Potential Scenarios of What Happened with Nolan Wells After His Friends Left, with Chris Hansen

I've interrogated or interviewed hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of men over the years, including my own sons when they were the same age as Nolan Wells and Hudson. And you see that interview with Hudson and the thing that's striking me most right now is that he doesn't appear to be deceptive. He doesn't seem to be lying about this or nervous. It's obvious that But the reality is, Megan, somebody had to be the last one to see Nolan alive, right? So the question now is, who was that? And what did they see? It's frustrating to a lot of people. And if it was my child, I'd be frustrated too. And I understand the concern about the phone and no videos, but there's no evidence that the phone was scrubbed. And having been a lifelong boater on and off from the time I was Nolan Wells' age, I understand why they would put the phone in the center console or in the front console of the boat because you're up to your waist in water. So while Nolan was a prolific Snapchatter and liked to videotape and post all day long, I can understand why he didn't in this particular case. But again, why does a young man stay behind, right? At that age, it's typically because of a young woman. Was it Katie who he was chatting with? Was it another young woman? And what happened in that timeframe after Hudson and the fellows took off in their boat? Did he try to get on another boat? And these are things that are going to be difficult to find out. Hopefully, I know that the DA's office and the Sheriff's office are investigating 60 witnesses. It would seem that four or five of those have the most significant information. I would also tell you that they're about to finish the forensic examination of Noah's phone. And I would want to do some sort of an examination of the phones of some of the other kids who are out there. And I think sometimes those examinations will create a timeline and create some idea of what exactly happened to this poor young man. They'll know. If anybody wiped that phone, they are going to know that. They know whether it was wiped or not. And if it was wiped, it's very easy to pull it back. We find in our sting operations, the local law enforcement and feds go through these phones forensically all the time. And even if they delete the suggestive text messages, the illegal illicit text messages that these guys send to these kids in our stings, they're all retrievable. There's nothing that's deleted forever. And I think you know that as well. Yeah, that's right. So we'll know all of that. And you're right. They probably already know that. And their messaging has been no signs of foul play. Boys are all cooperating. I'm pretty sure we're going to get a diagnosis of accidental death by drowning. That's where my money is. The thing about investigations like this is that if you rule out any possibility, or if you focus exclusively on one potential outcome to the exclusion of others, you're going to miss some leads. So they have to keep an open mind. I do respect the sanctity of the grand jury and the fact that they're not saying a whole lot about it as opposed to some other recent investigations we saw, like in the Nancy Guthrie case where the sheriff was having separate interviews with separate media at separate times of the day. It was so herky jerky, you couldn't even keep up with what was going on. And it's a bad way to run an investigation. You have a briefing every day, it's four o'clock, and if something develops, then we'll call y'all. But that thing was just out of control down in Arizona. And my heart still breaks and will always break for that family. But in this case, at least there appears to be some investigative integrity in terms of not igniting this thing into a situation it may not be. Racism, I mean, if there was racism, then why does a kid who's black get invited to go hang out with all his white friends? I mean, you can tell by the way they got along. Lifelong friends. Lifelong friends, right? So I don't think, you know, who knows? Was there some horrible guy on the island who took issue with something that Nolan did? You know, something horrible happened. There's a cover-up. You can't exclude any of that. But there's certainly no evidence that that did happen. And I don't think his immediate friends give off the vibe of being in collusion to cover up something evil. At least I don't see it at this point. I totally agree with you. We can't rule out that somebody on the island may have done something to Nolan. But this knee-jerk blame the friends, as you heard Congressman Jackson do, specifically citing the fact that they're white is just outrageous. I hate when people jump off on things without knowing the facts and they're just running their mouth for the sake of running their mouth. And that's what that is. You know, I understand the family hiring Ben Crump because they want answers. I get that, right? I totally do. And that's their right to do that. But, you know, the other question I have, Megan, is that, you know, this wasn't an island where you could duck over to the crab shack or, you know, grab a fish sandwich or hang out or, you know, there was a campground or anything. There's nothing there. So I don't think that he planned to spend the night. And there's no other missing human with whom he could have spent it, even if they had some cockamamie plan to build a campfire and have a romantic evening and get picked up in the morning. There's no ferry in and out of there. So at some point, he had to want to get off that island. I think, you know, a toxicology report, which always takes weeks longer than the initial autopsy, will explain if, you know, he had a lot to drink or very little to drink. Nobody has, at least that I've seen, said that he was drunk or over-served or incapacitated. In the rush to get out of there on many boats, could he have slipped, fallen, hit his head? He wasn't going to try and swim back to the mainland. That's 10 miles. So that's, I think, what's fueling some of this stuff is that there's no logical explanation that I have seen as to why Nolan would stay on the island and miss the last boat out of there. Right. That's the second part that I agree with that changes it, because we do know why he stayed behind, at least according to... What a shocking surprise. An 18-year-old guy wants to chat with a girl. Oh, my God. You know, of course. There's no other motive for it. Every 18-year-old boy on the planet who's in that situation, surrounded by cute bikini-clad girls, is going to want to talk to one of them. That's their job. Absolutely. That's their job. Especially if you feel like you got one on the line. You know, it sounds like he may have been connecting with this Katie. And I don't know whether it was Katie or anybody else. I'm certainly not suggesting anything untoward or questionable about this young lady. They're all out there having fun. You remember what it was like to finish up high school, get ready to go to college. You go back to school. You're an athlete. You're a football player. You're a stud. You look great, feel great. You had a couple of beers. You know, you're just enjoying your life. But something happened between the time that that boat left, the boat that he had arrived on, the boat that apparently had the bilge problem, and the rest of the boats leaving. And I know those situations where those raft ups occur are chaotic, but I just, I can't think of a way, and it frustrates me, and I did some reporting on this before coming on, knowing you're going to want to talk about it. I can't figure out why this young man either stayed behind or was left behind. Say he passed out. Let's just say for the sake of discussion, he had a few too many pops and he passed out. Kids do that. And he wakes up and he's cold and he's shivering. He doesn't have a cell phone. That's horrible. But what makes him get in the water and try to swim 10 miles? I don't think he does that. I think he does the best he can to stay warm on the island and hope that somebody figures out he's missing, which they did. And they sent rescue crews out there. The other possibility is they're strong undertoes, but he was said to be a strong swimmer. Now, no one's a strong swimmer when they're drunk. We don't know whether he was. But the other possibility, Chris, I'm at the beach for the summer every summer. I'm not a beach person, but I am surrounded by beach people and beach news now for 20 years. And one of the things that happens in addition to people dying from the undertow every year, unfortunately, is they get hit by boats. They get hit by boats. Well, that's last summer. There was a guy who he got thrown from his own boat. It was it was a freak accident. It was like the wake of another boat came. It jostled him into his throttle of his own boat, which it pushed his boat forward unexpectedly. And he and another got thrown off of their boat. One of the two was able to to swim out of the concentric circles that that that their own boat started to make because now it's not there's no one at the Yeah, exactly. And he did not have that, you know, the little connection between the key and his waistband that they are. Yeah, the land that they urge you to have. And the second man was hit by the boat and killed. And you see that all the time. If you take your kids tubing or water skiing, you have to put the flag on your boat to tell everybody I've got a person out of my boat nearby. Be careful. Not everybody does, especially in a place like this where it's a bunch of kids. And I can easily see something happening where one of the other boats leaving, if he were in the water, possibly hit him. And he went down that way. There's just so many possibilities that endless. I mean, I've even as an experienced boater, a skipper, you know, who, you know, I took all the Coast Guard classes and did a lot of boating on the East Coast and in Michigan. And and you can slip on the swim platform of a boat. And I've caught myself a couple of times over the years right on the edge of something. And, you know, it can be slippery and you're not paying attention for one split second and down you go. And I can recite case after case of celebrities who have had issues on boats that the ballplayer Norm Cash was coming out of a restaurant in Beaver Island, Michigan, walking on the dock, slipped between his boat and the dock. They didn't find him the next morning. You know, it happens fast. But I still think that somebody had to see something. I mean, if he's jumping on the back of a boat and they're all taken off at the same time, somebody sees him. Somebody has to be the last human being to see Nolan Wells alive. And I'd like to know who that is. I mean, especially if it is, as they tell us, which is he was one of the only black boys there. So, I mean, he would be memorable from that standpoint. He was so obviously beloved by those other kids that I would be shocked if that played into it. Now, again, I wasn't there. I don't know what happened in the waning hours of that party. I don't know what time the very last boat took off or the very last group of boats. I presume it was before dark, but you never know with kids. So, you know, I'm sure they're focusing in on that time frame and those boats. And if I were investigating the case, I would have the phones of every kid who is in that vicinity or every kid whose phone I can get. And I would do some pinpointing and gather the forensic evidence. And I'd be looking carefully at that. We'll find out. I'm confident that if there is foul play, I think they'll figure it out. And the sheriff's office there and the DA there, I don't think they have any motive to cover this up. I mean, I think some of the families there, you know, they come from money. They come from influence. You know, I heard somebody say, you know, I was middle class growing up and my dad had a boat, but we weren't rich enough for him to let me drive that boat. And I understand that concept. And these people are obviously well enough off that they could afford to have their kids drive their boats. And I get that. And my kids drove boats. And thankfully, we never had an incident like this. But if there was foul play, somebody's going to talk. The evidence is going to exist on one of those phones. Somebody's going to say something, and we will find out. If it's an accident, you know, either way, my heart breaks for this family, because this is just something that shouldn't happen. And you can't keep your kids in the basement. And you've got to allow them to go out and have fun and do adventurous stuff. That's how kids develop into good adults. And to have this happen as a result of something that was supposed to be so fun and such a rite of passage, it really it's terrible. It's horrifying. No BS, no agenda, no fear. For the first time since World War II, our national debt has exceeded the gross domestic product. America's reckless government spending keeps catching up with us. Higher inflation, higher prices, higher cost of living expenses, and higher interest payments on the national debt. 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