Graham city council member Bonnie Whitaker says she didn’t think much of it when – amid an ongoing controversy over several votes by the council’s majority to remove Sesquicentennial Park from the northwest corner of Court Square in downtown Graham – she received a couple of barbed anonymous emails.
“When they mention a terrorist organization – that they’re going to name-drop you to Antifa – that’s when I get very concerned. They lit a Virginia councilman on fire.”
– Graham city council member Bonnie Whitaker
The first two emails from “uncblueneck” were among hundreds of emails and text messages that Graham city officials recently furnished in response to a public records request by The Alamance News.
The first-term council member said she’s long been accustomed to keyboard warriors and online trolling, but this felt different. When she received a third email from “uncblueneck,” threatening to “dox” her – i.e., provide her home address to Antifa – she got scared, Whitaker told The Alamance News this week.
“I felt it was outside the limitations of what people should be saying to council members,” Whitaker said in an initial interview Monday afternoon. “When he came back with the one about Antifa, that made me feel [unsafe].”
“When I got the email about Antifa, which President [Donald Trump] has designated as a terrorist group, I [contacted] the city manager,” Whitaker said in a follow-up interview Tuesday afternoon. “When they mention a terrorist organization – that they’re going to name-drop you to Antifa – that’s when I get very concerned. They lit a Virginia councilman on fire,” she added, referring to Danville, Virginia city councilman Lee Vogler.
Vogler was taken to UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill for the first of multiple surgeries that his family said would be needed after he was lit on fire outside of the office of his employer, Showcase Magazine, a monthly lifestyle magazine based in Danville, on July 30, 2025. Investigators later attributed it to a personal dispute, rather than a political disagreement, multiple media outlets reported at the time.
The third email that “uncblueneck” sent to Whitaker, at 3:25 p.m. on March 3, stated, “I know everyone addresses on the council [.] 2456? [referring to Whitaker’s house number]. I will release the information to ANTIFA.”
“I sent an email to the police chief, saying, ‘Does this rise to the [level] of being a threat?’ I didn’t know [the sender had] worked for the city until I traced it back. The reason [I reported it] was because I looked it up online to see if it was a criminal offense to harass an elected official. The chief told me it didn’t rise to a level that was enforceable. What the chief did tell me was, if it escalates, let him know.”this enough of an escalation?” after receiving the third email, with the subject line “Dox,” from Stallings.
– Graham city council member Bonnie Whitaker
“I sent an email to the police chief, saying, ‘Does this rise to the [level] of being a threat?’ I didn’t know [the sender had] worked for the city until I traced it back,” Whitaker said this week. “The reason [I reported it] was because I looked it up online to see if it was a criminal offense to harass an elected official. The chief told me it didn’t rise to a level that was enforceable. What the chief did tell me was, if it escalates, let him know.”
Garner responded to Whitaker at 9:19 p.m. the evening of March 4, saying that the police chief would contact her the following afternoon, based on copies of the email exchanges that Whitaker furnished to the newspaper this week.
‘Bonnie started in on me’
All three emails were traced to 63-year-old Graham resident Billy Stallings, who retired from the city in 2024.
Stallings had an exemplary record during his 11-year tenure with the city as a wastewater treatment plant operator, based on documents that Graham city officials furnished Wednesday in response to a public records request by The Alamance News.
He received eight merit-based raises between August 2017 and August 2024, including a 2 percent ($1,317.82) annual raise on August 11, 2024, three weeks before his retirement took effect on August 31, 2024. Stallings’ ending salary was $67,208.48, based on the documents that Graham city officials furnished in response to the newspaper’s public records request.
Stallings submitted a notice of his intention to retire from the city on March 10, 2024 and ended his tenure with “no disciplinary action, demotion, or disciplinary suspension taken,” said Lorrie Andrews, human resources director for the city of Graham.
In an interview with The Alamance News, Stallings said he’s been frustrated with several current and former council members for years but insisted his gripe with Whitaker stemmed from a city council meeting on December 9, 2025.
“There aren’t many people at city hall I would trust,” Stallings opined.
“Bonnie started in on me,” he told the newspaper Monday morning. Stallings said he’d been invited by then-mayor Jennifer Talley to attend and speak at the council’s December meeting, where he claims that Whitaker confronted him during a break.
“Bonnie had a hair up her [butt] and asked, ‘What are you doing here?’” Stallings said Whitaker had initiated contact with him during the city council meeting in December, and his irritation sort of snowballed from there.
Whitaker insisted to the newspaper that she’d never met Stallings and had no idea who he was when he emailed her. “If he was there, I didn’t know who he was,” she said, referring to the meeting on December 9.
Stallings confirmed in the interview that he’d emailed Whitaker on February 14 and March 1. His first email to Whitaker bore the subject line “Sleepy Ricky,” referring to mayor pro tem Ricky Hall, and stated, “Take a look…He’s a big fat [expletive] get his [expletive] off the council.”
Whitaker told the newspaper that she’d chalked up that first email to someone making an insensitive joke about Hall, whom she says has a condition that causes his eyes to droop, leading to ridicule and speculation over whether the mayor pro tem is asleep during council meetings.
Apparently, it was enough of a concern that Whitaker forwarded the “Sleepy Ricky” email to Graham’s city manager and IT director on at 8:18 a.m. on February 17, based on a copy of the email that Graham city officials furnished in response to an earlier public records request by The Alamance News. “This needs to be tracked down,” Whitaker wrote in her email to Garner and the city’s IT director Jeff Wilson.
At 9:06 a.m. on Sunday, March 1, Stallings emailed Whitaker a second time, using the subject line, “Speakers.”
“‘You are a coward!” Stallings wrote. “I’ll release your email address then your nasty mouth will be locked out of city hall. RESIGN YOU COWARD[.]”
Stallings called Alamance News editor Tom Boney, Jr. in mid-March and revealed that Graham city officials hadn’t turned over all of his emails after the newspaper ran a story about correspondence to and from Hall, Whitaker, and councilman Bobby Chin.
Garner told the newspaper Tuesday that the “Dox” email from Stallings had been omitted because it wasn’t responsive to the newspaper’s request for correspondence about Sesquicentennial Park to and from the three council members, Garner told the newspaper Tuesday.
‘Did you send these emails?’
In the interview, Stallings volunteered that he’d emailed Whitaker, saying he knows the home addresses for her and the four other city council members. He said he’d deleted his copies, adding, “The police department has them.”
Though Whitaker acknowledged during the interview that she’d voluntarily listed her home address when she filed paperwork with Board of Elections to run for city council in 2023, she said she felt like Stallings was singling her out. “It was very unsettling to me, being a female,” said Whitaker.
A few days after he sent his “Dox” email to Whitaker on March 3, Graham police Capt. Duane Flood and Sgt. John Way showed up at Stallings’ home at 213 East Hanover Road.
Stallings readily fessed up when they two plainclothes officers starting asking him about his emails.
“One of the officers opened his little book, and said, ‘Are you uncblueneck?’ I said, ‘Yeah, who’s complaining?’
“They told me, ‘You are not in any trouble; did you send these emails?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I sure did.’”
– Graham resident Billy Stallings
“One of the officers opened his little book, and said, ‘Are you uncblueneck?’” Stallings recalled Monday. “I said, ‘Yeah, who’s complaining?’
“They told me, ‘You are not in any trouble; did you send these emails?’” Stallings told the newspaper. “I said, ‘Yeah, I sure did.’”
Stallings said that being questioned by the police about his emails was a head-scratcher. “They were trying to intimidate me – no, they did not intimidate me,” he recalled in the interview. “[But] when they said, ‘You’re not in any trouble,’ I thought why worry? They said, ‘You do have freedom of speech.’”
Yet he said that the sergeant left him with a warning: “‘If I get a letter, I’m coming back.’” Stallings said he wasn’t sure what that meant.
Chief: Police had already planned to speak with Stallings about a personal matter
Whitaker and Neil said in separate interviews this week that the emails were merely incidental to the reason why Flood and Way had gone to Stallings home.
“We were out there for another reason that we were already dealing with Mr. Stallings [about],” Neil told the newspaper Tuesday afternoon. “They [Flood and Way] were out there on a personal matter with him the same day.”
Whitaker told the newspaper Tuesday morning that the department was sending someone out to talk with Stallings, and they decided to talk to him about the emails, too. “Mr. Stallings had contacted the police to file a complaint, and they were trying to help him with [an unrelated personal matter],” Whitaker said in the subsequent interview.
No charges were filed, Neil said. Nor did Flood and Way file an incident report afterward. Neither Neil nor Stallings could pinpoint the exact date on which Flood and Way had visited his home along East Hanover Road.
“Mr. Stallings did absolutely nothing wrong, and that was what he was told. [Council member Whitaker] was advised he did nothing wrong and was well within the Constitution.”
– Graham police chief Brian Neil
Flood and Way were trying to determine what Stallings’ intent was in sending the emails to Whitaker, and they “were satisfied his intent was not to cause anybody harm,” Neil elaborated in an interview with The Alamance News.
‘No gray area anymore’
“Mr. Stallings did absolutely nothing wrong, and that was what he was told,” the police chief said. “[Ms. Whitaker] was advised he did nothing wrong and was well within the Constitution.”
Stallings said he thinks Whitaker’s “just a bully” trying to silence criticism and that she abused her position as a city council member by involving the police. “The mob mentality she’s talking about [during the council meeting in February] began with her,” he said.
Whitaker rejected that assessment.
“I think it’s within my role to ask, if I feel threatened, but they [the city staff and police department] didn’t track anything down for me,” she said in the initial interview Monday afternoon. “They said it was not within their purview. I emailed the [chief]. He basically said there’s not anything we can do.”
Neil insisted that he’d handled Whitaker’s inquiry the same way he would for anybody else. “We would definitely look at the preliminary things before we go in,” the chief told the newspaper Tuesday afternoon.
Stallings also said that the two officers ended their visit by asking him to leave Whitaker alone.
“They said, ‘She’s moving to Tennessee – she’s not even going to be able to finish her term,’” Stallings told the newspaper Monday.
Whitaker shot down that rumor. “I have no plans to vacate my seat,” she said Monday. “I bought some land in Tennessee because my sister lives there. If I were to move at any time, I would have to vacate my seat, but that is not the plan. Right now, it is just vacation property.”
Meanwhile, Whitaker said recent political violence elsewhere in the country has led her to develop a heightened awareness of her safety and surroundings.
“There’s no gray area anymore,” she said in the follow-up interview. “People cannot see beyond their differences. We collectively have a mindset [that], if you disagree with someone, you have to hate them.”
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