New details in exam of Nolan Wells’ cell phone

SOUTH MISSISSIPPI (WXXV) — New details coming to light on Thursday after Attorney Ben Crump and his team held another press conference to discuss the forensic examination of Nolan Wells’ cell phone.

“There’s Snaps [Snapchats] between Nolan’s friend groups, and now we won’t divulge any of their names for privacy purposes, but they were very telling and very enlightening,” said Attorney Crump.

After weeks of back and forth between the district attorney’s office and Ben Crump’s legal team regarding the examination of Nolan Wells’ phone, an independent examination was conducted for the Wells-Wonsley family by the firm Garrett Discovery out of Orlando, Florida.

Most notably, a 261-page Snapchat conversation report was provided to the grand jury for consideration. That was the highlight of this latest conference as Snapchat was determined to be Nolan’s primary form of communication.

“Not only were people across America concerned with the history of the State of Mississippi whether race would be an issue, but the messages on his phone, and the Snaps will show some of his own friends were concerned about people on Horn Island can be racist,” said Crump.

Though limited messages were provided to the public, crump read out a chain of messages from one of the group chats Nolan was involved in.

“There’s so many people out there, so I don’t know if they could have even done something but I don’t know.’ Nobody’s accepting that it was an accidental drowning. Even the friends are talking about they are concerned about what really happened to Nolan Wells,” he said.

Crump’s team claims that messages on Snapchat have been deleted, but they did not clarify what these deleted messages concern and if they are connected to Nolan’s death.

“I can tell you from a digital standpoint, things were deleted from the phone, from the time he last had the phone up until the time that his parents got the phone. They were Snapchats. Correct,” said Andrew Garrett with Garrett Discovery.

Following the press conference, the back-and-forth between the D.A.’s office and Crump’s team continues. An email from Garrett Discovery claims that the Wonsley family decided to go forward with a private forensic examination of the phone after the terms they agreed on with the D.A.’s office changed.

“I know that the prosecutor put out some stuff about they would have met any agreement the parents had for analyzing the phone. That’s untrue. They set the venue as the place and then told us only law enforcement can come in. It’s like getting invited to a party — you come to the front lawn but you can’t get through the front door. It’s not a joint inspection at that point,” Garrett said.

In response to her claims being called “incomplete and misleading,” District Attorney Myers-McIlrath released a statement, noting that the information she has released to the public is “true and accurate.”

Myers-McIlrath also claimed that she was never provided with the 30-hour digital download from the extraction of Nolan’s phone, despite the claims that she had.

The district attorney says the Crump team decided at last minute to do a private extraction and only provide the grand jury with certain portions of the results, stating, “That is the Crump team making a strategic choice to control the public information… and create a misleading public narrative.”

She ended her statements by saying, “If the Crump team genuinely has new information or evidence that Nolan Wells was murdered, they should stop playing games and immediately provide it to me.”

Another press conference is expected to take place next week, but the date and time for it has not yet been released. WXXV will provide updates as information is made available.