Nolan Wells: More Secrets Pile Up In Nolan’s Phone Investigation as Brian Entin Talks the TRUTH
Uh, in this episode I’m getting into the latest with the Nolan Wells case, which is something that a lot of us have been following closely ever since uh, his body was discovered off the coast of Mississippi.
Um, what’s interesting though is there’s been a lot of attention on the cell phone, on Nolan’s cell phone.
Remember his friends had it and then his mom was able to get custody of it.
It’s kind of shocking that now even more than a month since this whole thing started, um, the investigators still haven’t looked into the cell phone.
The family, from what I am hearing, uh, still has not officially handed over the cell phone to investigators.
The family wants there to be a joint uh, analysis of the cell phone where they have experts on the family side and then also the FBI and experts from the state all looking at the cell phone and going through the cell phone together, but that still has not happened as of me shooting this video more than a month after Nolan was discovered, which you would think it would be one of the first things that would get worked out just because the cell phone may have some critical clues about where Nolan was before, what kind of text messages he was sending, and
Even if those things were deleted, you’re going to find out in this episode they can still be found.
So, I’m going to dig into the latest on the phone.
There is some new information about when the forensic analysis may actually happen, uh, and then just the latest on the case in terms of the autopsies and and also the grand jury that’s going >> What is really hiding on Nolan Wells’ cell phone and why hasn’t law enforcement examined it yet?
Today, Brian Entin breaks down the shocking delays behind the investigation
Into the 18-year-old’s mysterious death off the Mississippi coast.
From deleted Snapchat messages and GPS tracking to a high-stakes joint forensic analysis with Ben Crump and the FBI, the digital evidence could finally blow this case wide open.
Plus, with secretive grand jury proceedings underway and the NAACP stepping in, but ladies and gentlemen watching this video, before we get into today’s update, I need you to do one thing for this Nolan Wells pathetic case.
If you’ve been following the Nolan Wells case with us, hit that subscribe Ê™uÑ‚Ñ‚on right now because what I’m about to share with you today from Brian Entin involves new developments that most people covering this case still haven’t caught up on.
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Now, let’s get into it.
>> Hey guys.
All right, so what happened to Nolan Wells, um even now with all the conversations and all of the talk about this is still a mystery, which is kind of hard to wrap your mind around.
Um the 18-year-old went missing after a 4th of July celebration on Horn Island.
That’s off the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
His body was found on the shoreline 2 days later, but still there are no answers about what happened.
Uh and really, according to all of the experts that I’ve spoken to about this case, it’s the cell phone.
It’s Nolan’s cell phone that could really hold the hands answers.
That could potentially hold the answers about where he was before, um where he was or where the phone was after, uh you know, who he was messaging.
Even if the messages were You’re going to hear from the expert who I’m about to interview in this episode.
Even if the messages were deleted, the cell phone could still hold the clues to exactly what happened to Nolan.
Uh and what’s surprising is it appears that any kind of forensic testing on Nolan Wells’s cell phone has still not been done up until this point.
Uh which you would have thought by this point um they would have been looking into the cell phone, but still no uh forensic examination on the cell phone.
Both the family and investigators, they agreed on July 15th.
So, think about it.
July 15th, that’s more than a month ago, that there would be a joint examination of the phone um and that they would agree on some kind of joint examination where the family could still be a part of it and and in control, but the uh state investigators could also, you know, take
A look at the phone, figure out what’s going on.
Um why are they waiting so long with something that could have such critical information?
According to reports, investigators demanded that the Wells family hand over the phone earlier this month, uh but they were out of town, according to the reports that I read.
Nolan’s mom has said that his friends had custody of the phone, uh and that she then went the night that he went missing, uh and was able to get the phone.
Um she said in interviews there was nothing in the Snapchat history for that day, which she said seems suspicious.
Uh and again, you’re going to hear from the expert who I’m interviewing in this episode in a second.
And there’s, you know, forensic data experts, this is what they do is they go to your cell phones.
There are still ways to go back and find Snapchats and other things and other messages on the phone, even if they have been deleted.
So, that could really, you know, blow open this investigation if there’s something interesting on the phone, even if it has been uh deleted.
Nolan’s family attorney, Ben Crump, says they’re seeking a joint forensic examination of the phone.
Again, joint meaning with the family and then with the state investigators.
Uh instead of handing the phone over to authorities, they want to do the examination together, he says, to ensure that it’s done properly.
Uh Crump says they’ve given the Jackson County District Attorney 4 days uh to choose from to perform the exam.
That’s according to local TV affiliate affiliate WKRG.
So, they’ve apparently given four different time slots that they will meet up with the investigators and that they will examine the phone together.
Uh in the letter that Crump sent to the DA, and I’m just looking at it, he’s asking them to select a time between August 18th and August 21st for the analysis of the phone.
And um in a statement he said, “We are eager to comply with the agreement we entered on July 15th, which is a joint forensic examination of Nolan’s phone conducted together with their experts, our experts, and possibly the FBI.
Our experts are on standby.
The family is ready.”
The family wants the district attorney to agree to do the inspection of the phone um at the digital forensics lab at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
Why they chose that location, I’m not sure, but that is what the family says that they would prefer.
Uh and the statement goes on to say, “The family wants Nolan’s phone examined right away with both parties in the room.
All parties agreed on July 15th that we share the same goal, which is determining the circumstances surrounding Nolan’s death.
The family is ready to move forward on that goal.”
>> More than a month after Nolan Wells was found off the coast of Horn Island, there is still one piece of evidence sitting untouched, his phone.
And the longer it sits, the more people are asking the same question, why?
On July 15th, the Wells family and investigators reached an agreement, a joint forensic examination of Nolan’s phone conducted together with experts representing the
Family, the state, and possibly the FBI in the room at the same time.
That agreement is now more than a month old.
And as of the most recent reporting, that examination still has not happened.
Attorney Ben Crump, representing the Wells family, has said the family’s experts have been on standby, ready to move forward since that agreement was made.
According to Crump, the family sent a letter to the Jackson County District Attorney offering four possible dates between August 18th and August 21st to finally conduct the exam.
The family has requested it take place at a digital forensics lab with both sides present in the room together at the same time.
Why does this matter so much?
Because according to digital forensics professionals, a phone like Nolan’s could hold information that nothing else in this case can offer.
Location history, message activity, application usage, even content that was deleted can sometimes still be recovered depending on how the device was preserved after Nolan went missing.
That’s the part that should concern anyone following this case closely.
Preservation.
Every day that phone sits without a proper forensic extraction is a day where recoverable data has the potential to disappear permanently, especially anything that may have synced to the cloud before being deleted now.
Before we go further, I want to pause here because this next part of the story is exactly why we started this channel.
If today’s update is giving you chills, if you’re sitting there wondering how something this important can still be unresolved a month later, that tells you everything about why true crime stories like this one need to be told properly and why three true crime stories exists.
We are not here for clickbait.
We are here to lay out documented facts case by case so families like the Wells family are not forgotten in the algorithm.
If that matters to you, subscribing costs nothing, but it tells us to keep digging into cases exactly like this one.
Back to the phone.
>> Hey Jake, it’s nice to see you.
I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.
You know, you’ve been busy.
Um I wanted to talk to you about the Nolan Wells case cuz there’s been so many different voices on this and then a lot of people I mean are emotional about it and I get that.
Um but to me one thing I keep thinking about is the cell phone.
Um you know, there’s been a lot of talk about the boat and about the distress call and about um witness statements, but how much do you think is going to come down to the phone in terms of finding out what really happened?
>> So I think it’s really important in the cases like this that the phone is a critical piece of evidence.
These are teenagers on a boat.
If they’re teenagers on a boat like teenagers here in North Carolina are, they’re probably a of iPhones sitting on that boat.
There are databases in that iPhone that can keep track of the last 30 days of usage.
Now, given that we’re beyond 30 days, it’s all going to come down to have these devices been properly preserved by law enforcement or by anyone involved in a potential litigation or lawsuit.
So, what can we think about on Nolan’s phone?
Nolan could have We could see all of these pieces of messages potentially being deleted, applications being launched, his Snapchat being opened.
I think that was one of the pieces I recall hearing in the news of what other applications with What was going on with his phone?
What had been deleted or removed?
But, we could have retraced all of those steps.
So, we would hope that counsel for the family and for the decedent has actually preserved that device.
They haven’t left it powered on in their desk drawer, but they’ve turned it off or gotten it to a digital forensics person to actually preserve it so that we can go back and try to to go through to see what has happened with this phone.
Who has Who were they talking to since he went in the water?
Like, what has physically happened to it?
What were opened?
What communications were sent?
What was potentially deleted?
The more time that goes on, the less likely these items can be recovered.
>> Yeah, and the family has said that they are going to do a joint inspection, that investigators are going to do an inspection to the phone, and that they have independent experts who are going to do an inspection.
And they sort of They’ve suggested that the phone was tampered with, although we don’t really know exactly what that means.
Um and also they’ve um demanded uh digital records from five uh tech platforms I saw.
I was looking through the court records.
Meta, TikTok, Snap, which would be Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Life360.
Can they see everything through if if they get those um those records?
Like, if someone deleted something, like, let’s say someone else got a hold of the phone and started deleting messages.
Would they still be able to see those messages?
>> It all depends on what synced back to the cloud.
So, if Nolan’s phone continued to have a cellular signal or was connected to somebody’s Wi-Fi and that data did sync up to the cloud, we start running into a data destruction period.
Uh in a recent case, we did find out that Google maintains data for about 42 Sorry, 48 hours after uh and the actual deletion occurs.
So, if law enforcement or investigators not very quick to issue a preservation request to Google following an incident, that data could be lost forever and then the phone becomes that much more crucial uh and that we hope it has been powered down and placed into evidence.
>> Nolan’s mother, Christine Wansley, has said that Nolan’s friends had possession of the phone the night he went missing and that she was later able to get it into her custody.
She has said that when she looked through his Snapchat history from that day, there was nothing there, something she found troubling.
That detail alone is part of why the family has pushed so hard for a joint examination rather than simply handing the device over.
According to Crump, the family wants transparency built into the process itself with their own experts present for every step, not just a summary of findings after the fact.
Meanwhile, the broader investigation continues to move forward on a separate track.
Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter has confirmed that investigators have interviewed dozens of witnesses since Nolan’s body was recovered on July 6th and that the FBI has been á´€ssisting with digital evidence in the case.
The three friends who traveled to Horn Island with Nolan have also been interviewed at length.
At the same time, a grand jury process looms over all of it.
Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McElrath has said that once the investigation concludes, a grand jury will determine whether any charges are warranted.
That single fact explains much of the secrecy surrounding this case right now.
Grand jury proceedings are designed to be confidential, which means the official autopsy results, still pending from the state medical examiner’s office, are expected to remain sealed until that process moves forward.
So, here is where things stand.
A phone that could hold answers, a family asking for transparency, a district attorney who has yet to confirm a date, and a grand jury waiting in the background for results that haven’t even been finalized yet.
If the examination does happen between August 18th and August 21st, as the family has requested, we could be looking at a turning point in this case.
One that either confirms what investigators have said so far or raises entirely new questions.
Either way, this is not a story that is going away quietly, and neither are we.
So, I will invite you, yes you watching now, to join this family because when this phone is finally examined, you are going to want to be here for it.
Thanks for staying with us, and we shall see you next time.
Bye.