What Noah Presgrove’s Best Friend Says Happened the Night Before He Died (Exclusive)
In an interview with PEOPLE, Jack Newton remembers the hours before Noah vanished from a party — and his body was found by the highway
In the dark of early morning, by the glow of headlights, Jack Newton says he came upon his best friend’s naked body laying on the side of Highway 81 in Oklahoma on Sept. 4, 2023.
He slowed down and got out of his truck.
“It just seemed like he was drunk, passed out on the side of the road when I first seen him,” Jack, 19, recalls of Noah Presgrove’s mysterious death in an hour-long interview for PEOPLE’s latest cover story.
Hours earlier, Jack and Noah had been celebrating a friend’s 22nd birthday at a home outside Terral, Okla., about a mile’s drive away.
Now, Noah — wearing only mismatched slip-on shoes, with a pair of undamaged white shorts nearby — was dead, with a cracked skull and fractured spine.
“He was laying on his side. His knees were kind of pulled up to his chest a little,” says Jack, noting that the 19-year-old who had graduated high school just a few months before was “right by” the white traffic line off the rural roadside.
In over a dozen interviews with law enforcement, partygoers, friends, family, and others at the scene, many details of Noah’s death remain uncertain.
Much of what happened during his final hours is still clouded by varying accounts, speculation, and rumor, or the sheer fact that police have not yet completed their investigation.
However, records and recordings reviewed by PEOPLE confirm some details: Noah had walked away from the party he and Jack attended, and he was first spotted by passing drivers on Highway 81 before 6 a.m. local time on Sept. 4.
Authorities initially thought the case could be a horrific road accident — a hit-and-run — but soon their suspicions darkened.
Courtesy of Madison Rawlings
A silver-plated chain necklace from Noah’s grandmother, which he wore every day, lay scattered in pieces near remnants of a tooth.
The base of his skull was split in two. And an 8-inch head wound had peeled part of his scalp to the bone. His later autopsy revealed that he died of “blunt force injuries.”
Tyler Hardy, a local trucker and one of two 911 callers, was already at the scene when Noah’s best friend arrived that morning.
“You know this kid?” Jack recalls Hardy asking.
“He’s my best friend,” Jack said.
Hardy had to pull Jack away from the friend he had known since preschool and grown close to in middle school. The two are almost always together, Jack says.
Courtesy Jack Newton
Back in his truck that morning by the highway, Jack says, he called his dad — with whom he had planned a fishing trip later that morning — to instead meet him at the scene.
Afterward, “it’s kind of blurry,” Jack says of the minutes that followed.
Much of that Labor Day weekend had been spent with a close group of nine friends who grew up together. They drank, they went hog hunting in Jack’s ATV side-by-side and, by that Sunday night, the party ramped up with a social media blast, extending to a group of teens and young adults from Texas.
Jack says he went to bed at 2 a.m. local time on Monday, Sept. 4. Before getting in bed, he says he put his thermal rifle in his truck and squirreled his ATV keys in the bedroom so no one would shoot or drive drunk.
But an hour or so later, Jack says, Noah grabbed the keys and a group took off on his ATV, which tipped over, although no one was visibly injured.
Courtesy Jack Newton
Other partygoers later told Jack that Noah became disgruntled after two female friends apparently rejected him.
“I’m going to go cool off,” Noah said, per the version of events later relayed to Jack, who nonetheless acknowledges that there are conflicting recollections.
Of one such disputed detail, he says,
