Overview
- Federal prosecutors have charged Michelle Francine Edwards with interstate transmission of threatening communications for a series of bomb threats directed at the George County Chancery Clerk’s Office and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
- Investigators say Edwards placed nearly 30 calls on July 23 using a blocked number and caller-ID masking, including about 21 calls to the clerk’s office and eight to the sheriff’s office that included warnings such as “Do not go outside” and claims of a bomb.
- The sheriff’s office ordered a building lockdown and conducted an exterior K-9 bomb sweep after the calls, and no explosives were found.
- Authorities say they linked the calls to Edwards using phone records, open-source checks of Cash App accounts, Cincinnati police records and cell-tower location data showing the phone “bedded down” near her West Price Hill address that night.
- If convicted on the federal charge Edwards faces up to five years in prison and a fine, and prosecutors separately charged another person with threatening messages connected to the broader Nolan Wells investigation while the state autopsy in Wells’s death remains pending.