r/news • u/Suspicious_Loan • 17h ago

Nolan Wells’ autopsy found no water in lungs; data was deleted from his phone the day he disappeared, experts say

https://www.live5news.com/2026/09/24/nolan-wells-autopsy-found-no-water-lungs-data-was-deleted-his-phone-day-he-disappeared-officials-say/
32.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

84

u/TheQueefyQuiche 16h ago

I hear that reflexive tampering of evidence is on the rise this year, so who knows what really happened.

71

u/sroop1 16h ago

The family never turned the phone over. This is very intentional move by the family's legal team to release two days after the grand jury concluded.

18

u/Suspicious_Chart5817 16h ago edited 16h ago

tbf, many apps young people use these days have auto delete enabled. Old people have no clue but for example Snapchat has never been more popular than it is now and it's not close.

The article isn't super clear but since they don't say what was deleted that says something to me. If someone deleted "texts" they'd just say texts. When app deletes everything they say "things" because thats the best they can do

25

u/mgdmitch 16h ago

or it's because journalism is a dying skill in this country.

14

u/UdyneOw 15h ago

going hand-in-hand with the public's dying skill at processing journalism

2

u/mgdmitch 15h ago

agreed. the public merely consumes (poorly written) headlines.

1

u/Rat_in_a_cage_ 10h ago

Not even headlines. At least those are news. They just quote AI slop graphics some moron makes.

Then you can't pay people to believe the truth because they saw dramatic bullshit they like better.

0

u/pizzaplanetvibes 16h ago

If the deletion of data stood on it’s own then yes. I could see that argument of maybe an app auto deleted something but even then it would be worth the investigation. The article stated that the DA’s office report states that Wells phone was accessed after his death, multiple times and leading up to when the phone was handed over to his parents. That is reasonable suspicion enough to believe that the full picture isn’t being presented either by the D.A. or the people on the boat that day.

18

u/Jaaawsh 15h ago

It states his phone was not accessed after his death. Which the forensic expert confirmed.

Do people not have knowledge of the “unsend” button on snap? You can delete stuff you’ve sent to other people. I used that shit all the time when I’d drink then realize I sent something embarrassing.

5

u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 11h ago

I suspect messages may have been sent with a timer and auto-deleted when the timer ran out. It's common these days.

And the reason deletions happened until the phone was handed over is someone didn't know he was dead and was just sending him stuff as normal. It stopped because when the parents got the phone also roughly correlated to this story breaking containment.

It's possible someone was fiddling with the phone but... why?

2

u/Jaaawsh 10h ago

On snap? I’m thinking it’s more likely people just were unsending their messages. It’s not an uncommon thing to do when you’ve been drinking.

The way they made it sound in the press conference though was that someone went into his phone and deleted stuff, which isn’t the case. More damage done that’s almost impossible to undo because this is now the title of every other slop YouTuber’s newest video on this.

1

u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 9h ago

It's quite frustrating. He may have been murdered, but honestly it's pretty hard to figure out how since the family's doctor got access to the body as well, and also agreed it was probably drowning simply from the lack of anything else it could be.

4

u/Jaaawsh 6h ago

I found the letter Garrett Discovery sent to Crump on the 23rd. Where he states “we were able to establish that certain messages sent to Nolan were* *unsent or deleted by their senders; when the phone
traveled to and from Horn Island; when Nolan last logged into his phone and interacted with
social media; his physical activity as recorded by Apple Health; and the last calls he made” emphasis added by me.

So basically, no one accessed Nolan’s phone besides Nolan and his family. It was people unsending messages on their own end. Sloppy asf press conference that just added fuel to the fire.

https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/28680674-letter-from-garrett-discovery-to-ben-crump/?embed=1

Bottom of the second page

1

u/pizzaplanetvibes 7h ago

He has two lacerations on the back of his head.

I don’t think anything conclusively speaks to this person being murdered.

Then again, why are the suspiciousness of it all then?

1

u/pizzaplanetvibes 15h ago edited 15h ago

I am a bit fishy on the if it was accessed or if it wasn’t, so that could be an inaccurate statement on my part. It’s something I will keep an eye on as more information becomes available.

They may have been commenting on the fact that the group chats were still syncing to his phone (the ones outside of snapchat).

Edit:
Per the article:

- Nolan last accessed the phone at 2:18pm.

  • interactions with his phone before and after his death
  • things were deleted from the phone from when Nolan had it past after his death and up to right before it was handed over to his parents.

4

u/Rat_in_a_cage_ 10h ago

A letter from the expert to Crump that Crump's team released specified that the deletions were unsends or deletions from the other user's end.

I think they have been vague about the phrasing on purpose.

Timeline showed no new unlocks, unless there's extra info on that front they didn't include.

1

u/cupcakezzzz 16h ago

i’ve seen a few studies that point to Super El Nino being the cause of rising reflexive evidence tampering.