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WAUSAU – A 67-year-old woman will spend the rest of her life in prison for the 2006 shooting death of her husband.
Marathon County Circuit Judge Michael Moran sentenced Cindy Schulz-Juedes to life in prison Wednesday morning, calling her actions following the death of her husband, Kenneth Juedes, callous and unfeeling. He ordered that Schulz-Juedes never be eligible for release from prison.
In October, a jury found Schulz-Juedes guilty of being a party to the crime of first-degree intentional homicide in the death of her husband and obstructing an officer. Prosecutors charged Schulz-Juedes more than 13 years after Juedes’s death.
On Wednesday, Schulz-Juedes continued to say she did not kill her husband, starting many of her sentences to the judge with the phrase, “As an innocent person.”
She criticized her trial attorney and said the conviction “hurt my soul.”
Three family members talked about how Schulz-Juedes had torn their family apart with “a tangled web of lies” years before Juedes’s murder. They also spoke of how Schulz-Juedes refused to let them give Juedes a funeral or see his remains after his death.
Schulz-Juedes’s attorney said the appeals process for the conviction already is underway.
According to the criminal complaint, Schultz-Juedes went to a neighbor’s home shortly after 8 a.m. Aug. 30, 2006, and told the neighbor Juedes “was bloody all over his chest.” The neighbors said Schulz-Juedes was “hysterical” but not crying.
When a dispatcher asked Schulz-Juedes, through one of the neighbors, if Juedes was talking or awake, she responded he wasn’t awake, according to the complaint. Schulz-Juedes said she didn’t know what happened and he was lying in the bed in blood. She also said the phones in the house didn’t work.
A forensic pathologist determined someone shot Juedes twice with a 20-gauge shotgun, according to the complaint. A detective determined the person shot Juedes once in the back and then, after he rolled onto his back, a second time in the chest.
Police say Schulz-Juedes told them she slept in a camper outside the couple’s home the night before, to avoid the noise in the house, according to the complaint. They say she told them she went to check on Juedes the next morning because his vehicle was in the driveway and she thought he was late for work.
Schulz-Juedes’s ex-husband gave her a shotgun similar to the one used to shoot Juedes, according to the complaint. When officers asked her about the shotgun in 2019, Schulz-Juedes said someone stole it a year before Juedes’s death. Schulz-Juedes did not report the theft to police.
A detective learned Juedes’s estate, including various life insurance policies, was worth more than $950,000, according to the complaint.
At first, Schulz-Juedes said she couldn’t find Juedes’s will but later she found a copy, dated almost two years prior, that left everything to her, according to the complaint. The attorney and witness named on the will both said they were not involved in its creation, according to the complaint.
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