Friends of a teenager mysteriously found dead by a lonely highway have hired a high-powered lawyer to defend them against a wrongful death lawsuit.

Noah Presgrove, 19, was discovered by the side of US-81 near Terral, Oklahoma, on September 4, 2023, hours after attending a 22nd birthday party a mile away.

He was found naked with his teeth knocked out and had suffered massive head and upper body injuries that led him to die from internal bleeding, but the cause of those injuries still remains a mystery nearly three years later.

Presgrove's family lost patience after years of near-silence from police and sued four of his friends and three parents for wrongful death in June last year.

The $75,000 lawsuit claimed the teenager was 'beat to death by one or more of the defendants' and dumped on the road, but did not specify who allegedly did it.

The defendants included birthday girl Avery Jo Combs, 24, her sister Carter, 22, their mother Stevie Howard, 44, and friend Logan Jernigan, 21.

They all denied any liability for Presgrove's death and have hired prominent attorney Clark Brewster to replace their previous lawyer.

He signed on to represent them along with Thomas Reese, another partner at his firm, Brewster & De Angelis, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Brewster has been the personal lawyer of former porn star Stormy Daniels since 2019, and represented her during Donald Trump's criminal trial.

Trump was convicted in New York in May 2024 of 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records over 'hush money' payments to Daniels after her one-night stand with Trump in 2006.

A jury found Trump paid his lawyer Michael Cohen to facilitate a non-disclosure agreement and secret $130,000 payment to Daniels in 2017.

Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge in January 2025 after a criminal punishment was made impractical by his election win.

Brewster was a key figure in the case as he shepherded Daniels through the trial, including more than seven hours of testimony.

The veteran attorney has won massive damages and kept high-profile clients out of jail over his 45-year legal career, and was named Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers in America magazine in 2025.

The Presgrove lawsuit is still in the discovery phase, with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation ordered to hand over their case files to both sides - the contents of which are shielded from public view.

A major goal of the lawsuit is to compel deposition testimony from the defendants and witnesses in the hope of finding out how Presgrove died, but it is not clear when, or if, that will happen.

All the accused parties denied liability in their initial responses to the lawsuit and entered affirmative defenses claiming Presgrove caused his own death.

Avery, Carter, and Logan were named in the lawsuit, filed by Presgrove's sister Madison Rawlings on behalf of his estate, because they hosted the party.

The party, which ran over the 2023 Labor Day weekend, was held at Avery and Carter's home, owned by their grandfather, off a gravel road about a mile up the highway from Terral.

Howard was included as a defendant because she owned a trailer next to the house that was used during the party, though she was not present for the festivities.

'The party was a civil conspiracy... to furnish alcoholic beverages to underaged and intoxicated individuals, such as [Presgrove], over the course of several days,' the lawsuit claimed. 

The girls were accused of providing Presgrove with alcohol 'even after he was already intoxicated' and breaching their duty of care by doing so. 

Presgrove's autopsy report found he had a blood alcohol level of 0.14, which is almost double the legal limit to drive.

Carter, now 22, has since welcomed a baby girl, Nobie Tate Newton, with her boyfriend Jack Newton, 21, who was Presgrove's best friend.

Newton is also named in the lawsuit and accused of providing Presgrove with the alcohol he drank the night he died.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol is not investigating his death as a murder, but Presgrove's family has long believed he was beaten to death and his body dumped on the road.

The lawsuit offered no evidence that he was beaten to death, let alone by anyone at the party, and none has emerged since his body was found, other than the nature of his injuries.

A rough series of events has emerged over the years since his death as the case was investigated, texts were leaked, and the details intensely discussed online.

The generally accepted narrative includes Presgrove being dirty but uninjured after a late-night ATV accident on the grounds of Avery and Carter's home, which is also mentioned in the lawsuit.

Carter and another friend, Jasmine Milan, then helped him shower due to how drunk he was, and he changed into a pair of white shorts borrowed from Newton.

Presgrove soon after argued with Avery, whom some friends claim he was hooking up with at the time, after he asked to sleep in her bed and she refused and told him he had to sleep on the floor. 

'She told him he couldn't sleep in her bed because he messed with her friend the night before,' Newton told a friend in 2024.

This was alluded to in a police interview with another of Presgrove's friends who was there that night, Kaden Pressy.

'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,' he said.

The argument upset Presgrove, and he wandered off into the night 'to cool off', never to be seen alive again.

In Facebook messages to a friend, Newton explained his own argument with Presgrove which occurred earlier in the night.

'We argued about girls for a second then ended up holding each other crying telling each other how much we meant to one another,' he wrote.

The lawsuit added that 'at least some partygoers' realized Presgrove was gone at 3.41am.

The 3.41am timing is a reference to a selfie Milan posted to Snapchat with the caption 'well, Noah's missing'.

Presgrove was found at 5.43am, according to both police and the lawsuit, naked, wearing only his shoes, and with some of his teeth scattered around his body.

He was spotted by an Oklahoma Petroleum Allies hauler driver and Gulfmark Energy field supervisor Tyler Hardy, both of whom called 911 minutes later.

Newton claimed he happened upon the scene at about 6am as he left to go fishing with his father, Caleb Newton, whom he called at 6.05am.

'I figured maybe he got a ride or something, Noah's done that before - got mad and left,' he told the Daily Mail last year.

'[Presgrove] was not one you usually worry about. I wasn't really thinking about it.'

This timeline is disputed by Pressy, who claimed he was woken up at 5.15am by Newton bursting through the door.

'Jack bursts through the door saying, "Noah is dead." Like, frantic, tearing up,' he told detectives in a leaked recording of a June 21, 2024, interview.

Pressy also claimed when he followed Newton to the body, that Presgrove had black shorts on, in contrast to accounts of him being naked with a pair of white shorts on the road nearby.

His claims are popular with Presgrove's family and followers of the case who are convinced the teen was murdered.

However, they conflict with the accounts of every other witness who has spoken publicly and what little police have said about the investigation.