The Nolan Wells Case, Part 1 of 3: The Trip
On the evening of July 3, 18-year-old Nolan Wells made salmon for his family. Then hug, kiss, and he left to stay with friends for the holiday.
It was a familiar plan. Wells had just graduated from Ocean Springs High School in 2025 and enrolled at Southwest Mississippi Community College, where he was a wide receiver getting ready for football training camp after the July 4th weekend.
On July 4th, he joined a group of high school friends for a boat trip to Horn Island — a federally protected barrier island about 10 miles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast known for its untouched beaches and total isolation. The boat left the southern shore at 9:56 a.m. and arrived at the western tip at 11:14 a.m.
In photos from the boat that day, Wells — 6’1”, in blue swim trunks and sunglasses — towers above his friends, arm slung around their shoulders, smiling.
At 5:44 p.m., the vessel arrived back on the mainland.
Wells wasn’t on it.
His family says they got a call around 11 p.m. from one of his friends. They reported him missing that night.
What happened on the island in between is still the central question.
Several friends told deputies that when they left, Wells was with an unknown female and chose to remain on the island. But others who knew him questioned that.
“I’ve never known Nolan to stay back while his friends leave,” Jayvon Williams, a friend who saw him on the island that day, told CNN. “He’s always been a guy where if he rode with you, he’s going to come back with you.”
His father put it the same way: “We always taught him, ‘If you go with a group, you stay with the group.’”
The first search started immediately. On July 5, Wells’ mother Christine Wonsley wrote that she and her husband had his cellphone — retrieved after a friend’s mother tracked it via Snapchat to a house where “a lot of people” were gathered.
When Wonsley looked through it, she said it struck her as “too clean.” No videos or pictures in Snapchat from the day on the island. “If he has a phone out all the time at home, he’s definitely going to have a phone out whenever he’s out,” she said.
Officially, the search ramped up that day. Jackson County Sheriff’s Department coordinated with the Coast Guard and Mississippi Department of Marine Resources. Two drone flights surveyed the western side of Horn Island, but excessive heat caused batteries to swell and cut flights short. Volunteer group United Cajun Navy joined, noting the beach was packed with boats and people that day, and that strong rip currents may have posed a risk.
On July 6, the search ended where no family wants it to end. A body matching Wells’ description was recovered from the water near the shoreline.
The coroner said there were no immediate signs of physical injury and requested the state medical examiner do the autopsy because of the condition the body was found in.
What was supposed to be a day on the water had become a death investigation.
In Part 2, we’ll look at where that investigation stands now — two autopsies, a phone, and a lot of unanswered questions.
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