The United Cajun Navy says it has never communicated with Ben Crump, the attorney representing Nolan Wells’ family, despite Crump’s claim that the volunteer search organization provided him with striking details about how the teenager’s body was found.
The search-and-rescue group pushed back publicly on social media after Crump, a nationally known civil rights lawyer, said during a Wednesday press conference that the Cajun Navy had told him Wells was “fully clothed” when he was discovered two days after disappearing from Horn Island off the Mississippi coast.
“The United Cajun Navy are so forthcoming […] They told us – we haven’t heard from any local officials – that Nolan was found face down, fully clothed,” Crump said earlier.
The Cajun Navy, however, flatly denied that account, accusing Crump of spreading a “lie” and insisting the organization had never spoken with him.
“He [Crump] said UCN told ‘us’ Nolan was fully clothed-not true. We have never spoken with Crump, and we certainly didn’t tell the parents anything like that,” the United Cajun Navy wrote in a post on X.
Crump had argued that what Wells was wearing when his body was recovered on July 6 could be a crucial detail in piecing together what happened after the teen joined friends for a Fourth of July boating trip.
Video recorded only hours before Wells vanished showed him wearing swim trunks and no shirt.
“That’s significant to us because the last time we saw him on the videos, he was without a shirt,” Crump said. “So at what point did he put on a shirt? Somebody saw something. Somebody knows something.”
The 18-year-old Mississippi college football player’s body was found with help from the disaster relief organization, with a pilot from the organization spotting Wells’ body from the sky.
Crump’s claim about the state of Wells’ dress came two days after Cajun Navy’s founder and president Todd Terrell mistakenly said yes to a question on the “Nancy Grace Show” asking if Wells had been found “fully clothed.”
Terrell soon set the record straight and later said that he’d meant that Wells’ body was clothed with swim trunks and that he should have been clearer.
The group reiterated the founder’s claims that Wells was not found fully clothed in the same X post.
“The bottom line is that Nolan was only wearing swim trunks when found. That’s a fact that can’t be refuted. This is a manufactured distraction to divert attention away from this press conference blunder.”
Crump did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
