A Mississippi grand jury says there is no evidence anyone committed a crime against Nolan Wells, and that the condition of his body is consistent with drowning. Here is the problem with that second part. By the time an independent pathologist got to look, the state had already removed the lungs and the neck.
You cannot confirm a drowning without lungs. You cannot rule out strangulation without a neck.
What the grand jury found
Forty-three witnesses. Physical evidence, digital evidence, police reports, interviews, video, photos and maps. The panel returned a no true bill, meaning it did not find enough to charge anybody.
The report says the position of the body, its condition, where it was found and when are “consistent with drowning.” There was bruising on the back of his head that the report calls non-fatal. It found no evidence of a fatal injury or organic disease.
District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath had said key evidence, including the autopsy, would not be released publicly until after the grand jury saw it.
The autopsy problem
The family hired Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., a forensic pathologist and president of Howard University Hospital, for a second opinion. He examined the body on July 22.
He could not determine a manner of death. He found no bone fractures and no deep tissue injuries. He noted a red discoloration on the back of the skull and could not say what caused it. And he said he could not rule out non-accidental factors without more investigation.
The reason he could not go further is the part that should stop you.
Wells’ lungs and neck structures had already been removed during the state autopsy. That made it impossible for the second pathologist to check for water in the lungs, which is how you support a drowning, or for injuries to the neck, which is how you find strangulation.
So the official conclusion is drowning, and the two pieces of tissue that could have tested that conclusion were gone before anyone outside the state could look at them. That is not a conspiracy theory. That is what happened.
The judge
One of the teenagers on that island is Warren Hudson. His stepmother is Ashlee Cole, a sitting Jackson County judge.
Cole did not stay quiet. She publicly released a timeline her son gave her, saying he last saw Wells around 3 p.m. on July 4 and that Wells chose to stay on the island. She spoke on his behalf while the investigation was open.
Nobody has produced evidence that Cole interfered with anything, and we are not going to suggest she did. She was also on the receiving end of real threats. A California man was charged in July over a threatening Facebook message sent to her, and she deleted her social media accounts.
What is true regardless: a sitting judge in the county where this was investigated is the parent of one of the last people to see Wells alive, and she used her own platform to put out his account of the day.
The timeline nobody disputes
- 9:56 a.m. The boat leaves the mainland dock.
- 11:14 a.m. It reaches Horn Island.
- 2:23 p.m. The last known image of Wells.
- 3:00 p.m. Hudson says he last saw Wells. This part is disputed.
- 4:31 p.m. The boat leaves the island. Wells is not on it.
- 6:06 p.m. The boat docks.
- 11:00 p.m. Hudson calls Wells’ parents. A missing person report is filed.
Five hours passed between the boat docking and anyone telling his family he was not on it.
What the family alleges
Benjamin Crump represents the Wells family. The NAACP joined the legal team in August. The Congressional Black Caucus asked the Justice Department to open a federal review, which matters because Horn Island is federally protected land under the National Park Service.
Crump has raised several things:
- A young woman at the gathering said Wells got back on the boat with the other boys, which contradicts their account.
- Wells left his phone behind, which Crump says makes no sense.
- His aunt found no Snapchat photos or video from that day, which Crump reads as deletion.
- Wells was last photographed shirtless and shoeless in swim trunks. He was found fully clothed.
- Crump says he received tips about a confrontation on the island.
The family sent spoliation letters on July 20, which are formal demands that evidence be preserved.
Where the family’s case is weakest
This matters, because a skeptical reader should know which parts do not hold.
A viral video circulated showing an argument, with a voice saying “Give me my freaking phone! What are you freaking doing?” It was widely presented as Wells.
Tracestin Shepherd, a friend of Wells who is biracial and was on the island, says the voice is his own. He says the argument was between him and another man over his girlfriend and had nothing to do with Wells. Rolling Stone reported that his girlfriend and his uncle, both present, back him up. Jayvon Williams, also there, confirmed the voice was not Wells.
About 300 people were at that gathering, and reporting describes the crowd as racially and ethnically diverse. Two of Wells’ friends started a defense fund for the boys.
The strongest version of the doubt here does not need the video. It rests on the missing lungs.
The BeezLoop Take
Forty-three witnesses is a real investigation and the people dismissing it as a cover-up should say what they think 43 people lied about. A grand jury also answers exactly one question, which is whether there is enough to charge somebody. It does not establish what happened, and those two things keep getting confused.
Here is what does not sit right, and it is not a feeling. The state reached a conclusion of drowning. The organs that could have confirmed or refuted that conclusion were removed before an outside pathologist could examine them. An independent forensic pathologist looked and said he could not determine a manner of death and could not rule out non-accidental factors. Those findings are not compatible with the certainty in the grand jury report, and nobody has reconciled them.
Add the rest. An 18-year-old, the only Black kid in the boat party, does not come back. The boat leaves without him at 4:31. It docks at 6:06. His parents are not called until 11. One of the boys aboard is a sitting judge’s stepson, and that judge put out his timeline herself. Grand jury proceedings are sealed, so the public gets a conclusion and none of the work.
Each of those has an innocent explanation available. All of them at once is why a family hired Benjamin Crump, why the NAACP signed on, and why the Congressional Black Caucus asked the Justice Department to look. Telling that family their suspicion is baseless is a different job from showing them why, and eleven weeks in, nobody in Jackson County has done the second one. We have written about what the system can prove versus what happened, and this is that gap at its widest.
Horn Island is federal land. DOJ can review this without anybody in Mississippi giving permission. That is the outstanding question now, not whether a local grand jury was satisfied.
The question
If the manner of death is officially undetermined, and the independent pathologist could not rule out non-accidental factors, on what basis is this closed? A grand jury declining to charge somebody and a death being explained are not the same thing, and only one of them has happened.
Sources: CNN · NPR · CBS News · ABC News on the independent autopsy · Newsweek on the DOJ request · CNN on the threat charges
