Wisc. Woman Who Offered $25G Reward in Husband’s 2006 Murder Is Arrested for Allegedly Killing Him
In 2007, a year after her husband had been gunned down in bed in his Wisconsin home, his widow offered a $25,000 reward to anyone with information that could help solve his murder.
Now, more than 13 years after Kenneth Juedes, 58, of Hull, was killed, his wife, Cindy Schulz-Juedes, is being accused of his murder, say authorities.
On Monday, Schulz-Juedes, 65, of Chippewa Falls, appeared in court for a probable cause hearing, a clerk in the Marathon County Circuit Court tells PEOPLE.
This was her first time in court since she was arrested on Wednesday. It is unclear at this point what prompted the arrest.
The judge ordered her held on a $1 million cash bond, WSAW, the Wausau Daily Herald and Wisconsin Public Radio report.
Police have made an arrest in a homicide that went unsolved for more than 13 years. Cindy Schulz-Juedes, 65, will be charged in the 2006 killing of her husband, Kenneth E. Juedes, in their home in Marathon County. https://t.co/rd4ftMmi6H
— WPR (@WPR) December 2, 2019
She was also ordered to surrender her passport, the Wausau Daily Herald reports.
She is expected to be charged with murdering her husband when she returns to court on Dec. 13, WSAW and Wisconsin Public Radio report.
She has not yet entered a plea because she hasn’t been formally charged yet. It is unclear whether she has retained an attorney who can speak on her behalf. The public defender who accompanied her to court did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
She remains held in the Marathon County Jail.
The arrest stems from Aug. 30, 2006, when Schulz-Juedes called 911 from a neighbor’s house, saying that her husband, a pharmacist, had just been shot, the Wausau Daily Herald reports.
She told police she was sleeping in a camper on the couple’s 30-acre property because of a sinus infection and woke up to find her husband in bed in their house, shot twice in the chest, the outlet reports.
Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Richard Dufour told the judge that Schulz-Juedes allegedly had the “means and motive” to murder her husband, WSAW reports.
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He said she allegedly murdered her husband for a nearly $1 million life insurance policy, as well as property she sold after his death for about $200,000, WSAW reports.
The two were having marital troubles, investigators found, Dufour told the judge.
A divorce, he alleged, “could have led to her receiving little, if anything.”
She was his second wife.
She was the only person living with Juedes at the time of his murder, Dufour alleged.
The public defender who accompanied her to court argued that prosecutors don’t have enough evidence against Schulz-Juedes, WSAW reports.
“All this is not enough that shows that there was actually something that happened,” public defender Trevor Peterson said in court, Wisconsin Public Radio reports. “In fact, 13 years shows that there was a lot of doubt in what’s going on there and the pieces of the puzzle aren’t put together.”
In 2013, Schulz-Juedes told the Wausau Daily Herald that she didn’t profit much from her husband’s death.
“I don’t feel I am a person of interest in my husband’s death,” Schulz-Juedes said. “Most of the money went to the kids. Moneywise, my husband and I together would have earned more in two years than I ever would have gotten from his death, and I still would have had my husband.”
