An email threatening to blow up the Bladen County courthouse led investigators to an address on Glenwood Drive in Elizabethtown, where they arrested a man who was already facing earlier sex-offense related allegations. William Bryan Clark was charged with felony false bomb report, and a judge has now set his bond at $2 million.
According to WECT, the Bladen County Sheriff’s Office received information about the threatening email from the Bladen County District Attorney’s Office on October 26. Investigators then worked with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, which helped identify the IP address attached to the email. A subpoena led them to an address in the 300 block of Glenwood Drive in Elizabethtown.
Clark was initially held without bond at the time of his arrest, the station reported. At his first appearance on Friday, October 30, 2026, a judge set his secured bond at $2 million.
Clark's Age Over Time
WECT identified Clark as a 44-year-old Elizabethtown man in its report on the bomb threat charge. Earlier coverage described Clark as 40 in 2022, when he was accused of trying to contact a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old through Instagram, and as 35 in 2017, when he faced separate charges involving a minor. Those ages are consistent with the passage of time.
Earlier Charges
In 2017, the Fayetteville Observer reported that Clark, then out on bail for sex crime charges, was accused of disseminating obscenity to a minor, soliciting a child by computer and taking indecent liberties with a child. He was out of jail on bail for prior sex crime charges at the time of those additional allegations, according to the newspaper.
Clark was later convicted in 2018 of indecent liberties with a minor, per the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry as cited by the earlier report. The 2022 report detailed fresh charges against him that followed: two felony counts of solicitation of a child by computer or other electronic device, one count of disseminating harmful material to minors, and a felony probation violation. He was held under a $500,000 bond in that case, the outlet reported at the time.
What the Charge Carries
Under North Carolina General Statute 14-69.1, communicating a report — knowing or having reason to know it is false — that an explosive device is located in or near a building or other listed property is a Class H felony, according to the North Carolina General Assembly. Subsection (c) provides a specific rule for false reports concerning public buildings.
False bomb threats against courthouses have surfaced elsewhere in the state. The Charlotte Observer reported on a North Carolina man accused of calling in a bomb threat to clear a building in an apparent attempt to avoid a court appearance. In Gaston County, a Los Angeles man was sentenced after pleading guilty to a bomb threat that shut down the Gaston County Courthouse, according to the Gaston Gazette.
As first reported by Columbus County News, Clark also faces separate charges from 2025 involving second- and third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and disseminating obscene material to a minor, with an indictment on those charges handed up in December 2025 according to court records cited by the outlet.
