Family of slain guard sue state officials over his death in 2021 Anamosa prison attack
On the day Robert McFarland was killed, there were supposed to be three corrections officers assigned to the Anamosa State Penitentiary infirmary, according to his wife, Sara Montague McFarland.
In reality, he was one of only two officers stationed there on March 23, 2021, Sara McFarland alleges in a new lawsuit.
Her complaint — and prior state investigations and reports — describe the prison as seriously understaffed. But even that overstates the level of security in the prison infirmary, according to the lawsuit, since at the time of his killing at the hands of two inmates attempting an escape, Robert McFarland's fellow officer was in a back room, on a computer, completing online training modules. Under Iowa Department of Corrections policy, she was required to do so at her post while on duty.
That meant McFarland was the only guard present when prisoners Michael Dutcher and Thomas Woodard Jr. entered the infirmary, posing as members of a work crew and carrying stolen tools for a planned escape attempt from the medium/maximum security prison.
McFarland, 46, was fatally injured alongside prison nurse Lorena Schulte, both struck in the head with hammers before the two inmates unsuccessfully used an angle grinder to try to cut through bars over infirmary windows. Both men are now serving life sentences for murder.
On Tuesday, McFarland's widow sued more than two dozen DOC leaders and officers for gross negligence leading to his death, echoing an earlier lawsuit brought by Schulte's family.
The complaint contains new allegations, including that the second officer was involved in training at the time of the attack, and paints a picture of widespread and systemic safety failures leading up to the killings.
"The more information we got, the scarier and more infuriating it became," attorney Robert Rehkemper, representing the family, told the Des Moines Register.
A Department of Corrections spokesperson declined to comment.
Training, tool management, prisoner movement all unsafe
Tuesday's filing is 130 pages long and names 27 individuals, from fellow guards to department Director Beth Skinner, whose actions it says contributed to McFarland's death.
The most serious failure, Rehkemper said, appears to have been in managing access to tools. Among other shortcomings, the lawsuit alleges that the sergeant responsible for overseeing tools in the prison's maintenance shop often delegated to inmate workers the task of checking out tools to other prisoners. Many of those tools, such as the hammers used in the murders, were simply hung up on peg boards. Rehkemper says national prison best practices call for such tools to be stored off site and kept under lock and key when within the prison walls.
The prison also allegedly did not use a work-order system or other means to track legitimate maintenance requests, and did not require detainees to be checked by officers entering or leaving tool storage — problems known to prison officials at least as early as a 2019 safety audit that flagged tool control as a problem.
From 2023: Two years after fatal escape attempt, Anamosa prison to become medium-security
On the day of the attack, the petition alleges, three of four employee supervisors in the maintenance shop had left to show a new hire the lunch room, and the last was in the office and out of view of the area, allowing inmates unsupervised access to the tool storage where Woodard and Dutcher found their hammers and grinder.
"They just walked in and helped themselves," Rehkemper said.
Inmate workers also were issued opaque black tool bags, making it easy to move tools throughout the prison unseen. The complaint notes, in a bleak twist, that prison policy at the same time required jail staff to use transparent lunch bags.
Despite the 2021 attack, and changes to policy and personnel since then, Anamosa still allegedly has problems securing its tools. The lawsuit claims that another hammer went missing earlier this year, and has yet to be recovered.
Missing safety gear, ignored criminal records
Like the Schulte family, the McFarlands allege that safety radios issued to jail staff often did not work. Tuesday's complaint explains, in greater detail, how that allegedly hampered the response to the attack. After Schulte and McFarland were attacked, the prisoners took hostage Lori Mathis, a dental aide, who did not have a radio to call for help.
A supervisor working on the floor directly above the infirmary heard breaking glass below but also did not have a radio and had to go downstairs herself, where she observed blood stains near the infirmary break room door. She then had to run back to find a phone to finally notify someone that an escape attempt was underway.
The McFarlands also argue, again echoing previous investigations, that Woodard and Dutcher should never have been trusted with tools in the first place. Both had records of violence in and out of detention facilities, and Dutcher in particular had a long record, recounted in the complaint, of escape attempts and violent, threatening and disruptive behavior toward jail and prison officers.
Wife remembers Robert McFarland's love for job, worry for safety
Sara and Robert McFarland were married for 10 years and had a son together, as well as two children she had from before they met. In an interview, she said they first met and became friends when they were working for a cell phone provider, and that McFarland was "very persistent" in asking her to date him.
"Actually my grandma and younger sister both were like, 'You need to give him a try, he seems like a really great guy,'" she said. "We just started dating, and he became my best friend and it was on from there."
McFarland worked for a decade at Anamosa, and his wife said he sometimes told her about problems inside the heavy stone walls of the now 149-year-old prison.
"He didn’t want me to worry more than I already did, but stuff like the radios not working, that was something he had told me a couple years before this happened," she said. "... You could see the worry in his face, but he wouldn’t let on too much. It was what he loved to do, and that was part of the job, and he just did it."
Since his death, she's gotten involved in advocating for prison safety reform, including seeking to reverse a 2017 legal change that stripped the corrections officers' union of the ability to negotiate over safety issues. While state officials "paid a lot of good talk" in the aftermath of the attack, three years later, she said, the same issues are still lingering.
State officials have for years sounded the alarm about staffing shortages in Iowa's overcrowded prison system. Rehkemper said the root of their problem is their failure to follow basic safety policies in facilities such as Anamosa.
From 2022: Iowa workers union alleges unsafe working conditions at Des Moines correctional facility
"Locks aren’t that expensive. Following basic protocols and procedures is not that hard," he said. "You can’t pay somebody enough, as we’re finding out, to work in an unsafe environment."
Their goal of the lawsuit, Sara McFarland and Rehkemper said, is to hold Department of Corrections leadership accountable for failing to make the investments and policy changes needed to ensure correction officers on the job are safe.
"How much money is my husband’s life worth? How much money was Lorena’s life worth?" McFarland asked. "It’s going to happen again. What are they going to tell the next family? It needs to be taken care of."
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Murdered Anamosa prison guard's wife sues Iowa officials
