“Do you all remember real sketchy looking guys behind us in two boats?” SnapChats revealed. A digital-forensics firm has confirmed that Snapchat threads were deleted from Nolan Wells’ friend group, according to attorney Ben Crump.

Crump says those messages & phone-location data are what’s keeping the family from accepting an accidental-drowning.

One of the things he points out is that the snaps show some of Wells’ own friends were concerned about people on Horn Island being racist.

Crump detailed one of the snaps:

“Do you all remember real sketchy looking guys behind us in two boats?”

“I mean like yeah.”

“That one that looked like…….the ones that were right behind us.”

“One was black and one was white.”

“Well, those guys were apparently like felons or something. At least one of them. And they were there when we were all gone, I think.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, they were ……. had to walk this lady to her boat because she knew one of them. And sheriff’s talking to my dad says something like, you wouldn’t want to be left alone with them, especially if they’re really drunk.”

“There are so many people out there, so I don’t know if they could have even done something, but I don’t know.”

A grand jury found three days ago that a crime wasn’t found to be committed.

Crump said the forensic examiner Andrew Garrett and colleagues at Garrett Discovery were able to use location tracking of Nolan’s cell phone:

“So, we have a definitive timeline now based on the movement of the cell phone.”

Crump also said that the team is “not accusing anybody of anything nefarious,” and that the forensic examiner did not say what the intent of the deletions are.

Christine Wonsley, Wells’ mother, already introduced the deletion story after she got Nolan Wells’ phone back the night of July 4 into the early hours of July 5.

#phone

She and her sister opened Snapchat and didn’t find any photos or videos from the Horn Island trip and said the phone was “too clean” adding that Wells posted constantly.

Now the forensic lab, hired by the family, has now confirmed Wonsley’s claims.

“We know that the last text message that Nolan Xavier Wells sent was on July 3rd around 8:30 p.m., where he said thank you to his auntie Gabby. And what his parents and family shared with us, this was common, because Nolan was like many teenagers.”

“They don’t use their mother and father text messaging. They use Snapchat.”

“And so, they went through this process of the traditional text messaging, and then they painstakingly — and you’re going to hear in detail — how they manually had to retrieve the Snapchats.”

“And so, we have all of the snaps. The district attorney’s office has them. So, they have all 282 pages of the snaps. And that’s really important because there are snaps between Nolan’s friend groups.”

Garrett’s timeline of the device:

8:24 a.m. July 4 – McDonald’s

8:37 a.m. – another residence; Snapchat in use

about 9:31 a.m. – phone boards a boat

about 11:18 a.m. – Horn Island

about 2:17–2:18 p.m. – last time Wells personally locked the phone, per Garrett

about 4:30–4:36 p.m. – boat leaves the beach; Sea Tow call about a failed bilge pump

about 6:10–6:30 p.m. – dock

7:24–7:25 p.m. – boat ramp

8:51 p.m. – a home on the mainland

About 3 a.m. July 5 – parents retrieve the phone (friends’ lawyer Tyler Cox says a girl pulled the phones off the boat, put them in a truck, and handed Wells’ phone over around 1:30 a.m.)

Friends, including Tracestin Shepherd, have said for months that leaving phones on the dash in salt water was routine, and that Wells put his with “probably 15 other phones.”
Location pings after mid-afternoon track the boat and then a house. They do not put Wells in those locations.