A friend who partied with a teenager before he was mysteriously found dead on a lonely highway has told police new information that could upend the case.
Noah Presgrove, 19, was wearing only shoes when his body was discovered on a desolate stretch of US-81 near Terral, Oklahoma, on September 4, 2023.
He was last seen alive about a mile away at a four-day 22nd birthday party with friends over the Labor Day weekend that was heavily documented on social media.
Presgrove suffered massive head and upper-body injuries that led him to die from internal bleeding, but the cause of those injuries remains a mystery.
His cadre of close pals still raging well into that Sunday night consistently claimed they had no idea how he died, if they were even awake when he did.
Noah Presgrove, 19, was wearing only shoes when his body was discovered on a desolate stretch of US-81 in Terral, Oklahoma, on September 4
A rough series of events emerged over the year since his death as the case was investigated, texts were leaked, and the details intensely discussed online.
After two nights or particularly heavy partying, Presgrove and several others took an ATV for a drunken spin and flipped it.
No one was hurt, but he was dirty enough that two of his friends gave him a shower and he changed into a different pair of shorts, and argued with birthday girl Avery Jo Combs about whether he could sleep in her bed.
After being told no, he wandered off to clear his head and wasn’t seen again until two passing motorists spotted his body and called 911 at 5.43am.
Presgrove’s best friend Jack Newton said he happened upon the scene about 6am as he left to go fishing with his father Caleb, whom he called at 6.05am.
However, another teenager who was at the party claimed in a leaked interview with police that Jack knew Presgrove was dead an hour earlier.
‘Jack Newton bursts through the door saying ‘Noah is dead’. Like, frantic, tearing up,’ Kaden Pressy, 20, told detectives.
‘He slammed through the door… and he ran back out the door immediately. I look at my phone, because I felt like I just went to sleep, and it was 5.15am.’
Kaden Pressy, 20, (pictured) told detectives a version of events that calls into question huge parts of what is known about what happened leading up to Presgrove’s death and how his body ended up on the highway
Kaden said he and three other boys soon followed Jack out the door and drove to the where Presgrove’s body was about a mile up the highway.
He claimed that when he saw Noah lying ‘contorted’ on the side of the road, he was wearing different shorts to those police recovered from the scene.
Kaden was first interviewed by Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers last October, where he gave the same story, but was called back in on June 21 after he started discussing his recollections on social media.
The two-hour interview, which Kaden recorded on his phone, was leaked this week and obtained by DailyMail.com.
Kaden confirmed to DailyMail.com that the audio was authentic, and that he stood by the claims he made during the police interview.
His testimony calls into question huge parts of what is known about the events leading up to Presgrove’s death and how his body ended up on the highway.
Presgrove (center) with his father Victor (left) and mother Kasey (right)
Presgrove’s best friend Jack Newton with his then-girlfriend, and Avery’s sister, Carter Combs
Kaden explained to two detectives that he met Presgrove through Jack in freshman or sophomore year of high school when they hung out at the Walmart in Duncan, Oklahoma, because there was ‘nothing to do’ in the town.
They were never really close, and only spent time together with Jack and other friends from the area about 40 miles north of where the party was held.
He said there were about 40 people at the Saturday night of the party, when Presgrove and Jack got into an argument about midnight
‘[Noah was saying] Jack was always flirting with girls he liked… Noah seemed pretty pissed about it,’ Kaden said.
‘When Noah’s drunk, he’s flirty with any kind of woman. To my knowledge, he was messing with Avery at the time – they were having sex.
‘Noah fell asleep on the ground with Logan [Jernigan] on Saturday night – they didn’t do anything, but when I woke up I remember Avery saying to Logan “if you did anything, I was gonna kill y’all” but they laughed it off.’
Jack in Facebook messages explained the argument to another friend: ‘We argued about girls for a second then ended up holding each other crying telling each other how much we meant to one another.’
Logan Jernigan, one of the girls who was at the party whom Presgrove fell asleep with earlier on the weekend, and was there the night he died
‘We argued about girls for a second then ended up holding each other crying telling each other how much we meant to one another,’ Jack told a friend in the weeks after Presgrove’s death
The party continued on Sunday night with about 15 people showing up, including Kaden’s 15-year-old cousin who got so drunk she was throwing up.
One of the videos posted online was of Kaden filming some of the partygoers socializing inside the house, and zoomed in on his cousin to show his mother that she was OK. Another photo showed her sitting on the ground outside.
Kaden also filmed the last known footage of Presgrove before his death, showing him daring another teen, Bryan Sweat, to slap him in the face.
The video was posted at 1.42am and Kaden went to sleep on the living room couch soon after.
He said he didn’t remember Presgrove leaving the party but Jasmine Milan, Avery’s best friend, told him a little before 2am that he walked off.
This is more than an hour before Presgrove was previously said to have wandered away, and well before Jasmine posted a Snapchat at 3.41am saying ‘Well, Noah is missing’.
‘I shrugged it off because Noah always walks off at parties when he’s drunk and he always comes back, we never have to go searching for him,’ Kaden said.
He said Presgrove usually walked of when he was upset to try to calm down ‘so it doesn’t ruin the mood for everyone else’.
The party was to celebrate the 22nd birthday of Avery Jo Combs (pictured), whose family are huge landowners in the area around Terral and beyond
Kaden’s 15-year-old cousin got so drunk she was throwing up, and Kaden sent this photo to his mother of her sitting on the ground before he went to sleep a little before 2am
Jasmine posted this selfie to Snapchat at 3.41am with the caption ‘well, Noah’s missing’, which continues to fuel condemnation a year later
Kaden went to sleep right after that, until he was woken up by a call from his mother Elisha about 3.20am.
Elisha told him she and her sister picked up his cousin about 3am from the side of the highway they noticed her Life360 location was moving as they approached, and called her and told her to pull over.
That was the last thing he remembered before he was woken up by Jack bursting through the door at 5.15am, as he was the closest to the door.
‘I wake up Issack [Rojas], Mikey, and Brylan… I yelled at them ‘hey guys, get up, Jack says Noah’s dead,’ Kaden said in the police interview.
Kaden said he noticed two of the three boys, who went to bed on the couches and floor nearby him, switched sleeping positions since the 3.20am phone call.
‘I don’t know if that means anything, but one of them [must have] got up to do something,’ he said.
Kaden realized one of his shoes, a grey Hey Dude brand, was gone, and after a brief look around gave up and left the house only wearing one.
Kaden’s other shoe was later discovered on Presgrove’s foot, with his own Adidas slip-on on the other.
Presgrove couldn’t find his other Adidas shoe, and so impulsively pulled on one he found lying around the house, his friends said.
A video showing the HeyDude shoes Kaden was wearing before he kicked them off and fell asleep on the couch. Presgrove took one of them when he left the party when he couldn’t find one of his, and it was found with his body
Presgrove daring Brylan Sweat to slap him across the face as they partied under an outside patio at the house. Kaden posted it at 1.42am and it is the last known video of Presgrove alive
‘We all load up in my red Jeep Cherokee and go down to where Noah was,’ Kaden continued.
They were just behind Jack as he pulled up to the side of the road, sometime between 5.20 and 5.25am. When he got out, Kaden said he could see a semi-truck facing south, and a ‘service truck’ facing north.
His and Jack’s cars were the only other ones at the scene, and law enforcement hadn’t arrived, he said.
‘Jack gets out of his vehicle and just sits and stares towards Noah and the service truck driver walks up to Jack and they start talking,’ he said.
‘I never saw the semi-truck driver. I walk towards Noah and there he is, laying there, all contorted.’
‘[His body] is laying on its side but his chest is towards the ground and his head is facing towards the grass… One of his arms was behind his back.’
Kaden explained the position of the other arm and legs with gestures, and added that it was pitch black with the scene lit by headlights.
‘I didn’t see any blood,’ he added, another crucial detail that agrees with other witnesses, and is taken as evidence by many that Presgrove was killed elsewhere and his body was moved.
‘He’s wearing black shorts, the same black shorts you can see in the videos from the party.’
Issack Rojas holding his shotgun in a video Kaden shot about 1.30am the night Presgrove died. He was one of the three boys Kaden drove to the scene
Brylan Sweat, another close friend of Presgrove who went with Kaden, Issack, and Mikey to the scene soon after Presgrove’s body was found
Presgrove’s autopsy report said the teenager was naked except for two mismatched shoes, and a pair of white shorts were on the road nearby.
Friends said he took off the black shorts to shower after the ATV accident and put on ‘loose-fitting white wrestling shorts’ he borrowed from Jack.
Kaden’s insistence that Presgrove was still in the same shorts he was in beforehand is a major discrepancy that, if accurate, upends the existing narrative.
‘I walk back towards my vehicle and Issack is bawling his eyes out, so I give him a hug and tell him it’s going to be OK,’ Kaden continued.
‘I go to my trunk to get out a blue blanket that I had… because I don’t want them staring at him because I know how that can be on some people’s minds, it can mess with them for a long time. He also didn’t deserve to be laying out there in the open like that.
‘Right as I was walking back towards Noah, we got told to leave, but I don’t remember who told us to leave,’ he said.
Kaden explained he initially remembered it being the service truck driver who sternly told him and the other boys they needed to go, but a couple of months after Presgrove’s death, Jack insisted it was himself.
He said he didn’t call 911 because he assumed someone at the scene before him already had, and didn’t know until later that the first call wasn’t until later.
Presgrove’s body was found between the two chalk lines, and teeth within the circles. In the background is a memorial set up for the teenager
Presgrove’s body was found about a mile north along the highway from the small street where the party was held
Kaden drove back to the house with all four in the car while Jack stayed at the scene, and went to the living room.
‘The girls were there crying and they asked us if Noah was really dead, and we told them yes, and they burst into tears and start walking around crying and migrated to the back room,’ Kaden said.
‘You can hear the girls crying in the back room… were are all sitting there, thinking, for a couple minutes and then they all go back to sleep like nothing just happened.
‘And I don’t know what to do, so I turn on the TV to try to get what I’ve just seen out of my mind.’
Kaden said he watched TV alone for a while and the girls later came out and joined him, until Jasmine’s mother Renee Milan, her husband, daughter Stephanie Milan, and Stephanie’s boyfriend arrive just before sunrise.
Kaden said it was his idea to get rid of all the alcohol containers so no one would get in trouble for underage drinking.
At the time they thought Presgrove died in a hit-and-run, so the house wouldn’t be a potential crime scene.
Kaden’s version of events is controversial because it differs drastically from that of other people at the party like Jack, and therefore casts suspicion on them
Presgrove was a high school football player until his graduation in May
Jack Newton, Presgrove’s best friend
Renee asked where the guns were, and they gave them to her to remove from the house as another possible complication.
They included Jack’s AR-15-style 300 blackout rifle with a thermal sight and suppressor, Brylan’s bolt action hunting rifle, and Issack’s pump action shotgun that he was seen holding in one of the videos from the party.
Kaden took the remaining alcohol with him and gave Issack, Brylan, and Mikey a ride home, then went home about 8am and told his mother what happened.
After telling his story to the detectives, Kaden was asked about what he heard from others at the party about what happened while he was asleep.
He said he recalled seeing a photo of Presgrove with the flipped Polaris Ranger side-by-side, but he only knew about the crash second-hand.
He understands it was Jack’s then-girlfriend and Avery’s sister, Carter Combs, and Jasmine who gave Presgrove the shower, as that’s what they told him on Monday morning after Renee arrived.
Carter explains how she and Jasmine Milan helped Presgrove shower after the ATV accident
Another of Presgrove’s friends says the same thing in a separate conversation
The detectives pressed Kaden on the time Jack burst through the door, as his time conflicted so much with what other witnesses like Jack told them.
‘I’m 100 per cent positive [that Jack arrived at 5.15am],’ he insisted, and said it was only five or 10 minutes before they got to Presgrove’s body after that.
He said he remembered the time because he immediately looked at his phone, as he felt like he only just went to sleep almost two hours earlier.
Kaden’s version of events is controversial because it differs drastically from that of other people at the party like Jack, and therefore casts suspicion on them.
But he is seen as something of a folk hero by those who are convinced Presgrove was killed and his body moved to the highway.
Since DailyMail.com’s initial coverage of Presgrove’s death in April incited global media attention, thousands of true-crime enthusiasts have flocked to three Facebook groups and Reddit to endlessly discuss the case.
Many of them, including locals and Presgrove’s friends and family, believe Kaden and frequently praise his courage for speaking out.
Presgrove’s best friend Jack Newton, who insists he was asleep when the teenager died, summarized the basic chain of events to a friend weeks after the party
!['Earlier that night he [was riding in an ATV] and he flipped it but then after that he was just hanging out at the house,' Stephanie Milan, one of the girls who was there, wrote in a Snapchat message to an inquiring local](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/09/20/21/85343291-13869483-_Earlier_that_night_he_was_riding_in_an_ATV_and_he_flipped_it_bu-a-110_1726865900444.jpg)
‘Earlier that night he [was riding in an ATV] and he flipped it but then after that he was just hanging out at the house,’ Stephanie Milan, one of the girls who was there, wrote in a Snapchat message to an inquiring local
Those less enthused include Jack, who confronted Kaden on Snapchat, asking for his point of view and timeline of the night as he was ‘hearing all kinds of stuff’.
‘And did you really say on a podcast that you were scared because you could be next? I just thought I’d ask you before I got upset, because there are so many rumors going around,’ he wrote.
Kaden replied that he should be the who who’s upset because Jack was telling people he was ‘begging’ to be friends again.
‘I’m not really worried about anyone hurting me, just saying. I’m afraid of finding out my friends arnt (sic) my friends,’ he wrote.
‘Jack you were there, you don’t need my POV or timeline, you know when you bursted (sic) through the door.
‘You know me, Mikey, Issac and Sweat followed you and you know it was dark af only the service truck and box semi was there but nowhere have I seen you say this, not to anyone.
‘You know we all got out and you know who was there so why arnt (sic) you telling the truth, man, this really sucks. Just tell the truth, bro.’
Jack replied: This ain’t you, Pressy… you’ve got the times all wrong. When y’all came to the scene it was light outside. Ask Sweat and all of them.’
Kaden replied saying he was ‘really bothered’ that Jack insisted it was light outside when they arrived.
Dawn began at 6.42am on September 4, 2023, and sunrise was 7.06am, according to records, meaning would still have been dark in either timeline.
Jack confronted Kaden on Snapchat, asking for his point of view and timeline of the night as he was ‘hearing all kinds of stuff’
Kaden replied that he should be the who who’s upset because Jack was telling people he was ‘begging’ to be friends again
Jack replied: This ain’t you, Pressy… you’ve got the times all wrong. When y’all came to the scene it was light outside. Ask Sweat and all of them.’
Kaden told police in the interview that he stopped being friends with Jack a couple of months earlier, and then the entire friendship group cut him off.
‘No one wants to talk to me anymore… They still hang out together, but they don’t wanna hang out with me no more,’ he said.
He said the rift began after his mother told him to stop hanging out with Jack as she didn’t trust him because ‘of all his lies, he’s changed his story eight times already’.
Carter backed up her then-boyfriend in a comment on a post in one of the Facebook groups, saying Kaden’s story didn’t make sense with her recollection.
‘Jack didn’t just walk in and tell us Noah passed away, he came in running and berried (sic) his head into my bed saying Noah was gone [and] stayed for a minute and said I gotta get back to Noa, I can’t leave him alone there,’ she wrote.
‘Also… none of us went back to sleep. Me, Logan, Avery, and [Jasmine] and her parents stayed outside crying not understanding any of this just like you.
‘But this is also spreading lies.’
Jack and Carter got engaged in the months after Presgrove’s death and planned to marry this summer, but broke up in the past few months.
Carter backed up her then-boyfriend in a comment on a post in one of the Facebook groups, saying Kaden’s story didn’t make sense with her recollection
Presgrove argued with Avery (pictured) after he asked to sleep in her bed, but she refused and told him he had to sleep on the floor
Other skeptics of Kaden’s version of events argue he merely misremembered the time, or his phone wasn’t set to daylight savings.
‘I think KP timeline is off a little or maybe he has some sort of false memory from trauma,’ Avery and Carter’s aunt Sarah Long wrote.
Kaden also faced hostility from Gulfmark Energy field supervisor Tyler Hardy, who found Presgrove’s body on the road and called 911 at 5.48am.
Hardy and his wife accused Kaden of calling him a lie and implying he was involved in covering up Presgrove’s death and manipulating the scene.
He insisted he never saw Kaden or his red Cherokee at the scene and only saw and spoke to Jack while he was there.
‘Why would I lie about who was there? If he was in Jack’s truck he didn’t get out. [Jack was] the only person who walked up to Noah and told me who it was,’ he wrote in one comment.
The furor caused Elisha to step in and defend her son, saying he had told his parents the same account for eight months.
‘I’m 100% certain he too would pass a polygraph. He stated he saw the semi but not the driver. The service truck driver (that would be you) and Jack standing beside Noah.
‘He described how Noah’s body was laying… he remembered seeing black shorts on Noah.’
Gulfmark Energy field supervisor Tyler Hardy (pictured with his wife Mallory) was the first known person to find Presgrove’s body, and called 911 at 5.48am
Presgrove (left) poses with Jack during the party
In another comment she added: ‘His memory of Noah wearing black shorts is something that has never changed.
‘He can describe the exact way Noah’s body was laying, and he has to the OHP investigating officer when he was interviewed.’
Kaden wrote that when he was originally interviewed in October, police said they had no clue about the black shorts
‘So like I said someone took them off and got rid of them before the cops got there. They showed me the picture of Noah and the white shorts beside him and I instantly knew foul play was involved,’ he wrote.
As the discussion developed, it emerged that the ‘service truck’ Kaden said he saw did not look like Hardy’s Ford F-150 as it had a flatbed tray and equipment in the back.
Kaden also said the driver he saw didn’t resemble Hardy and the semi-truck was a box truck, not the Oklahoma Petroleum Allies hauler the other 911 caller was driving.
Kaden in a Facebook messenger conversation with a family friend last year also described the ‘service truck’ as ‘some government like road worker vehicle’.
The new theory was that two other vehicles were there when Kaden arrived and they were gone by the time Tyler and the other 911 caller arrived.
During that time, the black shorts were removed from Noah’s body and the white ones put on the road, the theory goes.
Renee, in an unrelated Facebook group thread, seemed to inadvertently contradict Jack in her account of when she arrived at the house.
She wrote that Jasmine called her between 5.45am and 6am and it took her 40-45 minutes to get there.
‘I have enough time to jump up, get dressed, and go,’ she wrote.
Jasmine would only have known Presgrove was dead at that time if Kaden’s timeline was correct, and Renee would have arrived at the house just before sunrise about 7am, as in Kaden’s recollection.
Renee, in an unrelated Facebook group thread, seemed to inadvertently contradict Jack in her account of when she arrived at the house
Kaden in another message last year also undermined Jack’s explanation of how he came across Presgrove’s body by the side of the road.
‘Jack had a bad feeling and he said he drove around for a bit looking for him and then he seen the semi and there was Noah and he came back and told us and we all went there and they made us leave and Jack stay,’ he wrote.
‘I just got woken up around 5am to Jack screaming Noah is dead.’
However, Jack’s version of events is he woke up ready to go fishing sometime after 5.30am and was told his best friend was missing.
‘I figured maybe he got a ride or something, Noah’s done that before – got mad and left,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘He was not one you usually worry about. I wasn’t really thinking about it.’
Jack said he assumed Presgrove was fine and left for the lake, driving north until he saw the semi-trailer and pickup by the side of the road.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol, which is leading the investigation, has released almost no information about the case over the past year.
The last update was four months ago when it said Presgrove’s death was not being investigated as a murder – which did not explicitly rule out manslaughter.
OHP troopers confirmed during Kaden’s interview that the FBI is not involved in the case.
Kaden in another message last year also undermined Jack’s explanation of how he came across Presgrove’s body by the side of the road
Jack’s version of events is he woke up ready to go fishing sometime after 5.30am and was told his best friend was missing. He texted his father, Caleb Newton, at 5.53am letting him know he was on his way