The official record on Nolan Wells’ body is narrower than the argument built on top of it. The Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s autopsy, performed July 7, and the independent autopsy by Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., performed July 10 and sent to Ben Crump’s team on July 19, both list cause and manner of death as undetermined. The death certificate does the same. Drowning, both experts said, is what remains when other causes are excluded, and it could not be certified because no one witnessed the moment he entered the water. Crump and senior attorney Liza Park made the empty airways the center of a September 24 press conference. The state report, they said, found no water in the lungs, no water in the throat, and no water in the stomach, and they asked how a grand jury could still call the death consistent with drowning.

Park also said the head injury showed red blood cells without a white-cell response, which the legal team read as evidence the blunt trauma happened within about four hours of death. Mitchell documented recent unexplained blunt-force injury to the back of the head and additional areas of the back, and he wrote that the investigation should stay open until the injuries, the entry into the water, Wells’ level of consciousness, and any non-accidental factor could be established. The state examiner and Mitchell disagreed about non-deep bruising on the ʙuттocks and shoulder. The grand jury said it could not determine the cause of those marks. It did determine the head bruise was not fatal. A witness had already described the awkward slip from a boat at about 3:30 p.m., without being able to say whether the head was struck.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Mary Jumbelic, former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County, New York, told the New York Post that absent water can fit what examiners call dry drowning: the upper airway spasms shut before a large volume of water is inhaled, so the lungs and stomach stay relatively clear. She also said an unwitnessed death plus a body that has been decomposing for two days leaves a medical examiner with little to certify, which is why undetermined is the honest box. The larynx and hyoid were intact, which weighs against strangulation. Mitchell was allowed to examine the retained neck tissue at the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory, confirmed that holding that tissue is standard, and dispelled rumors that lungs and stomach had been withheld. He testified. Crump’s office said the state examiner did not pH๏τograph the back of the head. The grand jury’s phrase was never “we proved accidental drowning.” It was that the position, condition, timing, and place of the body were consistent with drowning, after both pathologists had already refused a firmer label. The family’s reading is that an undetermined death with unexplained bruising cannot be closed. The jury’s reading is that unexplained is not the same as criminal, and that no fatal injury was found.

She also accused Crump’s team of waiting until the eleventh hour for a private extraction and of giving the grand jury a few hundred selected pages rather than a full download. The family says the district attorney learned things late and still does not know whether the full extraction was shown to jurors. Both descriptions can be true at once in a narrow technical sense. Snapchat is built so senders can unsend. A forensic exam can see that content is gone without proving a stranger held the handset. The phone’s lock state after midafternoon is the fact Garrett put on the table. The grand jury treated that record as reviewed and insufficient for a charge. The parents still treat the empty apps as the thing that does not match the son they knew.

Source: https://nypost.com/2026/09/24/us-news/last-text-message-nolan-wells-sent-before-being-found-dead-in-water-after-july-4-boating-trip-revealed/