California man charged with threatening judge in Nolan Wells case

A 27-year-old Sacramento man has been charged with sending threatening messages to the Mississippi judge whose son was among the friends with 18-year-old Nolan Wells when he vanished during a July 4 boat outing to Horn Island.

Joseph Alfredo Vasquez Dumarce was arrested Thursday and charged with interstate transmission of a threatening communication, a federal offense, after allegedly sending a series of Facebook Messenger threats to Jackson County Chancery Court Judge Ashlee Cole, according to a recently unsealed federal complaint. The charge carries a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, court documents show.

Investigators say Mr. Dumarce, using the Facebook handle “yaeyae962,” warned Judge Cole that a package was headed to her office and that “you have maybe 10 seconds or less to ask God for forgiveness” once it was opened. He also allegedly called numbers connected to Judge Cole’s court office at 1:27 a.m. on July 11.

Judge Cole’s son, Warren Hudson, was among the group of friends who traveled with Wells to Horn Island before Wells disappeared; Hudson has said he was interviewed by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department and “cooperated fully.” Cole posted screenshots of the threats to her own Facebook account on July 9, writing that it was “not the appropriate forum to further elaborate on the facts of July 4, 2026.”

Agents with the FBI’s Safe Streets Task Force connected the “yaeyae962” account to Mr. Dumarce through identifying information tied to an associated email account, including IP address data, a birth date, a phone number and a street address, according to wire reports on the case.

Judge Cole is not the only person tied to the case who has reported being targeted. Wells’ mother, Christine Wonsley-Wells, has said she has faced hostile calls, harassing mail and a wave of negative reviews on her professional page — a harassment campaign attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Wells family, raised at a Thursday press conference at the National Urban League’s conference in Nashville, calling those responsible “sick, evil people.”

Mr. Dumarce has a previous arrest on his record in California. In April 2019, Sacramento police arrested a then-20-year-old Joseph Dumarce after he allegedly exposed himself to a 13-year-old girl walking to school and attempted to pull her into his car. Additional reporting from the Sacramento Bee and Sun Herald states Dumarce was later convicted and registered as a sex offender, and that he was released from prison in 2023.

Wells’ father, Elmore Wonsley, speaking Thursday at the National Urban League conference in Nashville, said the family has struggled to grieve amid the scrutiny.

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“We just want the truth,” he said.

Wells disappeared after a Fourth of July boat trip to Horn Island, a barrier island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast; his body was recovered two days later by a National Park Service ranger. His death remains under investigation, and results of his official state autopsy have not been made public.

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