Lemon Live at 5: “They Failed Our Son” Nolan Wells’ Parents Break Their Silence

Honestly? Not good. But we'll figure this out. We will make it through this by the grace of God because that's all we have right now is our faith.

Yes. Yes. I don't think it was as fair and as transparent as it was told to be. We're left with a lot of questions. But at the end of the day, we still don't know what happened to our son.

Yes, that's correct. A text message was received at 7:54, and then in the message she did explain that it would be put on Facebook. Didn't specify a time, but of course my family, friends are like, 'I don't know if you've seen this.' And so everyone is sending the video to us. And so I was just like, why? Like, this is just crazy. Like, didn't even give us that moment to process the documents, process what had happened, or even process what was going to occur, you know, with the public.

Yep, the only victim in this situation is Nolan. People need to understand and realize at the end of the day, Nolan is dead. He is not here. We cannot see him. We cannot touch him. We cannot talk to him. He's not here. He lost his life. No one else that day lost their lives. Everyone is able to go on about their day, and me, Elmore, Nolan's siblings, our family, we are all stuck in grief right now.

I just feel like it wasn't really about Nolan. Again, we are now left with more questions than we have answers. And at the end of the day, there is no one on this earth that wants answers more than me, Nolan's father, his siblings, and our family. And we still do not have them.

Well, to me, it seemed like, like you said, like a defense. It was more of protecting the community, protecting their reputation. But you're trying to protect the reputation of people who can still go to school, who still can go to work, can still go out and have fun. Like my wife said, Nolan is the victim. Very brief statements about Nolan, but it always went back to the community, the reputation of the people who we never accused. We just came out from the beginning, we wanted to know what happened to our son. And through that entire 15-minute or whatever speech she made, she never gave us any answers to that. To be honest with you, Don, I don't care about the community. I don't care about the reputation. My son is not here. That's what I care about. And no one can tell me what happened to him. It takes nothing to do something to enhance anything. You can enhance stuff to find, to convict people for all kinds of stuff. But you can't do your due diligence to help a family try to find their son.

I don't know what we have. What we have is 23 members of a state criminal grand jury in Mississippi. And I don't know what was, you know, given the secrecy of a grand jury, we don't know exactly the evidence that was presented. We understand it was 40 witnesses. It was GPS data. It was some, if not all, cell phone data related to not just Nolan Wells, but I presume witnesses. It was some, but not all, of the information gathered by the family and their attorneys like Ben Crump and the NAACP's Kristen Clark. And somebody presented it under state crimes to a grand jury. When I say I don't know what we got, we got a state no true bill returned, meaning there wasn't a majority of grand jurors who believed that a crime had been committed. They presumed that he had drowned, Nolan Wells had drowned after staying on the island when his friends and others had returned by boat. But again, there was things that are inconsistent. We know in multiple autopsies, like where did he get the blunt force trauma in the back of his head from? Where did he get the dried blood from? How did he drown? I mean, did he try to swim back to shore and he failed, or was there foul play on board? And what I saw in the combination of the announcement of the no true bill of the state, I keep emphasizing this, the state prosecution and the state prosecutor, the district attorney Angela Myers McElrath, it looked like a DA who is busy defending herself. We'll see the video in a minute. It's very smarmy, it's very snarky. It doesn't talk about the death of somebody who even the autopsy says was inconclusive. She just basically says, 'Nothing more to see here. My grand jury's done.' And then spent a fair amount of time in her video attacking the family and the family's attorney in Ben Crump, which I thought was highly unusual. The missing pieces here is this does not conclude how did Nolan Wells die. If we had an operating Department of Justice and a Civil Rights Division, there'd be a civil rights investigation under the lower standard that comes with civil cases, which is preponderance of the evidence. I mean, as we all know, O.J. didn't get convicted of that crime of murdering his wife, but a jury sure found that that happened in the civil case. Civil prosecution for civil rights violations, a federal prosecution. See, in normal times, if this was a Democratic Department of Justice or an independent-minded Department of Justice, you and I would be talking about, 'All right, well, one step is over. Let's move on to what the feds are doing.' Feds aren't doing a darn thing about this investigation, leaving it to the parents, their colleagues at the NAACP who have joined forces with them to bring justice to the family. It's all about what happened. That DA cannot look you, me, and your audience in the eye, Don, and tell us what happened. All she can say is she, and I don't know how it was presented, could not get a criminal conviction based on the evidence that was presented to that particular jury.

I mean, it's by a huge amount. It's like 4%, and it's thousands of times more than any other group of people. So, when it is very suspicious in this day and age, especially in Mississippi, when you see an inconclusive black male's death, and nobody knows what happened with an island teeming with people, with a waterway teeming with people on boats. And to hear the DA talk about it, I don't know. Everybody went home. He stayed on the island and somehow he drowned. Nothing to see here. That can't be the end of the story of what happened to Nolan Wells, just for our society and for his family.

The death of Nolan Wells has devastated our community. Outsiders and influencers have attempted to exploit Nolan's death to divide and create chaos here. But we are better together. Our community has suffered many tragedies, and I know that in the midst of this terrible loss, hateful rhetoric and vile speculation, what has been damaged in our community will be restored. The narrative that three white boys and a black boy went to an island and only three white friends returned spread like wildfire. This was false. Nolan went to Horn Island on July 4th, 2026, with a large group of friends, and while on the island he connected with even more friends. There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan's disappearance and death were racially motivated. Nolan's friends love Nolan, and Nolan loved them. Nolan chose to stay on the island that day, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to contradict that. The family, the Crump team, and anyone close to Nolan knew that his disappearance and death were not the result of racial hate or violence. Yet the flames of that narrative, set against the backdrop of Mississippi's terrible history, were fanned by both people who knew the truth and those who didn't. I cannot tell you how difficult it is observing people create narratives detrimental to our community when I have true knowledge that I cannot legally or ethically share. But my job requires discipline and restraint. I am responsible for protecting the integrity of active investigations, and I will always make decisions that most faithfully protect and respect the law regardless of circumstances. That is the difference between an attorney whose duty is owed to an individual client and a district attorney whose duty is owed to the community as a whole. I strictly and conservatively interpret the laws concerning what I can and should share with the public about a case. In the death investigation of Nolan Wells, that has meant that our community had to wait.

Yeah, I mean, her statement that there's not a scintilla of evidence to conclude that foul play led to Nolan Wells's death, and then takes it to heart. I mean, look, the NAACP joined for a reason. When I interviewed Kristen Clark, I asked her point-blank, 'Why did the NAACP get involved with this?' She said, 'When there's a mysterious death of a black person in America, we're on the scene. And we have to make sure, we're not trying to railroad anyone into getting convicted for crimes that didn't happen, but there needs to be transparency. There needs to be a resolution. This can't be a cold case. We never know what happened to Nolan Wells.' By the way, even in Mississippi, there's no statute of limitations for murder. So, if there's more evidence that is provided, she is duty-bound as the prosecutor to pursue it. But she doesn't seem to be looking for justice for families, to protect victims and survivors. She looks to be protecting her own hide and trying to do what she needs to do politically in order to satisfy her base. That is not supposed to be what happens in America as a prosecutor. You know, I would think the optics alone would encourage her to do more and do better.

Yeah, she attacked him and his statements and misstatements. I mean, these are his words. I paraphrase them.

On August 13th, 2026, after the Crump team conducted and released the results of its independent autopsy, and after receiving hundreds of tips, they advised my office that they had no evidence of a crime being committed against Nolan Wells. Just this weekend, I read where a congresswoman had met with Nolan's family and the Crump team and said that Nolan Wells is another black boy murdered and no one seems to care. Ma'am, you are wrong. The Crump team knows this and knows that they are dealing with a district attorney whose unwavering pursuit of the truth gave them all a seat at the table to offer the grand jury any and every piece of evidence they deemed important to this investigation. Keep in mind that this meeting with the congresswoman was after the Crump team advised my office they had discovered no evidence of a crime against Nolan. And understand that our investigation was exhaustive. And our complete investigation was presented to the grand jury.

Yeah, I mean, it is odd to all that Ben Crump wants to do as a civil rights lawyer and as the lead lawyer for the family is to obtain justice and dignity for them in this process, which is sorely lacking. And I hope your viewers and my viewers who have joined here today are thinking, would this happen if this was a white child? If this wasn't a black child in Mississippi, not sure about that. If this was a, let's be frank, if this was a blonde white girl that had this happen to, does anybody think really that that prosecutor would be issuing statements like that and attacking the lawyers for that child?

All right, if that's right. If you're not going to step into the breach, that vacuum or void will be filled. And what we should have had is not a declaration by the Jackson County Police Department, whatever it was, that from the beginning it's always been an accident investigation. Why? Why hasn't there been foul play from the very, very beginning? It changes how you treat the crime scene, including his buddies that were there who all lawyered up very, very quickly. Defensive about their work instead of working closely. This Kristen Clark told me at that time, and that was about two weeks ago, she had never met with the prosecutor, even though she's on the legal team and she's up on the stage, we just saw her in the back behind Ben Crump. How do you not meet with the general counsel for the NAACP, former head of the Department of Justice's civil rights division, and a family attorney about these issues? How do you keep them at arm's length? I mean, you just heard the prosecutor say, 'Well, the secrecy around a grand jury is not a sword, it's a shield to protect them.' What about the dignity of this process, the transparency?

Well, they are, and as we see it on the federal side under the Trump administration, you know, the presumption of regularity, which is a doctrine that had always been given a free pass to the government because it's like, no, we could never believe that there'd be a government that couldn't be trusted with the prosecutor process, with the grand jury process. Those days are over. Federal judges have now recognized time and time again that they're no longer going to trust the Department of Justice nor give it a free pass with the presumption of regularity. I don't think there's been any presumption of regularity in Mississippi concerning missing black people for a long, ever. So, I think we're right to call it out. It's this heavy-handedness and this lack of grace about the way that the prosecutor team is handling this with the family, treating them as the enemy instead of as grieving parents, that is really calling to me.

Oh, that's without a doubt. I mean, 1,000%. Like when it was Mississippi, I was like, well, of course it's Mississippi. You know, if he didn't drown in Lake Ontario, he drowned in Mississippi. And I don't like some of the aspects of the autopsy that have come out. Why are there blunt force anything? I mean, did he fall off the island into the water and drown? I mean, I really, it's conceivable, but again, this cannot be a cold case. If I were the governor of Mississippi and I was doing a proper civic duty, I would be appointing a special prosecutor independent from Ms. Myers, maybe even from outside of Mississippi, to investigate this matter, because I think the public is demanding that. That's why I think when you showcase this case and I showcase this case and platform it, we keep it in the public mind and we don't let it go because what they want us to do is turn the page and they want this story to be the bottom of the birdcage, and we're not going to let it.

What I am suggesting is that the Crump team knew better, but did not do better. I am giving you the opportunity to see for yourself what was communicated between my office and the Crump team. Releasing the correspondence I sent during the investigation is the written record that provides the clearest account of those interactions. From the beginning, I told Nolan's family that our goal was the same, to find out what happened to Nolan Wells. This is and has always been a search for the truth. No narrative, no agenda, no politics, nothing personal, just the truth. One of the most prevalent false narratives was that my office refused to cooperate and/or obstructed a mutual examination with the Crump team of Nolan's cell phone. This could not be further from the truth. You must first understand that the state of Mississippi had no legal avenue to seize and search Nolan's cell phone. Nolan's family received that phone in the very early morning hours of July 5th, and it continues to remain in their possession. Nolan's family and the Crump team have always been in complete control of Nolan's cell phone, including when, where, how, and if the phone would be examined by the state. During our July 15th, 2026 meeting, I accepted the Crump team's offer to participate in a mutual examination of Nolan's cell phone. I remained willing to do so and agreeable to any conditions the family wished to impose. Again, this truth about Nolan's phone was not shared with the public. When the extraction did not happen within a reasonable time, I reached out to get the ball rolling. We could not wait on the Crump team. I could not allow this investigation to be delayed, especially as tensions rose, false information exploded, and threats and harassment continued to escalate. Unbeknownst to me, the family was out of town at that time. Their attorneys reached out, and we subsequently set up a time and place for an extraction to occur. On the morning of the agreed-upon extraction day, our law enforcement investigators were contacted by privately retained examiners with Garrett Discovery Inc., advising that the mutual phone extraction would not occur, as they had begun a private extraction the evening prior, and it was incomplete. I respected the family's decision for a private examination and requested that they share those results with my office. On August 28th, 2026, the Crump team advised that I would receive the extraction data by FedEx within 48 hours and provided a 14-page preliminary report indicating the phone had not been accessed by anyone other than Nolan's family, and nothing had been deleted off of the phone since Nolan's last use. I never received the full extraction data as promised, and I never received a complete extraction report of Nolan's cell phone. After the grand jury convened in this case, the Crump team provided a 282-page selection of reports from Nolan's cell phone, which the grand jury considered.

No, and to answer your question, in criminal cases, what the prosecutor should do in order to maintain some sort of public veneer of objectivity and independence is just say there's a no true bill returned today by the grand jury. Maybe you go on to say there were 40 witnesses and there was this kind of evidence including the autopsies, and the 23 people, we didn't get a majority out of these grand jurors to indict anybody. But she could have also said, if I was rewriting this, however, that we don't want this to be a cold case. We want to get to the bottom of what is happening and we will continue to vigilantly pursue all leads even if this particular grand jury did not return a bill. I will be vigilant. She didn't say any of that. She said, 'Well, I don't like Benjamin Crump and he's a civil rights lawyer.' This is my paraphrase. 'And he didn't give me this and then he says I didn't give the full telephone records and I did.' I mean, it's just the fact that a middle-aged white woman with her bouffant hair is sitting there in 2026 talking about what is still a missing and, well, not missing, a dead black boy and talking about it in that way and has no problem from her political strategy standpoint in attacking the family by way of the attorney, I think it's just galling. She should lose her job and the governor's office should worry about this, hopefully. If we bring enough public attention to it, I'm telling you they need to appoint an independent prosecutor. We can't count on the feds. Feds aren't going to do it. Need to lean on the Mississippi attorney general and lean on the governor to appoint an independent prosecutor on this.

Yeah. She should lose her job not because, oh, she didn't get the conviction. I want to make this clear to your audience and to mine. I'm not saying, you know, I'm not slapping my forehead here. I haven't...

I said once with you, "But how did they not get an indictment?" I wasn't there for the 40 hours of the 40 witnesses. I wasn't there for the evidence as it was being presented. And I'm not saying I don't trust the grand jury in Mississippi. I just don't know what was presented to them. However, that should not end the story. We want to know, and that prosecutor should want to know and leave the door open. That's why Benjamin Crump has demanded that all the autopsies be released.

And as he said, and to paraphrase his posting a few hours ago, no true bill does not mean it is not the resolution of how Nolan Wells died. And the fact that she wants to put a big fat period on the end of it, like they did with Trump and the Epstein files. We're done. Are we done now? Why are we still talking about this? We're still talking about it because justice has not been done. And how about a little level of compassion and dignity for the family? Just once.