The Megyn Kelly Show - The TRUTH About Nolan Wells' Alcohol Consumption, Bruises, and Deleted Messages, and the Shock Pastor Murder Trial | Ep. 1406

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Megyn Kelly is joined by Russ Latino, attorney for Bart Edmiston, to discuss the new information we're learning now that the Nolan Wells medical examiner reports are being made publicly available, the information about Wells' phone and supposedly deleted Snapchat messages, Benjamin Crump’s new spin and lies, the claims being made about deleted Snapchat messages on Wells’ phone, why there is no evidence showing anything improper, what we're learning now about Wells’ alcohol consumption, what the bruises on Wells' body actually reveal, the racialized escalation from Crump and others, and more. Then Megyn Kelly discusses the highlights from Caleb Flynn’s murder trial, the case against the pastor and former “American Idol” contestant, the wild 9-1-1 phone call at the center of the case, the bombshell testimony when Caleb Flynn’s alleged mistress took the stand, the text messages revealed in court, the excruciating text messages between Caleb Flynn and his alleged mistress, the disturbing amount of times they talked about killing Flynn's wife, Kamala Harris’ latest embarrassing interview, her ridiculous comments about “algorithms," her rambling answers about hope and power, Herald Group: Learn more at https://GuardYourCard.comRelief Factor: Reclaim your mobility and celebrate your freedom from aches this year by grabbing your $17.76 3-week QuickStart at https://ReliefFactor.com or by calling 800-4-RELIEF.Ladder Technologies, Inc: Ditch the gym guesswork and get expert-led strength training for less than $1/day—grab your 7-day free trial and $10 off at https://ladder.fit/MEGYNBuoy: Head to https://justaddbuoy.com/megyn and use code MEGYN for 31% off the Liquid Electrolyte Discovery Set, backed by a 30-day risk-free guarantee  Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan and Kelly show and happy Friday. We have a lot to get to today. I've got to start with this. Happy Birthday Yates. My son turns 17 today. Oh my gosh, all of you parents out there can relate. It is hard to believe it's been 17 years. You know, it's like now we're getting into some high up years between the moment of birth and present day and it just, it goes by in an instant. Here's to all the moms and dads out there who celebrate their kids' birthdays, but secretly deep inside feel a sense of pending loss as they get older and we know what's going to happen. They're going to leave us. It just, it's what's normal. I have to let it go. Can't make him feel bad about it. I do want him to go off and become an independent

man, but not yet. Not yet. The law says they get to get him for another year or so, and since he's only a junior, two years, let's say. Anyway, happy birthday, sweet Yates. Today, we are finally going to get to this murder trial involving this Caleb Flynn. He's this pastor who is accused of murdering his wife. He's also a former American Idol contestant, and his mistress took the stand in his murder trial this week. And wow, it's been a jaw dropper. So we'll cover that in just a bit. But we are starting today with just an incredible back and forth in the Nolan Wells story. I mean, I don't know exactly how to break it down in a line or two. But basically what happened was the grand jury came back and said, this kid drowned. We don't have like proof positive that he drowned. But

we have looked at everything submitted by the state and by Benjamin Crump, who represents the family. He's submitted a bunch of evidence to us, too. He's been invited to submit anything and everything he has. And he, in response to that, gave a bunch of things. And we, the grand jury, looked at it all and our determination, after listening to the medical examiner for the state of Mississippi, as well as the one hired by Crump on behalf of the Nolan Wells family, a young black man who went, over to this Horn Island with his friends on July 4th of this year with his buddies and did not return in his buddy's boat because he wanted to stay at the island, based on independent witness testimony, and then never came home. And a day later was found dead in the water. And now there's been all sorts of innuendo swirling around his friends, most of whom were white, not all, because his family connected with two race hustlers, Al Sharpton and Ben

Crump, who have been fueling that fire ever since with absolutely no evidence. And the grand jury ultimately just this week came out and said there was no foul play here. These boys did nothing. There's nothing put in front of us that in any way incriminates those friends at all. And the nearest we can tell is that this kid drown. He drowned after having a fair amount to drink. And that should be the end of it. I'm sorry, Mr. Crump, but your game is over.

It's done. You had your fun trying to divide us yet again on the basis of skin color. What's your goal? Like a full out race war? No, I think it's just to pad your pockets with some more donations to grieving moms and dads like these who at their weakest moment fall into your clutches. You can pump up your name and your wallet at the expense of grieving families. Shame on you. You're a bad. person. But Benjamin Crump will not accept the conclusion of the grand jury at all. And what happened yesterday afternoon is he released what he says is his own independent forensic examination of Nolan Wells. Again, that's the deced in here, cell phone and provided his spin of what it means. Here's what's so galling about his interpretation of the cell phone. The DA didn't have the cell phone. What happened was the boys who went to Horn Island with Nolan, his buddies, had this cell phone on their boat.

Nolan left it on their boat. And then they all got in the water and they swam and they had a good time and so on. And then when the boat was returning back early because it was having some trouble taking on water and Nolan said, I'm good, I'll just catch a ride with somebody else, which was commonplace. There was testimony to that effect that kids would come and go on different boats all the time. He clearly forgot to take his phone off the boat. The boat went back to the mainland with his phone on it. And the boys later returned that phone to the family. And or it might have been to Nolan Wells' friend.

I can't remember. But they returned it immediately that evening. And it's been in the possession of Nolan's parents ever since. Ben Crump has the phone. And so he came out and was like, the phone records are incomplete. You have the phone records. You have the phone. What are you saying?

Why are you trying to create drama around the phone and phone records? records. When you're the one who has those, the DA had to ask you for all of that. All right. So now he does this, what the DA is calling grandstanding, about there were deletions off of this phone, he says, after Nolan last logged on and when the parents received the phone. There were deletions. Aha. Must be the white boys. It's really what he says, either explicit. or implicitly with all of his statements, those white kids, they deleted their nefarious text messages. That's what he's suggesting. And the DA had to get up in the middle of the night from the look of it last night and put together a statement of her own to try to correct the

record because the hustler is out there at every turn trying to spin us on what the facts allegedly show. All right. So here's what Ben Crump claimed where he would speaking about Snapchat conversation that occurred on Nolan's cell phone. And this, he's using this to say, even Nolan's friends were worried about Nolan possibly getting attacked by racists on Horn Island. Listen to Sot 1. 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. His friends discussing that on Snap.

So, yeah, a lot of people were thinking about whether there was a racial component in this tragedy of Nolan Wells being unalived. 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, yes. One was black and one was white. 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 had to walk this lady to her boat because, she knew one of them. And sheriff's talking to my dad says something like, you wouldn't want to be left alone with them, especially if they're really drunk. Nobody's accepting that it was an accidental drowning.

Even the friends are talking about, they're concerned about what really happened to Nolan Wales. So now it's not the friends. It's some random, sketchy looking dudes on the island. Now, have we moved on from the friends? Mr. Crump, I can't quite keep track because for months now, you've been telling me it's these white boys who are racist down in Mississippi and mentioning Emmett Till. But now it's some random guys that Nolan's friends thought looked sketchy. Pick a lane. I'm having difficulty keeping up with your theories. He's trying to get these kids arrested. He's been trying to get these kids arrested for months with zero evidence.

Now the grand jury comes out and says they did nothing. A complete and total exoneration of all these boys. He switched it to the boys had snaps about sketchy looking characters on Horn Island. and even they didn't agree it was a drowning. Well, I don't know when those snaps were. It sounds like that they were right after Nolan went missing. And they didn't know what had happened to Nolan. But the point is, who is it?

He's got no viable theories. And he hasn't, the truth is, given up on the theory that Nolan's friends killed him. Because he's also suggesting that there were deletions on Snapchat, on Nolan's Snapchat with his friends after Nolan was no longer using the phone and before it was returned to his parents. And he made a big point about how his last text message was from the night before to an aunt that Nolan, like a lot of teenagers, doesn't really text. He was a Snapchatter. I mean, virtually every teen is. And so he was suggesting this is very suspicious. Somebody was deleting snaps on Nolan's phone. That too is a lie.

that too is alive. The DA has addressed that in a statement today. By the way, that sound I played was from yesterday, not Wednesday, it was from Thursday. And she comes out and says, okay, first of all, the grand jury returned a detailed report concerning their findings in this investigation. The grand jury report references the cell phone extraction reports that our office received. The 30-hour digital download that Mr. Garrett, his forensic witness, discussed was not provided to the state, as Mr. Garrett claimed. All that we got were two emails containing about 300 pages of selected findings from Nolan's cell phone. However, the information they provided in their press conference and what they provided to my office prior to the grand jury

report was that no one physically accessed Nolan's cell phone after his last known use and before his parents received it. No one accessed it. No one accessed it. No one accessed it. No one it. I missed that in his presser. The family had been concerned about Nolan's phone being accessed before they received it. When I recently spoke to Mrs. Wansley, that's Nolan's mom, I mentioned how relieved she must have been to learn this. The user action discussed by Mr. Garrett, that's again, Crump's forensic guy, is from other Snapchat users, not someone physically accessing Nolan Wells' phone. If the Crump team has evidence to the contrary, They've not provided it to us.

What she is telling us is that Nolan was part of a group chat on Snapchat. That group chat continued messaging beyond the point that Nolan had accessed his phone that day of July 4th. The chat did not stop just because Nolan was no longer participating in it. And Snapchat has automated deletions on many of its messaging services. So this is not even really. remotely suspicious, but based on this and one other thing regarding the autopsy, which we're going to get into, he's now, again, trying to stir up trouble that somehow these boys

allegedly went on Nolan's phones. That's what he wants you to believe and deleted their, what, Nolan's text to them saying, please don't kill me, his provocative, oh, you know, F you, why don't you come for me texts? They don't exist. They aren't there. the DA would have found them. The DA got all of the phones, of the boys. If there had been some suspicious deletion on Nolan's phone and all the boys' phones, you don't think we'd know about it? You don't think this DA would throw these boys under the bus in two seconds?

She's made reference to Mississippi's dark history when it comes to racial matters. Repeatedly, she's well aware. This woman does not want that kind of a scandal on her hands. what incentive would she have to cover anything up? Her career depends on her doing a thorough investigation and figuring out what actually happened in a case as high profile as this. And you know what she's found to determine these boys had something to do with it? Nothing.

And you know what? Benjamin Crump is found to determine these boys had something to do with it? Nothing. She has repeatedly pointed out, and there's a grand jury pointed out. They went to Crump repeatedly and said, what do you have that shows the boy's involvement? And he continuously tells them nothing. It's not until he gets in front of the microphones that he finds his voice. He finds his voice. And now he's got a lot to say about the sketchy, racist-looking guys on the island and the alleged deletions on Nolan's phone that he's had on his possession without telling you the full story.

because he wants the innuendo to hang in the air. And he'd love for these white and also mixed-race friends of Nolan's to hang right alongside of it. Just absolutely cynical. Joining me now is Russ Latino. He's the attorney for one of Nolan's friends, Bart Edmiston. He was on the other day. We were talking about how Bart rescued the distressed vessel.

That's really his only role in this whole. whole case, but it was enough for this crazed crowd amped up by Ben Crump to turn on Bart. He has nothing to do with it, but we asked Russ to come on to talk about what's just happened because he's a lawyer involved in the case and he knows all the facts, but this piece of the case doesn't really involve Bart. Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always getting in your wallet and that now they're messing with your credit card. They say your credit card and the security it offers are under attack, and that senators Dick Durbin

and Roger Marshall want to change the nation's payment system to benefit corporate megastores like Walmart and Target at the expense of everyday Americans. Credit cards can keep your payments secure and provide rewards that families use to help make everyday purchases more affordable. The Electronic Payments Coalition says the Durban Marshall mandates would let corporate megastores cut corners on credit card processing, routing transactions over cheaper, untested networks, with weaker security and fewer protections. Find out more at guardyricard.com and consider telling Congress to guard your card. Russ, thank you for coming back.

Yeah, thank you for having. What do you make of what Ben Crump did yesterday? Well, I would say, first of all, your framing is correct insofar as Bart had very little to do with this case. I mean, I would say he did two things. One, he ferried out an overflow crowd that day at a request from a friend to bring out some folks that he didn't even know. And then the second thing that he did towards the end of the day

was to actually help the Triton boat that Nolan had originally written out on that morning when it was experiencing a mechanical issue. But for that, he has been accused of everything underneath the sun, including and up to the murder of his friend, based on some incredibly rank speculation and defamation. You know, people inventing mode of all sorts of things that would be comical, but for the fact that you're literally accusing somebody

without any facts of the worst possible thing that they could do and subjecting them to death threats and all manner of things. I think part of the problem here is that if you think about the Super Bowl last year, right, was between the Seahawks and the Patriots, and I know that and you know that. But watching what's going online is a little bit like watching people that didn't watch the game, talk about it being between, you know, the Browns and the Chiefs or something, right? That they are making up plays. They are making up things that happened.

And the consequence of that is that it doesn't really matter what is true. You've got a small group of young men, including my client, that have been implicated by all of these things that Mr. Crump and others have pushed. I'll say that as sort of context for the conversation around the phone because I don't think the average person on the internet engaging on this

understands that the phone wasn't on my client's boat or that my client never had possession of it. I think that what they think is he's one of a handful of people that have been named, therefore he must be implicated in some way in the things that Crump is accusing these young men of. It's also important to understand that what happened yesterday

didn't happen in a vacuum, Megan. Right? So he had already put out the narrative very early on. This was a small group of boys that went out to this desolate place. So you've got opportunity that he's created a narrative around. He said there's a limited number of people who could have been involved. And so he's made a small group with lots of the things that he said. And then on top of that has essentially said these boys abscond it with the phone and then

things got to delete it. So when you put this expert up after the grand jury has already found no credible evidence and you allow the expert to not say but imply that the phone got accessed. You know exactly what the result is. You know that it's going to lead this angry mob that is already prime for defamation that is already making threats against people to believe that one of the young men's whose names have been floated around and have been bashed on the internet must have been the one that accessed and deleted things off the phone, and therefore that is proof of conspiracy and cover-up.

The reality is that no one accessed the phone. And so what you've got to listen for when you're listening to experts like this is not always what they do say, but what they don't say. So he says that... Let me stand you by on that for one second, Russ, and play what this guy, Andrew Garrett, the forensics guy for Trump,

said specifically about deletions on the phone yesterday. Stop two. Were things deleted from that phone, yes? There were things that were deleted from the phone. I can't talk to intent. Unfortunately, that's not my field of expertise, the psychology, 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. And was it Snapchat things? They were Snapchat, correct. I don't talk in the world in intent, unfortunately. So we can say that in order for that to be done, somebody had to take a user action to delete data. So his parents said that when they got his phone, they thought that things had been deleted.

And the question is, are they crazy to think that? No, I think if you were to look at the phone like we did and look through the message threads and stuff, you could pit together that things were deleted. Okay. So again, the DA, In her statement today, Jackson County DA, Angel Miles McElrith, says, no one physically accessed Nolan's cell phone after his last known use and before his parents received it.

And so that's not the impression you would have if you listened to this guy, Garrett. But the truth is, no one physically accessed it. There may have been deletions on Snapchat. Can we speak to that, Russ? Because now you're going to have people out there like, oh, well, they put it on Snapchat, all the things they did to Nolan or something on Snapchat was super incriminating. That's why they deleted it. So, you know, aha, we've got them.

Yeah, I just want to revisit that he did not say that the phone had been accessed by anybody on the Trident boat where the phone was. He certainly left that open to people's imagination. And if you watch what happened on the internet yesterday, people ran with that like wild, right? That was the proof that the friends had tampered with the phone. And it was the proof of a cover-up when, in fact, he did not say that. And by the way, he has since done an interview where he has clarified himself a little bit there, you know, not one that's going to be covered by all of national media and seen by millions of people, but he did a TikTok Live, the Garrett guy where he basically said that he wasn't, you know,

he wasn't implying that somebody had accessed the phone. That was not. And all he said there was there were things deleted from that phone. And he said it took a user action, right? So there are two ways that messages. is get deleted from Snapchat. I'm not a big Snapchater. You mentioned you have a 17-year-old son today.

First of all, happy birthday to him. He probably does Snapchat a good bit. But my appreciation is that there are two ways. One is that there's an automatic deletion function that you can set to a certain amount of time where things get deleted. The other is, you know, you can recall a Snapchat, right? So if I send you something, Megan, and it's a goof, and I decide, you know what, I'm going to recall that.

I can recall the Snapchat. And it effectively removes it off of both. of our phones. And so, you know, that may very well be what he's referring to. He actually, again, he did not say exactly what he was referring to, right? He did not say the mechanism by which these things were deleted. He didn't say who deleted. He didn't say when they deleted or what was deleted. But there's a completely non-nefarious explanation for this, which is either automatic deletion or the platform itself is designed to allow for you to put something out there and then recall it. And I think that's just a privacy feature.

that people use all the time in the context of the platform. Yes. I mean, again, the DA says explicitly, the user action discussed by Mr. Garrett is from other Snapchat users, not someone physically accessing Nolan Wells' phone. If the Crump team has evidence to the contrary, they have not provided it to us. Then she goes on to say, the Crump team made the decision to wait until the 11th hour

to do a private phone extraction and only provide the grand jury with certain portions of the results. That's not the state of Mississippi. failing to be thorough. That's the crump team, making strategic choices to control the public information on Nolan's phone and create a misleading public narrative. What the snaps tell us is how strong Nolan's bonds of friendships were. It also tells us that the family and the crump team should not have allowed Nolan's friends to be publicly accused and have their lives and their families' lives threatened and reputations ruined. This DA has had about enough of this. Now, we've got to

get into the autopsies because the state of Mississippi conducted one and then the Ben Crump team conducted one. And the other big piece of news that's now come out because the state didn't release its autopsy results, but they gave them to Ben Crump, who then made them public yesterday. And what they found is that there was not water in Nolan's stomach or lungs. And this led the internet, same internet, to say he didn't drown. He didn't drown. Yeah, how could he, that was not a drowning. He didn't drown. A drowning would show, would show water in the lungs. Here is a bit of that in, um, it's crump attorney Liza Park, right? Is that, yeah, speaking to this. Yeah. And then Ben Crump, too, speaking yesterday, saw for a watch.

Lungs. No fluid or debris is within the airways. GI track 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 accidental drowning but this is their own medical examiners report. And this is what the contusions look like to her on the back of the head.

You pointed out. They can't see it. 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. We are still trying to determine who or what caused the blunt force trauma to the back of Nolan Wells' head.

Okay, Russ. So they're saying that the autopsy shows a contusion on the lower back of his head, Nolan's head, and no water in the lungs or stomach. And I want to say up front, that is interesting, and I get it. That would suggest if he didn't know more, he didn't drown, and somehow he hit his head. The hitting of the head, I think, is real because even our own, you know, we consulted, for example, Dr. Kendall Crowns, he's the chief medical examiner of the Tarant County Medical Examiner. district in Fort Worth, Texas. He hosts the true crime podcast, Mayhem in the morgue. And he was saying, yes, you wouldn't have a bruise if it was post-mortem. Like if the body

floating in the water hit like a piece of wood or something, it would not create a bruise on a dead body. Only a live body can get a bruise. But the fact that he had a bruise on the back of his head doesn't tell us anything. It definitely wasn't a life-threatening bruise because both medical examiners said that. So somehow he did hit his head at some point, and that's all we know. We have zero evidence that someone hit him. And actually, Russ, the grand jury report said as follows. A witness testified before us under oath that he saw Mr. Wells slip awkwardly off the side of a

boat around the time of 3.30 on July 4th, 2006. he couldn't say whether Mr. Wells struck his head during the fall. He testified that Wells continued to socialize after the fall and did not appear injured. The grand jury understands that neither forensic expert has ruled out accidental drowning and went on from there. So he had a contusion, a bruise on the back of his head, and he didn't have water in his lungs. And I'm just going to play you, and our expert agrees with this. But this is Dr. Michelle Dupree, who had appeared on News Nation. This is back in March of 2024 in a different case discussing the issue of dry drowning.

Watch. Well, there's really two ways to drown, if you will. One is a wet drowning. One is a dry drowning. And in a wet drowning, the person is panicking. They're taking water in. The other situation is when the person is about to drown, they do panic. But the approach basically freezes up.

They have what's called a laryngos spasm, and that prevents water and air from getting in. So there may not be that much water in the lungs if that is what happened. That was a case involving a young man named Riley Strain. He was found dead in a river. It was ruled in accidental drowning. Per the medical examiner, he was drunk. And it appears that Nolan Wells was drunk, too.

Your thoughts on all of that, Russ? Yeah, so if I can take two quick points of personal privilege on the phone calls and then certainly will address the autopsy. I'd say one thing that is important is if they had had anything incriminating, right? They looked at all the text messages. They looked at all the group messages. It sounds like they were saying they were able to reconstruct everything that was deleted. If that's true and they had anything that was incriminating towards the friends,

one, they would have submitted that to the grand jury when they sent their report to the grand jury. Two, they certainly would have submitted in the context of the press conference that they had yesterday. They literally came up with nothing, which means I can guarantee them. you, they don't have anything incriminating in any of those messages. You know, I think the other thing that is really, really important just contextually is that this reminds me a lot of like labor and employment cases that happen where an employee will accuse an employer of not doing a good job

and then not cooperate in the investigation. And once the investigation is over, then use their lack of cooperation or them dragging their own feet as evidence that the investigation was not done well. And I think to some degree, that's what we're seeing here. With respect to the autopsy, this is the same problem that we've had throughout this, even when they came up with the independent autopsy back on July 22nd, which is they focus really hard on language that is inflammatory or that they believe to be inflammatory, right? And they do that to the exclusion of other explanations or other evidence that makes it clear that what they're saying really isn't as inflammatory as they would suggest. So as an example, they kept saying the throat and the lungs were

missing early on. Of course, we know they weren't their own pathologists said that what the ME had done was standard practice or that it was rightfully done. The same thing is happening right now around the use of the words blunt force trauma. You know, first of all, I think you could quibble as to whether or not bruising is indication of blunt force trauma or not. I think the other thing that you mentioned that is incredibly important is neither of the pathologist, including their pathologist suggests that that was the cause of Nolan Well's death. And you had a witness that says that Nolan had hit his head slipping off the side of another boat earlier in the day before either the Trident or the Tide Line left at 430. And so very, first of all, we're talking about a different boat.

Let's make that clear. Second of all, there's a plausible explanation for it and one which neither pathologist identify as the cause of death. Now, on the notion of dry drowning, I mean, I think if you talk to any pathologist very early on about this, they could tell you that. I think if you did even like a rudimentary Google search, you would know that drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion. And in this instance, they were not able to identify any other cause of his death. And so people who are saying, you know, oh, there wasn't water in the lungs or there wasn't water in the stomach.

One, that is not a scientific analysis for his legal team to be putting it out there to suggest that this is proof that he didn't drown is inconsistent with their own pathologist. They know very well that there is the possibility of dry drowning. It happens, they say, from between 10 to 15 percent of the cases, back to Dr. Kendall Crowns, who has no horse in this race at all. This is the chief medical examiner of a district in Fort Worth. So this is what he says about dry drowning. There can be a reflex closure of the throat, laryngeosasm, when water comes in contact with the larynx around the level of the vocal cords. The vocal cords suddenly tighten, which essentially closes the throat. The individual cannot breathe, nor can any water get in.

Much like in drownings in which water is inhaled, the individual dies from anoxia or lack of oxygen, getting to the brain. This used to be called dry drowning. It occurs in about 10 to 15% of cases. At autopsy, there will be no water found in the stomach or inhaled into the lungs. So it is not the end of the story on the drowning conclusion to say there was no water in the lungs. It's only part of the story. And then you get to the toxicology. And what it looks like to me, Russ, and again, having run it by Dr. Kendall Crowns, who's an independent on all of this, is that Nolan Wells was drunk. He was definitely drunk when he died. And this is, I'll just tell you what the information is.

It looks like the amount of ethanol found in his body was said to be 270 milligrams per DL. I don't know exactly what that's, what that measurement it is, but it's 270 MGs per DLs. Per decaliliter. Of ethanol reported in deciliter. Okay, thank you. And now that, that's a very, very high number. But what Dr. Kendall Crowns says and what all medical examiners seem to agree on is that when a body decomposes, it can cause toxicology findings to not be perfectly reflective of the actual amount of drug,

or in this case, alcohol consumed. And what he tells us is that specifically with ethanol, which is alcohol, the consumption of glucose by bacteria causes alcohol, the alcohol content in the dead body to be generated, which can artificially raise the level of alcohol, typically between 50 to 70 milligrams per deciliter, with extreme cases showing levels as high as 150 milligrams per deciliter. He writes the following to us.

The level of 270 milligrams per deciliter of ethanol that was reported in Nolan Wells could be as low as 120 milligrams in his body of actual alcohol. But in reality, it would be closer to 200 milligrams per deciliter. He says, which would represent 10, 12 gallons cans of beer, or it's equivalent in liquor and shots in the course of one hour. And there's a whole calculation. Each drink raises blood alcohol 20 milligrams per deciliter. You metabolize 20 milligrams per deciliter per hour.

So to get to 200, you have to have consumed 10 drinks in an hour. And he points out the reality is that Nolan's blood alcohol content could have been even higher. The reality looking like Nolan got very intoxicated. in a very short amount of time, was drinking, was boating, was in the water, and that is a very dangerous combination. Yeah, I don't have anything to disagree with Dr. Kendall Crown's analysis on there. He's clearly a pathologist, and I don't claim to be one.

I know that there is something to this idea that when you use decompositional fluid instead of blood for the testing, which this toxicology lab did, and it's important to note that this toxicology lab is an independent lab that states across the United States use. It's in Pennsylvania. It's called an NMS, very frequently used, so reputable outlet. But the decompositional fluid is a less reliable way to test than if you're testing blood.

But it certainly would seem, based on everything that I've read and experience, that even if it raised the level, there certainly was a good amount of alcohol in a system. Yeah. I mean, the boys didn't try to deny that they were drinking there that. day. And it looks like, I mean, if this is true, not only was Nolan drinking, but he really got his drink on in the hour before he went into the water and died. And Ben Crump, you know, very much wants us to believe that that contusion happened because, you know, your client's friends may have assaulted him. There's zero proof of that. That's what's true, Russ. Zero, zero. And both

forensic evidence experts from the Crump team and the DA's team. looked at that injury and said, no, that did not kill Nolan Wells. That was not a life. It was a bruise at the base of the skull. That's it. Yeah. And, you know, I think, too, it's important to point out that, you know, as of August 13th, whenever the district attorney had asked them, do you have any evidence or witnesses that you think support criminality, that you think would support a finding of probable cause that a crime occurred, that they, of course, said no, that they had nothing that was germane, even though, you know, they had their pathologist, obviously, to go and testify. The report was available.

some of what Mr. Garrett did in terms of forensic analysis of the phone was made available as well. There's a dispute as to how much of that was made available and the timing of it. But the grand jury considered his report as well. But when directly asked the question, do you have anything that would support a finding of criminal conduct? The answer was we don't have anything germane to that. And so for more than a month now, they've known that their own investigation did not return anything that showed criminal conduct. and they remain silent on it, right? They also are now putting out things like the cell phone information

without talking about the contents of the actual messages, really. And so they have known for months what those Snapchat show. They know whether or not those Snapchat show anything that is in any way incriminating. The DA apparently does as well, and it's made the point that they weren't. All they showed was that his friends actually cared about him, actually were concerned about what? was going on. I say all this to say that Mr. Krupp and his team have had the ability to put out the fire that they started. I think they lit a match very early on in this process and allowed

it to burn through all of these surrogates on the internet making up complete nonsense about people with no factual basis and no evidence. And they've had opportunity over the last couple of months whether it was August 13th or whether it's now, to say very clearly, we've got no evidence that the boys accessed the phone, we've got no evidence that any of these boys did anything criminal to Nolan Wells, we've got no evidence that they hurt him in any way. And they're not willing to do that.

They would rather subject people to legitimate death threats, legitimate harassment, than to be honest about their own findings. And I think, you know, we've got a real problem with that. Ben Crump is still pushing the lie. We talked about this the other day that Michael Brown was murdered by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. It is a lie. It is a lie.

Five black witnesses who watched the altercation told Barack Obama's DOJ being run by a black man, Eric Holder, that it wasn't true, that Michael Brown charged the officer. and had tried to assault him prior to charging him. And Ben Crump still will not correct the record on that. I don't think he'll ever correct the record on what he's doing to these boys here. He doesn't care that they're young, they're minors, that they have their whole lives in front of them, that they're going to have to carry this around. He doesn't care. That they were the ones who loved and knew Nolan, unlike Ben Crump. And the DA seems to have had about enough of the Ben Crump show. She issued this statement just this week, Here's SOTS six. The narrative that three white boys and a black boy went to an island,

and only three white friends returned spread like wildfire. This was false. There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan's disappearance and death were racially motivated. Nolan's friends love Nolan, and Nolan loved them. Nolan chose to stay on the island that day, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to contradict that. The family, the crump team, and anyone close to Nolan knew that his disappearance and death were not the result of racial hate or violence.

Yet the flames of that narrative set against the backdrop of Mississippi's terrible history were fanned by both people who knew the truth and those who didn't. I cannot tell you how difficult it is. observing people create narratives detrimental to our community when I have true knowledge that I cannot legally or ethically share. But my job requires discipline and restraint. I am responsible for protecting the integrity of active investigations and I will always make decisions that most faithfully protect and respect the law regardless of circumstances. That is the difference between an attorney whose duty is owed to an individual client and a district attorney

whose duty is owed to the community as a whole. Oh, I mean, I can feel her frustration. And then in her paper statement, she writes, my interactions with Mr. Kromp as well as his conduct in this case have demonstrated that he is not worthy of our trust. I did not expect that his characterization and representations in this case

would be any different today, nor do I expect anything better from him in the future. But we should demand better of him. I mean, we are really bordering on explicitly defamatory conduct here, Russ. I don't think we're bordering on it. I think we crossed that border a very long time ago. And it's incredibly, incredibly damaging.

I think the DA's give a damn is busted at this point. She has done everything possible to ensure that this was a thorough investigation. If you think about five days worth of grand jury testimony, That may not mean anything to the average person, Megan, but I know you practiced law for a while. That is an incredibly thorough grand jury investigation to hear five days worth of witnesses. The typical process would be that an investigator comes and lays out, here's what we did in the course of our investigation, here's what you found out. For them to hear from 40 plus witnesses, for them to hear the level of expert witnesses, the forensic reports and all of that, with something that is above and beyond what is normal.

And then the letter evidence is very clear that she gave Crump and his legal team every opportunity to submit witnesses, every opportunity to submit information that they thought was relevant or germane to a potential criminal investigation and they said they had none. And so, yeah, I think at this point,

she's looking at the same scenario that I mentioned earlier where someone essentially set up a claim that the investigation was not going to be thorough at the very beginning and then didn't cooperate and then at the end came back and used their lack of cooperation. operation as evidence that the investigators had done a poor job. And at some point, no matter how

unbiased you are, no matter how much integrity you have, you have the ability and the right to stand up for yourself and to say, that's not true. And I think that's what this district attorney is doing. Let me say this too really quickly, because we talked about Mississippi before when I was on with you and I told you how much I love this state. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is a really, really special place, too. It is very different from the rest of the state of Mississippi. I grew up in Hancock County, which is down on the Gulf Coast, lived in Gulfport, which is another city down there. Still have a lot of family friends down there. In a lot of ways, it's a little bit more like New Orleans and South Louisiana than it is the rest of Mississippi. It is very laissez-faire. People give you the

shirts off their back. We just celebrated the 21st anniversary of Katrina, Megan. And I will tell you that there was no racial litmus test in Katrina, right? Neighbors help neighbors, regardless of their background, regardless of their skin color, because that's how Mississippi operates. operates. You know, Governor Barber used to talk about hitching up your bridges. That's what we did during Katrina. And there was no sense of, oh, we're only going to help this group of people or that group of people, right? We just helped everybody because that's what the coast is like. And it's been maligned in a way that is horribly unfair by someone who, whose entire professional career is based off of dividing communities like Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It is a very cool little

community. It did not deserve that. And in some ways, what we're talking about here is a perfect example of transcending a negative racial past. You had a group of friends that were mixed race that hung out all the time that had this Snapchat group thread where they all cut it up, cut up and kid with each other, right? Where Mr. Wells was staying the night at one of these friends' houses and regularly stayed the night at these boys' houses. So this is not a situation where there's anything to suggest racial animus. In fact, the situation suggests the exact opposite. It suggests a community.

Rush, you weren't here when I made this point yesterday or two days ago when you were on because you had to run. But I did make the point after you left. I have dear friends whose 17-year-old son died during COVID of myocarditis. And the ones who got them through it, the ones who helped them deal with their grief, their son was Blake Barkledge. Their names are Allison.

Tom Barkledge. More than anyone were his Blake's eight best friends. They called him the Divine Nine, and the Divine Nine came over and helped Tom put up the Christmas tree decorations because he always did that with Blake and he couldn't do it that year on the exterior of the house. He broke down in tears. They were there in minutes to help that dad. Like, they have been the most soothing balm to the mom and dad for five years now. And this Ben Crump and Al Sharpton, inserted themselves in this case in a way that I think corrupted the minds of Nolan Wells's parents because I don't think they started off blaming whites for everything. I don't think they would have allowed Nolan to be friends. They wouldn't have raised a boy like Nolan who would be friends

with a bunch of white kids and mixed race in their friend group. I think they've been exploited in their time of grief. And this is yet their victims have been crumbed too because they too, like my friends, the Barcloges could be getting comforted by your client and the other boys who I'm sure would love to have a healing moment with Nolan's parents, but now cannot. Yeah, look, I think that entire community continues to pray for the Wansley family, for Nolan's family. You know, it certainly has been a difficult situation because without the level of division that's been created, these families would all be wrapping their arms around that family.

And so I think in a lot of ways it's disrupted the natural progress or process of healing here. I just would reiterate, though, at some level, that that group of friends or those friendships that we're talking about are the exact opposite of the way that people are now portraying Mississippi and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. That, the depth of that friendship was proof of something that transcends the racial tension that Mr. Crump and others are now trying to create. And it's really disheartening and disappointing, but maybe not entirely unexpected based upon his past. My only comfort here is that they've shot their best ammo. There's nothing more. These boys had nothing to do with it, as I 100% believe. There's not going to be anything more manufactured by Ben Crump.

There's nothing out there. And so they don't have anything to worry about because if you're innocent, then it doesn't doesn't matter. There's not going to be a text message. There's not going to be an eyewitness, a videotape, a self-off. It won't come out because it doesn't exist. And therefore, this story will go away. And even Ben Crump will move on to his next race hustle. We've been watching him do it for years. Russ, our regards to your client and all the boys affected by this, thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. God, what a case. It's infuriating. And yet we know this playbook. Do we not? Up next, the pastor with the mistress and apparently a gun.

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to help you. And maybe you will be sharing your story with them. And I'll be reading it on the air soon too. All right. We're finally getting into this case of the Ohio pastor, Caleb Flynn, former American Idol contestant who very clearly murdered his wife. He denies it. He's pleaded and not guilty. All right. That did happen. And this case broke months ago.

The murder happened February 16th of 2026. So it's relatively recent, but it's been in the news for a while. And people always suspect the husband. I mean, in 90% of the cases, it is the husband. and, you know, just kind of, he didn't have an alibi. He said he was home, but he was in the children's room when it happened. And so it was just very sketchy. And, you know, the cops arrested him within four days.

So I don't know. People understood, yes, probably him. But it wasn't until this week when we actually got to meet his mistress. And not just his mistress. She was 20 years old, some 19 years his junior, when they were doing it. And it went on for years from 2024 to 2026. And there are over 300,000 text messages between the two of them. It's like 100,000 in a year. It's insane. It's insane. I mean, they were obsessed with each other. And I've got to be honest, she's an attractive woman and he's not an attractive man at all.

So I don't totally understand what happened here other than have you watched the Netflix special on this other bizarro pastor who's being accused by his now deceased wife's family of driving her to suicide or possibly even worse, that too involved a much older pastor and a much younger woman and a relationship that started in an affair. Now, he wound up marrying this young woman and then, as I said, kind of mentally torturing her based on the documentary. He denies it. In any event, the point is both these guys were in a position of authority. A pastor absolutely is in a position of authority over the people in his parish. And in particular, the young people.

And I think a young woman, now this is the affair partner I'm showing you here. Here she is when she's a couple years later, Alleya. Though this is all relatively recent. So again, she's, you know, her young 20s still. And she connects with this guy, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay. So I'm just saying the reason this exploded this week, if you haven't heard about it, is because we met Alea. And we have on the stand testimony of her reading the text messages between them, which, you know, of course, are like, I love you.

But it's a lot of like, I can't fucking stand my awful wife. And I want her dead. I want you to kill her. I want a killer. And then the affair partner, Alea, like, I want her dead too. I mean, these are the worst crime committers ever. And it looks to me like she may have had some idea this is going to happen, but clearly the prosecution's using her.

And she's, you know, she's singing like a bird now on this guy, Caleb Flynn, her pastor, her sweet pastor. But yeah, that dumbest criminal ever. Like, so stupid. It's kind of offensive. Like, we'd like to try to a little harder to figure out a crime, I think is a true crime I speak for most of us when I say, like, we kind of enjoy the mystery of it when we get past the awfulness of it. I think one of the things that attracts people to the true crime world is it's

the same thing that attracts geeks to math, like the ability to problem solve. And many of us don't have that wonderful ability when it comes to numbers, but we do or think we do when it comes to crime. This guy's made it too easy, which is one of the reasons why this case isn't that compelling, but let's face it. this gal on the stand reading these texts is you can't take your eyes off of it. I mean, it's just like stunning. Okay, but I'm going to go back to the beginning, just can give you a little primer before we get into what the actual testimony has been. Caleb Flynn is 40 years old. He was what's called a worship pastor, a guy who combines both his musical duties at a church with his

pastoral ones. So he's not just the music director, but he's actually acting as a pastor inside the congregation. He met his now deceased wife, Ashley, in college. They got married in 2010. She was 37 when she died. He's currently 40, as I said. He appeared briefly on season 12 of American Idol back in 2013. Here's a bit of how that went. My name is Caleb Flynn. I'm from Tip City, Ohio. I auditioned because I'm sure everybody says it, but music is all I know. It's what I love. live to do and I love to sing so that's why auditioned maybe my wife kind of nudged me a little bit too I'm a music pastor and so that's my job every week is to go up there and to sing and to connect what I do on stage of the congregation so first and foremost obviously is the Lord thing that makes

me unique you know I absolutely love the Lord I love my wife more than anything she is very very pretty just I love her my favorite past idol contestant would probably be Carrie Underwood. She's just absolutely incredible. Love her attitude and just her passion for what she does. And I promise you, if my wife died her hair blonde, she would look just like her. So sweet. Such a bright future.

Or not. So his very, very pretty wife is the one he allegedly killed and whose family gave him a job that was purportedly worth over to her. $200,000 a year, maybe $250. So he was doing rather well, thanks to her family. And his love of the Lord, I guess, didn't extend to not killing people. Generally, when you really believe in the Lord and Jesus, you understand he's against murder, which this guy's been accused of. But he's married to Ashley. They have two daughters, and they were living in this tip city, Ohio, which is just north of Dayton. The prosecution alleges that on February 16th, 2026, Ashley, the wife was found dead inside

their home. She was shot twice in the back of the head while she slept. The 911 call, you know, we all listen to the 911 call and we think we can tell. It's not always accurate. Sometimes the overly dramatic ones are actually telling the truth. And sometimes the stoic ones who show no emotion are telling the truth, and sometimes they're not. But I have to say, like, this sounds so fake and, like, over the top to me. This guy's 911 call here. It is in part. Miami County, not alone.

Somebody broke into my home. Somebody broke in my home. Are they still in there? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. What's the address? 932 Countyham Court, Pennsylvania, Ohio.

Please, please, hurry. Please, please, hurry. What are you seeing? My wife is... She's got two shots to her hands. There's blood everywhere. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Sir, please, please. Ma'am, I need you to take a deep breath, okay? Do you still see anybody in the house? No, the door to the garage is wide open. Please, hurry, please. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. My daughters are here.

My daughters are here. Where are she at? She's in the bed. She's in the bed. Are you with her? I am in the room. I'm looking at her. Yes, please.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Sir, please. They are heading that way, okay. I need you to take a deep breath for me.

Are you hearing anything? No. I rubbed her leg and said her name. She's not answering. Okay. Are you hearing any kind of noise inside the house? No. No.

Oh, sir, her faces. White is going to go straight to me. Okay. Who's face? My wife's face. Your wife's face? The one, yes, the one who was shot. She was, she was what? Shot, I said. Okay, where were she shot at?

In the head, in the head. I hope there's blood everywhere. I need to just take a deep bread for me, okay? Okay. Okay. Just get that cloth and I want you to put it on that wound, but don't want to apply direct pressure to it, okay? They're coming to you as quick as they can, okay.

I've inflated on her head. Okay. Sir, sir, sir. Sir, the cop is here. Okay, I want you to... Okay, open the door for him so he can get into her, okay? Okay, he's coming to me. Sir!

Hurry, sir! I don't know that the door to the cross door was wide open. I'm her husband. Okay. So he's totally distraught. He would have you believe. I don't think anybody believed it since he was under arrest in four days. He wanted cops to believe that an intruder had come into his home in the middle of the night

and shot his wife and that he was allegedly in the children. room at the time. Again, they have two daughters at the time this happened last February. They were at ages nine and 11. I think they're now 10 and 12. They both had birthdays. And there he is in all of his drama. This guy's been full of drama from the beginning. He was like fake hyperventilating, fake dry heaving. In court, he's constantly breaking down tears like, good Lord. I mean, like the histrionics of him. He's very, very worried he's going to jail. That's really what it is. is. Here he is in court listening to the playing of his 911 call. Oh, so painful for him, because poor Ashley's gone. Okay, sure. This goes on. By the way, how poorly has he aged?

Look at this guy. You show me this? I probably guess, I was like late 60s. I don't know. You could pass for 67 here. He's 40. I mean, that, when he was on American Idol, he looked like a, you know, relatively young guy. Look at this. This was 13 years ago. So it was 30, it was 27. Look at the difference between 27 and 40 for this guy, Caleb Flynn. It's been a rough 13 years and a rough 10 months for him in particular.

It's going to get even rougher when he gets convicted, which is what I predict will happen. Okay, but so he calls 911. They come over to investigate. They did give him a test for gunshot residue. on his body and clothing, none was found, nor was the murder weapon. She was shot with a 9mm. That's not great for the prosecution. That's kind of the only two facts that the defense has going for it.

That there's no gunshot residue on him and that there's no murder weapon. There is a 9mm weapon of his that's missing and unaccounted for. And one of the incriminating things we heard in the 911 call was him saying she's been shot twice. She's been shot. She had two shots, he said, in the head. And that's what the forensic examiners have said is that would have been impossible to know that, you know, you shoot somebody in the head in that situation. And especially if you do shoot them twice, the head is going to be such a mess that no person just coming into the room would understand it was multiple gunshots. They would just see carnage. And by the way, there was a test. There was testimony just this week by Dr. Brian Castro, who had examined all the pictures of the autopsy, et cetera. And this is what he said, Sat 17. This is a picture of the back of the head. And there has not been any washing done at this point.

So you're seeing hair and brain matter and blood obscuring what eventually is determined to be two gunshot moons to the back of the right side of the head. Just viewing this photo, can you tell how many gunshot ones there are? Yeah. No, and he's an expert. But the husband, distraught, to have just stumbled upon his dead wife, could immediately tell that there were two gunshots to the head. I doubt it.

So from the stupid criminal files, they all think they're smarter than law enforcement. And few are. Okay, so we get to trial. began last week. And here's a bit from the prosecution's opening where they talked a bit about the text messages we're going to get into. SOT 16. I was up until 4 a.m. last night, crying. Literally trying to think of ways to kill her and not go to jail. If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, that is how dark and how hateful. I feel. Those two messages are Caleb Flynn's own words. The words about his wife Ashley, words communicated to his mistress. Those messages were sent months apart and before Ashley's

murder. It's a treasure trove of info inside those text messages. I mean a treasure trove. These two dumb-dums, yeah, the prosecutors told the jurors that Flynn and Alea exchanged more than 100,000 messages over roughly a year. There are 34 binders of messages inside this courtroom in which he continuously talks about how much he hated his wife and had his chosen codename for her, which was douche repeated over and over and over. But enough about Caleb Flynn's projection. Here's a bit of how the defense is arguing the case from their opening statement. Take a listen here in SOT 18. They can't show you if Caleb had a gun in his hands that night. They can't show you if Caleb pulled the trigger. They can't show you if Caleb damaged the door. They can't give you the date that the door was damaged.

They are merely guessing and they're asking you to do the exact same thing. They're even asking you to convict Caleb of a tampering with a gun charge on a source. basis that they can't find him. There's no forensic evidence linking Caleb to these crimes. There is no eyewitness, as the state has already told you, that Caleb was the shooter. There's no surveillance footage of Caleb that night. There's no gunshot residue found on Caleb or his clothing. There's no time of death from the coroner.

The only fingerprints that the state has are those of Caleb in his own home, which lived since 2021. The state has no direct evidence as to what happened. only a theory following an affair. A tragedy deserves more than a theory. Okay. That might have worked without the text messages, but there, I mean, unless we have another Casey Anthony's situation on our hands,

like a bunch of dumb jurors who were easily misled, sorry, they should come to the right conclusion, rather easily. Here's what happened. The two daughters were told after their father was a arrested that he was being charged with killing their mother, these poor girls at this tender age, have now lost both parents. Their mom is dead. Their dad is under arrest for having done it. And Ashley's sister, the young girl's aunt, testified about the two daughters and telling them,

saying that they were heartbroken at the time. But she elaborated just a bit as follows. Sot 19. What was their reaction to understanding that there was an affair with someone that they personally knew? They were shocked. They were upset for their bombing because they said she loved Daddy more than anyone else in life. So why did Daddy not love her as much? And so, but when we told her then who it was, the oldest said, I'm not surprised. Okay.

The oldest was not surprised. Of course, the oldest knew this young woman, Alea, from the church. I'm sure her dad was working as this pastor and was not shocked at all to find out that this surprise was the affair partner of her father for some 18 months. according to the testimony from 2004 to around early 2026. It ended after a murder was committed. That doesn't tend to be like a massive turn on for affair partners who are in their young 20s, as it turns out, or at least so she would have us believe. They saw each other at least once a week. They traveled to nearby cities together where no one would recognize them. They discussed getting married one day. He took her out behind, you know, fast food restaurants in his

truck, yeah, whatever. Okay, it's like losers having, having an extramarital affair. And it would kind of stop at that. It's a tale as old as time. If one of them hadn't blown his wife's head off, what the fuck? Like, honestly, all I can think of is the lines of Sharon Rocha at the sentencing of Scott Peterson. Why didn't you just divorce her? Why didn't you just, you just, divorce her. Divorce is always an option. You know, this guy in the text messages seemed, because the affair partner, Alaya, kept saying to him, you know, like, I want to, please leave her. I want to be together. And he's like, I want to be together too. But it was really his daughters that he was allegedly concerned about hurting. But I guess he thought like a softer place

would be for them, for him to, again, blow their mother's head off. That would be a softer, kinder thing to do rather than just announce they're going to get a divorce. I mean, of course, we all know that in the one scenario, when there's a divorce, Daddy might look bad. In the other scenario, if she just gets murdered by an evil intruder and you're never caught for it, you're just the doting, carrying dad there to pick up the pieces, you're the hero. And Caleb Flynn was a little too drunk on his own wine and thought he could play that role. Well, guess what? Text messages are forever, at least for the most part. So here's an interesting exchange and then I'll get into what the text messages actually exchanged.

There was testimony by the affair partner, Alea, about an exchange they had deep into this whole thing about whether their 100,000 messages could be deleted and not retrieved in any legal proceeding, say. Listen to SOT 21. He said, so we're 100% these messages can't be retrieved. And I said, that's what I found when I chat GPTed it. I'll check again. I remember it saying that once these threads are deleted, you can't get them back. He said, okay, good deal. Okay.

And we actually looked into that just for kicks, because doesn't everybody want to know the answer to that? It's kind of interesting. Here's our info. ICloud Google Drive and carrier backups often store full message histories, even if you delete a chat. Phone companies keep metadata, like who texted whom and when,

even if the content isn't stored long term. If the person with whom you're texting has their phone seized, your messages are on there if they didn't delete them as well. Digital forensic specialists can recover messages months or even years after deletion, especially when the physical device is in police custody. the moment a phone is seized, assume everything on it is potentially recoverable. Even if you factory reset your phone, forensic tools can sometimes recover data from residual memory. Memory, excuse me, don't count on deletion as a defense strategy.

So a deletion is never a deletion. I'm sorry to break it to you, but you might actually need to be a good person now in 26 America. You should not be relying on the deletion of texts as pretty. protection for any bad behavior, shall we say. Not trying to help people get away with murder or affairs, but just FYI, Chad GPT once again got it wrong. Didn't I say I signed off Chad GPT. I haven't used it since. I asked Chad GPT a question about Trump's second term. And it responded, Trump didn't win a second term. That's election denialism. He was not reelected.

President, Joe Biden was elected the lawful president of the United States. Like, are you an idiot, chat ch pt? Like, what is happening here? This was like a couple of months ago. I'm like, don't, Trump is in the middle of his second term right now. They do not need to be consecutive in order to be considered the first and the second. And then you get the stupid apology from chat. It's like, just know, that's who you're relying on for information. If you base your research, depending on what your job is, on information from chat GPT, which is why I don't. It's one thing if you want to use it as like a failsafe, like, I think this thing happened and you're looking for a confirmation and maybe you check, then you X out of the AI search and you check

the actual news articles, but be very careful about relying on AI only. It can lead you down the wrong road. And the next thing you know, you're on the stand testifying and rate your text messages with the accused over there who murdered his wife as evidenced by his many text messages to you in which you sound disgusting too. All right, I'll give you one on camera because she she was no angel either in these messages. She was 21 when they got together. She's 24 now, as I said. She was young. That's no excuse. I think I would have understood at age 21. Not a great idea to do this in the first place. And certainly not a great idea to be having. Having sex with a married man who's talking about killing his wife and every other text messages is a request to me to kill or a statement that he's going to.

I think at age 21, I would have realized, this might not be a great guy. I might be in a difficult position here. So here she is crying, breaking down on the stand when she gets confronted with some of his nastiness and hers. Sot 22. Sorry. I just wish I didn't say this. Spit it out. What was the message said? I didn't mean it.

Says, Oh. It says I want to kill her, Caleb. Who said that? Me. Next message. I said it's so bad. Next message.

He said that makes two of us. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. You're playing with fire, sister. It's all fun in games until the wife winds up dead. And two little girls have lost their mom. No one gives a shit about your stupid tears. Good luck.

Here's a bit of how it looked. It's actually very interesting. I went back and looked at the coverage from February of 2026 until this week. And it's been like nothing. They didn't know there was a rumor about this gal, possibly being his affair partner. But nobody knew what the prosecution had in its back pocket with these texts. And it would be bad enough if they were steamy and like,

I want you. I want to be with you. That would suck. But I mean, explicit demands that she'd be murdered and like promises to murder and like dreams and fantasies about murdering. Like, it's great. I love it when the terrible people are dumb. So here's a few. Okay, we'll start a year ago. March of 2025. Murder happened in February of 26. Flynn. That's Caleb. It's basically Caleb and Alea. Caleb, I just want her dead and gone. Alea. What can I do? Caleb, kill her. Caleb, May 16th, 2025. If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat. That's how dark and hateful I feel. Two days later, May 18th, 2025. Caleb, that's why I constantly tell you I hate

her, loathe her. I want her dead. June of 2025, Caleb, we have to get rid of douche, his pet nickname for her when he was talking to his affair partner. I need you. You're my everything. All right. I just want to like, point of objection here, a man can't call a woman a douche. It doesn't work. I don't know why, but it doesn't. He also calls her bitch and everything. A douche, I think, is a universal term for a man. He's being a douche. Am I wrong? Like, please email me. I'm pretty sure. It's not official, but just those of us who are in the swing. wearing game and the derogatory words game. Dush is something you call a dude.

Okay. Anyway, like I said, he's not smart. We have to get rid of douche. I need you. You're my everything. And what a weird mixture of like inappropriate, disgusting, like, I don't know, below the belt,

awfulness about the mother of one's children parlayed with, you're my everything. A little love letter. Like, fucking douchebag, I love you, you're my everything. Can't wait until we spend our whole lives together and bliss. You know, like, what's going on? Got like a split personality, this guy. Caleb, June, July 10th, 2025. Do you know how badly I want to say, F it to any rules and any barriers and just love you with my

entire heart for the rest of my life? Then she responds, I want to kill her, Caleb. What? What? Wait, what? I thought we were talking about how we were going to be together. and I was going to love you with my entire heart for the rest of my life. I want to kill her. Says the sweet, the sweet little mistress, Leia. That makes two of us, he joins in. August. August 22nd, 2025.

Caleb, all I want is you. I'm sorry I hurt you. She keeps getting hurt because he's not leaving the wife and she's catching on to him periodically here. I was up until 4 a.m. last night crying. Well, that I believe. And literally thinking of ways to kill. her and not go to jail. So dumb. She responds, I'm not asking that you take her life, obviously,

because that's not what you should do. And I know you actually wouldn't, but to make the divorce happen, it would change everything. Good. So this girl's smarter than he is, because she actually wrote something that would cover her ass, potentially. And then she at least tried to see whether text messages could be deleted forever. And then was, she was smart enough to ask the question, but not so smart to not believe chat, GPT. Maybe she'll get there. She's young. September 8th, 2025, Caleb, I hate her. I hate everything about her. I mean, at what point does she say, like, I know, you've said that many times. Come up with a more interesting message. September 30th, 2025. Caleb tells Alea, he's willing to sacrifice his.

is, quote, daughters, a quarter million dollar salary job, a place to live, possibly a church I serve at, public shame and humiliation, and way more to be with Alaya. Then he asks her to unfollow a man on social media, sarcastically calling it a big sacrifice. And then at some point, we don't know, it's in the fall of 2025. Alea grows a pair and writes, until she's gone, I'm gone. and we do see periodic harassment on her part of trying to get him to leave her, you know, actually leave her the way, you know, the divorce law is provided for. Until she's gone, I'm gone. And ultimately, we believe what was the catalyst for the murder was she did actually break up with him in January of 26.

Alea. It's like, I'm done. I no longer believe you and I'm out of here. And guess what? He pulled the trigger within weeks. Allegedly, he denies it. January of 26. Alea.

Do you know how many times you've said you're going to fast and then leave her? Going to fast and then leave her? Okay, that's what she wrote. This will literally be your fourth time you've prayed protection or fasted about how. Alea. As Jesus is my witness right now, I swear in everything, I swear on absolutely everything that I love. If you do not leave her next week, I don't want this anymore for the rest of my life.

Because now we're in January, 26. The murder's coming. No date given, but we think around this time frame. Caleb, I'm sorry, this sucks. Caleb, if I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat. Unless she dies, cheats again, or we find a way to get rid of her, she will be around. Now, he keeps saying in these texts, I believe it is to put the affair partner's mind at ease that his wife Ashley cheated on him. There's no evidence of that, and there's been testimony at trial that there's, that that's not true. So I have no idea what the story is. Does he actually believe it? I doubt it.

Did she have a flirtation that he's counting as cheating? No, he's probably just a prick. I think he's probably just lying to the affair partner to make her feel better and himself better about his behavior. But whatever. It's irrelevant. Who gives a shit? You don't get to kill somebody because they cheat on you. Alea texts him, please hire someone to take douche out. I need you in my life. I need you. And Caleb responds, so tempting. It's unbelievable. Again, this little, sweet little mistress is no shrinking violet either. That's like, amazing. Please hire someone to take douche out. Now, let me ask you something. How sure are we that this woman had nothing to do with it? I mean, it doesn't seem like they're presenting that at trial. And in fact, there's been, I think, a fair amount of witness

testimony suggesting that she was where she said she was on the night that Ashley was murdered. But man, you read these texts and you're like, are we bulletproof on that? Because like, ah, she seemed very much in favor of a hit on this woman. And like, maybe even possible of pulling the trigger herself. But I mean, you got to put your money on Kayla at this point for all the obvious reasons. The testimony continues to come out that she was house sitting for a different pastor on the night in question. There was testimony about her phone, having been placed down and put.

out of used, you know, airplane mode or what have you, in the evening. You know, I don't remember the exact timing off the top of my head, but it was in the evening, like hours before Ashley was killed. And then it did not get up and get used until like 7.30 in the morning, but the phone went back on and then two hours later she got out of bed. So it showed she was like lying there, you know, using it or she turned it on at least and then moved about without it. Now that doesn't mean she didn't get out of the house in those hours without. out her phone. You know, I mean, a lot of us put our phone on airplane mode at night, and if we get up to go to the bathroom, we don't go get our phone and bring it with us, and so it wouldn't

be reflected on there, especially if you got up and left the house, unless you're wearing an Apple Watch or an aura ring or something, how would anybody know? So there's that, but it does seem like the prosecution does not believe she had anything to do with it. That's how it looks to me from what we've heard so far. But she certainly seemed to be in favor of it. Here's another one. from her. Life with you and loving you is so easy and just makes sense. I've fallen so madly in love. I don't want to settle for anything less than Caleb.

We have to get rid of douche. I love you. You're my everything. My heart and my soul. My best friend, my love, my better have. Alea, I don't even want to say this in a joking way anymore. We need a solution, Caleb. We need it to be me and you forever.

No exceptions. Caleb, I've never joked about it. February 11th. Now we are within days of the murder. Caleb, I need her to die, to cheat again, to leave. There it is right there. Valentine's Day of February 26th, 226, two days before the murder. Caleb messaged Alleya to say he was, quote, free, but, quote, shouldn't text or leave any trails. Now, the murder wouldn't have him for two more days, so I don't know what he means by free, but he's realizing. A little too late. The text message game may be dangerous. Now we're Feb 15 day before the murder. Caleb said he was going to tell his wife you plan to leave her and get a divorce. It's kind of crazy.

I'm not scared tomorrow. I guess he means about tomorrow. I mean, I'm not looking forward to it. And it's about to be a crap fest here moving forward. But I'm not scared of it. Quote, I just want to be free of her. Have my girls and have a chance to start a life with you. I choose you, he writes, I'm free.

Actions will come tomorrow. Actions will come tomorrow. Now, there's more. Caleb would say that he had practiced what he was going to say to the two daughters, saying that he would tell them that the divorce was a result of their mother's alleged infidelity. I'm just going to be truthful with the girls, he said in one message. It won't be graphic, but we will say that Ashley sinned and betrayed any trust or loyalty. We will read them the Bible verse.

about a man leaving because of this. I'll be much more sensitive to them, but just have to be honest with them. Then he writes to Alea. Alea, I love you. If you give me just one more chance, I'll love you until the day you die. I'll show you that love is real

and love does last unless you fall in love with a 20-year-old, in which case it ends in you getting your head blown off if you marry this guy. So be very careful, Alleya. But it's amazing to me. So it seems to me that at this point, he's realized, oh, God, I have to be careful about

texts. And so far too late in the game, he shifts his text game to, I'm going to ask for a divorce. And like he doesn't, doesn't think that, like, the authorities are going to even think that was suspicious. You know what I mean? Like, let's say all they had was he was going to ask her for divorce. And then she winds up shot to death. Like, how did he not think that was going to come back on him? I don't, I don't know. I'd love to hear him answer these questions. final midnight exchange this is i think february 15th into february 16th so technically it's the very wee hours of february 16th uh he she texts you're about to be free he responds i choose you a lea you're more than enough good night she writes back good night praying now he writes

thank you praying for you as well good night less than two hours after this exchange he placed that frantic emergency services call, claiming an intruder had entered their home and killed Ashley. Now, here's another interesting piece. When news of Ashley Flynn's death broke, Alea texted him. Caleb, I just saw the news. Someone told me to pray for Mrs. Flynn. What is going on right now? Were you behind this? Caleb, it didn't happen the way we thought it would, did it? And then he follows up. A day I'll never forget. It's a very odd way to speak about your wife getting murdered as though it's like a graduation ceremony. Not sure what he was after. Now, he's sitting in court and he is getting defended. Same way they did Scott Peterson just because he had an affair,

may make him a shitty person and a bad husband doesn't make him a murderer. Where's the proof of murder? No gunshot residue, no eyewitness. No. no weapon. All you've got is text messages. That worked better, I should say, had the chance of working better in the Scott Peterson case where we didn't have messages saying, I want her dead. Please kill her. I want to kill her. Tonight's the night. You can play that a little better without all those. So this defense attorney, they've got their hands full. For many people starting a fitness routine, going to the gym without a clear goal or structure often leads to random exercises and minimal progress. While traditional personal training

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It takes just two minutes to apply. Amazing. Hey, everyone. It's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly. channel, and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Dushinsky, Jesse Kelly, real clear politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megan Kelly channel, Sirius XM 11, and on the Sirius XM app. Yesterday in court, they played songs that he used AI to write for her.

And apparently, like, everybody in the courtroom was rolling their eyes. This was so cringy. We have just a little bit of it. Watch. This is terrible. All right. We've been subjected of enough of this. The poor parish.

He's the music director? You'd think he'd be able to come up with better than that. Good gracious. Just pick a beautiful song. I don't know. Like, what's... Yeah, so it's not going well. What happened today was the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation Special

agent Joseph Wilheim took the stand, reported that he had managed to extract a note from their messages that read, you gave it all with the lyrics to that song. So he linked it to that hideous song. And then a woman named Andrea Kinzig took the stand. She's an FBI special agent. She performed an extraction of the victim, Ashley Flynn's cell phone, testified there was no information on her phone to indicate she was involved in an affair. Here's a bit of that. What evidence did you discover in regards to Ashley Flanby involved in an actual railroad affair? I did not find anything on the cell phone to indicate she was involved in an extra rareb welfare. She said there were text messages between husband and wife, Ashley and Caleb in

January and part of February that did reveal some of Ashley's frustrations. Quote, there was a message where Caleb stated he was worshipping and that he would call Ashley back later. Ashley responded, he could be honest and asked, is it her? And it has come out that she was aware. She became aware, thanks to seeing a text message exchange of his affair with Alea. Clearly wanted it to end, and it didn't. The only time it ended was a month before the murder when Alaya ended it. and he appears to have dealt with that in the most severe fashion possible. It's gotten very, very dark in there. Here is even Alea turning on him now in Sot 23 from the stand.

How would you describe your feelings for the defendant today? I hate him. Have you ever felt differently about him? Yes. When? And how did you feel? When we were in a relationship. and I thought I thought of us in love.

Why the change from love to hate? Because I believe that you might as well. Good call. Little late to the party, but you're getting there. Hang in there, sweetheart. So I think this guy's going down and we will continue to cover it if there's any big surprise.

We'll be reporting on it, of course. All right. In the time we have left, we have got to talk about Kamala Harris. So we played the soundbite for you yesterday with Glenn of the new, like the renewed black scent, right? It was very strange, like, it is not important to, I can't, like half drunk and half like she's from the street. Okay, sure. It's very strange.

And if I may, insulting to black people when she adopts this accent as though, you know, that in her head is how a stereotypical black person sounds. But she was in front of the NAACP and she went for it. Now she's gone on this podcast called Big Boy TV. And my friends, she's at it again. Not exactly with the accent, but with the absolutely nonsensical talk in which she tries to sound smart about something in this case. Algorithms, but isn't.

Watch. if you keep seeing the same thing over and over again know that you are being targeted because you looked at it the first time they're just going to keep sending it to you which means they're trying to dumb people down with the assumption that people don't have any interest beyond what they've already seen think about that oh yeah the algorithm right but the algorithm suggesting I have no more interest because I'm looking at this yellow flower I'm only interested in yellow flowers so here's more yellow flowers as well as As though my brain can't handle the fact that there may be a pink flower. Right, right. That I might be interested in looking at. Right. And so part of it is understanding how the algorithm is manipulating us and figuring out how we're going to psych it out a bit. Oh, my God.

Can you imagine if she were like your mother and you had no choice but to sit around the dinner table and be forced to listen to that? I'm starting to understand Doug Emhoff's daughter, the one who's got like the weird look and she kind of looks androgynous and she's supposedly a runway model. A lot better. I'm starting to get it. It's like a rebellion against years sitting around family dinner tables and holidays with that. What? She's such a simpleton. She never says anything inspirational, informational.

Half the time she's wrong factually. And the other half she's just breaking out her latest. accent and doing a pander. Let's take another deep dive into this interview. Sought 32 about power and hope. You know, how do you tell someone either it's going to be okay or things could change when you actually look out on what's in front of you is extremely scary, you know? I believe in the powers of people. And that includes believing that part of the people.

of our hope comes from our ability to fight for what we know is right and then to see the progress and and the potential for the progress and let that give us hope right right I believe very strongly if you feel powerless you are powerless if you feel powerful you are you are powerful and we are powerful but but but knowing that is what makes it happen. And so if we're feeling hopeless, we are less likely to feel powerful. And I believe you should never let anybody take your power from you.

Oh my God. Remember this? We were subjected to this for like a year, a year. Like, that's how it felt. I guess it was 104 days, technically, but it felt like 10 years. of hard labor and sing-sing. That, I'm triggered.

Are you triggered? I'm triggered. That brought me right back to the campaign in how painful her inanities were 107 days of nightmarish. Pavlam. She's spoon fed to random media fools who pretended she was saying something profound. Like Oprah, Kamala Harris. There's one more. I'm sorry to be doing this to you. This is very cruel for a Friday afternoon.

But if I have to hear it, so do you. Here we go, SOT 34. You're the people person, and you want to see that there's a texture to you. And there's a texture of being human. And I think that's what we see in you and what we feel we're missing. We're missing. I feel like we're missing a human quality right now. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure you probably feel. We have to see it in each other, right? It gets back to your point about hopelessness and stuff.

We have to, you know, you see it, I can see it in your eyes and in your speech when you talk about your son and your daughter and your wife. We have to see it in your team, right? We have to see it in each other. We cannot lose hope. It's so we are each, we are all worth fighting for. Right. And it's for something. It's not against something. Right. Right. It's for something. Right. So let's hold on to that. Oh my God. That verbal tick of saying, right, after everything in order to make it sound more profound is so annoying. She does it all the time. It is a natural thing in communication to every once in a while, say, right? You heard it there.

First of all, this is obviously a hit on Trump. There's a texture. His questions are as dumb as her answers, for the record. There's a texture to you and to being human. There's a texture to being human. Okay. What we're missing here is that human quality. Clearly, I think it's a reference to Trump.

We have to see it in each other. I can see it in your eyes when you talk about your son. Right. We're all, we all want to fight for each other. Right. This is the substitute for anything of substance. And we may have one to eight more years of that, depending on what she decides. Noodle on that over the weekend.

I love you all. We'll see you Monday. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.