Graham Councilwoman Reports Threatening Emails, Police Question Former City Employee

Graham city council member Bonnie Whitaker went to the city manager after a March 3 email threatened to release her home address to an extremist group, triggering a police inquiry that led officers to the door of Billy Stallings, a former city employee who retired in 2024.

The messages were a series of increasingly sharp anonymous emails connected to the ongoing fight over the proposed relocation of Sesquicentennial Park in Graham. City records and email-tracking helped link the correspondence to Stallings, who sent the messages from an account identified in documents as "uncblueneck."

Whitaker said she had grown accustomed to critical constituent emails and "keyboard warriors," but the March 3 message carried something different: an explicit threat to publish her home address to "ANTIFA." "When they mention a terrorist organization — that they're going to name-drop you to Antifa — that's when I get very concerned," she said. She cited an incident in Danville, Virginia, as a reference point for the kind of real-world harm that can follow when a public official's address reaches the wrong hands.

After Whitaker reported the emails to the city manager, the chief of police moved to determine whether the messages met the legal threshold for criminal threats or harassment. Officers subsequently went to Stallings' home to question him.

The episode sits inside one of Graham's most heated recent planning disputes. The proposed Sesquicentennial Park relocation has drawn sustained public pushback and, based on city records reviewed in connection with the case, produced a stream of sharp communications aimed at council members. Whether the messages attributed to Stallings rise to criminal conduct remains under review, but the involvement of the chief of police signals the city is treating the matter as more than routine constituent correspondence.