Wisconsin News

Bomb Threats: Wisconsin News Omits That Katherine Windels, Woman Charged in Making Death Threats Against Republican Senators, Is a School Teacher

A Wisconsin woman accused of emailing death threats to GOP state lawmakers during the Capitol debate over the collective bargaining law was charged Thursday with two felonies.

Katherine Windels, 26, was charged with two counts of creating a bomb scare, along with two misdemeanor counts of computer-based threats to injure or harm. The charges carry a combined maximum penalty of 7.5 years in prison.

The criminal complaint accuses the Cross Plains woman of sending two emails to senators threatening to shoot them and plant bombs around their homes.

The first message sent March 9 to Sen. Robert Cowles of Green Bay said the sender and others had decided to kill the Republican senator by “arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head,” the complaint said. The email also claimed the group had planted bombs around the senator’s house and car and the Capitol building.

A similar email with the same threats was sent to other Republican senators two hours later. Both emails chastised the lawmakers for voting earlier that day for the budget repair bill, which strips most public employees of collective bargaining rights. The emails also praised Republican Sen. Dale Schultz of Green Bay, who was not sent a threat, as “heroic” for voting against it.

The emails were sent from a computer account that appeared to belong to someone named Lisa Patterson. Police contacted Patterson, who said she didn’t set up the account, the complaint said.

Authorities eventually tracked the computer’s IP address — the unique number assigned to every computer that connects to the Internet — to Windels’ parents. Police approached Windels, who allegedly admitted she sent the emails but said she never meant to carry out the attacks.

From Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel Journal… again, there is no mention of Windels being a teacher:

Madison – A 26-year-old woman was charged Thursday with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts for allegedly making email threats against Wisconsin lawmakers during the height of the battle over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill.

Katherine R. Windels of Cross Plains was named in a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Criminal Court.

According to the criminal complaint, Windels allegedly sent an email threat to State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) March 9. Later that evening, she allegedly sent another email to 15 Republican legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).

The subject line of the second email was: “Atten: Death Threat!!!! Bomb!!!” In that email, she purportedly wrote, “Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.”

“I hope you have a good time in hell,” she allegedly wrote in the lengthy email in which she purportedly listed scenarios in which the legislators and their families would die, including bombings and by “putting a nice little bullet in your head.”

According to the criminal complaint, Windels told investigators “I sent out emails that I was disgusted and very upset by what they were doing.”