The prison guard responsible for checking on Chad Isaak the day the convicted quadruple murderer hanged himself in his North Dakota State Penitentiary cell was fired Thursday for violating policy.
bismarcktribune.com
9/23/22
Isaak hanged himself with a bedsheet tied to the top of the bunkbed in his cell on Sunday, July 31. He also was found clutching an extension cord, though investigative reports released to the Tribune on Thursday do not speculate as to why. He was pronounced dead at a Bismarck hospital the evening of the 31st.
The reports say Adams twice walked by Isaak's cell during regular rounds and did not check on him despite Isaak having put a piece of cardboard in his cell window -- a tactic inmates use for privacy but which is against prison policy.
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She states that when prison staff encounter a covered cell door window, "the staff need to stop and have the resident in the cell remove the covering. If no response is received from the resident, the staff must open the cell to both view the resident and remove the window covering."
State of mind
The internal investigative reports state that Isaak's cellmate reported no comments by Isaak about being depressed or feeling suicidal. Corrections officials listened to Isaak's phone calls over the 30 days preceding his death -- two calls with his father, one with his mother and four with his daughter -- "and no indication of self-harming ideation was found."
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Isaak told prison staff about a month before his death that things were "going well," according to Zander. His mother or father visited him a total of five times during his incarceration -- the last time a visit by his mother three days before he killed himself.
Isaak left no suicide note, according to a previous report by the Highway Patrol, which handled the criminal investigation into the incident.
Isaak was appealing his conviction at the time of his death. The internal investigation reports say he "had a large amount of legal paperwork in his cell" related to the appeal. The North Dakota Supreme Court is deciding whether the appeal is moot or whether Isaak's conviction should be abated, or essentially erased, because all of his appeal options had not been exhausted when he died.
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