OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss.—Christine and Elmore Wonsley stood in a teary-eyed embrace as they spoke to a full crowd of family, friends and teammates who gathered to mourn and celebrate the life of their son Nolan Wells on Monday.
Christine Wonsley, center, walks with Rev. Al Sharpton, right, her husband Elmore, second from left, and attorney Ben Crump, left, during a memorial service for her son Nolan Xavier Wells, an 18-year-old found ᴅᴇᴀᴅ after taking a July 4 boat trip with friends on Monday, July 20, 2026, in Ocean Springs, Miss.
“We will miss everything about him,” Christine Wonsley said. “From his quiet nature to the corny jokes, his gentle smile.”
Wells, an 18-year-old resident of Ocean Springs, disappeared on July 4 during a boat trip with a group of friends to Horn Island, a lush barrier island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast well known for its natural beauty and summer gatherings.
Christine Wonsley reported him missing to authorities late on July 4 after he failed to return from that trip. A ranger found his body two days later, on the northwest beach of the island.
Before the service began at Center Pointe Church in Ocean Springs, family, friends and teammates packed the church, many dressed in light blue to honor Wells, to a prelude of “Heaven Gained an Angel.”
The funeral began with a prayer from Rev. Al Sharpton, who called for justice and asked those in attendance to remember Wells’ life with joy. Thaddeus Fairley Sr. then performed “Trust in God” by Elevation Worship.
Then, Wells’ parents, Elmore and Christine Wonsley, gave teary expressions reflecting on the life of their son and his protective, nurturing nature.
Christine Wonsley said Wells had a way about him that made everyone feel at ease and his absence has left “an emptiness that can never truly be filled.”
“We will always be proud of the legacy of love, kindness and faith that you have left behind,” she said, speaking to her son.
‘Somebody Saw Something’
In a pᴀssionate eulogy, Rev. Sharpton called for answers and urged people not to pᴀss judgment until investigators have uncovered all the facts in the case.
“We cannot say it was racist, but we cannot say it was not racist,” Sharpton said. “So let’s not judge either way until all the evidence is in.”
Sharpton also questioned why officials have seemed quick to dismiss that foul play might have been a possible factor in Wells’ death, why 18-year-old Wells would leave his phone with friends and why his friends did not immediately call police to report him missing.
The group of friends that Wells rode with to the crowded island that day told law enforcement that they left at 4:30 after their boat began taking on water, and that he declined to ride back with them, saying he would ride back on another boat. One of those friends contacted the U.S. Coast Guard around 11 p.m. on July 4 after realizing Wells had never returned.
No suspects have been announced in Wells’ death, nor has his death been ruled a homicide. Across social media, misinformation has spread after the teenager’s pᴀssing, much of it targeting the friends and acquaintances in Wells’ presence prior to his death.
At a press conference on Wednesday, attorney Ben Crump said his team had agreed to have a “mutual inspection” of Wells’ cell phone with their own experts and Jackson County investigators.
Sharpton then offered a $50,000 reward for anyone who could provide information that leads to an arrest. Filmmaker and actor Tyler Perry, who had already covered the cost of the funeral, later matched the reward while watching online, for a total reward of $100,000.
“He was not on that island by himself,” Sharpton said. “Somebody saw something or knows something.”
GPS data that CBS News first reported after making a public records request to the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources showed the boat Nolan Wells traveled to Horn Island, departing at 9:56 a.m. that morning and arriving just over an hour later. It left the island at 4:31 p.m., as Wells’ friends had previously stated, following a mechanical issue on the boat.
Tracestin Shepherd, one of Wells’ friends present on the island the day of his disappearance, told ABC News that Wells declined to return to shore when the boat departed so that he could stay with a girl he’d met. Wells, he said, intended to return on a different friend’s boat.
Sharpton said he believes Mississippi’s racist history, including the lynching of Emmett Till, is the reason why a lot of people in the nation are calling for answers about Wells’ death.
“Some of us remember what happened in Mississippi,” Sharpton said. “Before we can medicate and heal today, we’ve got to look at your history.”
Because of Mississippi’s history, Sharpton said “we’ve got to be able to dig deep.”
“We can’t have people in law enforcement saying there was no foul play before the investigation,” he continued.
Still, Sharpton acknowledged the multiracial crowd that turned out to pay their respects to Wells.
“One of the things that I’m glad to see is that there are people of all races at this funeral,” Sharpton said. “And there are people of all ages. All whites are not racist, and all Blacks are not angry. Somewhere in the middle, we’ve got to meet and find what is just and fair. And that is why we want to celebrate Nolan and at the same time say we want a full and thorough investigation.”
Following the eulogy, Crump led the crowd in a chant of “Nolan’s life mattered.”
Both Autopsies Still Unreleased
At a press conference that followed the funeral, Crump said his team and the family are still waiting to receive an incident report and results of the autopsy.
Jackson County Coroner Bruce Lynd Jr. confirmed to the Mississippi Free Press in a July 8 interview that the Mississippi State Medical Examiner conducted Wells’ autopsy on July 7, shortly after the discovery of his body. Lynd, who personally examined Wells’ body on Horn Island, told this reporter he had seen no obvious signs of external injuries, and that Wells’ body had not been bound in any way, contrary to rumors he’d seen on social media.
But the condition of the body necessitated a swift review by the state examiner. Those results have yet to be released, likely while investigators wait on a toxicology report. Today, Crump said that it took six days for the family to receive Wells’ body after the official autopsy in order to conduct the secondary autopsy.
Attorney Crump also confirmed in a press event the week Wells’ body was discovered that he would receive a second, independent autopsy, funded by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Foundation. The autopsy’s results have yet to be released.
The family and attorneys met with Jackson County District Attorney Angel McIlrath about when they would receive the incident report on Wells’ death. Under Mississippi law, a victim is enтιтled to receive an incident report within 72 hours.
After the funeral, Christine Wonsley thanked the community along with Tyler Perry and others who provided funding to cover the costs of the service.
“We just cannot thank our community enough for rallying around us during this time” Christine Wonsley said.
Amy Schafer reported from Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Nick Judin reported from Jackson, Mississippi.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
