Prisoner charged with making terroristic threats, threatened to kill Milton mayor, Gov. Kemp

MILTON, Ga. — Milton Mayor Peyton Jamison has received death threats since at least September 2023. Now, a man has been charged with making those threats, at least since December.

As previously reported by Channel 2 Action News, threats came in the form of text messages and phone calls, beginning on Sept. 3, 2023.

Months later, the threats were still coming. Channel 2′s Bryan Mims spoke with the Milton Police Department about the threats, which they’d continued investigating throughout the year and into 2024. The most recent threats came in December, according to police.

“On December 17th, 2023, I was assigned a Terroristic Threats and Acts call,” the incident report’s narrative said. “I spoke to the suspect who made threats against several individuals. The investigation continues.”

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In an update on Wednesday, Milton police said the December phone call was tracked to the cell of a man serving a life sentence in the Georgia State Prison system.

Police said Jamison wasn’t the only one to receive threats from 30-year-old Eric Elam.

“Elam, 30, faces two charges of Terroristic Threats and Acts – one directed at Milton Mayor Peyton Jamison and the other towards Georgia Governor Brian Kemp,” police said.

While Elam has been identified as the one making threats against Jamison and Kemp in December, police said they are working to determine if it was connected to the earlier threat in September which was made against Jamison and his family.

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Elam is serving a life sentence in Macon State Prison for armed robbery, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections. He’s been serving his sentence since February 2020.

“Both stem from a phone call made on December 16, 2023, that authorities determined came from a mobile phone inside a Georgia State Prison. The phone used to place that call was later located in Elam’s prison cell,” Milton police said.

While Elam has been charged with making threats against Jamison and Kemp, police said they believe that he did not have any independent reason to make the threats on his own.

Instead, police say “it is presumed other individuals and/or groups were behind the effort for yet-to-be-determined reasons.” They are now working to find out who may be responsible and bring them to justice.

Milton Police Chief Jason Griffin thanked the GDC for their help in the case, as did Jamison.

“Crimes like this in the cybercrime underworld and ‘dark web’ are typically very hard to investigate,” Griffin said. “Yet our smart, dedicated detectives – in conjunction with the Department of Corrections – bucked the odds and determined the source of this threat.”

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