New Nolan Wells audio obtained by NBC News captures the friends he traveled to Horn Island with calling for towing assistance because their boat was taking on water, roughly an hour after the 18 year old was last seen alive. NBC News obtained the recording through a public records request. In it, a member of the group tells the person on the other end of the line that the vessel’s bilge pump had stopped working and that they were at the west tip of Horn Island. A dispatcher asks whether everyone aboard is accounted for and in good health. The caller confirms that they are, and puts the headcount at seven people.
Nolan traveled to Horn Island, an uninhabited barrier island about 10 miles off the Mississippi coast, with a group of friends on the Fourth of July. Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter has said Nolan did not return to the mainland with them that afternoon. Attorney Ben Crump’s office has said Nolan was last seen on the island around 3 p.m. His mother, Christine Wonsley, reported him missing that night. His body was recovered in the water near the west end of the island on the morning of July 6, following a search that involved the U.S. Coast Guard, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and the National Park Service.
The new Nolan Wells audio matters because it is timestamped. Until now, the account of why the group left the island early came from the friends themselves and their families. Ashlee Cole, the mother of one of Nolan’s friends, said publicly that the group left around 4:30 p.m. when the boat began taking on water and they had trouble with the bilge pump. The recording lines up with that account. It gives investigators something they did not have before, which is a fixed point in the afternoon that does not depend on anyone’s memory.
What the recording does not do is answer the question at the center of the case. It does not explain why Nolan was not on the boat. It does not establish whether anyone was with him on the island after the group departed. It does not address what happened between 3 p.m. and the moment his body entered the water. The Nolan Wells audio narrows the timeline around the boat and leaves the timeline around Nolan himself exactly as open as it was before.
GPS data from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, obtained by CBS News, tracks the vessel through the rest of that day. The boat left a dock at approximately 9:56 a.m. and reached Horn Island at 11:14 a.m. It departed the island at 4:31 p.m. and returned to its original dock. It went into Fort Bayou around 5:52 p.m., came back to the dock at 6:06 p.m., then went to the Fort Bayou boat launch at 7:19 p.m. From there it traveled over land, presumably towed by a vehicle, to the Biloxi residence of the boat’s owners. The Marine Resources report ends on July 5, when the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office took over as lead investigative agency.
Put the GPS record and the new Nolan Wells audio side by side and the vessel’s movements are now accounted for in a way Nolan’s are not. That contrast is a large part of why his family has pushed back on the early framing of the case. Crump has disputed the account that Nolan voluntarily chose to stay behind, pointing out that he would have been left on an uninhabited island without his phone, without his keys and without a confirmed ride back to the mainland. One of his high school friends, Tracestin Shepherd, told ABC News that Nolan wanted to stay because he had met a girl and planned to catch a ride back on another friend’s boat.
Nolan’s cellphone has become a second front in the investigation. His friends reportedly returned from the island with the device. His parents have said they believe photographs, messages or other content may have been removed from it. Crump has said his team will coordinate an independent examination of the phone data and that sheriff’s investigators will review the findings as well.
The FBI is now assisting. Ledbetter confirmed to WLOX that the bureau is helping examine digital evidence collected so far, and said the involvement is not unusual, since Horn Island sits on federal land and his office works with the FBI regularly.
The sheriff has said he suspects Nolan drowned but that the investigation is ongoing. An autopsy is being conducted by the state medical examiner, and Jackson County Coroner Bruce Lynd Jr. has said those results are pending. The family also commissioned an independent autopsy, funded by Colin Kaepernick.
Meanwhile the case is headed toward a grand jury. Wonsley met with District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath this week, and the DA’s office said it will present the case once the sheriff’s investigation is complete. The office noted that convening a grand jury is standard procedure for most unnatural or suspicious deaths in the county and does not by itself indicate criminality.
For now, the Nolan Wells audio is one more verified piece in a case that has been running on very few of them. Seven people got off that island. One did not.
