A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A Wisconsin Senate committee held a public hearing Thursday on a bipartisan bill that would require the state Department of Natural Resources to notify county and tribal governments when local groundwater contamination is found to exceed state standards. 

Throughout the hearing, the bill’s authors and residents of communities with water quality problems complained of incidents in which significant amounts of time passed before people learned their water was contaminated with harmful chemicals such as nitrates or PFAS. 

“Time really counts, hours, days, weeks, and in our case, even years,” said Lee Donahue, a resident of the town of Campbell on French Island near La Crosse, which has been dealing with PFAS contamination for years. “It’s been heart wrenching to know that my family and my friends and my neighbors have all been impacted by these toxic chemicals. I don’t wish anyone to have contamination in their water. And the sad part is we had no clue that PFAS was pouring from our faucets and that we were drinking that water for years and years and years before any notification was made.”

Initially authored by Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse) and Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), more than 60 legislators of both parties have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors, signaling the legislation has enough support to be signed into law during a legislative session in which efforts to find compromise on environmental issues — including efforts to extend the Knowles-Nelson stewardship grant program and to create a method to spend $125 million that has been set aside for more than two years to remediate PFAS contamination — have been stuck in the partisan muck. 

Under the bill, if the DNR finds an exceedance of the state’s groundwater standards the department will have seven days to notify the local county or tribal health department as well as the county land and conservation department. 

For several years, Wisconsin policymakers have been unable to establish a state standard for the acceptable amount of PFAS in the state’s groundwater, hitting roadblocks at the state Natural Resources Board and in the Republican-controlled Legislature. The state does have established standards for the amount of PFAS in the state’s surface water and the drinking water provided by municipal water utilities. 

As the Legislature has tried and failed to pass a bill that would spend the $125 million in the PFAS trust fund, residents of communities affected by PFAS contamination have frequently said the policy change they’d most like to see is the establishment of a groundwater standard. 

The contaminant notification bill does not establish a groundwater standard for PFAS, however it requires the DNR to notify the county government if the groundwater is found to have PFAS levels higher than the existing state standards for PFAS in surface or drinking water. 

About one-third of Wisconsin residents get their water from private drinking wells. While the bill does not establish a groundwater standard and does not provide any assistance if the groundwater they use to shower, brush their teeth, make coffee or mix baby formula is contaminated, proponents said it does make sure residents have the information they need to make decisions about the source of their water. 

“If people have a right to clean water, then they have a right to know when their water is not clean,” said Michael Tiboris, the agriculture and water policy director at the River Alliance of Wisconsin. “And this bill is exactly the kind of action that we appreciate having legislators take a strong position on, giving families knowledge of the threats to their drinking water makes it possible for them to protect themselves.” 

None of the people or groups that testified at the hearing Thursday were in opposition to the bill, but a few industry groups expressed a handful of complaints and said they’d like to see amendments to the bill’s final version. 

The concerns of business groups centered around making sure that any notifications were made after test results have been verified and making sure that the notifications don’t instigate regulatory action from the government that it doesn’t have the authority to undertake. 

“It’s just not appropriate for the government to take any kind of action,” said Adam Jordahl, director of environmental and energy policy at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. “I know it’s not a direct regulatory action where we’re expecting an individual or business to do something or comply with something, but nevertheless, the issue of sort of holding people accountable to a regulatory PFAS standard that has not yet actually been promulgated into the administrative code. We find that to be very problematic and kind of a slippery slope going down in terms of holding people accountable or responsible to something that hasn’t gone through the full rulemaking process.”

Scott Suder, the president of the Wisconsin Paper Council, said he’s concerned that prematurely telling people their water is contaminated could create “reputational risks” for nearby businesses. 

“It creates unnecessary legal and reputational risk for industry, potentially because the notice is subject to public inspection and copying under [Wisconsin open records law],” Suder said. “All exceedance notifications would become public records, creating significant disclosure and some reputational risks, so even minor errors or omissions could trigger liabilities, and the visibility of exceedances may lead to public misunderstanding about actual risks. So it is a bit concerning for industry as well.”

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Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated for a bill to create a task force on to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

At a Tuesday hearing, Wisconsin Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated   creating a task force on missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker.

Walker went missing in 2022 at the age of 15 in Milwaukee and has not been found.

“They refused to issue an Amber Alert to allow the community to help search for her. They were telling me Joniah did not fit the requirement of anything,” Stubbs said. Howard sat next to her with her eyes closed. “What are the requirements to get help from your local police department when your Black… daughter [is] missing?”

SB 404, coauthored by Stubbs (D-Madison), Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) and Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), would establish a 17-member task force to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls and produce a report.

“To help prevent other families from experiencing what my family and countless other families endured … this bill for missing and murdered African–American women and girls … needs to be passed into state law,” Stubbs read on behalf of Howard. “Help us. Find us. Give our families closure. We matter.” 

This is the third legislative session in a row that Stubbs has introduced legislation to create the task force. She was inspired in part by the Department of Justice’s task force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, which was established in 2020 by Attorney General Josh Kaul after the Legislature failed to pass a bill to create that task force. Kaul has said that the funds don’t exist to take a similar path with this task force. 

Stubbs said during the hearing in the Senate Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, Children & Families committee that the bill is “necessary to improve the mechanisms for preventing, investigating and healing for all forms of gender-based violence in our state, which impacts women and kids of all racial backgrounds, but which affect Black women and girls at the highest rate.”

Members of the task force would include four lawmakers and other stakeholders, including law enforcement representatives and representatives from advocacy or legal organizations that focus on Black women and girls.

The task force would be responsible for examining a number of issues related to the violence that Black women and girls face including systemic causes, the appropriate methods for tracking and collecting data, policing related to investigating and prosecuting crimes, measures that could reduce violence and ways to support victims and their families.

Under the bill, a final report would be due by 2027. It would need to recommend policies and practices that would be effective in reducing gender violence and increasing the safety of Black women and girls and help victims and communities to heal from violence.

Stubbs highlighted a 2022 report from the Guardian that found that in 2020 five Black women and girls were killed every day in the U.S. Wisconsin had the worst homicide rate for Black women and girls in the nation that year. Stubbs said data on the extent of the issue is incomplete, and the task force could help fill in the picture. 

“We are lacking crucial data, especially in Wisconsin,” Stubbs said. “The data already gathered is insufficient and lacks critical detail to understand the circumstances of violence.”

Johnson said the bill is a “necessary step toward understanding why African-American women and girls are so vulnerable to violence and disappearance and where our public safety systems are falling short.”

Sheena Scarborough, mother of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was murdered last year, also testified at the hearing. Johnson noted that both mothers are from her district.

“I think that speaks volumes to how serious the issue is and how it impacts communities, not just in the city of Milwaukee but across the state, but disproportionately it affects African-American women, especially in the city of Milwaukee,” Johnson said. 

The bill would provide one position in the Department of Justice to support the task force as well as $80,200 in 2025-26 and $99,500 in 2026-27 to fund it.

Last session, the bill passed the Assembly but never received a vote on the Senate floor. It received a public hearing but not without encountering roadblocks due to opposition from former Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville). Stroebel said he didn’t support the legislation because he didn’t support passing laws based on race or gender. 

Snyder, who described himself as “the Republican who likes to do what is right” said the bill is “the right thing to do,” and expressed frustration with the bill getting hung up last session. 

“I get really irritated when one person thinks that because they don’t like it, that they can kill it. That bugs me a lot,” Snyder said. 

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) asked the lawmakers if there are other groups, noting Hmong and Indigenous groups, that face disproportionate amounts of violence and suggested changing the bill to include them. 

“Instead of focusing on just one specific group… I would really love to see each one of these groups kind of meld together, so there’s representation so information can be shared,” Wanggaard said. 

James, who is the only member of the Legislature actively serving in law enforcement, answered Wanggaard’s question by pulling from his own experience. 

“Back at home, I mean, we have a high Hmong population. I don’t recall ever taking any cases involving any missing Hmong individuals to be honest with you. …I’ve had more white and African-American missing type cases,” James said. He said that a “caveat” to the issue is that “the data collection hasn’t always been prevalent and adequate… especially if we have agencies where they’re not even taking cases on missing persons, that data is not going to be collected.”

“My concern is that if they’re targeting young women — just young women in general, I’m not concerned what race they are — if they’re targeting these young women, is there a connection between some of the missing… say on the Menominee reservation as opposed to Milwaukee County,” Wanggaard said. “I’m just thinking about getting the most information to as many people as we can to help the process.”

Supporters of the bill addressed questions about why it was important to have a task force specifically focused on Black women and girls. 

Madison Police Chief John Patterson was asked whether he saw any value in creating one big task force.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to be surgical at times when it comes to disparities that we’ve identified in our system and, certainly, I believe this is one,” Patterson said. “In my almost three decades, I can tell you work that started off being very focused and surgical in nature to try to address a disparate impact in our community has led to greater communication, greater collaboration across all communities.”

Barbara Sella, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, said it’s “so important to understand dynamics within communities and different communities have different dynamics.” 

“To just say, well let’s include everybody — could make the task almost impossible… It’s really important to have a laser focus,” Sella said.

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Gov. Tony Evers signed “Bradyn’s Law,” which creates a new crime for sexual extortion and the “Swenson Starkie Act,” which extends the statute of limitations for hiding a corpse. Evers addresses the Legislature in his 2024 State of the State message. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers signed two bills this week introduced in response to crimes, including “Bradyn’s Law,” which creates a new crime for sexual extortion and the “Swenson Starkie Act,” which extends the statute of limitations for hiding a corpse. 

AB 201, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 48, was introduced by Rep. Patrick Snyder and Sen. Jesse James after the death of 15-year-old Bradyn Bohn from Kronenwetter, a village outside of Wausau. Bohn died by suicide in March after being targeted online by a perpetrator who convinced him to send photos of himself and told him that he needed to send money or face major consequences. He suffered through hours of threats and was coerced into sending money before his death.

“Today is an important day to remember Bradyn as we honor him and his memory, because now, moving forward, we will be able to hold bad actors responsible for reprehensible behavior, especially when they prey on our kids, and that is so important,” Evers said in a statement. “We wouldn’t be here today without Bradyn’s family and their relentless advocacy to keep kids safe online and hold predators accountable. We will be able to protect more of Wisconsin’s kids because of Bradyn’s family’s efforts to fight back.”

Sexual extortion, or “sextortion” is defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a crime in which “an offender coerces a minor to create and send sexually explicit images or video and then uses that material to extort the victim by threatening to release it.” 

2025 Wisconsin Act 48 makes it a Class I felony to coerce someone to engage in sexual conduct or to produce “an intimate representation” by threatening to injure someone’s property or representation, by threatening to commit violence or by threatening to distribute intimate photos of another person. The crime would be a Class H felony if the victim does any of those acts or is under the age of 18, and a Class G felony if the defendant was previously convicted of a sexually violent offense, the violation was committed during the course of a child abduction or the victim is under age 18 and the defendant is more than four years older than the victim. 

A person can also be prosecuted for felony murder if the person commits extortion and it causes the death of the victim. 

Sexual extortion has become a growing threat in the U.S. in recent years. The FBI observed from October 2022 to March 2023 an increase of more than 20% in reports of financially motivated sextortion incidents involving minor victims. 

From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations received over 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors that included at least 12,600 victims, mostly boys, and led to at least 20 suicides.

Rep. Brent Jacobson (R-Mosinee) said in a statement that the bill is the first step towards “protecting vulnerable Wisconsinites from exploitation.” 

“As technology creates new avenues for exploitation, my colleagues and I have an obligation to make sure our laws protect our constituents, and that Wisconsin parents have the resources and awareness to keep their children safe from harm,” Jacobson said. “We must continue to come together to prevent these heinous crimes from claiming children in our state.”

Statute of limitations for hiding a corpse

SB 423, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 59, extends the statute of limitations for prosecuting the crime of hiding or burying a corpse by specifying that it only begins “once the victim’s remains are found and identified or when the crime occurs, whichever is later.” The current statute of limitations is six years in Wisconsin.

The legislation was introduced by Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) and Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison) after the case of Starkie Swenson. Swenson disappeared in 1983 but his remains weren’t found until 2021, 38 years later. 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, John C. Andrews accepted a plea in the case and was convicted on a charge of homicide by negligent use of a vehicle in 1994 and served 16 months in prison. He refused to reveal where Swenson’s body was. 

Police charged him with hiding a corpse after identifying the remains in 2021, but the charges were dismissed due to the statute of limitations. 

“The killer should’ve faced justice for hiding the remains in an attempt to conceal his crime. However, because of a loophole in Wisconsin law, Starkie’s killer was able to avoid charges,” Tusler said in a statement. “Although we cannot heal the wounds caused by the murder of Starkie Swenson, 2025 Wisconsin Act 59 ensures that no violent criminal will be able to exploit the corpse-hiding loophole again,” Tusler said in a statement.

Notifying parents of sex offenses

AB 74, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 57, requires Wisconsin schools to notify a pupil’s parent or guardian if the pupil is an alleged victim, target or recipient of alleged sex offenses while at school. The law also requires school boards to provide parents and guardians each year with information on their rights to access records regarding school employee discipline.

“Doing everything we can to keep our kids safe at school, at home, and in our communities is a top priority for me, as well as our schools and education professionals, who are frontlines of doing what’s best for our kids every day,” Evers said in a statement. “This bill will strengthen transparency by making sure parents and family members are notified if any misconduct at school affects their kids’ safety or well-being and bolster accountability by ensuring they know what their rights are and what their kids’ rights are.”

Evers signs several other bills this week

Under AB 136, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 55, the penalty for impersonating a peace officer, a firefighter, an emergency medical services practitioner or an emergency medical responder is increased from a Class A misdemeanor to a Class I felony. Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rep. Chuck Wichgers (R-Muskego) introduced the legislation this year following an incident in New Berlin.

AB 388, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 75, creates a legal framework to establish a behavioral health hospital in Chippewa Falls using $10 million, which was set aside in the state budget this year to be used for Rogers Behavioral Health. Sen. Jesse James, who coauthored the bill, said in a statement that it “is extremely monumental for the people of northwestern Wisconsin” and provides “a renewed sense of optimism” to the community as it will provide mental health support for children and adults in the area.

Under SB 11, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 79, principals will now be required to allow youth membership organizations, including the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, to schedule at minimum one time to visit their school to encourage students to join their organization. The visit can consist of both spoken and written information on how the organization helps students with educational interests and civic engagement. 

Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) celebrated Evers signing the bill, saying that the organizations “create more engaged, confident, and community-minded citizens” and the law “ensures the next generation of Wisconsin children will continue to benefit from these life-changing experiences.” She also criticized Evers for vetoing another bill that would have added new requirements on schools related to military recruiters, saying the state should “proudly support our military, not slam the door shut when they’re offering students legitimate career options, which is precisely what the governor did with this veto.”

SB 310, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 61, limits the amount of time covered by an emergency power proclamation by a local government’s chief executive officer to 60 days, unless extended by a local governing body. The bill was part of a controversy surrounding Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez earlier this year who claimed that Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who is running for governor, abused his power during the COVID-19 pandemic when he issued emergency orders in 2021.

AB 265, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 56, requires judges to sentence offenders to a minimum of 10 years in prison if convicted of a human trafficking crime and 15 years for a child trafficking crime.

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A bill in the Wisconsin Legislature would make youth who received life without parole eligible to appeal to shorten their sentences; currently 28 states ban life without parole for juveniles offenders | Getty Images

Since the 2022-23 session of the Wisconsin Legislature, a bill (SB-801/AB-845) has been discussed that would eliminate the court-imposed sentence of life without parole for a juvenile (under 18 years of age) and require the court to consider specific factors when sentencing youth, namely their level of maturity.

The bill would also allow those already sentenced to life as a juvenile the opportunity to appeal and adjust their sentences after serving 15 years for crimes that didn’t involve murder and at 20 years for those who were convicted of homicide.

Two U.S. Supreme Court rulings (Miller v. Alabama, 2012, and Montgomery versus Louisiana, 2016) have held that life without parole for a juvenile comes under the category of cruel and unusual punishment. The Court has found that youth shouldn’t be held to the same level of accountability as adults because they are not psychologically or emotionally as mature and their brains are not fully developed.

According to an April 2024 report by the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, “Unusual & Unequal: The unfinished business of ending life without parole for children in the United States,” 28 states have banned juvenile sentences of life without parole (JLWOP):

“The scientific understanding that young people have limited decision-making abilities and impulse control informed widespread, rapid rejection of JLWOP in state legislatures, the Supreme Court, state courts, and the court of public opinion. Declaring that youth is ‘a mitigating factor’ that must be considered by sentencing judges in Miller v. Alabama (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court held that life without parole is disproportionate for the vast majority of youth.”

Nikki Olson, founder and executive director of Wisconsin Alliance for Youth Justice, is one of the advocates pursuing the legislation in Wisconsin.

“Their liberty was taken away before they even had full rights because they were kids,” she said of juveniles sentenced to life. “We are talking about people who weren’t even 18, who couldn’t legally smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or couldn’t even drive without their parents’ permission. They couldn’t sign contracts or be on a jury or vote in society. We understand that kids are fundamentally different. The science says kids are fundamentally different. The Supreme Court says they are fundamentally different. We would like Wisconsin law to reflect that as well.”

Two past Republican sponsors of the proposed Wisconsin legislation are Rep. Todd Novak and Sen. Jesse James.

“Ending juvenile life without parole in Wisconsin is not just about reforming our justice system; it’s about restoring hope, potential and the promise of a future for our youth,” Novak has said. “This would also ensure that Wisconsin remains in compliance with the United States Supreme Court precedent.”

Sen. James has also gone on the record endorsing the bill. “The science is clear: brains are still developing. They cannot fully comprehend the extent of their actions,” James said. “For example, how is a 15-year-old supposed to understand life without parole when that sentence is literally quadruple the entire time they’ve been alive. People can grow; people can change, especially when their brains are still forming. Juveniles deserve a second chance.”

According to Sen. James’ office, the bill will be reintroduced as soon as the Department of Corrections (DOC) provides data on how many people currently incarcerated in Wisconsin  would be eligible to apply for a sentence adjustment if the bill is passed. The advocacy group Kids Forward puts the number somewhere north of 100.

Sen. James was asked whether his Republican colleagues known for supporting tough-on-crime legislation would also back the bill.

“As legislators, we introduce legislation with the hope that it’ll pass,” he said. “It is a part of our job to advocate for our bills and highlight the potential benefits and positive impact of the legislation with supportive research. Last session was my first time authoring this bill, and I’m still learning new information about this issue myself. We unfortunately didn’t get the opportunity to have a public hearing on this bill in the Senate last year, so myself and other advocates have not had the chance to testify in support and provide that background and context to members of the Senate.”

Convicted as a juvenile, serving life as an adult

Zachary Reid, 33, incarcerated at the New Lisbon Correctional Institution, has been in prison for 17 years. He is serving a life sentence, but he can apply for extended supervision after serving 40 years. If there isn’t a change in the law or Gov. Tony Evers doesn’t offer him a commutation or pardon, Reid is looking at another 23 years of incarceration.

If the bill does become law, Reid said he would apply at his 20-year mark, and he would be granted a hearing for a sentence adjustment.

The current language of the bill says the hearing should consider “relevant information” including “expert testimony and other information about the youthful offender’s participation in any available educational, vocational, community service, or other programs, the youthful offender’s work reports and psychological evaluations, evidence of the youthful offender’s remorse and the youthful offender’s major violation of institutional rules, if any.”

In 2008, when Reid was 16, he was charged with killing his father. Then, in 2009, a Winnebago County trial jury convicted him of first degree  intentional homicide, and he was given a life sentence which he began to serve in Waupun Correctional Institution when he turned 17.

Reid continues to contend that the death of his father was not intentional but an accident and that  Reid was defending himself from his alcoholic, abusive father, who was wielding a knife and making threatening gestures. Reid claims he choked his father with the intention that his father would pass out, not die.

But Reid also admits he did some things after his father’s death that he shouldn’t have, such as placing the body in the trunk of his father’s car instead of reporting the death immediately to the police.

 At 16, Reid said, he was a very immature young person, often in trouble, using drugs, not attending school, and stealing, making many poor decisions.

“At that age, you think you’re an adult; you think you know everything,” he said. “Those things adults tell you to do, some certain things, and you think you know better. And I was guilty of all the same types of thoughts like that, of just thinking that I really knew what was best for my life.”

When Reid was arrested in October of his junior year of high school, he had not attended very many days of class, a trend of skipping school he had started as a sophomore.

“And I just thought I didn’t have to prove anything to anybody, like, I know this stuff,” he said. “Why do I have to prove to a teacher that I know? Just an ignorant way of thinking and really low maturity level compared to how I am now. I look back, and I just kind of shake my head a lot of the time. There’s just a lot of the stuff that I did, and on top of it, I was doing drugs and drinking. At the time, I was already binge drinking. I started drinking really bad when I was 15, and it really picked up even more when I was 16, because my grandmother passed, and I used it as basically a reason to implode. And so the combination of being immature and the drugs and drinking, I was making a lot of really poor decisions.”

At Waupun, Reid could have been a prison statistic with an attitude and gotten into drugs and gangs and trouble, but instead he decided to take a different path by learning to weld and machining and later to crochet and donate items to charities. He was transferred to New Lisbon, where he continued to work as a welder and machinist, and then five years ago, he began training dogs that assist the blind.

“We do basically high-level obedience training, preparing the dogs to be able to go to harness school, where they learn the actual skills of working with a blind person or visually impaired person, to basically give them back their life, to be able to get them out of their house and be able not to be stuck there,” he said.

In prison, Reid said, he’s applied himself to learn new skills and gain an education.

“I have valuable skills that Wisconsin needs right now, you know, like welding and fabricating is a really in-demand training, even the machining,” he said. “Like I can run a mill, a lathe, you know, that type of stuff. I’ve gotten two vocational certificates since I’ve been here. I got an electromechanical service technician certificate. It’s also part of a pre-apprenticeship program through the Department of Workforce Development. I’m actually a certified professional dog trainer, like I got that through Chippewa Valley Technical College. I just finished my associate’s degree earlier this year, so I have an Associate of Science through Milwaukee Area Technical College.”

Reid also intends to pursue a bachelor’s degree from Marquette University in peace studies.

“I contribute to society right now in the environment I’m in, so I have no doubt that I can contribute in a meaningful way out there,” said Reid.

Since he has been in prison, Reid claims he has only received two conduct reports or complaints, one in 2010, his first year in prison, and another in 2016 for a tattoo.

Not many 33-year-old men have to wake up every day and live with the consequences of an action they took as a 16-year-old.

“Most of the time I try to just, kind of like, live in the right now,” he said. “I know it’s kind of like, you hear that phrase a lot, like live in the now type of stuff. I try to do that to the best of my ability as a coping mechanism, because, dwelling, obviously, on what happened and everything like that, like it was my dad, you know, so to me, I think it’s even a little bit more burdensome than for most of these people in that, I mean, my intent wasn’t to kill him. I was trying to just get him to stop attacking me in the situation we were in, and he passed away. So it’s like it’s not only just the guilt of taking a life, but it’s like I was so drug-addled or whatever it was, but it’s like I failed in that moment, like that was my failure.”

In-prison testimonies

At a future hearing to have his sentence adjusted, Reid would likely hear from others who would offer endorsements.

Patricia Muraczewski provided the dog training for the residents in New Lisbon and worked with Reid for two years. She was impressed by his work ethic and character and believes Reid should be considered for an early release.

“He was a member of the Paw Forward team of inmates who train dogs for the visually impaired,” she said.  “Mr. Reid was extremely diligent in class attendance and was very serious in acquiring and understanding the methods needed to train each dog that he was partnered with.  He had a very relaxed demeanor and got along with all of the other teams.  Even though there were frustrations at times with new instructors and conflicting material, he never expressed any anger.”

She added, “Over the course of my time in New Lisbon, never was Mr. Reid disrespectful and he never broke any rules or overstepped his position.” 

“Of all of the inmates I had worked with during that time, in my opinion, he was the inmate most likely to be successful when released and least likely to reoffend,” she said, adding,“During the four years this program has been in existence at New Lisbon none of the men that have been released have reoffended.” 

Brandon Horak knew Reid as a fellow resident at Waupun and later at New Lisbon. Horak had been sentenced to 10 years of incarceration for felony murder in the commission of an armed robbery after he set up a drug dealer for a robbery that resulted in the murder of the dealer.

“I wasn’t in a good state of mind,” he said when he first entered Waupun and met Reid.  “I had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison, so I met him in Waupun and he ended up encouraging me to get a job, so we worked in the laundry room together for a year and a half or two years. He encouraged me to get into school, and I didn’t want to do any of this stuff, so he was a really big influence on my life.”

Both Reid and Horak left Waupun and then later met up again in New Lisbon, where Reid had begun training dogs, and Horak said he noticed that Reid had lost a defensive, protective shield that many residents carry in amaximum security prisons like Waupun.

“I asked him why he didn’t care if someone stole something from him, which is obviously a big no-no in prison, and he said the dog program had changed his life and he had something to live for,” said Horak.

Even though Horak wasn’t officially in the dog program, Reid taught Horak what he had learned, and after he left prison, Horak set up his own dog training business based on Reid’s mentoring, a business called EDU Training.

“We train dogs in people’s homes, and to be honest, it was all thanks to Zach,” he said.

Out of prison, Horak often reaches back to Reid and his cellmate for advice on working with client pets.

“I’ve never been back to jail,” Horak said “I have a full-time job. I own a business. I do all this stuff, and I honestly do not believe I would have been able to do it without his (Reid’s) help. I just talked to him last week and he always tells me, ‘You better be doing good out there.’”

In prison, Horak said, he saw many people released and then come right back. Because of that, he doesn’t automatically believe everyone deserves leniency. Still, he says, Reid isn’t one of those who should be in prison and he believes he could do more good on the outside.

Engaged to be married 

Reid and his fiancée Samantha, got to know each other as pen pals in 2013, and that developed into a relationship in 2018. In 2019, they became engaged. In 2024, she moved from Florida to Wisconsin to be closer to Reid.

“The only reason we’re not married right now is that we’re hoping to get him out one day,” said Samantha, “so we can have just a normal marriage out here, versus having a marriage done or a wedding ceremony done inside the prison.”

Samantha said she has been communicating with Reid since they were both in their early 20s, and she’s seen him mature over the years.

“But just even in the last maybe five years, it’s just blown up like he has just matured and wants to do so much good,” she said. “ … He loves that he can actually make a difference, and he’s done other charity programs that even the prison doesn’t offer. He crochets hearts for suicide prevention.”

She said it recently occurred to her how much Reid is trying to do good for others and also maintain a relationship with her from prison.

“That is work, too, to just step up and almost religiously call somebody regularly, and never let me down, and to take care of me with all this distance,” she said.

If the legislation is passed, Samantha says that Reid would be the “poster child for this bill.”

“It’s like he went out of his way to get welding experience,” she said. “He went out of his way to do charity work. He went out of his way to do all these wonderful things over the years. And I mean, just since I’ve known him, he’s grown and matured. He’s checking off every box he can possibly check off, and could prove that over the course of 17 years, like he is not that person [that he was at 16], and look at all these good things he is doing and all the things he could contribute to society, and right now we’re just warehousing him. We’re wasting all these taxpayer dollars housing somebody that is very clearly not a threat.”

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