The father of Nolan Wells' self-described best friend is accusing attorney Ben Crump of turning the 18-year-old's death into a vehicle for financial gain and political maneuvering, and says he plans to sue Crump for defamation.
Ben Hudson, a 56-year-old addiction medicine physician and father of six, told the New York Post in an exclusive interview that Crump has falsely accused his 19-year-old son Warren Hudson and Warren's friends of murder, accusations Hudson says have unleashed thousands of death threats against his family and destroyed any chance his son has of grieving the loss of his closest friend.
Wells, a promising college football player from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, went missing during a Fourth of July boat trip to Horn Island, a barrier island roughly 10 miles off the Gulf Coast. His body was found in the water two days later. Warren Hudson was among the group of friends on the island that day.
No arrests have been made. No charges have been filed. Law enforcement has not publicly concluded that foul play was involved. But that has not stopped a growing apparatus of lawyers, activists, and celebrity donors from treating the case as though the verdict is already in.
In his interview, Ben Hudson did not hold back about what he believes Crump has done to his family.
"In my opinion, Ben Crump has slandered and falsely accused my son and his friends of murder and he's pursued what's an obvious false narrative."
Hudson said he intends to file defamation and slander lawsuits against Crump, and predicted other families would follow.
"I think he can expect lawsuits not just from my family but from a number of other families who, in my opinion, he's defamed."
He described the fallout in stark terms. His son, Warren, is 19 years old and trying to mourn a friend. Instead, Hudson said, the young man has been branded a racist and a murderer across social media and beyond.
"My son is 19, he's trying to grieve the death of his friend. Meanwhile, he's getting death threats and he's called a racist and a murderer, and the truth couldn't be further from that."
Hudson told the Post his family has received thousands of what he described as credible death threats and hate messages. He said a picture of his wife, Ashlee Cole, a Jackson County chancery court judge, was sent alongside one of those threats.
Mississippi's governor has since pointed to Crump and Sharpton's public rhetoric as a factor in the threats, and the FBI has stepped into the case amid the escalating tension.
On July 20, the day of Nolan Wells' funeral at Center Pointe Church in Ocean Springs, Gary Bufkin, a Mississippi-based litigation attorney representing Wells' parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, sent warning letters to Ben Hudson, his wife, and Warren Hudson. The letters warned against "destruction or failure to preserve evidence" and stated that litigation was "reasonably anticipated."
The timing struck Hudson as deliberate. The friends who had been with Wells on Horn Island did not attend the funeral. Hudson said the environment made attendance impossible.
"How would our children ever be able to attend that when they put out a $100,000 bounty alleging that my son and his friends had murdered their best friend?"
Rev. Al Sharpton officiated the funeral. Crump led mourners in chants of "Justice for Nolan Wells" and "Nolan's life matters." Sharpton announced a reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, a sum that has since reached $125,000, with contributions from NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Owens and filmmaker Tyler Perry. Hudson offered a separate $50,000 reward of his own.
Hudson called the funeral a political rally.
"I was very disappointed that they turned the funeral into a political rally."
He went further, tying Sharpton's involvement directly to the political calendar.
"Sharpton's involvement is 100% correlated with the fact that we have midterm elections coming up."
And he broadened the accusation beyond his own family:
"My family, the Wells-Wonsley family, and the families of all these other kids are being used by people like Al Sharpton and Ben Crump and news outlets as political pawns to win some kind of political favor for the midterms."
Crump responded to Hudson's accusations at a press conference held at the National Urban League's annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. He dismissed the defamation threat as a sideshow.
"It's a distraction, we're not distracted by it at all."
"We haven't done anything other than ask questions to get to the truth."
Sharpton, for his part, denied turning the funeral into a political event. He told the Post he never discussed politics at the service and called the "bounty" characterization "an overreach, at best." He also said he had not known Warren Hudson's name until the Post reached out to him.
"I've been very careful to say that we shouldn't pre-judge it as racist, but they should not pre-judge it as not racist until the investigations are over."
On the midterm connection, Sharpton was blunt:
"I don't understand the connection with the midterm elections, that's absurd, one has nothing to do with the other."
But the question of what actually happened to Nolan Wells remains open. The Wells family retained Crump shortly after the death, and Newsmax reported that the family was calling for an independent autopsy and greater transparency from investigators. Wells' mother, Christine Wonsley, said the family had seen video of an alleged fight involving her son on the island. Crump said at the time that investigators should "pursue this case with the urgency and transparency this family deserves."
An independent autopsy commissioned by the family returned results that Crump described as "inconclusive." Dr. Roger Mitchell, the pathologist who performed it, found an area of "red discoloration" on the back of Wells' head and said he could not rule out non-accidental factors. Crump announced the findings at the NAACP National Convention in Chicago.
But Fox News reported that forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden pushed back sharply. Baden said the head injury was minor, could have occurred before or after death, and was consistent with an accidental death. He said the independent pathologist was "reaching for straws."
A separate forensic review also found nothing in the independent autopsy to suggest foul play. The official autopsy had not been completed as of the most recent reporting.
The Washington Examiner reported that the Wells family raised additional questions: friends allegedly left the island without Wells and took his phone and car keys, and the family later tracked the phone to the mainland using a tracking app. The family also alleged that social media messages may have been deleted from Wells' phone. Crump asked publicly what teenager would leave their phone behind voluntarily.
Meanwhile, AP News reported that Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter said it sounded like Wells "chose to stay on the island with the assumption that he was going to ride back to the mainland with someone else." That account does not square easily with the family's suspicion that something more sinister occurred.
Earlier developments in the case, including a Marine Patrol email that surfaced with details about alcohol consumption on the island, have only added layers to an already complicated investigation.
Hudson's central argument is straightforward: Crump has constructed a public narrative of murder and racism without evidence to support it, and that narrative has put innocent people in danger.
"In my opinion, truth is not Ben Crump's concern. He's exploiting the situation and raising money."
"I think this is financially exploiting this entire tragedy and making it a much bigger tragedy at the expense of my family and our community and the Wells family."
Crump insists his work is about "getting to the truth." Sharpton says he has been careful not to prejudge the case. But the reward announcements, the chants at the funeral, the celebrity donors, the press conferences at national conventions, all of it has moved far ahead of what the evidence, as publicly known, actually shows.
Details corrected by outside parties have further muddied the waters. The United Cajun Navy, which assisted in the search, corrected earlier claims about what Wells was wearing when his body was found, he was in swim trunks, not fully clothed as some activists had suggested.
The independent autopsy left the cause of death undetermined, and several critical questions remain unanswered. No law enforcement agency has publicly concluded what happened to Wells. No one has been charged.
Hudson's claim, that his family is being railroaded by a lawyer who profits from public outrage, is, for now, just that: a claim. But it is a claim backed by litigation warning letters arriving on the day of a funeral, a son receiving death threats, and a public narrative that has outrun every known fact in the case.
When the loudest voices in a tragedy belong to lawyers and activists with national platforms and midterm calendars, the people closest to the loss, on both sides, tend to get ground up first.
