Kelly O'Keefe Boettcher holds a photo of Brittany Doescher at a vigil near Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac on March 22, 2025 | Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner

At a vigil across the road from Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac, Wis., advocates sought to increase attention on the women’s prison.

“There’s been a lot of publicity with what goes on in the men’s prisons in the last couple of years, but that is something that is not just within those prisons, it is at the women’s prisons too,” Juli Bliefnick, who was once incarcerated at Taycheedah, said at the vigil on Saturday. 

The small group of advocates met in a neighborhood near the prison and walked up to the facility, carrying signs bearing photos of two women. 

Wisconsin Watch and Wisconsin Public Radio published an article on March 11 that reported the deaths of Shawnee Reed, 36, on Feb. 23, and Brittany Doescher, 33, on March 6, following hospital stays. The women were incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional. 

Bliefnick is the operations coordinator for FREE, a nonprofit addressing the gender-specific issues of women’s incarceration and reentry to society. She spoke about getting “some visibility for these women and honor[ing] their memory” and showing support for women currently incarcerated at the facility. 

The official causes of the deaths are still not public, according to the article. Family members said hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. Following discussions with doctors, an unnamed family member of Doescher believes earlier treatment could have prevented her death. Family members said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month before the article’s publication on March 11.

Pneumonia fatality

The obituary for Doescher says that she “suffered and died from complications from pneumonia left untreated.”

In a statement to Wisconsin Watch and WPR, Department of Corrections communications director Beth Hardtke said the agency was taking steps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses to staff and incarcerated people in a time of reportedly high numbers of respiratory illness cases in Wisconsin, the article said. She detailed actions taken by the department and said people incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, including Taycheedah, recently received testing and treatment for Influenza A. 

Another advocate at the vigil, Melissa Ludin, said she is a member of FREE’s board. 

“And I think if anything, I think there’s things that really need to be looked into with that,” she said, referring to Doescher’s family saying the cause of her death was untreated pneumonia. “…Are there other women that are sick?”

Cellmate homicide

In July 2023, Cindy Schulz-Juedes, 68, died at Taycheedah Correctional. Taylor Sanchez, 29 and also incarcerated at Taycheedah, was charged with first-degree intentional homicide of her cellmate. A jury trial is scheduled for  July and early August. 

In early March, the Examiner sent a records request for any reports produced by the Fond du Lac Police Department’s investigation into Schulz-Juedes’s death. The department denied the request on the grounds that disclosure could interfere with an ongoing prosecution or investigation.