Three More Prisoners Die, Three More Staffers Fired at Wisconsin Prison
At Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution, 11 staffers have now been fired or resigned in the wake of a federal probe sparked by a spate of prisoner deaths that has now reached a total of seven in just two years at the troubled maximum-security lockup. The most recent prisoner to die was 23-year-old Damien Evans on March 4, 2025. The state Department of Corrections (DOC) offered no other details, however.
Names of nine fired staffers and two more who resigned have also not been released, as an investigation continues that was launched by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) in March 2024.
Evans was the third prisoner to die since the investigation started. Christopher L. McDonald, 57, succumbed on August 4, 2024, to what Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt called “a likely self-inflicted incident.” Jay J. Adkins, 66, died on May 23, 2024, but no cause of death has been released for him.
As PLN reported, former Warden Randall Hepp and eight other employees were arrested in June 2024, after they were charged in the deaths of two other prisoners: Donald W. Maier, 62, in February 2024 and Cameron Williams, 24, in October 2023. No charges have been filed in the deaths of yet another two prisoners: Tyshun Lemons, 30, in October 2023 and Dean Hoffman, 60, in June 2023. However, lawsuits have been filed by survivors of both prisoners. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.36.]
The prison went on lockdown in March 2023, and it wasn’t lifted until late July 2024. By then, Gov. Tony Evers (D) had invited the DOJ to investigate a suspected smuggling ring responsible for contraband cellphones and drugs that might have caused some of the deaths. Evers has also gotten behind a $500 million plan to revamp DOC prisons, including downgrading the Waupun lockup, which is the state’s oldest, to hold medium security prisoners, who would be offered vocational training there.
Meanwhile, of the eight staffers facing charges, one was convicted in September 2024: Sarah Ann Margaret Ransbottom, 36, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in connection with Maier’s death and was fined $250. She had originally faced a felony misconduct in office charge.
A ninth former staffer has also been convicted, though unrelated to any single death: Former facilities repair worker William Lee Homan, 47, pleaded guilty in September 2024 to federal charges for smuggling cellphones, drugs and tobacco into the lockup between 2022 and 2023. According to his plea, he took payoffs from prisoners and their associates totaling over $53,000 in exchange. Homan was sentenced in December 2024 to nine months of house arrest and three years’ probation by the federal court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. See: United States v. Homan, USDC (E.D. Wisc.), Case No. 2:24-cr-00169.
Additional source: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
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