A Tecumseh inmate spending life in prison was charged Friday with first-degree murder for allegedly strangling his 22-year-old cellmate last week.
Patrick W. Schroeder, 39, is also charged with use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony, according to the Nebraska Attorney General's Office.Ìý
Terry L. Berry was found unresponsive in his cell April 15 just after 7:30 p.m. He was taken to Bryan Medical Center and pronounced dead five days later.Ìý
Berry was serving three to four years for felony forgery and a jail assault conviction from Platte County. He had a parole hearing scheduled for next month, and his release date was in December.
Schroeder and Berry were the only occupants in the cell at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution before Berry was found unresponsive.
Video surveillance showed a corrections corporal had conducted a check of the inmates around 7:12 p.m. About 25 minutes later, the same corporal returned to remove a phone cart from another cell when Schroeder told him that Berry was lying on the floor, unconscious with a white towel around his neck, according to a court document.
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Investigators said the towel had creases near the ends as though it had been pulled and held tightly. Berry also had injuries on his neck that were consistent with being strangled, along with several small bruises on his hands and arms, the document says.
An autopsy conducted in Omaha on Friday confirmed the cause of death to be strangulation, and the manner of death to be homicide.
Nebraska State Ombudsman Marshall Lux said his staff told him the incident occurred in the special-management unit, which holds inmates in segregation or solitary confinement.
Earlier, Lux said he had questions for prison officials.
"Why were there two people in that one cell?" Lux said.
Corrections Director Scott Frakes was questioned Thursday about double bunking in the segregation unit at Tecumseh.
He said it was very limited, but "using the correct tools and in the right setting and with the right population, it's safe and it's OK to house people in a restrictive housing setting with two people in a cell. Just like it is in general population."
The Tecumseh prison housed an average of 1,032 inmates each day in the last quarter of 2016, operating at 107 percent of its design capacity, according to the department's latest population numbers.
Schroeder was in prison for first-degree murder, use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony and six counts of second-degree forgery out of Pawnee County, according to records.
He killed 75-year-old Pawnee City farmer Kenneth Albers on April 14, 2006.ÌýDuring Schroeder's sentencing hearing the next year, Pawnee County District Court Judge Daniel Bryan said Schroeder killed the farmer because he was "tired of pinching pennies."
Schroeder confessed to the crime but investigators initially suspected him after finding that the day before Albers was killed, Albers had filed a report with the Pawnee County Sheriff’s office alleging Schroeder had stolen his checkbook on April 10 or 11 and forged a check for about $1,350.
Prosecutors said Schroeder went to Albers' home with a plan to rob him. He demanded money from Albers and then hit him once with a nightstick. Albers led Schroeder to his bedroom and handed over several thousand dollars in cash. After that, Schroeder took Albers to a machine shed and hit him with the nightstick four or five more times before taking his body to an abandoned well south of the farm.Ìý