Nobody has been charged in the death of Nolan Wells, and three of the friends who were with him on Horn Island have now hired one of the lawyers who represented Donald Trump against major news organizations. Warren Hudson, Jax Pitalo and Morgan Seymour brought in defamation attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik this week, added to the team by their existing attorney, J. Tyler Cox. A GiveSendGo fund supporting their legal costs has raised over $160,000.
Paltzik is not a small name. He has represented Trump in high profile media disputes involving CBS and Paramount, The New York Times and the BBC. Defamation law is a specific specialty, and hiring someone at that level signals the plan is not just to answer investigators but to go after people making claims in public.Cox and Paltzik said as much in a joint statement given to TMZ. They said they are proud to stand with and fight for three completely innocent young men, and that starting now, anyone who continues trafficking in lies about them will be held accountable to the maximum extent of the law. They said the three had nothing whatsoever to do with what happened to Nolan.The fund was set up by Dr. Benjamin Hudson, Warren’s father, on behalf of his son along with Pitalo and Seymour. The pipeline running to it has been conservative media. Brandon Tatum, host of “The Officer Tatum Show,” was first to report the Paltzik hire and has directed his audience to the fundraiser, arguing that the young men should be mourning their friend rather than defending their reputations. Warren Hudson previously sat down with Tatum and denied any involvement in Nolan’s death or any tampering with his phone.Ben Crump, who represents Nolan’s family, was asked about the new legal team in New York on Thursday and did not take the bait. He called the choice of attorney a distraction and said the only thing that matters to him and to Nolan’s family is finding out the truth about how Nolan died.Cox and Paltzik say they want that too. They told TMZ they are traveling to Horn Island to see for themselves where the 18-year-old disappeared and where his body was found, which amounts to a private legal team running its own look at the scene while the state’s official autopsy is still not public.Here is where the actual case stands. Nolan Wells traveled by boat with a group of high school friends to Horn Island on Saturday, July 4. Horn Island is an undeveloped ten mile strip of sand and brush south of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, reachable only by boat, and it was packed with holiday crowds that day. Nolan was last seen around 3 p.m. He did not come back with the group. His mother reported him missing that night, and a U.S. park ranger found his body at the northwestern tip of the island on the morning of July 6.Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter has said initial interviews indicated Nolan chose to stay on the island and that his friends believed he would catch a ride back with someone else. The sheriff has said the friends have cooperated and that the investigation remains active. Local officials said early on that no foul play was suspected.
The family did not accept that. Crump said Nolan’s father described him as an elite athlete who could swim, and that the family does not accept an accidental drowning. Crump has also said Nolan’s friends took his phone with them when they left the island, and that when the family got the phone back, messages had been deleted.An independent autopsy was performed by Dr. Roger A. Mitchell, a board certified forensic pathologist and president of the National Medical Association, and paid for by Colin Kaepernick. Crump announced the preliminary findings on July 22 at the NAACP National Convention in Chicago. Cause and manner of death: undetermined, pending further investigation. Mitchell noted red discoloration in the soft tissue at the back of Nolan’s head with no skull fractures or lacerations to the skin there. He also flagged the biggest limitation on his review, which was that he could not directly examine the airway and lungs for water or the stomach for contents, the exact evidence needed to confirm a drowning. He wrote that when a body is found in water and drowning is suspected, it matters how the person entered the water, and that this is especially true for someone who could swim.The state medical examiner’s office has still not released the official autopsy. It said its own examination followed standard procedures and protocols, declined to comment on the independent findings, and urged the public to stay patient and avoid drawing conclusions before the investigation is finished, saying unfounded speculation creates obstacles for investigators.Nolan was Black. The friends he traveled to the island with are white. He was the only one who did not come home. He played football at Ocean Springs High School and was a wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, set to return for the coming season. He would have turned 19 in August. The NAACP National Board adopted a resolution on July 18 calling on local, state and federal authorities including the Department of Justice to conduct a transparent review of how he came to be left on the island and of everything that happened in the hours before his body was found.There is a $125,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, funded jointly by Al Sharpton, Tyler Perry and Terrell Owens.The pressure has also produced things nobody should want. Bart Edmiston Jr., another friend of Nolan’s, sent a cease and desist letter to OnlyFans creator Kymbra Li over claims linking him to the death and an alleged cover up, which she denies. A California man was arrested after authorities said he sent messages threatening Judge Ashlee Cole, Warren Hudson’s stepmother, and her children. The Hudson family has shared audio of threatening calls with the Sun Herald.So the ledger reads like this: a reward fund on one side, a defense fund on the other, an independent autopsy that could not answer the question, a state autopsy nobody has seen, no arrests, and a family still waiting.
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