‘We’re Inching Closer’ (Exclusive) : What Noah Presgrove’s Family Has Learned from Their Own Investigation of His Death

Standing 6-foot-1, Noah Presgrove was a natural athlete on the football, wrestling, cross-country and track teams at Comanche High School in Oklahoma, where he seemed to know everyone.

“It didn’t matter who you were, you got along with Noah,” says older brother Dailen Presgrove, 24, a teacher at the school.

After graduating in 2023, Noah planned to enlist in the military with a cousin. “He was a good, respectful kid,” his grandmother Deborah “Nana” Smith tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story.

Smith helped raise Noah while his mother, Kasey Elliot, struggled with substance abuse throughout his youth. “So many people cared about him," Smith says.

That became clear in the days after Noah’s mysterious death on Sept. 4, 2023, when his lifeless body was found along Highway 81 with grave wounds but no answers about how he sustained them.

For more on Noah Presgrove's life and death and his family's search for answers, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE orsubscribe.

A year later, while state police continue to investigate — having ruled out murder — Noah's loved ones say they have been digging for the truth on their own.

It started, in part, when relatives from his expansive family tree came together to grieve last year.

At one of the gatherings, they were greeted by Kathy Bingham, a private investigator whose grandson is one of Noah’s cousins. Distraught, the boy had called her for help.

“I told him, ‘Hang on — we’re going to find out what happened,' ” says Bingham.

She has since spent months zeroing in on partygoers who saw Noah just before he died, collecting their statements to construct a timeline of his last hours until, hopefully, the moment of his death is revealed.

In April Dailen joined in too, co -

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nducting his own interviews, compiling notes and cross-referencing witness accounts.

“Somebody knows something,” he says. Speaking with PEOPLE for this week's cover story, the family hopes that Noah’s story will inspire someone who knows the truth to come forward.

Publicly, state police say they can’t reveal much because their investigation is ongoing, according to a spokeswoman.

Still, records reviewed by PEOPLE confirm some details. Noah’s body was reported shortly before 6 a.m. local time on Sept. 4. “It looked awful odd,” one of the drivers told 911.

And at some point the night before, Noah also had an ATV “rollover incident” involving some other men, after which “he got into an argument” at the party and left, according to his autopsy

“There’s so many possibilities, and nothing about the injury pattern will help narrow it down further,” says Dr. Priya Banerjee, a board-certified forensic pathologist who has reviewed Noah’s autopsy — which states his cause of death as blunt force injuries — but is unconnected to the probe.

Banerjee comes back to this detail: Something seems to have hit Noah on the left side of his head. Hard.

Bingham, the PI looking into Noah’s case, plans to provide law enforcement with her own collected testimonies soon — focusing on “two people in particular” who she believes know what happened to Noah and on the shorts found at the scene, which Noah's best friend, Jack Newton, says he was wearing when he left the party just hours before his body was found.

Bingham declined to share more details but says, “We’re inching closer.”

“We won’t stop,” Dailen adds, “until Noah has justice.”

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