Nolan Wells Death

Three of Nolan Wells' friends are suing a TikTok creator who allegedly branded them killers.

According to court docs obtained by TMZ, Warren Hudson, Jax Pitalo and Morgan Seymour filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday in Mississippi against Sandra L. Butler, who allegedly runs the TikTok account "gods_bestgirl" and identifies herself as "Royalty."

The three men claim Butler repeatedly accused them of killing Wells aboard a boat on July 4, fleeing the scene, tampering with his phone and lying to cover up the alleged crime.

Nolan Wells' family is turning up the pressure on authorities ... calling once again for the FBI and DOJ to step in and investigate the 18-year-old's mysterious death ... 93 days after he passed.

Attorney Ben Crump joined join Nolan's parents and Stop AAPI Hate Executive Director Cynthia Choi at a news conference Monday in Inglewood, California.

His mother Christine Wells-Wonsley and father Elmore Wonsley renewed demands for a federal investigation into what happened to Nolan, who disappeared during a Fourth of July boating trip to Horn Island in Mississippi and was found dead two days later.

The attorney representing Nolan Wells' friends is speaking out about an indicted individual who he says brutally threatened to kill his client and slit the throats of his 2 younger brothers.

During a sit-down interview with Kayleigh McEnany on Fox News' "Saturday in America" ... attorney Tyler Cox said that the jailed harasser threatened Warren Hudson and his stepmom Ashlee Cole -- who is a chancery judge -- by claiming "they were going to slit his brothers' throats in front of them."

Cox said ... "And so that person is thankfully being held without bond and hopefully seeing justice soon. And that's just one example of many."

Nolan Wells' friends are speaking out against a fresh batch of death threats they say they've received after lawyers for Nolan's family claimed messages from Nolan's phone had been deleted ... and they say their families are also under fire.

In a teaser clip for Fox News' "Saturday in America" ... Nolan's pals Jax Pitalo, Warren Hudson and Morgan Seymour told host Kayleigh McEnany about the alleged intimidation attempts.

Claiming he's received "thousands" of death threats, Warren added ... "And not just me, my stepmom's a chancery court judge, and she goes to her office every day, and there's voicemails. Hundreds, thousands, not just my stepmom, but my mom, my dad, my stepdad, my entire family."

The United Cajun Navy leader who helped find Nolan Wells' body on Horn Island is pushing back on some of Ben Crump's latest claims ... saying key details were presented misleadingly.

Brian Trascher joined us on "TMZ Live" Monday ... accusing Crump's team of using "selective verbiage" during a press conference last week that made parts of the case sound more suspicious than he believes the evidence supports.

Brian pointed to questions surrounding Nolan's phone, including a forensic expert correcting the timeline for the last instance when Nolan locked the device.

Nolan Wells' death was an accidental drowning, and anyone who says otherwise is full of it ... so says the United Cajun Navy, which is firing back at people online.

The grassroots nonprofit organization was active on X over the weekend ... reposting a clip of Nancy Grace talking about the case ... and responding to a series of persistent narratives.

The UCN says nobody opened Nolan's phone after 2:18 PM on the day he disappeared ... until his mom did later that evening ... and nobody deleted anything from it.

Attorneys representing Nolan Wells' friends are speaking out against bomb threats they say have been made against their clients ... in the wake of claims that Snapchat messages were deleted from Nolan's phone.

In a Friday press release ... attorneys Edward Andrew Paltzik and Tyler Cox said Nolan's pals Jax Pitalo, Warren Hudson and Morgan Seymour "refuse to be intimidated by today's litany of bomb and death threats."

The legal team added that these threats came from people "outside the community."

The District Attorney who investigated Nolan Wells' death fired back at the late teen’s family lawyer Ben Crump ... hours after he held a press conference with alleged new evidence.

Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath criticized Crump's claims Thursday that texts were deleted on Nolan's phone.

Crump and a forensic expert his team hired said they discovered data had been deleted from the phone. They said the missing messages were on Snapchat.

McLlrath said, "The user action discussed by [Crump's team] is from other snapchat users, not someone physically accessing Nolan Wells' phone."

She added, "If the Crump team has evidence to the contrary, they have not provided it to us. The Grand Jury report outlined the other evidence they received, including cell phone downloads, surveillance data, GPS data, and the printed report of Nolan’s cell phone."

She ended with another dig at Crump ... writing if his team "genuinely has new information or evidence that Nolan Wells was murdered they should stop playing games and immediately provide it to me."

Attorneys representing Nolan Wells' friends say they didn't delete the Snapchat messages that the family's lawyers claim were scrubbed from his phone ... and are adamant they're not to blame.

Edward Andrew Paltzik -- who represents Jax Pitalo, Warren Hudson and Morgan Seymour -- tells TMZ ... "Warren, Jax and Morgan did not erase anything and never had access to his phone. If anything was erased, they didn't do it."

Their other attorney, Tyler Cox, tells us ... "A girl from the group got all the phones left in the boat (which included Nolan's) and put them in Wyatt's truck, and it stayed there until Christine's friend came over to get Nolan's phone. The same girl in the group retrieved the phone from the truck and gave it to Christine's friend around 1:30 AM."

Nolan Wells' attorneys have released the state's autopsy report ... and they say it raises new questions about the official theory of his death.

The Mississippi report says there was no fluid or debris within the airways of his lungs.

It mentions bruising in the tissue on his scalp on both sides of the back of his neck ... and says there were no other external or internal injuries and that no internal organ abnormalities contributed to his death.

The state's report was signed Aug. 17 ... but still lists Nolan's cause and manner of death as undetermined. It says the body was examined on July 7.

Nolan Wells' cellphone tells a troubling story ... messages were allegedly deleted after he last used the device, and the records contain conversations about "sketchy" people on Horn Island.

Attorney Ben Crump and the family's digital-forensics team laid out the findings at a press conference Thursday ... saying Nolan last used his phone at 2:18 PM on the day he died ... and showing a map of GPS coordinates tracing Nolan's phone from the island to when his parents ultimately retrieved the phone.

Andrew Garrett -- the forensic examiner hired by Nolan's parents -- says messages were deleted between Nolan's last phone activity and the time his family regained access to the device. Garrett says his team cannot determine who deleted the messages or why.

The final independent autopsy report commissioned by Nolan Wells' family found signs of blunt force trauma to the back of his head and body ... findings Ben Crump believes demand answers.

Crump's legal team released the report Tuesday, shortly after holding a press conference in Atlanta -- and one day after a Mississippi grand jury declined to pursue criminal charges, saying the circumstances of Nolan's death were consistent with drowning.

The autopsy says a 12-by-8-inch area of discoloration on the back of Nolan's head was confirmed to be blood from blunt force trauma. It also identified three additional bruises -- two on his lower back and one near his left shoulder blade -- that were not documented in the preliminary autopsy report.

Ben Crump -- the attorney for Nolan Wells' family -- says the biggest unanswered question in his death comes down to three words -- "blunt force trauma" -- and his family will continue fighting for answers.

Crump spoke Tuesday after a grand jury declined to pursue criminal charges ... pointing to unexplained injuries on the back of Nolan's head and his back.

He said Mississippi officials are leaving the family with "we'll never know" ... but Nolan's family has three words of its own -- "we'll never stop."

Nolan Wells slipped and fell off a boat hours before he died off the coast of Mississippi ... according to a witness who testified before the grand jury that decided against filing criminal charges related to his death.

According to documents filed late last week, a witness said under oath that they saw Nolan "slip awkwardly off the side of a boat" at around 3:30 PM on the Fourth of July when he was at Horn Island.

The docs say the witness could not say whether Nolan hit his head when he slipped ... though the witness did say Nolan got right back up and continued to socialize with people on the boat.

Here's the heated exchange between lawyers for Nolan Wells' family and prosecutors in Mississippi ... and it's chock full of drama and friction.

The correspondence between Jackson County D.A. Angel Myers McIlrath and several of the family's attorneys was recently released as part of a grand jury report ... and it appears to show major communication issues between the two sides.

The D.A. sent an email to Gary Bufkin, Esq., July 29 ... stating there was no legal authority requiring her office to share information with civil counsel during an active investigation, adding that there was a process for death investigations, and she didn't think it was appropriate to deviate from it.