Days before laying her son to rest, Nolan Wells’ mother revealed she received anonymous hate mail at her home.
Christine Wonsley shared a photo of the mail on Facebook and addressed the unidentified sender directly.
“Whoever sent this to my home, may the good Lord have mercy on your soul,” she wrote alongside a photo of the mail, which was a defaced Associated Press photograph from a July 10 press conference at the National Action Network headquarters in New York. “Bold enough to send this crap but not bold enough to list your return address.”
The envelope was postmarked from Denver on July 15, according to Newsweek. The original image showed Rev. Al Sharpton and family attorney Ben Crump standing beside Wonsley and her husband, Elmore Wonsley, in support of the family.
The anonymous sender drew arrows from Crump’s and Sharpton’s eyes toward Wonsley and added dollar signs.
Wonsley added, “This is America where a grieving mother and father have to deal with this type of behavior because we asked a simple question of what happened to our son and accepted all the help we could get to find answers.”
She ended her message with a direct response to the sender: “Please go touch some grass.”
The hate mail arrived as Wonsley and her family continue to grieve publicly while seeking answers about Nolan's death.In an Instagram video shared July 16, she described the emotional weight of the previous two weeks.
“Right now everything is so heavy. Everything is so heavy,” she said. “I’m a healthcare provider so I talk about grief a lot. Now to be on the other side of this, it’s a lot. This loss, this pain, this grief hits different. It’s unsurmountable.”
Nolan’s funeral is being held Monday, July 20, at Center Pointe Church in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Visitation was scheduled from 9 to 11 a.m. CT, followed by the funeral service at 11 a.m. CT.
A celebration of life is set to follow at the Jackson County Fairgrounds. Sharpton is officiating the service, and arrangements were entrusted to Lockett Williams Mortuary in Gulfport.
Wonsley has urged those responding publicly to Nolan’s death to remain peaceful, saying her son “would never want any type of violence.”
Nolan, a wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, disappeared July 4 after traveling by boat with friends to Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. His friends returned to the mainland without him, and his body was recovered two days later in waters near the island.
The official cause and manner of his death have not been publicly released. Neither the official autopsy findings nor findings from the family’s independent examination have been made public, and toxicology results remain pending.
Once the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department completes its investigation, the findings will be presented to a grand jury, the Jackson County District Attorney’s Office told ABC News.
The office said the grand-jury review does not, by itself, indicate that criminal activity is suspected and is standard procedure for most unnatural or suspicious deaths in the county.
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