Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Independent autopsy "inconclusive" on cause of death for Nolan Wells in Mississippi

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Independent autopsy "inconclusive" on cause of death for Nolan Wells in Mississippi · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: How does an eighteen year old college athlete, I mean
• 0:03
  a wide receiver in absolute peak physical condition, just drown
• 0:08
  fully clothed, on a sunny fourth of July.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredibly jarring.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Right, and perhaps even more baffling, how does his body
• 0:17
  end up on an examination table in Washington, d c.
• 0:20
  Which is eight hundred miles away, missing the exact bones
• 0:23
  needed to prove how he died.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: It's just a massive void of evidence, exactly.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: We are looking at a case today where the physical
• 0:30
  evidence seems to just vanish, like water through sand. It
• 0:34
  leaves behind this agonizing void for everyone involved.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: It really is a profound mystery, and it's built almost
• 0:40
  entirely out of these glaring contradictions. You have a vibrant,
• 0:44
  crowded holiday celebration on a barrier island off the Mississippi
• 0:48
  Gulf coast that somehow just it dissolves into an isolated,
• 0:51
  pitch black scene of a young man vanishing.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And then you have that initial law enforcement theory.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Right right, the theory of accidental drowning, but that clashes
• 0:58
  violently with the physical state of the recovered body, completely clashes,
• 1:02
  and you have this grieving family who is essentially forced
• 1:07
  to crowdsource their own independent forensic investigation just to get
• 1:11
  basic answers.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Which is why we are doing a deep dive today
• 1:15
  into a specific moment that really crystallized all of those contradictions.
• 1:21
  I'm talking about the July twenty two to twenty twenty
• 1:23
  six announcement at the NUBACP National Convention in Chicago.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: That was a huge moment.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: It was on that stage you had the parents of
• 1:32
  Nolan Xavier Wells standing right alongside civil rights attorney Ben
• 1:36
  Crump and forensic pathologist doctor Rogrievitchel Junior, right and.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: They released the preliminary findings of an independent autopsy.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: There they did they were searching for clarity, obviously, but
• 1:47
  what they actually uncovered was this entirely new layer of
• 1:50
  forensic limitations.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And so our mission today for this deep dive is
• 1:53
  to try and cut through the incredible amount of noise.
• 1:56
  And there is so much noise, so much noise and
• 1:58
  speculation surrounding no death. We are working from a very
• 2:01
  specific stack of sources today.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Right, Let's lay those out.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: So we have the reports detailing that independent autopsy by
• 2:08
  doctor Mitchell. We have the statements from Ben Crump and
• 2:11
  the civil rights leaders who are involved. We also have
• 2:14
  the known timeline of events from that July fourth weekend,
• 2:18
  and we have the official stance of local law enforcement
• 2:21
  down in Jackson County.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Perfect. But before we start, you know, turning the pages
• 2:25
  on those sources, we need to establish the ground rules
• 2:29
  for how we're going to navigate this today. Definitely, because
• 2:32
  if you have spent literally any time online over the
• 2:37
  last few weeks, you know this case has become just
• 2:39
  a massive flashpoint.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: It involves intense public speculation, amateur internet sleuthing, and these
• 2:46
  incredibly complex, historically weighted racial dynamics.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: And because of that intensity, we really need to commit
• 2:51
  strictly to the facts presented in our provided material today.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Right, no outside theories exactly.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Our job is to impartially report on all the perspectives here,
• 3:00
  from the family's urgent concerns to the official law enforcement narrative,
• 3:03
  to the harsh realities of marine forensics, and even the
• 3:06
  broader societal conversation happening around it.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: We are not taking sides.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: No, we are not here to endorse any side. We
• 3:13
  are not drawing conclusions about foul play, and we are
• 3:17
  not making declarations of innocence We.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Just want to map out the massive gaps in this
• 3:21
  investigation so you can understand why this case remains so
• 3:27
  frustratingly unresolved. Right, Okay, let's unpack this because to truly
• 3:32
  comprehend the weight of what was lost here, you have
• 3:36
  to start with the human element. You really have to
• 3:38
  start with Nolan Wells.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: You do the sources paint a picture of someone who
• 3:42
  is really just beginning to realize his potential.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was only eighteen.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Eighteen, hailing from Ocean Springs, Mississippi. And Ocean Springs is
• 3:50
  this quintessential Gulf Coast community veryit very tight knit. Yeah,
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  it's defined by its relationship to the water. It's strong
• 3:58
  local schools and these deep, deep social networks.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And being an athlete in a community like that, I
• 4:03
  mean that carries a very specific kind of weight, doesn't it.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: It really does. Nolan graduated from Oceans Bounce High School
• 4:09
  in twenty twenty five, and he transitioned to Southwest Mississippi
• 4:13
  Community College up in Summit. And he wasn't just on
• 4:16
  the team. He was a six foot one, one hundred
• 4:18
  and eighty five pound wide receiver who is actively preparing
• 4:22
  for his second college season.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I really want people to think about the pure biomechanics
• 4:29
  of being a college wide receiver.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: It's intense.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: It is you are talking about someone trained for explosive speed,
• 4:37
  intense physical endurance, and this acute bodily awareness.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Right. The agility required is off the charts.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: To play at that level, you undergo rigorous cardiovascular conditioning,
• 4:49
  You spend hours in the weight room building your core strength.
• 4:52
  You have to possess a highly tuned sense of balance
• 4:55
  and coordination just to run a route, you know, just
• 4:58
  to catch a football while anticipating a hard contact hit.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And that specific physical profile is a crucial data point
• 5:04
  when we eventually examine the theories of how we actually
• 5:07
  died exactly. His coaches noted he was incredibly disciplined. He
• 5:10
  showed up on time. He treated his academic life with
• 5:13
  the exact same focus that he brought to the football field. Yeah,
• 5:16
  he had genuine aspirations of transferring to a Division I program.
• 5:21
  By all accounts from our sources, he was a highly
• 5:24
  capable young man operating at the absolute peak of his
• 5:27
  physical abilities.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I look at Nolan and I just think about you know,
• 5:30
  anyone you or I might know who is eighteen, right,
• 5:33
  it is such a specific threshold in life. You are
• 5:37
  legally an adult, sure, but you are still carrying the
• 5:42
  warmth and the humor of youth.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, you are full of.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: This kinetic energy and this completely untapped potential. And there's
• 5:51
  just this deeply unsettling contrast between the incredible discipline of
• 5:56
  his athletic stature and the sheer vulnerability of what ultimately
• 6:00
  happened to him in the water.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking. And beyond just the physical stats, the sources
• 6:04
  give us a really intimate look at his temperament too.
• 6:06
  Was he like, well, he wasn't the loud, boisterous guy
• 6:09
  demanding attention in the room. He was described consistently as
• 6:12
  a quiet individual with this really gentle smile.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: That's sweet.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. At his funeral, his mother, Christine Wansley, she shared
• 6:19
  these stories about his kind of corny sense of humor.
• 6:22
  She really emphasized how he constantly sought to make the
• 6:25
  people around him feel loved and comfortable.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: And you see that warmth echoed by his peers too.
• 6:31
  Like there was a moment on the island that day
• 6:33
  on July fourth, with a close friend as his named Javon.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Williams, right, Javon was there.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Javon arrived on a different boat, but he recalled
• 6:41
  this specific interaction where Nolan explicitly told him that he
• 6:46
  loved him.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: That really stands out.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: It does. And then another friend, Trace Carter, actually pulled
• 6:51
  Nolan aside before he even left for the trip, urging
• 6:54
  him to be careful and asking him to check in
• 6:56
  when he.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Got back, which really suggests that he was deeply in
• 7:00
  in this supportive peer group. He was someone people worried
• 7:03
  about and truly cared for. When the news of his
• 7:06
  disappearance broke, it wasn't just his family grieving, you know.
• 7:09
  It was his teammates, his coaches, and literally the entire
• 7:13
  Ocean Springs school district that went into mourning.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: But the mystery of how a respected, highly conditioned athlete
• 7:20
  just simply vanishes. It forces us to shift our focus
• 7:25
  from who he was to the specific environment where he
• 7:27
  spent those final hours.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: We have to examine the geography of isolation here exactly.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: The setting is Horn Island, and understanding the physical reality
• 7:36
  of this specific place is just it's central to understanding
• 7:39
  the whole timeline it is. I want to paint a
• 7:42
  picture of this because unless you live down on the
• 7:44
  Gulf coast, you might hear the word island and think
• 7:47
  of like a resort, right.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Like a boardwalk with lifeguards and concession.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Styles exactly, you think of amenities. But Horn Island is
• 7:55
  the exact opposite of that. It is a barrier island
• 7:58
  and its managed as part of the Gulf Islands now
• 8:00
  National Seashore. So it's very raw completely. It is essentially
• 8:03
  just a long, narrow strip of shifting white sand and
• 8:06
  some scrub vegetation. There is no development, none, no permanent residence,
• 8:10
  no electricity, no public facilities whatsoever.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: And its location is really its most defining feature, right
• 8:16
  because it sits roughly seven to eleven miles off the
• 8:19
  mainline coast of Mississippi.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: That's a long way out it is.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: You cannot drive there, you cannot just take a ferry.
• 8:24
  The only way to access it is by private boat.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: But on a holiday weekend, the isolation is sort of
• 8:30
  masked by the sheer volume of people, right, I mean,
• 8:32
  so fourth of July, the sources estimate there were about
• 8:35
  two hundred people anchored off the shores of Horn Island
• 8:37
  that Saturday.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: That's a huge crowd for an uninhabited island.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: It transforms into this massive floating party. You have boats
• 8:44
  all tied together, people are waiting in the shallows, there's music,
• 8:48
  there's drinking. It feels like a very safe, collective social event.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: And the timeline of that day begins pretty normally. No
• 8:55
  one travels to the island with three friends, three young
• 8:58
  white men, and they're all sharing a single boat.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: There is a photograph from that boat ride that actually
• 9:05
  became central to the public discourse later on.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've seen that one.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it shows Nolan's standing there with his arms casually
• 9:12
  draped around his friends. There's smiling. I mean, it is
• 9:15
  the absolute picture of a care free holiday.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: The afternoon progresses, you know, the sun beats down, people
• 9:21
  are swimming. Yeah, But then the narrative starts to fracture. Right.
• 9:25
  According to Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter, who was relaying
• 9:29
  the accounts given by the three friends, their boat began
• 9:33
  to experience mechanical failures.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Specifically, they reported that the boat was taking on water
• 9:38
  and they were having trouble with the bilge pump.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, a failing bilge pump on a small private vessel
• 9:44
  seven miles offshore. That is a critical emergency.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: It absolutely is for.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Those who don't boat. The bilge is the lowest compartment
• 9:52
  of a boat where water naturally collects. The pump's entire
• 9:56
  job is to expel that water back out into the ocean. Right,
• 9:59
  if the pump failed and water is actively coming in,
• 10:02
  the buoyancy of your hussel is compromised. In marine navigation,
• 10:06
  returning to the mainland immediately is literally the only logical.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Choice exactly so, facing this mechanical emergency, the three friends
• 10:14
  decide they have to leave the island. The time is
• 10:16
  roughly four thirty pm okay, But Nolan Wells does not
• 10:19
  get on that boat.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Which is where things take a huge turn. Right.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: The friends told investigators that Nolan made the decision to
• 10:26
  stay behind. They stated his intention was to talk to
• 10:29
  a girl he had seen, or you know, perhaps hang
• 10:32
  out with other friends who are still on the island, the.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Idea being he would just catch a ride back to
• 10:36
  the mainland later with someone else.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly now, the sightings of him around this time are
• 10:41
  a little bit muddy in the sources. Some accounts place
• 10:44
  his last sighting around three pm okay, while others, like
• 10:48
  his friend Javon Williams, they recall seeing him shortly after
• 10:52
  four pm, But the undeniable fact remains. The boat with
• 10:57
  his three friends departs around four thirty pm and.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: They leave him there they do. Okay, here's where it
• 11:02
  gets really interesting, or rather deeply confusing. I have to
• 11:05
  push back on the logistics here. What do you mean
• 11:07
  they leave at four thirty and according to the sources,
• 11:10
  the friends returned to the mainland with Nolan's keys and
• 11:13
  his cell phone. Right, let's just think through the mechanics
• 11:16
  of that. You are on an uninhabited barrier island. There
• 11:20
  are no power outlets, there are no landlines. You are
• 11:23
  seven miles from the mainland. If you are staying behind
• 11:27
  specifically to secure a ride back with another group of
• 11:30
  people as the crowds start to thin out, how do
• 11:33
  you coordinate that without a phone?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It makes no sense. And that specific detail, the separation
• 11:38
  of Nolan from his phone, is really what triggered the
• 11:41
  initial wave of suspicion from the family and the public.
• 11:43
  Of course, it did from a purely practical standpoint in
• 11:46
  twenty twenty six, a smartphone is your only tetder to
• 11:49
  safety in a remote location like that. Yeah, if you
• 11:52
  need to text someone on another boat, or even just
• 11:54
  check the time to know when the sun is setting.
• 11:56
  You need that device.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, if my friends are leaving on a sinking
• 11:59
  boat and I decide to stay, my very first instinct
• 12:03
  is to pat my pocket and make sure my phone
• 12:05
  is on me. Naturally, the idea that he would willingly
• 12:08
  let his primary lifeline travel seven miles away over open water,
• 12:12
  it just doesn't align with the survival instincts of a
• 12:14
  young adult.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: It creates a scenario of absolute vulnerability because you know,
• 12:18
  while the island feels like a crowded party at three pm,
• 12:21
  the environment changes aggressively as the afternoon wanes. Oh so well,
• 12:27
  the Gulf coast is notorious for sudden weather shifts. But
• 12:29
  more importantly, Horn Island is surrounded by really complex hydrology.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, explain the hydrology for a second. What is actually
• 12:37
  happening under the water there.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: So, Barrier islands are essentially sand bars that take the
• 12:42
  brunt of the ocean's energy to protect the mainland. Right.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Ok.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Because the shape of the sand beneath the water is
• 12:48
  constantly shifting, water pushes over the sand bars toward the beach,
• 12:52
  and then it desperately seeks a channel to rush back
• 12:54
  out to sea. Ah, I see these channels are rip currents.
• 12:57
  They are essentially underwater rivers moving away from the shore
• 13:01
  at speeds faster than an Olympic swimmer could ever splat.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Wow. So, even if you are a division N caliber
• 13:06
  wide receiver, if you step into a trench between those sandbars,
• 13:10
  the ocean is just going to pull you out. Yeah.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, Muscular strength cannot overpower fluid dynamics. If you fight
• 13:17
  a rip current by swimming directly against it, your muscles
• 13:20
  rapidly deplete their oxygen.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Glatic acid builds.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Up, plactic acid builds up, panic sets in, and you drown.
• 13:27
  And remember, once the sun sets on an uneveloped island,
• 13:31
  there is zero light.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Pollution right, No street lights.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: No ambient glow from buildings, nothing. It is a profound,
• 13:39
  disorienting darkness. If you end up in the water after dark,
• 13:43
  without a phone, without a boat, your options for survival
• 13:45
  approach zero.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Which tragically leads to the inevitable emergency response. Someone finally
• 13:52
  realizes he is not on the manland. A missing personal
• 13:55
  report is filed that Saturday night with the US Coats card,
• 13:58
  and notably, the source of state was by one of
• 14:00
  the three friends who had been on the boat.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: The search grid is established quickly, the Coast Guard and
• 14:04
  local marine patrols begins scanning all the waters between Horn
• 14:07
  Island and Ocean Springs.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: But for roughly forty eight hours, there's just nothing.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: A body in the ocean is completely subject to tides, winds,
• 14:15
  and surface currents.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Until Monday morning, July sixth, searchers find a body in
• 14:20
  the water near the northwestern tip of Horn Island. The
• 14:24
  next day, dental records positively identify the remains as eighteen
• 14:29
  year old Nolan Xavier Wells. The Jackson County Corner assumes custody,
• 14:34
  and the Mississippi State Medical Examiner's Office performs the initial autopsy.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: And within days the official narrative really begins to solidify.
• 14:43
  Sheriff Ledbetter holds a press conference.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: What does he say?
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: He publicly states that investigators interviewed the three friends, that
• 14:50
  the friends are fully cooperating, and that based on those
• 14:53
  interviews and the initial physical assessment, there is quote unquote
• 14:57
  no reason to suspect foul play.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: So the earth reporting heavily suggests law enforcement is leaning
• 15:02
  toward a theory of accidental drowning. Yes, the point to
• 15:06
  all those environmental hazards we just discussed, the aggressive rip currents,
• 15:09
  the darkness, and the potential factor of alcohol consumption. That's
• 15:13
  just kind of inherent to a Fourth of July beach party.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: And it is a plausible theory on its face. I mean,
• 15:17
  young men frequently fall victim to rip currents. But the
• 15:21
  physical state of Nolan's body presented a glaring contradiction that
• 15:25
  completely derailed the family's trust in that official theory.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because when the recovery team found Nolan, he was
• 15:32
  face down in the water and he was fully clothed.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, he was wearing his clothes, not swimwear.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: This is the detail I just cannot get past. Let's
• 15:41
  look at the physics and psychology of this. We have
• 15:43
  that photograph from earlier in the day on the boat
• 15:46
  exactly Nolan is on the boat, the sun is shining,
• 15:49
  and he is shirtless, wearing swimming trunks. He is literally
• 15:53
  dressed for the water. Right if we follow the accidental
• 15:56
  drowning theory, a scenario where he decides to go for
• 15:59
  a casual or just wade into the water to cool
• 16:01
  off and gets caught in a rip current, why on
• 16:04
  earth would he put all his clothes.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Back on, it doesn't track the presence of clothing entirely
• 16:09
  changes the forensic interpretation of a water recovery. How So,
• 16:13
  clothing creates immense drag, wet fabric is incredibly heavy, and
• 16:17
  it restricts joint mobility. A strong athlete knows instinctively not
• 16:21
  to swim in heavy street clothes.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: So if he didn't intend to go swimming, how does
• 16:26
  he end up fully clothed in the Gulf of Mexico?
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: That is the pivotal question here. Did he slip while
• 16:32
  trying to board a different vessel? What was he walking
• 16:35
  along a steep drop off in the dark and just
• 16:37
  lost his footing right? Or more concerningly, was there a
• 16:40
  physical altercation that resulted in him being pushed or thrown
• 16:44
  into the water. The clothing strongly suggests he did not
• 16:47
  enter the water for recreation, And it.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Was that specific physical paradox, combined with the missing phone
• 16:53
  and all the timeline discrepancies, that cause Christine and Elmore
• 16:57
  Wansley to just outright reject the initial accidental drowning narrative understandably,
• 17:03
  So they looked at the local investigation and they saw
• 17:05
  a rush to judgment they saw a sheriff clearing the
• 17:09
  friends of foul play before the toxicology full autopsy reports
• 17:13
  were even finalized.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: And when a family loses faith in the local investigative apparatus,
• 17:17
  they often seek external leverage, and the Wansley family secured
• 17:21
  some of the most powerful leverage available in the United States.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: They hire Ben Crump. They did for anyone unfamiliar with
• 17:27
  the legal landscape out there. Ben Crump is arguably the
• 17:31
  most recognizable civil rights attorney.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: In America, oh without a doubt.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: His entire practice is built around intervening in cases where
• 17:39
  families of color feel local law enforcement is operating with
• 17:42
  opacity or bias. When Ben Crump enters a case, he
• 17:46
  brings the national media with him.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: But the mobilization went far beyond just legal representation. Former
• 17:53
  NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. There is no Your Rights Camp
• 17:56
  step forward to fully fund a private, independent autoim Wow. Yeah. Additionally,
• 18:02
  billionaire actor and producer Tyler Perry offered to pay for
• 18:05
  Nolan's funeral expenses and fronted half of a one hundred
• 18:09
  thousand dollars reward for information leading to an arrest or conviction.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: We are talking about an astronomical amount of resources suddenly
• 18:16
  bearing down on Jackson County, Mississippi. They're essentially building a
• 18:19
  parallel justice system.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And the first major action of that parallel system is
• 18:24
  to get their own scientific baseline. So they arranged to
• 18:27
  have Nolan's body flown over eight hundred miles away to Washington,
• 18:31
  d C. For a second autopsy.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Is right, and the pathologist they selected is doctor Roger A.
• 18:36
  Mitchell Junior.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Who is he?
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: He is the president of the National Medical Association. He's
• 18:41
  a former chief Medical Examiner and a highly credentialed expert
• 18:45
  in forensic pathology. He conducted his examination on July tenth.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, but when doctor Mitchell unzips that body bag in DC,
• 18:55
  he is immediately confronted with a forensic nightmare.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: He really is.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: The condition of the Boody grastically limits what science can
• 19:02
  actually tell him.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: We have to delve into the biology of marine decomposition
• 19:06
  to understand why doctor Mitchell was so hamstrung.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Here, okay, let's do it.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: When a body enters the water, a biological clock starts ticking,
• 19:13
  but water temperature dictates the speed of that clock, and.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: The Gulf of Mexico in July is basically like bathwater.
• 19:19
  It's incredibly warm.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And decisely warm. Water acts as an accelerant for bacterial growth.
• 19:24
  The human body is full of naturally occurring bacteria, particularly
• 19:28
  in the gut. Right when the immune system dies, those
• 19:30
  bacteria begin consuming the body from the inside out, a
• 19:34
  process called putrefaction. In warm marine environments, this process causes
• 19:38
  tissues to soften, to swell, and to discolor within a
• 19:42
  matter of hours. Furthermore, the constant mechanical action of the
• 19:46
  waves and currents washes away trace evidence on the.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Skin, like what kind of evidence?
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Things like defensive scratch marks or microscopic fibers. They just
• 19:55
  get washed away.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So doctor Mitchell is already dealing with a severely degrade canvas.
• 20:01
  But the water wasn't the biggest problem, was it.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: No, it wasn't.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: The biggest problem was what happened during the first autopsy
• 20:07
  back in Mississippi.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, when a body undergoes a standard forensic autopsy, the
• 20:13
  medical examiner evisceraates the internal organs to weigh them and
• 20:16
  check for a disease or trauma.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Right, that's standard in.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Cases of potential asphyxiation. Or drowning. They pay special attention
• 20:23
  to the neck. But when doctor Mitchell examined Nolan, he
• 20:26
  discovered that the critical anatomical structures of the throat and
• 20:30
  neck had been completely removed during the Mississippi autopsy and
• 20:33
  were not transported with the body to DC.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I am trying to wrap my head around this. They
• 20:37
  just didn't sun the neck.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the specific anatomy involved and why
• 20:42
  its absence is just devastating To a second opinion, Doctor
• 20:46
  Mitchell needed to examine the larynx, the trachea, and most importantly,
• 20:50
  the hyoid bone.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, the highwoid bone. Explain exactly what that is and
• 20:54
  where it sits.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: The hyoid is a small U shaped bone situated in
• 20:58
  the anterior midline of the neck, right between the chin
• 21:01
  and the thyroid cartilage. It is unique because it is
• 21:05
  the only bone in the human body that does not articulate,
• 21:08
  meaning it doesn't connect to any other bone. It is
• 21:11
  suspended purely by muscles and ligaments.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Wait, it just floats there in the throat.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Essentially, Yes, it anchors the muscles of the tongue and
• 21:18
  the larynx, but in forensic pathology, the hy ode bone
• 21:22
  acts almost like the black box in an airplane crash.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Ah, that makes so much sense. I want to build
• 21:26
  on that because you know, usually people compare a second
• 21:29
  autopsy to trying to complete a complex jigsaw puzzle. Right,
• 21:32
  This isn't just a puzzle missing a few pieces. This
• 21:34
  is like trying to complete a complex jigsaw puzzle, but
• 21:37
  someone has already thrown away all the corner and edge
• 21:40
  pieces before you even open the box.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Without the hyoid bone, you have no framework exactly.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Let's go back to the black box idea. When an
• 21:50
  airplane crashes into the ocean, the fuselage is destroyed by
• 21:53
  the water and the impact, right, making it hard to
• 21:56
  tell what happened just by looking at the twisted metal. Right,
• 22:00
  box is a piece of hardware designed specifically to record
• 22:03
  the internal trauma. If you recover the black box, you
• 22:06
  know the truth of the flight's final moments. So how
• 22:09
  does that apply to the throat well In a water recovery,
• 22:13
  the skin and external tissues are compromised by decomposition and
• 22:17
  marine life, but the hyoid bone is protected deep inside
• 22:20
  the neck.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Ah.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: If someone is manually strangled or put in a violent chokehold,
• 22:26
  the localized pressure almost always fractures the horns of the
• 22:29
  hired bone or causes deep hemorrhaging in the surrounding.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Cartilage, and if they drown.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Conversely, if someone simply slips underwater and drowns accidentally, the
• 22:38
  black box the hyoid bone remains pristine and unbroken.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So by removing that structural black box during the first
• 22:44
  autopsy and not sending it to doctor Mitchell, the Mississippi
• 22:48
  authorities effectively blinded the independent pathologist.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: They remove the primary physical evidence required to distinguish definitively
• 22:55
  between a traumatic assault to the neck and an accidental drowning.
• 22:59
  Doctor Mitchell had no way to verify the initial medical
• 23:02
  examiner's work regarding strangulation or blunt force trauma to the through.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: It is just a staggering omission. And because of that
• 23:09
  missing anatomy and the advanced rain decomposition, the findings doctor
• 23:13
  Mitchell presented at the NAACP Convention on July twenty two
• 23:17
  were well, they were agonizingly inconclusive.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: The official independent report listed the cause of death as undetermined.
• 23:25
  The manner of death was listed as undetermined pending further investigation.
• 23:29
  They could not even establish a definitive date of death.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: But doctor Mitchell didn't find absolutely nothing. He documented one
• 23:35
  major glaring anomaly on the body right the mark. He
• 23:39
  noted a massive area of red discoloration on the back
• 23:42
  of Nolan's head. The report specifies it was twelve inches
• 23:45
  by eight inches.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: To visualize that, you know, a standard sheet of printer
• 23:49
  paper is eight and a half by eleven inches. Wow,
• 23:52
  so you were talking about an area of discoloration slightly
• 23:55
  larger than a piece of paper covering the back of
• 23:57
  a skull and neck.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: That is massive. If I hear red discoloration on the
• 24:01
  back of the head, my brain immediately jumps to trauma. Sure,
• 24:05
  I imagine he was hit with an oar or he
• 24:08
  slipped and slammed the back of his head against the
• 24:10
  fiberglass hull.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Of a boat, and blunt force trauma is absolutely a
• 24:15
  primary hypothesis for a mark like that. But here is
• 24:17
  the forensic wrinkle. Doctor Mitchell performed a careful examination of
• 24:22
  the skull beneath that discoloration and found absolutely no fractures.
• 24:26
  The bone was completely intact.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Well wait, you could still have a lethal head injury
• 24:30
  without cracking the skull right concussions don't always break bone.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: True, but the lack of a fracture, combined with the
• 24:36
  advanced decomposition, introduces a competing scientific explanation. Liver mortis.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: What is liver mortis?
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: When a human heart stops beating, it stops pumping blood
• 24:48
  through the vascular system, gravity immediately takes over. The red
• 24:51
  blood cells begin to settle and pool in the lowest
• 24:54
  points of the body, creating a dark purplish red discoloration
• 24:58
  on the skin.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: So how does that relate to Nolan?
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: If Nolan was found floating face up, or if his
• 25:04
  body was resting on its back on the seafloor for
• 25:06
  a period of time, the blood would naturally pool in
• 25:09
  the back of his head and neck.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: So doctor Mitchell is staring at this massive red mark.
• 25:14
  It could be the lingering bruise of a brutal attack
• 25:17
  that knocked him unconscious. Or it could simply be the
• 25:20
  natural settling of blood after he drowned. Yes, and because
• 25:23
  the tissue is degraded by the warm gulf water, microscopic
• 25:27
  analysis of the blood vessels can't definitively tell him which
• 25:30
  it is.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly the problem. It is an evidentiary dead end based
• 25:34
  solely on the visual examination.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Which is why Ben Crump stepped to the microphone at
• 25:38
  that convention and essentially said, we cannot accept these blanks.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: He was very clear on that.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: He presented a list of seven specific unanswered questions that
• 25:46
  doctor Mitchell outlined. These aren't just rhetorical points for a
• 25:50
  press conference either. They are a literal checklist of forensic necessities.
• 25:55
  I want to break these seven questions down organically because
• 25:58
  they reveal the intricate mechanisms of a death investigation.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Let's look at the first thematic group,
• 26:04
  the mystery of his entry into the water. Crump asked,
• 26:08
  what were the circumstances entering the water and what was
• 26:12
  the body position when found?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Well, we talked about the clothing. The circumstances of entry
• 26:16
  are paramount. Did he walk in from the shoreline? Did
• 26:20
  he fall from a height like a boat deck? But
• 26:22
  why is the exact body position upon discovery so critical
• 26:26
  to a pathologist.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Because it helps map the current and the timeline. Oh interesting,
• 26:31
  if you know exactly how the body was oriented relative
• 26:33
  to the tidal flow of Horn Island and you measure
• 26:36
  the specific gravity of the body based on decomposition gases.
• 26:40
  A hydrologist can backtrack the drift.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Pattern, so it tells you where he started exactly.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: It can tell you if he entered the water near
• 26:46
  the mainland side of the island or the open ocean side.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: That brings us to the second group of questions, which
• 26:51
  are essentially biological time blocks. Crump asked for the stomach
• 26:56
  contents and the toxicology report. Let's start with the stomach.
• 27:00
  Emptying is a fascinating science.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: It is one of the most reliable forensic clocks we have.
• 27:05
  Human digestion occurs at a relatively predictable mechanical rate. Right
• 27:10
  when you eat a meal. The food sits in the
• 27:13
  stomach while acids break it down before slowly emptying into
• 27:16
  the small intestine. Depending on the density of the food,
• 27:20
  this takes a few hours.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: So how does that apply to Nolan's timeline.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Well, if investigators know what Nolan ate at the July
• 27:26
  fourth party, say a hamburger at two PM, a pathologist
• 27:30
  can examine the stomach contents. If the stomach is completely empty,
• 27:34
  it suggests he lived for many hours after eating, pushing
• 27:37
  his time of death deep into the night.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Got it? And if it's not empty.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: If the stomach still contains largely undigested food, it means
• 27:44
  his biological clocks stopped violently and suddenly very shortly after
• 27:48
  he ate. It anchors the timeline in objective biology, rather
• 27:51
  than relying on the potentially flawed memories of his friends.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense, and the toxicology report works as
• 27:58
  a different kind of clock, right.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Toxicology is a chemical roadmap using gas chromatography mass spectrometry.
• 28:06
  Toxicologists analyze blood, urine, or eye fluid to identify foreign substances.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: And that takes a while to get back.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: It takes weeks to process. They are looking for alcohol,
• 28:16
  illicit drugs, or even over the counter medications.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Because if a Division I athlete drowns in a rip current,
• 28:22
  you want to know if his central nervous system was
• 28:25
  depressed exactly, if his blood alcohol content was high. It
• 28:29
  lends heavy scientific weight to the Shaff's theory of an
• 28:31
  accidental impaired drowning. But if he was completely sober.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: The accidental drowning theory becomes much harder to swallow.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Right now, the final cluster of Crump's questions focuses on
• 28:41
  the specific mechanism of trauma. He asked about the injuries
• 28:45
  to the front of the neck, which we know doctor
• 28:47
  Mitchell couldn't answer because the black box was missing. He
• 28:50
  asked about evidence of a brain bleed beneath that twelve
• 28:53
  by eight inch red mark, and most importantly, he asked
• 28:56
  if there was water in the airway.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: The diatom's question.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: This is the part I find incredibly grim but fascinating.
• 29:03
  Just because a body is found in the water doesn't
• 29:05
  mean the person actually drowned.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Correct. The forensic distinction between drowning and being dumped in
• 29:11
  the water post mortem relies heavily on diatoms.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: What are diatoms exactly?
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Diatoms are microscopic, single celled algae that live in almost
• 29:19
  all bodies of water, and they.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Have silica shells, right, So they are incredibly.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Hard, yes, very hard. When a living person actively drowns,
• 29:28
  they panic and inhale water deep into their lungs. The
• 29:31
  microscopic diatoms in that water are pushed through the alveoli
• 29:34
  of the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, I follow.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Because the heart is still beating during the drowning process,
• 29:40
  it pumps those diatoms throughout the body into the brain
• 29:43
  the kidneys the bone marrow.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: But if someone is strangled on the beach dies and
• 29:48
  their body is thrown into the water to hide the crime, they.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Do not inhale. The heart is stopped, water might passively
• 29:56
  wash into the upper airway, but the diatoms will not
• 29:58
  be circulated into the deep tissue or bone marrow. By
• 30:02
  testing the marrow for diatoms matching this specific aquatic profile
• 30:06
  of Horn Island, a pathologist can definitively say whether Nolan
• 30:10
  was alive when he went under.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: But doctor Mitchell didn't have access to the deep internal
• 30:14
  organs from the first autopsy, so he couldn't perform those
• 30:17
  tests exactly. You take all of this, the missing neck bones,
• 30:21
  the delayed toxicology, the degraded tissue, the unanswered diatom questions,
• 30:26
  and you are left with this agonizing void of information.
• 30:30
  And we all know what happens in the modern era
• 30:32
  when a high profile case has a vacuum of facts.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: The public rushes in to fill it.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: The crucible of public opinion here has been white hot.
• 30:40
  Social media platforms essentially turned into open source detective agencies.
• 30:44
  People were literally dissecting every single frame of video from
• 30:47
  the island and.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: That environment is just a massive breeding ground for rampant misinformation.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Case in point, a photograph went viral on Twitter and
• 30:55
  TikTok claiming to be Nolan at a pool party on
• 30:58
  the very night he vanished. Oh, the narrative was spinning
• 31:01
  completely out of control that he wasn't even on the island.
• 31:04
  The family and friends had to painfully intervene and publicly
• 31:08
  clarify that the photo was from a completely different weekend.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: It's awful it forces the grieving family to constantly play
• 31:14
  defense against internet rumors.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: There was also massive speculation regarding digital communications right Rumors
• 31:21
  circulated widely about delated Snapchat messages and wiped digital footprints
• 31:26
  belonging to the friends on the boat.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: And we cannot ignore the massive overarching context of race
• 31:31
  in this public reaction.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: We absolutely have to talk about it.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: The facts, as laid out in the sources are clear.
• 31:37
  Nolan Wells was a young black man. The three friends
• 31:41
  who shared the boat, who reported the mechanical issues, and
• 31:43
  who left him on the island were white.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Now, official law enforcement, specifically the Jackson County Sheriff's Office,
• 31:50
  has stated plainly that they have not cited race as
• 31:53
  a factor in any of their preliminary findings. Right. However,
• 31:57
  the racial composition of the group is the primary driver
• 32:00
  of a national public conversation and the involvement of civil
• 32:03
  rights organizations.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: If we look at the historical context, you know this
• 32:07
  reaction doesn't happen in a vacuum. Mississippi has a profound,
• 32:11
  documented history of racial violence and deep seated inequities in
• 32:15
  its justice system.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: When a young black man dies under mysterious circumstances while
• 32:21
  in the sole company of white peers, and local authorities
• 32:24
  rapidly suggest an accident before all the science is even
• 32:28
  in it triggers a generational alarm.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Bell, the public scrutiny, the viral demands for justice, the
• 32:35
  skepticism of the sheriff. We shouldn't automatically interpret that is
• 32:39
  proof that the three friends committed a crime.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Right, That's an important distinction.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Rather, it is a reflection of a societal demand for
• 32:45
  an unassailable burden of proof.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly, it's the public saying, given the history of this region,
• 32:51
  we will not accept the benefit of the doubt. We
• 32:53
  require empirical science.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And you see that reflected in the institutional responses we mentioned,
• 32:58
  ben Crump and Colin Kaeprin, but the NAACP also took
• 33:02
  up the mantle, hosting the press conference.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Reverendel Sharpton even traveled to Mississippi to deliver the eulogy
• 33:07
  at Nolan's funeral.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Right and Our sources noted that Director Spike Lee also
• 33:12
  amplify the calls for an independent investigation on his platforms.
• 33:16
  These figures essentially act as megaphones for a community that
• 33:20
  feels historically marginalized by local police forces.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: I look at all this, the science, the social media sleuths,
• 33:27
  the national civil rights leaders, and the emotional weight of
• 33:32
  it just crushes me.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: So what does this all really mean for the parents?
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Think about Christine and Elmore Wansley. Losing a child is
• 33:39
  an apocalyptic level of grief, but they are not allowed
• 33:43
  to close their doors and mourn in peace.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: No, they have to be activists.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: They are forced to become investigative advocates. They are organizing
• 33:50
  independent autopsies, fielding calls from Ben Crump, reading horrific theories
• 33:53
  about their son on social media, all while staring at
• 33:56
  an empty chair at their dining room table.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: As Derek Johnson, the Resident to the NAACP stated during
• 34:02
  the convention, it is entirely possible that when all the
• 34:05
  science has finally concluded, this will prove to be a
• 34:08
  tragic accidental drowning. But the family and the public deserve
• 34:12
  a transparent, exhaustive process to reach that conclusion. Trust has
• 34:17
  to be earned through evidence, not expected through press releases.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Well said, which brings us to the current holding pattern.
• 34:25
  What actually remains unknown and what are the legal mechanisms
• 34:28
  moving forward?
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Break it down for us.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: There are three major pillars of the investigation that are
• 34:33
  officially pending. First, the full official state autopsy report from
• 34:38
  the Mississippi Medical Examiner right. This report should theoretically contain
• 34:42
  the analysis of the lungs, the airway, and those missing
• 34:46
  neck structures that doctor Mitchell couldn't access.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Corner Bruce Lynn Junior has stated this report is delayed
• 34:52
  because they are waiting on the second pillar, which is
• 34:55
  the toxicology results.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Right, and once the toxicologies complete, the state pathologists can
• 35:00
  finalize the cause and manner of death. But the third
• 35:03
  pillar is perhaps the most crucial in modern.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Investigations, digital forensics.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Digital forensics, we mentioned the rumors of deleted snapchats. Investigators
• 35:12
  aren't just relying on what the friends tell them.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: They're looking at the data.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: They are pulling GPS data from the boat's navigation system
• 35:19
  to verify the exact route and timeline of the failing
• 35:22
  bilge pump. They are mapping out cell tower pings to
• 35:26
  see exactly when Nolan's phone left the island.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: They are executing search warns on the cloud storage of
• 35:32
  everyone involved. Because in digital forensics, deleting an app or
• 35:36
  a message from a handset rarely destroys the data.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: There's always a trace, at.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Least metadata, timestamps, geolocation tags, and cached images on external servers.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Authorities have stated that once all these pillars are complete,
• 35:49
  the autopsy, the talks, the digital mapping, the entire case
• 35:52
  file will be handed over to a grand jury.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Now, the grand jury is a vital legal mechanism in
• 35:58
  cases that are this saturated with public deay trust. Unlike
• 36:01
  a trial, where a prosecutor tries to prove guilt beyond
• 36:03
  a reasonable doubt in open court, a grand jury is
• 36:06
  a secret proceeding.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: How exactly does it differ from a trial Because no
• 36:10
  one has been arrested here.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Right, So, in a grand jury, a panel of ordinary
• 36:13
  citizens is convened behind closed doors. The prosecutor presents all
• 36:17
  the collected evidence, the raw autopsy photos, the digital cell
• 36:21
  phone extractions, the sworn testimonies of witnesses. There is no
• 36:25
  defense attorney present to object. The jury's only job is
• 36:29
  to look at the totality of the facts and decide
• 36:33
  is there probable cause to believe a crime was committed
• 36:36
  and should someone be indicted?
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Ah, I see. So it is essentially the justice system's
• 36:41
  way of auditing the local police work.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It takes the decision to press charges out of
• 36:47
  the hands of a single elected sheriff and puts it
• 36:49
  into the hands of the community. It shields witnesses who
• 36:52
  might be afraid to speak publicly, allowing them to testify
• 36:55
  under oath in secret.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: And if the grand jury reviews the evidence and returns
• 36:59
  a no bill, meaning they find no evidence of a crime,
• 37:02
  it provides a level of legal finality, even if it
• 37:04
  doesn't satisfy the public's emotional desire for a different outcome.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: So we wait for the grand jury to synthesize the
• 37:11
  massive scope of what we've explored today. We are looking
• 37:14
  at the tragic loss of Nolan Xavier Wells, an eighteen
• 37:17
  year old athlete full of warmth and promise. His final
• 37:20
  hours are just shrouded in this agonizing fog of missing data.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: We have physical evidence compromised by the harsh realities of war,
• 37:28
  marine decomposition, and the baffling surgical emissions of the first autopsy.
• 37:33
  We have a timeline of a failing boat and a
• 37:35
  left behind phone that defies basic survival logic. And we
• 37:39
  have a family backed by the highest levels of civil
• 37:41
  rights advocacy, demanding that science fill the void left by
• 37:45
  local narratives.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: The physical science, in many ways, has reached a terrifying limit.
• 37:49
  The water washed way, the trace evidence, the hyoide bone,
• 37:52
  the black box of the throat was removed. The body
• 37:55
  has yielded all the secrets it can. It has, but
• 37:58
  it leaves me with this final lingering thought. You know,
• 38:00
  we are physical beings, but we live our lives in
• 38:02
  a digital reality.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: We really do.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Our bodies fade, they decompose, their subject to the brutal
• 38:07
  forces of nature. But we all leave behind a second body,
• 38:10
  a digital footprint that is entirely waterproof.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: The metadata the cloud backups, the silent pings between cell
• 38:17
  towers over open water.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly if the physical science cannot give Christine and Elmore
• 38:22
  Wansley the definitive answers they so desperately deserve. Will the
• 38:26
  ultimate truth of what happened in the dark on Horn
• 38:28
  Island actually be found hiding in the cloud.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: It's a haunting question.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: While the ocean destroys physical evidence, servers are designed to
• 38:37
  remember forever. The answer might not be in the water.
• 38:40
  It might be in the data, and.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: That digital memory may be the only thing capable of
• 38:44
  illuminating the isolation of that night.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. We
• 38:49
  know this is an incredibly heavy topic, burdened by grief
• 38:52
  and historical weight, but our commitment is to explore the
• 38:55
  mechanics of the truth, however complex or unresolved it may be.
• 39:00
  Keep asking questions, keep demanding the facts, and we will
• 39:03
  see you on the next deep dive.