The investigation into 18-year-old Nolan Wells’ death just took another turn. On July 22, Brian Trascher — vice president of the United Cajun Navy — told TMZ he has photographs of Wells’ body that were taken on July 6, the morning authorities discovered him on Horn Island off Mississippi’s coast. And he’s ready to hand them over to the family. Just ask.
Wells disappeared during a Fourth of July boat trip to Horn Island with friends, and his body was found two days later in what authorities initially classified as a possible drowning. But since that discovery, the case has spiraled into a high-profile investigation marked by conflicting accounts, legal tension, and unanswered questions that have drawn national attention — and the involvement of civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who’s representing Wells’ family.
Trascher was part of the Cajun Navy’s aircraft search team, flying about 400 feet in the air as law enforcement responded on the beach. He said he took wide-angle photos of the scene but didn’t immediately tell the family about them. Why? “I worried the photos would only make an unbearable moment even traumatic,” he told TMZ. “Plus, law enforcement had a much better view.” Fair reasoning on the surface — but here’s where it gets messy. The family only learned about these photos through media coverage, not a phone call from the rescue organization that helped find their son.
This revelation comes at a flashpoint moment in the case. Earlier on July 22, Crump addressed the NAACP convention in Chicago with preliminary findings from an independent autopsy the family commissioned. He claimed the United Cajun Navy told him Wells was found “face down and fully clothed.” That detail mattered to Crump because, he argued, video footage showed Wells shirtless when he was last seen alive — raising the question: when and how did he get a shirt?
But hours after Crump’s remarks, the Cajun Navy pushed back hard. On X (formerly Twitter), they wrote: “@AttorneyCrump we didn’t say Nolan was fully clothed when found. He was wearing only swim trunks. Please don’t misrepresent our words.” The contradiction stems from an appearance by Cajun Navy president Todd Terrell on Nancy Grace’s Crime Stories on July 21, where he apparently confirmed the “fully clothed” description — a detail he later disputed. Now Crump and the Cajun Navy are publicly at odds over what seems like a crucial piece of evidence.
Here’s the bigger picture: Wells, an 18-year-old wide receiver for Southwest Mississippi Community College, went to celebrate Independence Day with a group of friends — who appear, based on photos, to be primarily white. He chose to stay behind on the island while his friends left around 4:30 p.m. due to a boat issue. When he didn’t come home that night, his mother, Christine Wells-Wonsley, launched a desperate social media search that went viral. The United Cajun Navy and volunteers helped locate him by July 6. But the official sheriff’s statement that “no foul play was suspected” immediately sparked frustration online. The fact that Wells is Black and his friends appear to be white has fueled broader conversation about racial dynamics in Mississippi — a state with a deeply fraught history.
Ben Crump has been pushing for transparency and a thorough investigation. The family commissioned an independent autopsy, which came back with a cause of death listed as “undetermined pending investigation.” That means the official cause is still unknown. Jackson County officials are awaiting full autopsy results and toxicology. The district attorney has indicated the case will eventually go before a grand jury to determine if any criminal charges are warranted.
Wells’ funeral was held on July 21 with hundreds in attendance. Rev. Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy, and Crump called for justice. Yet here we are, three weeks later, still with critical questions unanswered — and now with the Cajun Navy’s unreleased evidence adding another layer of complexity to an already tangled investigation.
The 16BARS take: A rescue organization sitting on evidence photos for weeks, conflicting accounts of what Wells was wearing, and a family forced to hire a national civil rights attorney to get answers — this is exactly the kind of opaque investigation that breeds distrust. If those photos matter to the truth, they need to be part of the public record NOW, not offered quietly after the fact.
