When families lose faith in local investigations, who steps in?

More than 30 days after the disappearance and death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, his family is still seeking answers about what happened.

On July 4, Wells was hanging out with three friends at Horn Island, about 10 miles off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, when his parents received a call from one of his friends that he was missing.

His friends had returned from the island by boat. Wells did not. Two days later, the college football player was found dead and local authorities quickly suggested there was no foul play.

Wells is Black. His three friends are white. In this context, “no foul play” has felt like a placeholder for less urgency, lots of unanswered questions and an overwhelming amount of speculation.

Last week, Wells’ parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Atlanta, made yet another plea for transparency.

The family has asked for a federal review of the circumstances surrounding their son’s death, a request supported by a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

On Monday, the NAACP also joined the legal team.

It shouldn’t take high-powered attorneys, the weight of a national civil rights organization or the federal government to ensure a thorough investigation, but we know from history, both distant and recent, when a Black person dies in a majority-white town, the dynamic is different.

“You want to believe that (because) this is a child that everybody is going to do their level best to find out what happened,” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Wonsleys. “They had concerns whether they were going to get a fair and impartial investigation.”

Christine Wonsley described the frantic evening just after 11 p.m. when they received a call that Nolan was missing. She had already tried to call her son several times but did not get an answer. His friends maintained that he stayed back to meet up with a girl instead of accompanying them back to the mainland.

The evening soon became a confusing blur of phone calls and visits to different agencies — the Department of Marine Resources, the Coast Guard, the Ocean Springs Police Department, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department — all of which said the case was out of their jurisdiction.

“At that point, I am like, who am I supposed to talk to? Who is supposed to help me with this?” Christine Wonsley said.

Their first engagement with law enforcement was a midnight meetup in the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office had agreed to take a statement, but the deputy left without sharing a plan of action.

“Where is the urgency?” Wonsley wondered.

When a loved one goes missing, family members should not have to act as a search and rescue team. When a loved one is found dead, family members should not be forced to become private investigators. When there is the sense that no one is there to help, we, the public, must demand answers from local and national law enforcement officials.

The Wonsleys’ plight resonated with Michelle Graves, a close friend of Tamla Horsford, the mom who died in 2018 during an adult sleepover with a group of fellow football parents. Horsford was the only Black person in attendance at the event in Forsyth County. She was found dead in the backyard the next morning.

Tamla Horsford died in November after a witness said he believed she fell off a balcony during an adult slumber party. (Courtesy of family)

When we talked on the phone, Graves said she saw similarities in both cases: the delays in reporting Horsford’s death, the immediate assumption that her death was accidental and multiple inconsistencies in witness stories.

Facing public pressure, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office pulled in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to review their findings. GBI closed their investigation in 2021 with the same conclusion: no foul play.

Graves openly questioned certain procedural missteps and the general lack of professionalism in county law enforcement’s handling of the case.

She recalled how much more energy was directed toward harassing her rather than seeking answers. Someone hired a private investigator to follow her. She had to fight a defamation lawsuit, which was ultimately dropped.

“If you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t care if somebody is poking around,” said Graves. “All I was doing was trying to find out why my friend died, and if you didn’t do anything, it shouldn’t matter to you.”

Graves believes, like the Wonsleys, that the only way to approximate a fair and adequate investigation is to engage federal agencies. But even that may have limitations.

“I am trying to get Tamla’s case back out there,” she said. “Can we get the FBI involved? I don’t even know that you can trust them.”