"Things were deleted": Wells family attorneys release cell phone information

On Monday, Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said a preliminary report indicated no messages were deleted since Wells’ last phone use.

But at a Thursday press conference in Orlando, Florida, Andrew Garrett, CEO of Garrett Discovery, said material from Wells' phone appears to have been deleted based on a longer report, which was shared with the DA after the preliminary report.  

"One of the things we do know is there was interactions with the phone before and after his death, up until the time that his family retrieved the phone from the other young men that were with him that day," Garrett told reporters at a press conference held by civil rights attorney Ben Crump. 

"From a digital standpoint, things were deleted on the phone from the time he last had the phone, up until the time that his parents got the phone."

Those deleted messages were from Snapchat. Garrett said much of their review included Snapchat messages and group chats Wells was in. He didn't provide details on who deleted them or what those messages might have entailed. 

 Snapchat automatically deletes messages, leaving them to disappear in 24 hours. Garrett said that messages were deleted, but users can opt to save messages in chats. 

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump read some of the messages during the press conference — he didn't give much context, listing privacy concerns. But messages from friends include racial and safety concerns about some of the other people on Horn Island that day.

"'There are so many people out there, so I don't know if they could have even done something, but I don't know,'" Crump said, reading from their report. "Nobody's accepting that it was an accidental drowning: even the friends are talking about, they are concerned about what really happened to Nolan Wells."

In a release on Thursday evening, Myers McIlrath disputed Crump and Garrett's claims. 

"The 30-hour digital download that Mr. Garrett discussed during the press conference today was never provided to the State as Mr. Garrett 
suggested," she wrote. "All that was provided to us were two emails containing around 300 pages of selected findings from Nolan’s cell phone."

That longer report was shared with the grand jury when it had convened, though. 

She stated that the information provided during the press conference and what was shared preliminarily with her office was that nobody had physically accessed Wells' phone between his last use of it and when his parents recovered it. 

"The user action discussed by Mr. Garrett is from other snapchat users, not someone physically accessing Nolan Wells’ phone," Myers McIlrath wrote. 

Garrett, during Thursday's press conference, said he was not asked to testify before the grand jury. 

"Nobody's ever asked me, 'Hey make sure this is prepared for the grand jury,'" Garrett said. "The district attorney never called, the state's attorneys never called, anybody that's ever commented about this has never called our office." 

Other data from the extraction included GPS data, which Garrett displayed on a moving map during the press conference. Per his presentation, the group reached Horn Island just after 11:00 a.m., with Wells' last cell phone use set at roughly 2:18 p.m. 

Other than that, the phone traveled with the boat to somebody's house, left the dock and then traveled to a boat ramp. Around 7:30 p.m., Garrett said the phone was at an individual's residence. Video of GPS data shows the phone traveling over land to various other places throughout the evening. 

Wells' parents picked up the phone from a friend's house after Wells' body was found on July 6, with Garrett estimating the phone recovery time at 3:00 a.m. 

GPS mapping video courtesy of Ben Crump's communications team. 

Crump also shared the state autopsy, highlighting bruises on the back of Wells' head. The report states that Wells was "found face down in the water at Horn Island."

"Because the circumstances surrounding this death are unknown, the cause and manner of death are best classified as undetermined."

The report also states that no fluid or debris was found in Wells' airways. 

The NAACP responded to that report on Thursday evening. 

“The state’s own medical examiner’s autopsy report conflicts with the grand jury report’s claim that Nolan Wells died because of an accidental drowning," a statement reads.  "We continue our press and demand for the District Attorney to continue this investigation.  We also urge the Justice Department to initiate its own independent investigation into the events that transpired on Horn Island and led to Nolan Well’s death."

Crump said more information about the state and independent autopsies will be presented next week with Dr. Roger Mitchell, the forensic pathologist who performed an independent autopsy on Wells. The initial findings were inconclusive. 

Prior to the grand jury's report, the interactions between Crump's team and the district attorney's office were highly contentious, with both parties suggesting that the other was not acting in good faith, particularly regarding cooperation in conducting a joint review of Wells' phone. 

Liza Park, an attorney with Crump's office, says with the grand jury review done, Crump's team plans to release more of their findings.

"Up until that time, we've been playing by the rules, we haven't been putting anything forth that we had," Park said at the press conference. "It's done, so here we are."

In her initial statement on Monday, Myers McIlrath highlighted the preliminary report but did not elaborate on the longer report that Crump's team shared via email while the grand jury was convened. 

"[Crump's team] provided a 14-page preliminary report indicating the phone had not been accessed by anyone other than Nolan's family, and nothing had been deleted off of the phone since Nolan's last use," she said. "I never received the full extraction data as promised, and I never receive the complete extraction report of Nolan's cell phone."

"After the grand jury convened in this case, the Crump team provided a 282-page selection of reports from Nolan's cell phone, which the grand jury considered." 

Myers McIlrath released communications between her and attorneys representing the Wells family. The letters show that the Crump's team did share the full report, albeit later than expected, because of issues that Garrett Discovery had in reviewing Snapchat data. 

"Unfortunately, this phone had a newer version of Snapchat in which the software did not support," Garrett told reporters on Thursday. "That required us to manually process the data, manually decrypt all the messages and put them back together." 

In a letter to Crump, shared with the press, Garrett wrote that law enforcement was informed that a final report would be along later and that "was agreed upon with the government's investigator."

A joint review at the Digital Forensics Lab at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College would be law enforcement only — excluding the Wells family from being present during an extraction. Park said they were not informed of that during the initial July 15 meeting to discuss a joint review.

Similarly, Garrett wrote that it was misleading for Myers McIlrath to suggest that the family was uncooperative in a joint review and that law enforcement was not forthcoming with them.  

"They set the venue as a place and then told us only law enforcement can come in," Garrett said during a press conference. "It's like getting invited to a party you come to the front lawn, but you can't get through the front door. It's not a joint inspection at that point." 

Myers McIlrath, in her statement, concluded that the information presented thus far still doesn't suggest foul play. 

"if the Crump team genuinely has new information or evidence that Nolan Wells was murdered, they should stop playing games and immediately provide it to me," she wrote.