Christine Wonsley says she cannot sleep since her 18-year-old son, Nolan Wells, first went missing after a Fourth of July trip to Horn Island. Wells, a wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, was later found dead in the water off the shoreline, and Rolling Stone is the backdrop for the public scrutiny now surrounding the case.
“This was our baby boy,” she said. “I birthed him.”
Nolan Wells on Horn Island
Wells went to Horn Island with friends on the Fourth of July. Horn Island is an uninhabited stretch of wilderness off the Mississippi coast with no shelters, no facilities and no communications. His friends returned home, but he did not.
A National Park Service agent found his body face down in the water off the shoreline on Monday morning. The Jackson County Sheriff's Department is still investigating his death, which leaves the family waiting for answers while the timeline of his last hours is still being pieced together.
John Ledbetter and the timeline
Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter previously told affiliate WXXV, “It's gonna take a lot of hard work” to get to the bottom of the case. On Friday, Rev. Al Sharpton said, “This does not smell right,” and Ben Crump said a young woman said Nolan planned to go back to the boat with the boys.
Crump also said the boys said Nolan told them he was going to stay and talk to the young woman. Those two accounts leave investigators with a narrow but important task: interview each person separately and test whether the stories match, which is the kind of step Charles Ramsey said law enforcement often needs before deciding what caused a death.
Christine and Elmore Wonsley
Charles Ramsey said investigators must interview each of the friends Wells traveled with, anyone on the beach at the time and the girl he was purportedly talking to on the island. Christine and Elmore Wonsley spoke to 's Victor Blackwell on Saturday, keeping the focus on the question that still drives the case: why Nolan Wells did not return with the others.
