Ben Crump (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) and Angel Myers McIlrath (from DA social media)
- “The Crump team is asking the public to ask questions that the Crump team has the answers to,” Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said Thursday. “My interactions with Mr. Crump, as well as his conduct in this case, has demonstrated that he is not worthy of our trust.”
Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath issued a strongly worded rebuttal to Ben Crump Thursday evening after the attorney for the parents of Nolan Wells held a press conference in Orlanda to discuss the independent extraction of the teen’s cell phone and the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s autopsy report.
McIlrath states that Crump’s assertion now that messages were deleted from Wells’ cell phone is not the full context. She said the Crump legal team has told the DA that no one physically accessed the phone after the teen’s last known use. She further states that user actions Crump now questions as being deleted were from other Snapchat users, not by someone accessing the phone.
The District Attorney made clear once again that her office has always been willing to mutually examine the cell phone but said the Crump team has made strategic choices to control the public information “and create a misleading public narrative.”
As for the state’s autopsy report, McIlrath said the Crump team advised her office that they had no evidence of a crime against Wells.
“The Crump team is asking the public to ask questions that the Crump team has the answers to,” the DA said.
McIlrath went on to say, “My interactions with Mr. Crump, as well as his conduct in this case, has demonstrated that he is not worthy of our trust… If the Crump team genuinely has new information or evidence that Nolan Wells was murdered they should stop playing games and immediately provide it to me.”
You can read McIlrath’s full statement below.
