, and to deliver mail, transmit, or make available for inspection, said materials to counsel for petitioner, meaning Ms. Wensley. Now you go down a little bit further, it says, materials to be reduced within 21 days, all materials and information of all kinds, regardless of form in your possession, custody, or control, or accessible to you concerning Nolan, Xavier, Wells, his cell number, and then it gives his email address, including without limitation, all subscriber.

information associated with the account, all current and prior usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, and display names associated with the account. The account creation date and the IP address used to create the account. All IP addresses tied to actions on the account, including logins, password resets, two-factor enrollment, all IP addresses tied to friend events on the account, all communications configured as public on the account, and all related data and metadata, all non-content information concerning the account, all information that identifies or may be used to identify any party messaging in a conversation with the account. And all communications, including messages and group messages, two from or including the account,

all photographs, video recordings, audio recordings, content attachments, text files, transcripts, GPS data, location data, metadata, sender receipt timestamp logs, device identifiers, friends list history, and all other electronically stored information of all kinds related in any way to the account. Now, why is this relevant? Give you an idea, according to TMZ, Christine had used Life 360 to track down her son's phone, which was apparently with his friends, and then compared the location data from that app with Snapchat, and there's a report that didn't match. We also know at that one point it was reported that Christine had wondered whether material from Nolan's phone had been deleted, that there were reportedly no pictures or videos

from his Snapchat account or on his Snapchat account. Now, we also know that Nolan's purported friend Warren Hudson told Brandon Tatum on the Officer Tatum show, this YouTube show, quote, there was no reason for us to get on Nolan's phone. No one touched Nolan's phone. If none of us had touched Nolan's phone, then, you know, there's no reason for anything to be deleted. All right, I know this is off topic, but I just got a call out of a sponsor that helps make episodes like this possible. And I think you're really going to like it because have you ever looked at an old photo of yourself and thought, wow, my skin used to look so much healthier. I look so much younger. And look, you get older. You see the dark spots, the fine lines,

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moisturizer with NAD plus, it is perfect for anyone wanting to experience GU's full routine. And I got to say, for a limited time, GU is having a crazy deal for our listeners and viewers, because their glow-up bundle is already up to 45% off right now. But our listeners, our viewers, can now get an additional 20% off-plus free show. shipping with our code sidebar at j i yuskin.com that's j iyuskin.com use code sidebar for an additional 20% off and after you purchase they're going to ask you where you heard about them show us some love show us some support tell them that our show sent you really appreciate it matt i threw a lot at you why are we seeing these subpoenas well i think there's a couple of things going on here

First of all, this language in these subpoenas is pretty standard for any subpoena that is demanding the production of records from any electronic service provider. These are the kinds of things you would look for in putting together a case. I'm expecting that the Jackson County Sheriff's Department is commanding the production of the same kind of information, either through a search warrant. But I think this speaks to the fact that Nolan Wells' family, as they've expressed, does not have. have confidence in the integrity or the impartiality of the law enforcement investigation. And so they are conducting their own investigation. And that, I think, gets to the larger issue of why so much of this country is talking about this case at this time. And I mentioned to you when we spoke before that there are legitimate reasons why some people don't trust law enforcement.

To put a finer point on it, there is a terrible history in this country of black men, particularly young black men, being murdered by white men who get away with it. And unfortunately, a lot of those cases, the role of law enforcement has ranged from indifference to complicity. Specifically in Mississippi, I mean, Emmett Till's body was discovered submerged in water after being murdered by white men who got away with it. Roughly four or five hours drive from where Nolan was found. The three civil white workers who were murdered by white men, who were clansmen, and also police officers, were found less than 200 miles from where Nolan was found. Wells was found. So I'm not casting any aspersions on the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, and I certainly don't claim to know how Nolan Wells died. But it does not surprise me that a black

family in Mississippi, given this history, would have questions when their son dies mysteriously and would not accept at face value what was being represented to them by authorities. So I think these subpoenas and this independent investigation speak to that. No, you raise a good point. You raise a good point about their concerns, their reservations, their need for answers, their need for transparency. The one thing I'll say is, you know, you hire Ben Crump, we've talked about this before, puts a lot of pressure, puts a spotlight on this case, puts pressure on law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation and give answers to the public, not saying they wouldn't have done that regardless, but, you know, the family had concerns

that it seemed law enforcement was automatically saying there was no foul play, nothing to see here. I do have a question, though. You raised an important point. You said, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, and correct before I'm wrong, that it's likely you would assume that law enforcement has tried to obtain the same records. If they didn't, if it comes out, they didn't try to get the same records from these social media companies and Nolan's family is, does that signify to you a deficit in the investigation? It would. I mean, they should be at this point seeking information from every possible source. That would include human sources, and I've heard reported that they've spoken to something like 60-plus people,

but they should definitely be seeking every form of evidence from electronic media, whether it be, sorry, go ahead. And what would they be doing for? I mean, what would they use it for? What would they be trying to find out how you're an investigator, you get all this information? What do you do with it? Well, there's a few things, right? I mean, they should be looking at the phones of anybody on the island that has, you know, come forward in the investigation to say that they have had any interaction or even any sightings of Nolan Wells on July 4th. and combing through all of that electronic data, looking at communications, looking at images from the devices of anybody that interacted with Nolan Wells on Horn Island that day, not just his friend group.

They also should be looking at these electronic service providers to see if there were any images, any communication from Nolan that day that for some reason isn't on his phone. They should be looking, for example... You can tell that? I mean, this information would tell you if something was deleted? So very often when somebody deletes content from their phone, it remains on the servers of the electronic service providers.

Some of that depends on the applications. Some of it depends on the permissions and privacy you've got set up on your device. But it is certainly possible for somebody to believe they have deleted something from a device and to have to have that data still remain on the servers of the electronic service provider. Does it seem to you that they are preparing a lawsuit of some kind? That's not the first time that somebody would file a lawsuit after they obtain certain information potentially through a subpoena. Is that something you are wondering? Because remember, the family's represented by counsel. It's certainly a possibility.

And it's not unusual when somebody loses a loved one to want to seek some kind of accountability. And particularly if you feel that the authorities are not discharging their duties effectively, a lawsuit can be one way to seek some form of accountability. By the way, how accurate are these apps, in your opinion or your expertise, in terms of tracking someone's location? I would say that a lot of these applications are tremendously accurate. I mean, they work off of satellites. And I mean, I just recently had to help my daughter find her phone using an app.

And I was able to locate it literally within, probably a dozen or so feet from where she left it. So these apps are very accurate. And if, for example, Nolan Wells was wearing some other form of smart tech technology, a smart watch or something like that, they could certainly show the distance of Nolan Wells from his phone during the course of that day. It's good to have a detective father. Nothing gets lost.

Nothing falls into cracks. It's pretty cool. All right. We put that to the side. Again, I want to start with that because it just came out. But even before that came out, when we asked for you to be on the show, there was something else that we had to address this video. This is big. Because a big question, as we've always talked about in this case, did Nolan Wells stay on Horn Island to talk to a young woman?

Did he not go back on the boat? Did he not go back to the mainland? Did he not go back on the boat with the friends, right? Well, there is this. So this, what you're seeing is new video that was a report. quarterly obtained by Officer Tatum, right? Brandon Tatum Show. And he has been, by the way, challenging the narrative that race automatically played a role in what happened to Nolan.

But in this video, you see who it appeared to be Nolan's friends on the boat and there is no sign of Nolan. Now, we believe that this is at a critical time. Reminder, this is when the boat was apparently having issues. It was taking out water. We're going to get into it a little bit more because there's audio that I think is really relevant here as well. And they needed a toe. Again, we'll get into that how that happened. But when you look at this video, by all accounts, there's no sign of Nolan Wells in this video.

And as TMZ reports, this would be consistent with their reporting. Their sources saying that authorities believe Nolan stayed on Horn Island, citing two witnesses that apparently told investigators they saw Nolan on the island after the boat left. This is consistent with the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources Police report obtained by ABC News that claims Nolan's friends told authorities, quote, that when they left, he was. in the company of an unknown female, and then he chose to remain at the island. Matt, it's this video, I think, is quite pivotal, very important. I would agree. I mean, the video seems to show that Nolan was not on the boat. Now, the exact timing of things is something that people will have to dig deeply into

the timing of that video alongside the distress call that was made to the tow company. All of those things are going to be important part of the investigation. but at least at face value at first glance, this video does seem to support the contention that Nolan did not get on that boat with his friends. Does this mean it exonerates everyone on that boat? Does this mean if something happened to Nolan had to have happened on Horn Island?

Well, you're asking two questions. It would certainly suggest that if something happened to Nolan, it happened on Horn Island, or at least did not happen on that boat. that doesn't necessarily mean that the people on the boat are exonerated. Whatever happened to Nolan could have happened with or without their involvement or knowledge somewhere other at some other time. But it certainly does seem to support their statements, again, at first glance at face value.

But this helps the investigation because now, potentially looking at, now we have to look at the mainland, we have to look at what happened after a certain period of time, they can limit the area. They can look more specifically at an area to determine what happened to Nolan Wells, right? Because when this first happened, there was a conversation. Did Nolan get back in the boat, go to the mainland? Something happened to him. They put it back on the boat, you know, throw his body into the water. I'm not saying that was a legitimate theory, but that was something that was coming up. If you're not seeing him on the boat at that point, this in a way, I believe would help investigators, right, narrow down what they have to focus on.

It certainly provides some direction to the investigation. I think, again, just knowing what's publicly reported, it seems like it's premature to eliminate anything at this point, but it can at least shift the focus. At this point, it sounds like from what law enforcement is reporting that they have spoken to people that claim to have seen Nolan Wells on the island alive after his friend's boat left. Now, there's still some questions about who those people are and how they know it was Nolan. or these people that actually know him or are these people that just saw a tall black man and particularly with all the reporting assumed it was Nolan.

So there's still a lot of unanswered questions there. But assuming there are people that saw him alive on the island after his friends left that would tend to shift the focus of the investigation to try to figure out what happened to this young man after about 4.15 in the afternoon. And who saw him alive last? I mean, that's going to be possibly one of the most critical witnesses in this case. Yeah, that becomes really interesting, right? Like the idea of whatever happened to Nolan, no one saw anything, even if he was, if he accidentally drowned, no one saw him, no one tried to

help him out. That's a fair point. That's a fair question. And I do, it does make me wonder, do you believe, before we talk about the audio in a minute, is do you believe that law enforcement may know more, a lot more than they are telling right now? Do you believe that they have some potential witnesses who have provided more information about the last whereabouts of Nolan Wells and they just haven't shared that information yet? I would expect that to be the case. I would certainly hope it was the case. Again, there seems to be some reporting that they are claiming to have spoken to 60 or so people. Obviously, all of those statements are not in the public record at this time. There's also mentioned of this case going before a grand jury, which is, I guess,

procedure in this part of Mississippi. And if you're going to bring a case to the grand jury, you want the grand jury to hear that evidence for the first time in the grand jury room and not have it tainted by prior disclosure. I just played video. Now let's go to audio. Take a look. Hey, we're at the west tip of horn and our village stopped working. We're going.

We're sinking. Can you all please come? We have a membership. Yes. How far is the water coming up, sir? It's coming up. We're just thinking. I don't know.

Like, we're going down now. So, yeah, we've talked about this before. This audio that was released by the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, this is giving us a glimpse into what happened that day. It's giving us a glimpse into this chaotic event on the water on July 4th, because this is one of the first pieces of audio that we're hearing from that day that captures the frantic moments that this boat that was connected to this group began taking on water. It was due to a reported failing bilge pump. And this is a boat that we believe that at some point Nolan was on. but you compare that with the video that we just talked about, it doesn't appear that he was on it at that time.

So they call for a tow, and interestingly, the way that we understand it based on the reporting, it's actually been reported that another boat actually ended up helping them out, another boat that was anchored there, it wasn't a private towing company. And according to reporting, Nolan's friends said they left Horn Island at 4.30. Someone told them apparently they saw Nolan on Horn Island at 6 p.m. There were accounts, by the way, from friends that the last time they saw him was 3.3.000,

PM, but this is what we need to talk about, this audio development. So there is a theory that has come out when this video came and this audio came out. There was a new version of the audio that was enhanced by TMZ. When you listen to it, there are theories. There are people out there who believe you can hear in the background someone saying, is he dead? Nolan, wake up, check his chest. I spoke with a forensic audio expert, Robert Freed on my News Nation show, Jesse Weber Live, compared both. version. So compared the version that was obtained from the WFAB website and one from TMZ. And he said the newly enhanced audio from TMZ was longer than the other one. He created transcriptions of both videos. And here's what he found. In those transcripts from your analysis, does anyone say, is he dead? Check his chest. Nolan, wake up, anything like that? No. It's very distorted. Even if you hear it from the original to even the audio enhancement, it's still very difficult for some of

the software that we use to even pick up those types of words. There was nothing like that close to it in the transcriptions that we saw. Now, he did say that he would want the audio from the original source, right? The source, I am assuming, authorities have, because he said there was redactions. There was redactions. So he was curious how the audio was generated, and even in this video, you hear redactions. And I made the point to him that if there's a redaction of, let's say, personal information, a phone number, as that redactions is happening, you might hear something in the background. And so, you know, account numbers, things like that were shared. So he wants the original video. He wants to look at the metadata.

Matt, what do you take away from this? So I've listened to the original video, at least as it's been played on various media sites. And I, I, I have listened to the enhanced one. And quite frankly, I can hear commotion in the background. I can make out a few words, including some curse words and something like, oh, my God. I can't say one way or the other, whether the things some people believe they are hearing are being said or not. It's very distorted. I do appreciate that people are making an effort to try to kind of literally cut through the noise and find out what's going on in the background.

but I think it is just we don't have enough information. At least I don't feel I have enough information based on publicly available recordings to know what's being said in the background. That's fair. I guess the question is, would it make sense to you that if someone's making a call for an emergency help, they would make it two things. One, if Nolan was having some sort of emergency or was in trouble, wouldn't that be relayed on the dispatch unless there are those out there who say,

hey, the people on board were responsible. If that's the case, why would you make a call while this is going in the background? You see what I'm saying? Absolutely. I see what you're saying. So it is not unusual when people are staging a crime scene, covering up a crime, to make a 911 call as part of that crime scene staging. But that happens in cases that are usually premeditated murders, and it's a very cold-blooded, calculated sort of thing to do. We're talking about a half dozen or so 19 or so aged men. I don't get the sense that there's a tremendous amount of criminal sophistication or cold-heartedness in this group, at least in terms of what's been reported. It would be very surprising to me that they would deliberately stage a distress call to cover up some crime. It would be even more surprising to me that they would choose to make a recorded phone call while something was going on in the background connected to some kind of foul play that was happening or had. just occurred. And then the last thing I would say about that is if this is some kind of conspiracy

in which seven or so people know that some foul play happened to Nolan Wells and one or more of them was involved in it, it seems very unlikely to me that those folks could maintain that conspiracy of silence for coming up on a month now. I mean, even among sophisticated, hardcore organized criminal groups, the more people you have involved in a conspiracy, the more likely it is that somebody's going to talk. And these do not seem to be that kind of organized, hardcore criminal group. I just would be very surprised that a conspiracy of silence to cover up some foul play done to Nolan would persist as long as it has. And certainly if it did, it couldn't for much longer. I have to highlight another development. So it has been reported

by outlets like ABC that according to a document that was sent out seemingly on July 5th with preliminary information from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, witnesses that day told authorities that Nolan had been drinking heavily with friends on Horn Island. Now, this is their account. We don't know if this is true, but it was part of a report that happened quite close in time to what was going on with looking for Nolan Wells. What do we make of that? How does that fit into the investigation? Well, I think we need to be careful with those kinds of statements, certainly being intoxicated increases the risk that somebody is going to come to harm. It's just harder to take care of yourself if you're heavily intoxicated. But I would want to know

who these witnesses are and how they came to that conclusion. Are they seeing him acting in a way that suggests intoxication? Are they seeing him consume large quantities of alcohol right in front of them? Do we even know for certain that the allegedly intoxicated person they're describing is Nolan Wells? So there's a lot of unanswered questions, and we really want to be careful about anything that smacks a victim blaming. The fact is, I would expect on a July 4th weekend out on Horn Island, there were a lot of young people consuming an awful lot of alcohol, and every other one of those young people made it home safe. Yeah. We're waiting for the results of the toxicology reports, right? This independent autopsy, as we reported, was limited by the condition of the body that was handed to this examiner.

We've talked about before how the state medical examiner seems to have retained certain portions of the neck or throat, possibly for further examination, possibly for trauma drowning. But the toxicology is going to be key, right? That, I wonder, what is that going to tell us? Well, the toxicology may tell us what substances Nolan Wells had on board. It still really doesn't answer the question of why this young man lost his life. It's information, but it's not an answer. One of the difficulties is when you're dealing with drowning, it can be very hard, if that's what the situation is, it can be very hard to know what the circumstances were.

Was someone pushed in? Were they intoxicated? Do you push them in? If you hold someone down, maybe there's some sort of physical evidence left behind. Decomposition implicates it as well. So this is a tough one. You know, look, we'll see where it progresses. I just want the family to get answers.

I really do. I want them to have a sense of closure in this one way or another. See how this progresses. I'm going to stand on top of it. Matt Irvine, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Jesse. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us.

And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can also check us out on NBC's Peacock as well. If you want to follow me, X Instagram, My News Nation Show, Jesse Weber Live, Monday, Friday, 11 p.m. Eastern. See you next time, everybody.