JACKSON COUNTY, Miss. (WLOX) — Russ Latino, the lawyer for Bart Edmiston Jr., one of Nolan Wells’ friends, is serving a prelitigation letter to Jeanetta Brantley.
Latino says Brantley took the “Sea Tow call” — a call made from the boat Wells took to Horn Island to a private towing company —and altered it, causing detriment to Edmiston Jr. and his family.
The prelitigation letter says it is meant to “provide notice of the factual background and law at issue, insight into damages, a demand for retraction and correction, and a demand to preserve certain categories of evidence.”
WLOX News and other media organizations, through public records requests, obtained the original Sea Tow call from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources. At the beginning of the call, hold music plays before the conversation between the person calling and the dispatcher begins.
The letter accuses Brantley of taking the Sea Tow call from WLOX’s YouTube page and “enhancing it” by removing the music track from the dispatch side of the call, adjusting the gain and EQ, then posting the call online, along with a written transcript of what Brantley believed was being said.
“In this transcript, you identified my client by transcribing ‘dammit Bart,’ followed by the phrase ‘NoNo’s really dead now.’ You then spread that message across online ‘television’ shows like Crime Stories with Nancy Grace and innumerable podcasts,” the letter reads. “Your interpretation is false and/or misleading and the...
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