Autopsy results for a Mississippi teen who vanished during a Fourth of July boat trip do not indicate that there was foul play involved in his death, as investigators are awaiting crucial details from his toxicology report, a former top medical examiner has told The Post.
“I think just to be clear that so far there’s nothing dependent on foul play, but we don’t know what their findings were,” Dr. Michael Baden, former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, told The Post after reviewing Nolan Wells’ preliminary independent autopsy results.
The cause of death of the 18-year-old is yet to be determined, with key factors such as challenges due to decomposition and uncertainty over the cause of a 12-inch “discoloration” to his head delaying the answers his family demands.
“Right now, the situation is you can’t tell the cause of death,” said Dr. Baden, who is also a former chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police.
“Normally, routine toxicology for drugs of abuse is finished as a priority. And within a week or two, almost all the drugs can be identified.”
“The drugs that take longer are some of the more recent cannabinoid drugs, marijuana type drugs,” he added. “But they usually aren’t the major factor. They don’t usually kill people.”
During a press conference with Wells’ grieving parents on Wednesday, civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump highlighted how the victim’s throat had been removed during an official post-mortem prior to his body being flown over 800 miles to Washington, DC, for a second autopsy.
However, Dr. Baden, who was involved in the autopsy on Jeffrey Epstein, said this wasn’t unusual.
“Normally if there were fractures of the windpipe or the Adam’s apple, which would indicate neck compression, it’s pretty apparent at the first autopsy,” he said.
“However, the keeping of the windpipe is not uncommon. It’s not usual, but in cases like this, it’s kept for further, closer examination because there can be very tiny fractures that are missed,” Dr. Baden said.
The experienced pathologist also said it was still too soon to say whether the mark on the back of Wells’ head was the result of an accident or foul play, or whether it occurred before or after death.
“It isn’t a small injury. It’s about 12 inches long, the whole back of the scalp. So that could be postmortem decomposition,” said Dr. Baden.
“It could be from falling or being struck by a rock or something in the water or a floating log in the water. And one can’t rule out that he wasn’t struck in the head before he went in the water. But there are a lot of innocent ways it could have happened,” he added.
One of the seven unanswered questions flagged by the independent autopsy’s pathologist, Dr. Roger Mitchell, President of the National Medical Association, was whether there is any evidence of a brain bleed.
“If there was hemorrhage around the brain, we talked about the subdural hemorrhage, which can happen from a blow to the head or a fall, most common with a backward fall while drunk, that hemorrhage wouldn’t be available [in the autopsy] but the brain itself is available,” Dr. Baden told The Post.
“So there’s a possibility that there was hemorrhage around the brain, which indicates trauma,” he added.
Crump presented the report’s preliminary findings Wednesday morning at the NAACP National Convention in Chicago.
Among the unanswered questions highlighted in Dr. Mitchell’s report are the circumstances that led to Wells entering the water, what position the body was in when found, and whether there was any water in the airway, which would indicate drowning.
Crump claimed during the press conference that Wells’ body was found face down and fully clothed, despite photos from the day showing him shirtless, wearing swimming trunks.
Despite the unanswered questions, the NAACP conceded that it couldn’t rule out that Wells’ death may have been an accident.
“If it was truly an accident, then the families will have the necessary answers that any family deserves in this situation,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said while kicking off the press conference.
Police have said nothing points to foul play, at least yet, and they suspect Wells likely drowned after his friends left the island without him.
Wells had been drinking alcohol on the day he disappeared but seemed “completely fine,” his self-described “best friend” claimed.
“I talked to Nolan, and you know, Nolan was drinking. Everybody was drinking, most of everybody, and, I mean, Nolan seemed completely fine every time I talked to him,” Warren Hudson told conservative YouTuber Brandon Tatum.