OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. (WLBT) – Nationally renowned civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump and the legal team for the family of 18-year-old Nolan Wells are pushing back on any suggestion that the family has been uncooperative or less than transparent in the district attorney’s investigation into Wells’ death.
The body of 18-year-old Wells was found in the water just off Horn Island on the morning of July 6. He was reported missing the night of July 4 after he didn’t return from a boating trip with friends.
[READ: TIMELINE: Here’s what we know about the disappearance and death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells]
In correspondence sent to District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath on Aug. 13, the legal team confirmed that Wells’ parents, Elmore and Christine Wonsley, remain willing to facilitate a forensic examination of Nolan’s phone, consistent with what the parties agreed to on July 15.
At that July 15 meeting, the parties agreed to a jointly coordinated forensic examination of the phone using the Digital Forensics Lab at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, with possible FBI involvement.
According to the legal team’s correspondence, no date or time for that examination was ever set.
Instead, on Aug. 12 at 12:51 p.m. ET, the district attorney’s office sent a letter directing the family to deliver the phone to her office by 9 a.m. on Aug. 14, less than 48 hours later.
Wells’ parents were outside Mississippi when that letter was sent and were not scheduled to return before the deadline.
The parties have also not agreed on a forensic protocol governing the scope and method of the examination, chain of custody, preservation of the extraction, access to the resulting data, and return of the device.
The legal team has asked the district attorney’s office to send its proposed protocol and has said the examination can be scheduled immediately once it is agreed upon.
The legal team issued the following statement:
“Nolan’s family has not refused to cooperate, and the correspondence with the District Attorney’s Office is proof of that. We agreed on July 15 to examine this phone together, with their experts, our experts, and possibly the FBI. We have continued to expect that the forensic examination of Nolan’s phone would happen exactly as agreed on July 15. In order to preserve the evidence, we asked for a protocol, a chain of custody, and an agreement on what happens to the data. We have yet to receive these details.
“Setting a 48-hour deadline while this family was out of state is not a good-faith path to answers, and it weakens our confidence in the process. Nolan’s parents will not be pulled into a fight over deadlines and logistics. Even in their grief and heartbreak, they are still trying to work with the DA, but they want to be able to trust that this is a fair and impartial investigation and that the agreements made will be honored. They are focused on one thing, and that is finding out what happened to their son.”
Want more WLBT news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.
See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Please click here to report it and include the headline of the story in your email.
Copyright 2026 WLBT. All rights reserved.