Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath has criticised lawyer Ben Crump over claims that text messages were deleted from Nolan Wells’s mobile phone.
Crump and a forensic expert appointed by his team said they had found deleted data on the phone, including messages on Snapchat, during a press conference about what they described as alleged new evidence.
McIlrath disputed the interpretation, saying: “The user action discussed by [Crump’s team] is from other snapchat users, not someone physically accessing Nolan Wells’ phone.”
She said Crump’s team had not supplied evidence to the district attorney’s office supporting a different conclusion.
“If the Crump team has evidence to the contrary, they have not provided it to us,” McIlrath said. She added that a grand jury report had set out other material examined in the case, including mobile phone downloads, surveillance data, GPS data and a printed report from Wells’s phone.
McIlrath also challenged the family’s lawyer to provide any information suggesting that Wells was murdered. “If his 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.
Wells disappeared on 4 July during a boat outing with Warren Hudson, Jax Pitalo and Morgan Seymour. His body was found two days later.
After hearing testimony from 43 witnesses and reviewing phone downloads, GPS data, surveillance footage and other material, a grand jury returned a “no true bill”, meaning no charges were filed.
The panel said the circumstances were consistent with drowning. However, Wells’s official cause and manner of death remain undetermined.
