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100 Days, A Retrospective
James M. Maynard, a 32-year-old resident of a Bunnell-size town in inland Maine that gave birth to two of that state’s governors, was arrested and jailed there on a Flagler County warrant after a local investigation determined he was the alleged source of continuous death threats against a Palm Coast boy and his family through Xbox, the networked video game console.
Playing the handle “rashaphid#5243” and “xrainbowmodsx,” Maynard allegedly threatened a juvenile in Palm Coast’s W-Section starting in July 2022. He claimed he would kill him and his family and burn down their house through a series of poorly written texts (“U better shut trap u next person in line falmy that I kil”), saying he knew where the juvenile lived.
The two had never met. Communications were limited to Xbox and Snapchat. According to other users in the XBOX chat room, Maynard was determined to be around 30, a resident of Maine and a person with a speech impediment who lived with his mother, raising questions about his mental acuity or competence.
Two years elapsed between the beginning of the investigation and the arrest report. The detective who assumed responsibility for the case in November 2022 left the agency. A different detective was assigned the case in February 2025, investigated and traveled to Maine, which led to the arrest last week.
The detective, Adam Gossett, followed up on a search warrant submitted to Microsoft, receiving that data in late February. The data narrowed the search to Maynard and the Newport, Maine, area. A subpoena to Google for subscriber information associated with the email account confirmed Maynard to be the subscriber and provided a phone number, which was registered to his mother.
On April 1, the detective interviewed the Palm Coast victim, who told him that Maynard “had repeatedly altered his profile and made attempts to contact him,” according to the arrest report. The alleged victim “recounted an incident in which [Maynard] reached out to him via video chat through social media. During this interaction, [the juvenile identified Maynard] as the individual who had made the threats to him and his family, recognizing both his voice and accent.”
The Sheriff’s Office’s Real Time Crime Center set up a photo array that was equivalent to a photo lineup, enabling the alleged victim to identify Maynard. The juvenile in a follow-up interview confirmed that the individual he selected in the photo array was the same person he had seen during the video call and the same person responsible for the threatening messages.
“I commend our Major Case Unit for their hard work and dedication during this extensive over two-year investigation,” Sheriff Rick Staly was quoted as saying in a release. “Let this case be a warning that Flagler County Sheriff’s Office does not tolerate any threat to kill, and we will work with our law enforcement partners across the country to find you and hold you accountable if you threaten our residents. I also want to thank the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office and Waterville Police Department for their assistance in this case.”
Maynard was booked at the Kennebec County Correctional Facility in Maine, but is no longer listed as a current inmate there. He is awaiting extradition to Flagler County, where he faces a second-degree felony count of making written threats to kill. His arraignment is scheduled for June 3 at 8:30 a.m. before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols.
Xbox has a grim association with grime right now in the region as Nichols was today presiding over the re-sentencing hearing of Troy Victorino, 48, and Jerone Hunter, 38, in the so-called Xbox mass murders of 2006 in Deltona, when the two men, along with Michael Salas and Robert Cannon, bludgeoned six people to death. Salas and Canon are serving life in prison. The hearing will decide whether Victorino and Hunter will face the death penalty, to which they’d already been sentenced until the sentence was overturned. Victorino had orchestrated the killings because he was upset that his personal property, including an Xbox console, was no being returned.
Maynard’s alleged crime of course is not comparable except in the words he used to describe what he threatened to do to the Palm Coast family.
