A registered sex offender from California faces federal charges for allegedly sending graphic death threats to a Mississippi judge whose stepson was with 18-year-old Nolan Wells the day he vanished on a Fourth of July boating trip.
Joseph Alfredo Vasquez Dumarce, listed as a transient in Sacramento, is behind bars after FBI agents traced a string of violent social media messages back to him, messages that promised a bomb at the judge's office, blood on a boat, and the strangulation of her children. The target was Jackson County Chancery Judge Ashlee Cole, stepmother of Warren Hudson, one of the friends who joined Wells on Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast before the teenager disappeared and was found dead two days later.
Dumarce faces a federal charge of sending threatening communications across state lines, which carries up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. Court records obtained by the Sun Herald detail the messages investigators attribute to him, and the criminal history that preceded them.
The threats arrived through social media direct messages sent to Judge Cole after she used her Facebook page to express support for the Wells family following Nolan Wells' death on July 6. Court records quote the alleged messages in detail.
One read:
"Blood. So much blood everywhere. Hard to clean. Especially from a boat. But yours will be quick I promise."
Another warned of a "package" sent to Cole's office that would "blow" her away, followed by a chilling countdown:
"Once that package is opened, the timer will start. And then you have maybe 10 seconds or less to ask God for forgiveness."
A separate message claimed Cole's sons "are going to be strangled." Still another boasted that the sender possessed Cole's private information and that "not even the FBI can stop this."
On July 9, Cole posted screenshots to her Facebook page showing a burner account leaving comments on her photos that referenced a "slow painful death" and targeted her child. The account name associated with the threats, according to the New York Post, was "yaeyae962."
Agents from the FBI Safe Streets Task Force ran down the social media account behind the threats. Investigators cross-referenced the email address, IP addresses, phone number, date of birth, and street addresses tied to the account, which they allege led directly to Dumarce.
The trail ran from Jackson County, Mississippi, to Sacramento, California, a cross-country reach that made the case federal. Dumarce was arrested and charged with interstate transmission of a threatening communication.
Dumarce is no stranger to the criminal justice system. California's Megan's Law sex offender registry lists two prior convictions: annoying or molesting a child under 18 in 2019, and sending harmful matter to seduce a minor in 2020. He was released from prison in 2023.
Before those convictions, the Sacramento Bee reported that Dumarce was arrested in 2019 for allegedly exposing himself to and trying to kidnap a 13-year-old girl. Within a year of his release from prison, he allegedly turned to threatening a sitting judge and her family over social media.
That a convicted child predator, out of prison for roughly two years, could direct this kind of sustained menace at a judge and her children from across the country raises its own set of questions about post-release supervision and the monitoring of registered sex offenders.
The threats against Judge Cole sit against the backdrop of Nolan Wells' still-unexplained death. Wells, 18, joined friends including Warren Hudson on Horn Island to celebrate the Fourth of July. He vanished during the trip and was found dead on July 6.
Cole's connection to the case is personal, not judicial, Hudson is her stepson. Her public expression of support for the Wells family on Facebook apparently drew the attention of whoever was behind the threatening account.
The case has drawn wide public attention and deep frustration. Dr. Benjamin Hudson, Warren Hudson's father, offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in connection with Wells' death.
"We still don't know what happened."
That was Dr. Hudson's explanation for the reward, as reported by the New York Post. The cause and circumstances of Wells' death remain publicly unresolved.
Court records do not indicate whether Dumarce had any prior connection to Judge Cole, Warren Hudson, Nolan Wells, or anyone involved in the boating trip. No apparent link has been reported beyond the social media threats that followed Cole's public posts.
It remains unclear whether Dumarce has entered a plea or retained an attorney. The specific federal court handling the case has not been publicly identified in available reporting. And investigators have not said publicly whether the "package" threat was treated as a credible bomb threat requiring a physical response at Cole's office.
What is clear is the timeline: a teenager died under circumstances no one has publicly explained, a judge expressed sympathy for the family, and within days a convicted sex offender from 2,000 miles away allegedly flooded her inbox with promises of violence against her and her children.
When the system lets a man with Dumarce's record walk free and he immediately graduates to terrorizing a judge's family, the system has not done its job, and the people living with the consequences deserve better answers than they have gotten so far.
