In overcrowded Nebraska prisons, several suspected of killing cellmates while double bunked in cells meant for 1.

The nine or 10 phone calls Kevin Carter had with his mom each week he was held at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln produced only one vague foreshadowing of his death.

Carter had a new cellmate, he told his mom. And he didn’t like him.

“He always would say, ‘I love you’ two or three times during the conversation,” said Paige Carter, Kevin Carter’s mother. But her son seldom provided details about his experience in prison.

Paige Carter had no indication that her son’s cellmate of one week would beat and strangle him on Nov. 6, 2020.

Carter’s death was not the first, nor would it be the last, that occurred after prison officials double bunked inmates in cells built for one person.

Now, five years after Carter’s death, a legislative effort to limit double bunking is stuck in committee as the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services faces a federal lawsuit settlement over the practice.

Legislative Bill 99 would have given incarcerated people the choice to double bunk. The practice has been linked to the deaths of at least three people in Nebraska in the span of six years, court records and reports say, with another man’s death possibly connected to double bunking.

During a March interview, Rob Jeffreys, the director of the department, told University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism students (including this reporter) that the department, under his direction, does not use double bunking at any facilities, even though the system is routinely over 140% of its capacity. A spokesperson later clarified that Jeffreys was referring specifically to restrictive housing.

That would contradict testimony Jeffreys gave earlier in the year, when he explained that double bunking in restrictive housing is necessary at times due to a limited number of cells.

Jeffreys’ tenure has overlapped with at least one inmate death where the inmate’s cellmate is a suspect, according to court records. The death remains under investigation, and a spokesperson declined to say whether the inmates were in restrictive housing.

Restricting double bunking would have followed years of calls from experts, prison watchdogs and those personally affected by its use to end the practice.

Depending on the prison, individuals can be double bunked in both general population and restrictive housing settings, the latter of which limits the privileges, such as out-of-cell time, that those individuals have.

“It’s inhumane,” said John Fair, a formerly incarcerated man who now lives in Omaha. “If you put two dogs in a kennel, they’re going to fight, and especially when you got two people that think they’re alpha males.”

‘Asking for trouble’

In August 2023, according to court records, Dmitry Vanderbeek made multiple statements to a Nebraska State Patrol investigator, saying he strangled cellmate Alfred Thulin at the prison in Tecumseh.

“Bro, I ain’t gonna lie, I killed that dude,” Vanderbeek told the investigator, according to an affidavit. Also, during a parole board hearing on Sept. 25, 2023, Vanderbeek twice told the board he had killed someone.

Vanderbeek said he killed Thulin due to the stress of his life and of being in prison and the fact that he and Thulin didn’t get along, the affidavit said.

The State Patrol investigation into Thulin’s death is ongoing. Whether the two were being double bunked in a restrictive housing cell or a general population cell is not yet public information.

According to the Office of the Inspector General of the Nebraska Correctional System, the state’s prison watchdog, the Tecumseh prison stopped double bunking in restrictive housing units in 2017.

A grand jury will investigate the in-custody death, as required by state law.

Corrections officials provided a statement to the Flatwater Free Press, saying the department “operates a diverse array of facilities across the state, each designed to address specific security levels and rehabilitation needs of the incarcerated population. Depending on facility and custody level, individuals can be assigned to a variety of housing types, such as single-person cells, shared cells, dormitory-style housing units and restrictive housing …” 

The statement said Jeffreys’ comments made in March about not double bunking “were in response to specific questions in the context of restrictive housing and LB 99.”

Between 2017 and 2022, three prisoners killed or were accused of killing their cellmates while housed in restrictive housing cells in Nebraska prisons:

• In 2017, Patrick Schroeder strangled Terry Berry Jr. in their shared cell at the prison in Tecumseh. Schroeder pleaded guilty to first-degree murder later that year and was placed on death row. He killed himself in 2022.
• In 2020, Angelo Bol beat and strangled Kevin Carter in their shared cell at the penitentiary. Carter’s mother sued former and current state officials, alleging they knew the risks of housing her son with Bol.
• In 2022, Tyler Stanford was accused of killing Phillip Garcia in their shared cell at the penitentiary. A grand jury charged Stanford with first-degree murder in 2024. The case is pending.

Berry’s family sued the state, alleging that double bunking contributed to his death. The suit, settled for nearly $500,000 in 2022, put a spotlight on Nebraska prisons’ use of double bunking.

Some mental health experts argue that the practice can be dangerous.

Pablo Stewart, a clinical professor and psychiatrist at the Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, served as an expert in a class-action lawsuit brought in 2017 by the ACLU of Nebraska and Nebraska Appleseed, a nonprofit that provides legal aid to low-income Nebraskans.

The suit, filed on behalf of inmates in restrictive housing cells, alleged the state’s chronically overcrowded prison contributed to endangering the health, safety and lives of prisoners and staff. Stewart toured Nebraska prison facilities as part of his work.

He said people with pre-existing psychiatric disorders get worse by being put into restrictive housing. He added that if a person doesn’t enter that setting with an existing mental illness, they often develop one.

“Putting two people together, one of whom is mentally ill, but is well-treated on medications — that isn’t bad,” Stewart said. “You don’t want to put a mentally ill guy who’s actively symptomatic and refusing medications in a cell with somebody else, because you’re asking for trouble.” 

Foot in the door

The double-bunking measure, authored by Sen. Ashlei Spivey, a Democrat from Omaha, would allow incarcerated individuals the choice to bunk together in restrictive housing as long as they agree to it in writing.

Change is needed, Spivey argued during a January Judiciary Committee meeting, because double bunking is dangerous and costly. She cited Berry’s death and the settlement of the Berry family’s lawsuit.

The bill, LB 99, does not provide a framework for how the department would curb double bunking beyond that prisoners must agree to it in writing.

Although the bill has not made it past committee, Spivey said she plans to continue her efforts in the next legislative session. In between sessions, the Judiciary Committee will conduct an interim study into the department’s use of restrictive housing, Spivey said.

Little space, mounting tension

Fair, the formerly incarcerated man living in Omaha, served what he estimates to be a total of 13 years in restrictive housing in various state prisons. In that time, he said, he only ever shared a cell once.

Fair and the other inmate were friends, but tensions built as soon as they became cellmates. A complaint led to an argument that led to a fistfight that was over before guards could notice.

Fair and his cellmate’s main issue was inconsistent sleep times.

For Schroeder, his cellmate was too talkative.

“It’s hard to stay single-celled,” Fair said. “We’re humans, you know, we need human interaction. But it does get frustrating because you’re living with someone in the room the size of a bathroom.”

Restrictive housing cells like the one Fair was double-bunked in aren’t large enough to accommodate two people, according to the inspector general’s 2024 report on double bunking.

Restrictive cells should have at least 80 square feet of space, nearly half of it unencumbered space that isn’t filled with desks, toilets or sinks, according to American Correctional Association standards. The penitentiary’s restrictive cells have roughly 75 square feet of space and 32 square feet of unencumbered space, the report said. 

Although Spivey’s bill would allow prisoners to double bunk if they want, the inspector general said in its report that the nature of restrictive housing nullifies any way to determine if it’s safe. 

“Restrictive housing is a volatile setting, even for a correctional facility, and staff cannot be expected to determine which cellmates are safe and which ones are not in these circumstances,” the report said.

The inspector general has called for an end to the practice multiple times as the state’s inmate population has steadily risen since Berry’s death.

Overcrowding emergency

Since last year, the department has been under an “overcrowding emergency.”

Jeffreys, in legislative testimony, said that the limited restrictive housing cells can quickly fill up depending on events, such as an inmate committing a violent act, that cause people to be sent to those cells. 

“If I got only 20 cells and I got 30 people, somebody is going to have to double bunk,” Jeffreys said in his testimony.

The inspector general said in its report that the penitentiary was using double bunking during its investigation of Garcia’s death. Double bunking at the penitentiary was regular and normal, the report also said, despite a decrease in its overall restrictive housing population.

The department’s most recent annual restrictive housing report said the average daily population in the penitentiary’s 20-cell restrictive housing section was 32 in 2024.

The inspector general’s report also cited overcrowding as a contributing factor for the use of double bunking and called for an end to the “dangerous” practice.

A Nebraska News Service analysis of current department data also shows that the average daily population of multiple prisons exceeds even their operational capacities.

Design capacity is measured as the available number of beds a facility was built to hold. Operational capacity is 125% of a facility’s design capacity.

A 2020 analysis by the University of Nebraska at Omaha concluded that Nebraska has the second-most-populated prison system in the United States in terms of operational capacity, using data from 2019. It was second only to neighboring Iowa.

To ease overcrowding, the department is building a new prison in Lancaster County. However, experts say it will be overcrowded the minute it opens.

The new prison, projected to open in 2028 with 1,512 beds, will replace the Nebraska State Penitentiary, which has a design capacity of 818 beds but an actual average population of 1,287, according to state data. That means the new, $350 million prison may add only around 225 additional beds for the state’s adult male prisons, all of which currently exceed their operational capacity.

Is legislation enough?

Paige Carter didn’t wait for legislators to change laws. She said she took her family’s fight to the court system seeking justice — and prison reform — in the name of her son.

Kevin Carter had, since 2019, been serving a six- to nine-year sentence for terroristic threats and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony when his cellmate, convicted murderer Angelo Bol, beat and strangled him.

Prison staff found Carter unresponsive under a bedsheet, and he was pronounced dead later that night.

Officials charged Bol with first-degree murder in Carter’s death, but he was found not responsible due to insanity. The now-45-year-old is housed in a secure mental health unit at the state’s Reception and Treatment Center in Lincoln, court records show.

Bol had a history of mental illness, and department staff had discontinued his medications months before he was placed with her son, Paige Carter’s lawsuit alleged.

LB 99 stalled in the Legislature this spring as Paige Carter’s lawsuit was in the discovery process. In April, the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office agreed to settle the suit for $395,000.

“Our number one priority has been and must continue to be the care and rehabilitation of those incarcerated in our nine facilities,” said Dayne Urbanovsky, the department’s director of strategic communications.

The attorney general did not respond to requests for comment.

Paige Carter said she hoped the lawsuit would set a precedent, hold current and former officials responsible and encourage change in how the department operates.

“I’m not a fortune teller, but if (prison officials) were all convicted at the time (after Berry’s death), it would have fixed something to have it looked at,” Paige Carter said. “And maybe Kevin wouldn’t have been put in that cell.”

Flatwater Free Press reporter Sara Gentzler contributed to this report.

This article was originally produced as part of the Deepe Family-funded spring 2025 in-depth reporting course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications. The course focused on the issue of Nebraska’s prisons. This version of the article was edited by Flatwater Free Press staff.