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EP # 147 Nolan Wells & Deion Walton · Humanity Unplugged Podcast

0:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, hello, and welcome.
0:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Humanity Unplug Podcast.
0:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I am your host, Jumea McCrimon and it is Sunday.
0:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Another beautiful day that the Lord has made.
0:21
[SPEAKER_03]: That is rejoice and be glad in it.
0:26
[SPEAKER_02]: High fans, high people, family for first time listeners or people passing just in general or for a long time listeners, we thank you guys for tuning in to us.
0:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I just want to say we really enjoy doing what we do here, and I know I'm pushing it out into the next week.
0:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I'm going to try to get back to that schedule programming on Tuesdays and Thursdays, give you out two or a week.
1:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, work has been crazy, can't get out of it, work and work and work and planning other things.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: God is good.
1:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I just want to say to all of the young 2026 graduates from high school, we applaud you.
1:22
[SPEAKER_02]: We think you're doing great to all the youth that's coming out of college with a bachelor's associate's master's doctorates.
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: We also support you and tell you you're doing great as well.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You are somebody, put your mind to it, and nothing you can't achieve.
1:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, episode 147, 147 is a,
1:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I talked about doing this episode in 146, where I talked about giving you a conclusion to no wells.
1:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't talk about it at all, everybody was on top of it.
2:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I did a little snippet in 146, but now I'm going to give you some more information because now the onions.
2:13
[SPEAKER_02]: The layers are now starting to peel off the onion, and we start to see the effort we unfold itself.
2:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And people can clearly see with their eyes what's going on with the government and what's going on in general.
2:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And this situation is no different than the on-waltors.
2:35
[SPEAKER_02]: He's been in the situation where
2:41
[SPEAKER_02]: he's been a kid missing for for July.
2:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And he still made undid his funeral.
2:50
[SPEAKER_02]: He wasn't missing.
2:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
2:52
[SPEAKER_02]: He was found hung.
2:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe, and he hung or drown, one of the, one of the two, we're going to get into it and this happened on 4th of July as well.
3:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And they just did a memorial not to long go for him and he never made the news and all I didn't hear anything about it and said that
3:15
[SPEAKER_02]: our children and kids, youth, all African-American, I must say, have been being taken out one by one.
3:25
[SPEAKER_02]: If it ain't the prison system, it's drugs.
3:29
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's not drugs, it's our community.
3:33
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's not the community, it's the lack of education.
3:38
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's not the lack of education,
3:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And if it's not neither one of the last four or five I just mentioned, you always got a slot for the big R, which is racism.
3:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, the surprising topic that's there taking us out is the way in.
4:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And y'all know what Y'all in stands for nowadays, and that is who's taken us out.
4:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Our own people are having a great time taking us out.
4:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We find ways to argue and fuss about the small, my new things in our world, because we suffer from so much depression.
4:28
[SPEAKER_02]: The escalation is not a part of our structure, we don't know how to apologize or just walk away from a situation.
4:38
[SPEAKER_02]: We always find a way to put aggression or to find a way to shift the blame.
4:46
[SPEAKER_02]: of something on somebody else.
4:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's some of the reason why we say we get incarcerated because of our upbringing or what we went through as a child.
5:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I will say to you as a child, you thought as a child, but you know right from wrong once you've reached a certain age in your life.
5:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So you know whether you should be doing that or not.
5:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So we can't just keep blaming or saying, I upbringing made us who we are.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I upbringing made us make bad decisions.
5:30
[SPEAKER_02]: that got us the way we are now.
5:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I definitely say that, that a lot of people's upbringing allowed them to make bad decisions on where they're at now in their life by not having an open mind and understanding that decisions you make at a young age can cause you at our earlier age.
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: is part of the problem, society and the community don't allow us sometimes to grow.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: They want to keep us, cultivate it into what
6:14
[SPEAKER_02]: surrounding areas look like and let you think this is all you need, but life is much more than your surrounding areas.
6:23
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to grow.
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Every animal grows.
6:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Every mammal grows.
6:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything grows.
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: A tree doesn't stay the same size.
6:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It grows.
6:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Fly was blown.
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: seasons must happen to you in life just like it happens to things in the world.
6:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So as we look at Nolan Wells and we look at Deon Walters and we look at other kids that's coming up missing and being home, we look at the society around them, we look at the family structure around them, we look at the upbringing of how these were
7:08
[SPEAKER_02]: basically, all very good kids, great future ahead of them, and they were taken out for whatever reason.
7:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We can blame it on the big are or we can blame it on the other things I just mentioned to you.
7:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But nevertheless, the kids are not here any longer, and you cannot bring them back.
7:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So now, as a human being, you look for justice.
7:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You look for some type of closure to what happened.
7:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though with the closure, you don't get back the child that you lost.
7:43
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't get back that call that you got, that you received, that never goes away, that your kid is never coming to that room again.
7:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You're never seeing them again on this earth.
7:56
[SPEAKER_02]: That experienced that a lot of people go through in life.
8:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people never recover as we go until I ate minute mark.
8:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I want you to understand on this podcast.
8:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not doing no talking too much.
8:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just letting things play because I need you to hear all the information.
8:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I need you to listen fully.
8:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can get a clear understanding.
8:24
[SPEAKER_02]: a what to place with Nolan Wells, where we add in Nolan Wells case, and a little bit of the on-walkers to tighten up to in.
8:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But this is going to be a long one.
8:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not going to talk anymore.
8:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to give you all that work.
8:37
[SPEAKER_02]: God bless you all.
8:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank you guys for tuning in every week.
8:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And for my people all over Crocees, all over town, Cambodia, China, Japan, Africa, Russia, Europe, Australia, Asia, North America, South America,
9:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I got people listening all over and I applaud you guys.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank you, Vietnamese.
9:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank you guys, Singapore.
9:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank you for coming through and continue to show support.
9:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I bless you guys.
9:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank you, let's make this pass along.
9:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Share the link, share the profile.
9:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get, become a family.
9:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get together guys, awareness is key.
9:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And if we can save, at least one or two children, we did our job by just passing information on.
9:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Jimaine McCrimon.
9:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go.
9:44
[SPEAKER_03]: and this is a department of marine resources, tracking the movements of the boat, Nolan Wells was on before he disappeared July 4.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: For two weeks, a name has carried more weight than almost anything else in the Nolan case, precisely because so little was known about the person attached to it, a name without a full story.
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Two people were with Nolan Wells in his final confirmed minutes on
10:13
[SPEAKER_00]: For nearly two weeks, one of those two accounts stayed almost entirely out of public view.
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: While the other was repeated so many times, it started to sound like a established fact.
10:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, that changes, because what Katie says happened does not match what his friends have told investigators and a family that has already lost their son now has to sit with the possibility that somebody somewhere in this story isn't telling them the truth.
10:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about what that means for two parents who have spent every day since July the 4th, trying to understand how their sons holiday trip ended the way it did.
10:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't enough for them to know what happened.
10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to know who they can trust to tell them.
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more waiting for you tonight.
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Tracked GPS coordinates, showing exactly where a boat went, hour by hour, on the day Nolan disappeared.
11:02
[SPEAKER_00]: A record that doesn't care about anyone's feelings or loyalties,
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: A grand jury, now officially in motion, carrying this case somewhere it has never been before, and a set of small, strange details his own parents still can't make sense of.
11:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Details that have nothing to do with online rumors or viral posts, and everything to do with what actually happened on a barrier island off the coast of Mississippi.
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we start, a quick note.
11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: This case centers on the death of a young man, so if that's a heavy topic for you tonight, please take care of yourself as we go.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to follow this case as it develops, hit subscribe now, and let us know in the comments where you're tuning in from tonight.
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: because a family somewhere is hoping the right person sees this and remembers something they haven't shared yet.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with the name that took two weeks to surface and the fear that came attached to it.
11:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Nolan had a conversation with a young woman on the beach.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: His friends would later refer to her only as Katie.
12:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where the confirmed information stopped for a long time.
12:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Katie's identity wasn't in the first wave of coverage.
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't in the early statements from the family's legal team, while speculation online chased down pool parties and out-of-context video clips.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: The one person who may have spoken with Nolan last sat almost completely unidentified, unaware, most likely, that her name would eventually matter this much to strangers she had never met.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of the reason traces back to the very first night he went missing.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: A night that, for his mother, must have felt like it stretched on without end.
12:39
[SPEAKER_00]: According to someone who was on the phone with Christine Wanzley, as she tried to figure out where her son was, Katie's name entered the conversation almost by accident.
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: mentioned as someone no one had wanted to stay behind with, and then came a detail that made an already terrifying night considerably worse.
12:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Word that Katie herself might be missing too, with nobody on that call able to say who she actually was, or where to even begin looking for her.
13:06
[SPEAKER_00]: picture that moment for a second.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: A mother already searching for one missing child, suddenly told there might be two.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: No name to attach to the second worry, no number to call, just more fear, stacked on top of fear that already had nowhere left to go.
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: That particular fear turned out to be unfounded.
13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Katie was never missing.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: She had left the island safely that day on a different
13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Confirmation of that came not from police and not from Nolan's friends, but from her own mother, Gracie McCormick, who posted publicly to correct the record, once speculation about her daughter started spreading online in ways she never expected.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: According to McCormack, her daughter was on Horn Island that day, spent time with Nolan, and the two parted ways sometime that afternoon.
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: She says her daughter has no knowledge of anything that happened to him afterward.
14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: She said goodbye to him.
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: She got on a different boat.
14:03
[SPEAKER_00]: She went home to a mother who had no idea at the time that her daughter's name would soon sit at the center of one of the most talked about cases in the country.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: If that were the whole story, it would end there, quietly.
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The way most small footnotes in a larger tragedy tend to end.
14:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't.
14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Attorney Ben Crump, representing the Well's family, says Katie's account of that final conversation is specific and hasn't wavered, and it conflicts directly with what Nolan's friends have said.
14:32
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Katie, Nolan told her he was planning to rejoin his friends and get back on their boat before they left the island.
14:39
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the friends themselves, Nolan told them the opposite, that he intended to stay behind on the island with Katie, entirely by his own choice, in his own words.
14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Both statements cannot be accurate.
14:52
[SPEAKER_00]: One of these two accounts is wrong.
14:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere behind that single word, wrong, sits a family who has to live with not knowing which one it is.
15:01
[SPEAKER_00]: If Katie's version holds up, then something happened in the space between Nolan stating his intention to leave and the boat actually pulling away without him.
15:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Something interrupted whatever plan he had.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody has explained what.
15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: If the friend's version holds up, the Nolan made a deliberate conscious choice to remain alone on a remote barrier island as his only ride home departed without him, which raises an entirely different question about what happened to him in the hours that followed, alone without the group he had spent the whole day with.
15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't a theory pulled from a comment section, or a claim built on speculation.
15:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a direct contradiction between two people who were both there, describing Nolan's last documented words in two ways that simply cannot be reconciled with each other.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And right now, as of this recording, nobody, not the family, not the investigators, not anyone with the authority to say for certain, has resolved it.
15:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Nolan's parents are left holding two versions of their son's final choice, unable to know which one is real.
16:02
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a particular kind of pain in that specific uncertainty, one that's different from grief itself.
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Grief, terrible as it is, at least has a shape.
16:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the loss of a person you loved, but this is something else.
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The loss of even knowing your own son's last decision.
16:19
[SPEAKER_00]: did he choose to stay or did he intend to come home?
16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: For most families, that would be an easy thing to answer.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Peace together from a dozen small confirmations that never even register as important until they're needed.
16:32
[SPEAKER_00]: For the Wandsley family, it has become the single hardest unanswered question in their son's entire case.
16:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And nobody has been able to hand them a real answer yet.
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, beyond that conversation, there are smaller inconsistencies the family has raised publicly.
16:47
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of details that would never make a headline on their own, but that add weight the longer you sit with them.
16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Start with something as simple and as easy to dismiss as a piece of clothing.
16:58
[SPEAKER_00]: The official police report lists Nolan wearing black shorts at the time of his disappearance.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But according to Christine Wanzley, a young woman who was on the island that day later reached out and shared photos with her, showing Nolan and blue shorts not black.
17:13
[SPEAKER_00]: On its own, it sounds like nothing.
17:15
[SPEAKER_00]: A clerical slip, a misremembered detail, but try to see it the way a mother sees it, a mother who no longer has the ability to simply ask her son what he was wearing that day, or why, or where he went afterward.
17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: For her, that detail isn't a footnote to move past.
17:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a thread, and once you begin pulling on one thread in a case built almost entirely on other people's memories, you cannot help but look for the next one.
17:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's what happened before Nolan's body was even found, while his parents were still holding on to hope, still half-expecting a phone call that would end this nightmare with relief instead of grief.
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: They went to retrieve his car from a friend's driveway, a task that should have taken minutes.
17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: According to the family, it turned unexpectedly difficult.
18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: A friend came to the door claiming he couldn't find the keys.
18:06
[SPEAKER_00]: He went back inside to check again.
18:08
[SPEAKER_00]: minutes past.
18:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of minutes that feel endless when you're standing on someone else's porch, waiting.
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: With your missing son somewhere out there and no way to reach him.
18:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, the keys turned up exactly where another person overheard on a phone call happened to mention they had been the entire time.
18:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Sitting on top of an Xbox, inside the house.
18:28
[SPEAKER_00]: for a family already desperate for anything resembling a straight answer.
18:33
[SPEAKER_00]: A delay like that doesn't read as coincidence.
18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It reads as friction, appearing at the exact moment they needed things to be simple.
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there is Nolan's phone.
18:42
[SPEAKER_00]: According to a family friend who helped track the device down using a monitoring application, Nolan posted to Snapchat almost every day, the kind of habit so consistent it barely registered as a habit at all, until it stopped.
18:56
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 24 hours before he disappeared, that activity went completely silent, no updates, no posts, a silence that everyone close to him agrees was simply not like him.
19:08
[SPEAKER_00]: When the device was finally located, one more inconsistency surfaced.
19:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The location tied to the account didn't even match the place where the phone itself was ultimately found.
19:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Consider what it must be like to sit with that particular detail as a parent.
19:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Nolan's digital life had been by every account, an open book, the kind of constant, casual documentation, so common among people his age that nobody thinks twice about it.
19:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, for exactly the window of time that matters most, it goes quiet.
19:39
[SPEAKER_00]: not gradually, not with warning, just silence, and the one 24-hour stretch his family would give almost anything to understand.
19:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy, watching from the outside.
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to pause that you know I'm still here, guys, I'm not in the role.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: to treat a detail like that as a clue in the way a mystery novel treats a clue, something with an obvious explanation waiting just around the corner.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: For Nolan's parents, it isn't that simple.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one more piece of their son's last day that doesn't behave the way the rest of his life did.
20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: and they don't have the luxury of treating it as a plot point.
20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to live with it as an open question indefinitely until someone gives them a real answer.
20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: None of these details.
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Take an individually.
20:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell us exactly what happened to Nolan Wells.
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But together, according to the people who loved him most, they're the reason this family says they cannot simply accept the official account as complete, and why they continue, night after night, to ask questions nobody has fully answered yet.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: While all of this has been unfolding in the background, the contradictions, the small unexplained details, the quiet work of investigators trying to reconstruct a single afternoon.
20:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Nolan's family has also had to do something no parent should ever have to plan for.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Say goodbye.
21:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Christine Wanzley announced that her son's home-going celebration would be held on Monday, July 20th, at centerpoint church in Ocean Springs.
21:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The same community that watched Nolan grow up, play football, and become the young man his coaches and teammates describe with such consistency.
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: A place that once celebrated his signing day, now has to prepare to lay him to rest.
21:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's worth remembering, underneath every headline and every piece of tracked data, that this is still fundamentally, a family grieving a son in front of an audience of millions they never asked for.
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That's part of why accuracy matters so much here.
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Every detail in this case is being absorbed, not just by strangers online, but by two parents who will carry whatever gets said about their son for the rest of their lives.
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't get to walk away from this story once it stops trending.
21:52
[SPEAKER_00]: They live inside it, permanently now, and the only thing anyone watching can really offer them is care in how their son's story gets told.
22:00
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to keep up with every confirmed development in this case as it happens, subscribe now.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what we're covering next isn't based on anyone's memory, or anyone's account, or anyone's version of events at all.
22:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's based entirely on tracked data, the one part of this story that cannot be shaped by grief, or loyalty, or fear.
22:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Here is what the GPS record shows.
22:23
[SPEAKER_00]: At 9.56 in the morning on July 4, the boat carrying Nolan and his friends left at stock, beginning a day that no one on board could have known would end the way it did.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: By 1114, it had reached Horn Island.
22:36
[SPEAKER_00]: For several hours afterward, the group stayed together, celebrating the holiday the way so many others were doing that same afternoon, along that same stretch of coast.
22:45
[SPEAKER_00]: At 4.31 that afternoon, according to data from the
22:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Nolan was not on board.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It returned to its original dock, and then rather than staying there for the night, it kept moving.
23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: At 552pm, the boat traveled into Fort Bayou.
23:05
[SPEAKER_00]: By 606, it was back at the dock once again.
23:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Later that night at 719 p.m., the boat's track position shifted one more time to the Fort Bayou boat launch.
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: From there, according to the Marine Resources report, it was taken out of the water entirely and moved over land, presumably towed by a vehicle to a residence in Biloxi, owned by the boat's owners.
23:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Sit with that sequence.
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: for separate movements recorded automatically after the moment Nolan was left behind.
23:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Not one simple boat trip home, but a series of stops across several hours, ending on land more than 70 miles from where the day began.
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That sequence, tracked without any input from anyone connected to this case, is the exact window investigators are still working to fully explain.
23:54
[SPEAKER_00]: and the exact window Nolan's parents replay in their minds, over and over, searching for what might have happened inside it.
24:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Now to where the official process stands and what has changed most recently for a family that has spent weeks waiting for anyone in a position of authority.
24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: to simply sit down and talk to them directly.
24:13
[SPEAKER_00]: On July the 15th, Nolan's parents did exactly that.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Christine and Elmore Wandsley sat down face-to-face with Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers-Mackelreth.
24:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Their first direct meeting with her office since Nolan's body was found on Horn Island.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Attorney Ben Crump described the meeting afterward as respectful and candid, a small but meaningful shift after more than a week of feeling like they were on the outside of their own son's case.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And out of that meeting came confirmation that once the DA's investigation wraps up, its findings will go to a grand jury.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That phrase tends to carry more emotional weight than it actually holds.
24:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's worth being precise here.
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Both for the sake of accuracy and for the sake of a family who has already had their story distorted enough.
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: A grand jury referral is not a verdict.
25:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not a formal accusation against any one person.
25:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It does not mean charges have already been filed, and it does not mean investigators have concluded a crime took place.
25:13
[SPEAKER_00]: What it means specifically is that the case has reached a procedural point where its findings will be formally reviewed to determine whether charges are warranted at all.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a mechanism, a process, movement, but not resolution, and this family knows better than anyone, the difference between those two words.
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Crump also used the moment to correct something that had spread widely online.
25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The claim that the FBI had effectively taken over this investigation.
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: According to an official statement from FBI Jackson, the Bureau has assisted Jackson County investigators with specific elements of the case.
25:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Largely centered on threats made against individuals connected to the investigation.
25:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Threats that crossed state lines and therefore fell under federal jurisdiction.
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The Jackson County Sheriff's Office remains the lead agency throughout, from the very first search to whatever comes next.
26:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The FBI's involvement has been support, not command, and then there is Nolan's phone.
26:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The piece of evidence his family has pointed to from nearly the very beginning as something that might hold real answers about his final hours, a small object that has somehow come to carry the weight of an entire family's need to understand what happened to their son.
26:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about that for a moment.
26:30
[SPEAKER_00]: a device small enough to fit in a pocket, ordinary in every way, now sitting at the center of a grand jury referral, an FBI-assisted threat investigation, and a mother's last hope for understanding her son's final hours.
26:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an extraordinary amount of weight to place on something so small.
26:49
[SPEAKER_00]: but for a family with almost nothing else left to hold on to, it's become one of the only tangible things they have.
26:56
[SPEAKER_00]: At the July 15 press conference, both sides agreed to something new.
27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: A joint inspection with experts representing the family working alongside experts connected to the official investigation, examining the device together rather than separately, comparing findings in real time instead of releasing competing statements after the fact.
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Attorney Eric Hertz is leading that effort on the family side, working with former law enforcement professionals brought in specifically for the technical work involved.
27:26
[SPEAKER_00]: As of this recording, that inspection has not yet taken place.
27:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The family is still waiting, the way they have been waiting, and one form or another, since the night their son didn't come home.
27:37
[SPEAKER_00]: waiting on a search, waiting on a coroner, waiting on an autopsy, waiting on a meeting with the district attorney, and now waiting on a phone.
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Each piece of this case has arrived slowly on its own timeline, and each time this family has had no choice but to wait for it.
27:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we close tonight, two pieces of this case deserve a quick, direct correction because both of them spread widely and both of them shaped what people believed about Nolan's death.
28:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Long before anyone actually checked whether they were true.
28:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The first involved a photograph.
28:11
[SPEAKER_00]: An image of Nolan at a pool party began circulating online after his body was found, and for a short, disorienting period of time, a significant number of people genuinely believed it proved he had been alive after July 4th.
28:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere out there, strangers were sharing a photo and quietly hoping it meant Nolan Wells wasn't really gone.
28:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Hope that a grieving family had to watch spread, knowing it wasn't true, and having to say so publicly, again and again,
28:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Rolling stone confirmed through image metadata and an account from his friend Tristan Shepard that the photo had actually been taken on June 27th, a full week before Nolan ever went to Horn Island.
28:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It had simply been uploaded online on July 5th, which is what caused the confusion about its timing in the first place.
29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: the second involved a video.
29:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Many believed it captured Nolan in an argument shortly before he vanished.
29:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Treating the recording online is though it were the missing piece of the entire case.
29:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Shepherd addressed that one directly as well.
29:14
[SPEAKER_00]: The voice on the recording he confirmed was his own.
29:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Not Nolan's.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Both pieces of misinformation have since been corrected, publicly and clearly.
29:23
[SPEAKER_00]: What's left, once you strip them both away, is what was always underneath
29:29
[SPEAKER_00]: The timeline, the unresolved contradiction between two first-hand accounts and a family still waiting, patiently and publicly, for someone to give them real answers instead of theories.
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: This case is still open.
29:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It remains in every sense unfinished.
29:47
[SPEAKER_00]: The grand jury hasn't concluded anything yet.
29:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The phone inspection agreed two weeks ago still hasn't happened.
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And the contradiction between Katie's account and the account given by Nolan's friends still hasn't been resolved by anyone with the actual authority to resolve it.
30:05
[SPEAKER_00]: what we've laid out tonight isn't speculation, and it isn't the version of this story that spread fastest online.
30:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what has actually been confirmed by name, by record, by verified reporting, as of today.
30:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is, in many ways, the very least a grieving family deserves.
30:24
[SPEAKER_00]: not another theory, not another rumor, just the truth, as far as it's currently known, told with the care this story has always required.
30:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere in Ocean Springs tonight, a mother is planning a service for a son, she still doesn't fully understand losing.
30:39
[SPEAKER_00]: A father is still replying a driveway, a set of missing keys, a phone call he overheard.
30:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And a young woman named Katie, who never asked to become part of a national story, is living with the knowledge that her final conversation with Nolan Wells has become one of the most scrutinized exchange.
31:01
[SPEAKER_00]: is in the country.
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though by every account, she has done nothing but tell investigators what she remembers.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the part of this story that's easy to lose underneath the grand jury language and the GPS timestamps and the legal terminology.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Underneath all of it, there is still just a family in a small Mississippi community trying to understand how a holiday boat trip with friends ended with their son gone.
31:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing about a grand jury
31:30
[SPEAKER_02]: The picture with Nolan in the pool that they say happened in June, it looked like it was about 25 people in the water and Nolan was an only black kid in the water and when those numbers are like that, that's a very uncomfortable feeling.
31:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's cool that these are your friends, but
31:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a cool feeling for Blackhead.
31:58
[SPEAKER_02]: If you Black, you would know if you have experienced it.
32:03
[SPEAKER_02]: If you are one nomination and you hang out or go around a whole other nomination of people to nomination, race, act the group whatever you want to call it.
32:18
[SPEAKER_02]: you will see the difference.
32:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't bother you, but you see it, you feel it.
32:24
[SPEAKER_02]: All eyes are on you because of your skin color.
32:29
[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like why did he bring McDonald's to a barbecue cookout?
32:37
[SPEAKER_02]: We already got purpose and Frank's here.
32:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing about a joint phone inspection changes that.
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are steps, important ones, but they are steps toward an answer this family hasn't received yet.
32:51
[SPEAKER_00]: If this laid the case out more clearly than what you've seen elsewhere, send it to someone who's been following the story, and tell us in the comments, which unanswered question you think matters most right now.
33:02
[SPEAKER_00]: the conversation on the beach, the GPS timeline, or one of the smaller details this family still can't explain.
33:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be back with the next confirmed update, the most.
33:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's the first one, guys.
33:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope they you enjoyed that.
33:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I did.
33:18
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really, really good.
33:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go right into the next one, because the next one is a recent update that just happened.
33:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe a hour ago, here we go.
33:39
[SPEAKER_04]: and flanding in this case at once.
33:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And tomorrow brings a fourth moment this family has been dreading for over two weeks.
33:47
[SPEAKER_04]: First, the FBI has finally put its role in this case in writing, on the record, in full.
33:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Second, the young woman at the center of this case is biggest, unresolved contradiction has broken her own silence.
34:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Not through a relative, not through a second hand post,
34:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Third, somewhere in this story, a family connected to this case has become the target of an actual threat, serious enough that federal resources are now involved, and fourth, tomorrow, Nolan Wells will be laid to rest.
34:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Tonight, before that happens, we're going through everything that's landed in the past few days carefully, and separating what's officially confirmed from what's still being reported secondhand.
34:34
[SPEAKER_04]: For weeks, the question of exactly why the FBI was involved in this case had only been answered in fragments, a line here, a comment there.
34:42
[SPEAKER_04]: This week, the Bureau's Jackson Field Office released an actual complete public statement and it's worth hearing in full.
34:50
[SPEAKER_04]: The statement reads that while the FBI has assisted with certain aspects of the investigation using federal tools and partnerships that have proved valuable,
35:02
[SPEAKER_04]: and will continue to lead this investigation.
35:05
[SPEAKER_04]: It describes a trusting, effective partnership between Jackson County and the FBI built over many years of working side-by-side on complex cases.
35:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It says the FBI has been supporting Jackson County from day one in the effort to gather information and find answers for the Wells family and the broader community.
35:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And it closes by saying the FBI remains ready to assist further, particularly where federal resources might expand local capacity in the hope of bringing clarity and peace of mind to the people who love Nolan.
35:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So what he's not telling you is that the FBI was only involved because of the people conducting investigation life for threatened.
35:49
[SPEAKER_02]: The sheriff down there Mississippi lives were threatened for doing this investigation of for conducting this investigation.
35:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So since it was a threatening thing, federal FBI jumped in to track and to
36:06
[SPEAKER_02]: try to stop any harm from being done to the people out in Mississippi.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I'm going to give you all one more thing.
36:16
[SPEAKER_02]: This one is not as long.
36:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to stop that.
36:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I could have brought the replay.
36:21
[SPEAKER_02]: A whole 30 minutes of what you just heard.
36:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, this is 2003, 2004, 1920, this goes up to 26.
36:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a lot.
36:29
[SPEAKER_02]: It's only 13 minutes.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But this also is just from a great person content.
36:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Miss Petty Brown rise.
36:43
[SPEAKER_02]: She did a thing and I'm just going to shut out to her.
36:46
[SPEAKER_02]: This is her information, but I wanted to add it in so you guys can see what took place.
36:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Here we go.
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: What's up Brownies?
36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So I first want to begin this video by expressing my sincere condolences to all of the friends family loved ones of these young men and to say definitively
37:11
[SPEAKER_01]: are a tragedy and all of them deserve justice.
37:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Having said that, I'm gonna move right into the unpopular or unpleasant truth that just needs to be said.
37:23
[SPEAKER_01]: These cases have happened repeatedly over the past few decades, and I'm sure there's way more than the dozen that I have displayed here, but the reason that we don't hear about the vast majority of them is because American society has implicit biases.
37:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And those biases decide, first and foremost, who even gets to be considered human, you know?
37:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So who's life matters at all, much less who gets to be considered a victim?
37:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're gonna consider patriarchy, classism, colorism, more so than anything in who gets to be pushed to the front and
38:07
[SPEAKER_01]: which cases the news is going to carry.
38:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And to really drive that point home, let's talk about the fact that there were two teenage black males who passed away via drowning.
38:22
[SPEAKER_01]: on the Fourth of July, 2026.
38:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You have 17 year old Dion in Alabama and 18 year old Nolan in Mississippi.
38:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So neighboring states about the same age and yet one case is so prevalent and so heavily covered that it's all you can see
38:47
[SPEAKER_01]: being talked about in traditional media and social media.
38:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So much so that if you did like a search engine search for black teen drown, black teen male drowning, Nolan's case might be the only thing that comes up for the first couple of pages of searches.
39:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk about why he's getting pushed to the front.
39:14
[SPEAKER_01]: First and foremost, what I noticed about the vast majority of these cases is these young boys are poor and fatherless.
39:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So when America can't try out the two parent house, whole whole thing, whatever, your case is typically not gonna quite matter as much if they have someone that they feel like meets the standard, right?
39:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So with Dion, he just had so much working against him.
39:46
[SPEAKER_01]: First and foremost, we, I can find any information about his father at all.
39:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but as far as his mom, she's a single mom with a bunch of kids, um, that's not an attack on her.
39:58
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just me stating the fact some of which it seems like multiple of them.
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: She sent away to live with other relatives.
40:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but definitely Dion she did.
40:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was sent to Alabama to be raised by his uncle, who is not only gay, but also married to a white man.
40:20
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just what it looks like from the research, but by the way they talk around the subject, you can tell that this is an effort by the local press.
40:32
[SPEAKER_01]: to not lean into the particulars of Deon's life much, right?
40:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
40:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Alabama is a definitive red state and in a small town that's about 90% Caucasian, once you add the element of LGBTQ and interracial marriage, that community is simply not going to rally around this young boy.
41:00
[SPEAKER_01]: The media is not going to rally around the local media isn't they don't really want that story and that image with these types of details surrounding it out and so.
41:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Dude, guess how much I'm sorry guys got to let this play.
41:19
[SPEAKER_02]: One second.
41:20
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, it's coming back.
41:27
[SPEAKER_01]: being born into a family that America doesn't consider all American and ideal, that can be the reason why you don't get justice, right, for this young victim.
41:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But besides that, we had more cases this year already, like within months of Nolan's incident, and once again, he is dominating the
41:53
[SPEAKER_01]: When the so called community leaders and activists pick and choose which cases they're going to take, you're going to have to have certain sympathetic elements that they think that they can work with.
42:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So besides the poverty and the fatherlessness.
42:10
[SPEAKER_01]: particularly for the cases that happened in the deep south.
42:14
[SPEAKER_01]: When you listen to a lot of these young boys, mothers speak, if it would be labeled as what the media would call ghetto or uneducated, no one wants to hear them talk.
42:30
[SPEAKER_01]: When they're not well dressed, not well spoken, their homes don't present well for interviews,
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of these factors are taken into consideration and don't shoot the messenger.
42:44
[SPEAKER_01]: If you go back and analyze it, you'll see this for yourself.
42:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Nolan gets to be pushed to the front for colorism reasons, first and foremost.
42:55
[SPEAKER_01]: His parents are presenting themselves as a married couple to parent household well to do.
43:02
[SPEAKER_01]: His mom is Filipino.
43:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I, I found it interesting that she's been wearing her hair textured or whatever for all of these interviews, but she's been doing lifestyle content for the past couple of years on her personal social media page.
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of times her hair is straight and she just looks like her other Filipino sisters or relatives, so to speak.
43:31
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, when you see the family photos, most of them are a number of them are, without the husband in the picture.
43:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But for the ones that do have the husband in the picture, he looks like the only chocolate chip and a sugar cookie.
43:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's mostly just her family with Nolan.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, they look more Filipino than if you know their mixed with black the Filipino or whatever Asian descent.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: that they are, that shows up in them phenotypically, more than American blackness.
44:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of you understand what I'm saying, they're going to be many people who are going to go out of their way to misunderstand.
44:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's fine, too.
44:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It just still doesn't negate the truth.
44:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So Nolan's case is being pushed for those reasons, and then also the classism element of it.
44:34
[SPEAKER_01]: um, they have a nice home.
44:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You can look at all of her videos if it includes the bathroom she films in our bathroom a lot and then also the kitchen.
44:44
[SPEAKER_01]: When a home has these modern, uh, you know, granted, you know, you get, you know, all of the furnishings and finishings of a modern home, large square footage you can tell by the size of the bathrooms and the kitchen's
45:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you appear to be more well to do, you already have some money behind you.
45:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to be easier for the media to latch onto and then also for the local news.
45:12
[SPEAKER_01]: If they feel like you're somebody important, like for instance, his mom, is in the medical field, she's a healthcare worker.
45:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of those things together make Nolan matter more.
45:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and this is kind of a reminder of the throwback case that you see in the 2004 slot, um, Alanzo.
45:33
[SPEAKER_01]: There's two different Alanzos in these, uh, dozen cases that I have displayed here, but this particular Alanzo, his mother is just Hispanic or Latina.
45:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they tried it her out a lot.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: The paler you are light bright next to white that gets the push right so and then also they had moved from like the inner city to a like a more bedroom community like a more suburban home and so all of that helps too.
46:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
46:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just calling it like it is.
46:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So much so that this case happened all the way in 2004, they kept mentioning it, you know, like periodically it would come back up in the media.
46:21
[SPEAKER_01]: They would do an update on it because the case is air quotations unsolved and they even did a root of reboot of unsolved mysteries and he was one of the episodes.
46:33
[SPEAKER_01]: His case was one of the
46:37
[SPEAKER_01]: they then went and exhumed the body and opened the co-case back up because of the community push and interest in it.
46:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So one pattern that I noticed is that tended to happen for the
47:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But in at least half of these cases, what's happening is in your last moments, you were flirting with talking to a white girl
47:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And in all of these cases, according to the witnesses and the families before they were silenced many of the poor single mom families were just silenced their stories started changing and if if you notice now everybody's being pushed to say oh no we don't think that it was a racial element to it we don't think it was anything racial it's extremely weird now if you want me to do the detail deep dive.
47:43
[SPEAKER_01]: and break down each and every one of these cases, first and foremost, hype this video up.
47:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The algorithm is not gonna push it alone.
47:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And so of course you're gonna have to share the video with your other people, your mutuals, your context and your phone to get the views up.
48:01
[SPEAKER_01]: make sure that it has the engagement like comment.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: If you recognize some of these cases, go ahead and drop the information in the comments, so that people will know these are real people in real cases.
48:16
[SPEAKER_01]: As a mom whose son is about to head back to campus in two weeks, I don't want to put myself through the trauma of looking at these young boys
48:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, of my son, you know, I don't want to think about this any longer than I have to.
48:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But if there is an interest from the public, I will go ahead and do all of the details.
48:43
[SPEAKER_01]: If not, I'm just going to end by saying this and I really don't care how you feel about it.
48:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, the inherent anti-blackness that we are programmed with in our subconscious is the ultimate culprit in all of these cases.
48:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to just say something about the one that you see that looks like George Floyd under water for 2023 that's because both of these kids were 14 or 15 years old and when the white boy,
49:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what I'm saying is where they are teaching their children hatred, you're teaching your children to prioritize assimilation and white validation, and it's not working in their favor.
49:43
[SPEAKER_02]: They're way too many people.
49:45
[SPEAKER_02]: She's really preaching, guys, white validation, oh my God, that is the truth.
49:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why so many blacks want to be accepted by white people.
49:56
[SPEAKER_02]: If you all, you all, if you're not, you're not.
49:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't change my way I make my sandwich.
50:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still putting heavy mail on my sandwich.
50:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, hello, hi.
50:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, hi.
50:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't bother, okay?
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: All right?
50:12
[SPEAKER_01]: videos of young black boys, you can find on social media, talking about how they prefer light bright next to white.
50:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to buy racial with curly hair, light skin curly hair, all of this type of stuff.
50:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you pedestalize whiteness and make it your goal, this is what ends up happening to your sons.
50:32
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why I hashtag this whole phenomenon.
50:36
[SPEAKER_01]: hashtag Emmett Still.
50:39
[SPEAKER_01]: use the hashtag when you're talking about these subjects.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to say, because of your need for assimilation and white validation, a lot of you are going to end up resting in preference instead of resting in peace.
50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hate that for you.
51:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
51:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Guys, that was impressive.
51:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Well guys, I held y'all long enough.
51:12
[SPEAKER_02]: 147 is a special one.
51:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Germaine McCrement.
51:15
[SPEAKER_02]: This is Humanity Unplug Podcast.
51:18
[SPEAKER_02]: We thank you guys.
51:19
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to chop it up.
51:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully I push another one out.
51:23
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
51:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Later.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, thanks for listening.
51:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Please push this out.
51:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Share.
51:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye.