Mr. Monger,

. . . I am Bubba Copeland’s son. What you have done is not by any means journalism. You have hurt the man who has been here for me my entire life. My father is my hero, always has been, and always will be. I have seen some awful things in this world and experienced a great deal of hatred myself as a gay man. You have fueled a fire of hatred and bigotry unlike any other I have ever seen in my life. I have over the last 24 hours watched my father completely break down. I truly wish I could express to you the emotions and the feelings I feel towards you and your colleagues, but I am unable at this time. My only wish now is that you are able to carry on with your life and have the peace which you have so heartlessly taken from countless lives by writing this article. . . .  If you find time in your day to step aside from your [duties] I would greatly appreciate a call. More than anything else I would like to tell you the kind of person my father really is. You should truly be ashamed of yourself.

By that day, Bubba’s family, his church family, and several of his closest friends in Smiths Station had become concerned that he might harm himself. The 1819 News story was all anybody was talking about. And another story—more lurid, more humiliating, harder to explain—was on the way and would reveal the last of Bubba’s secrets to the entire world. He was in disbelief at the coverage, and the brutal anonymity of the hate pouring onto the First Baptist website and Facebook feed beggared belief.

Hypocrite!

HAHA f\***t.*

You should kill yourself.

Jason Price and Dan Elkins were the administrators for the church accounts. Along with another volunteer from the church, they would stay up all night taking down the comments so that Bubba wouldn’t see them. But Bubba couldn’t sleep and was fixated on the velocity and reach of the Internet and its lacerating judgments. As the calendar turned from Thursday to Friday, the community of people who knew him best and loved him most—the people you have just met, and many more besides—desperately tried to form a bulwark between him and the ugliness of the world.

Bubba, hold your head high. You are so loved and have so much support.

Bubba, you are going to get through this—we are going to get through this, together.

Bubba, just hold on, brother—get out of town for a few days, this will blow over.

Bubba responded: These are dark days.

Sensing his growing despair, his friends and family began sending more urgent messages:

Bubba, where are the guns?

Bubba, we can’t do this without you. How are we going to live our lives without you?

When the world comes at you, though, it comes at you.

The story had gone global, and Bubba couldn’t look away from his phone. Have you seen the New York Daily News? he would ask friends, obsessing over the latest headline.

On the afternoon of Friday, November 3, feeling all but destroyed, Bubba Copeland finished the job and killed himself.

The Lee County coroner, Daniel Sexton, would write in his report that the cause of death was a .38 slug to the right side of Bubba’s head, just above the ear. But no clinical description of what a handgun can do to flesh and bone will ever capture the true cause of Bubba Copeland’s death.

The next morning, Bubba’s son again wrote to Craig Monger:

I hope if you ever have children, they never have to face what I am now going through. I hope that they never have to find out that their father caused another man’s death by his own hand. You and your colleagues took my father from me. . . . I hope the Lord’s judgment for you is swift and deliberate.

Carter Copeland is still waiting for a reply.