Green Bay Correctional Institution prisoner charged with killing 19-year-old cellmate as a hate crime

GREEN BAY – A 24-year-old prisoner is charged with killing his 19-year-old cellmate at Green Bay Correctional Institution in a hate crime.

Jackson Vogel of Two Rivers is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, as a hate crime, for the Aug. 27 death of Micah Laureano, of Waukesha.

An autopsy by the Brown County medical examiner determined Laureano "died of strangulation/suffocation by manner of homicide," the Brown County Sheriff's Office announced Aug. 29 .

The two had been sharing a cell in the prison's treatment center for only hours before the incident, according to the sheriff's office and a criminal complaint.

According to the complaint, a correctional officer was doing a routine count of prisoners in the treatment center area around 9:30 p.m. Aug. 27 when he found a cell door with a pink piece of paper covering the window. The officer asked the inhabitants to remove the paper from the door.

Vogel removed it, and the officer saw Laureano unconscious, with his legs and arms bound together.

Laureano was pronounced dead at the scene.

A correctional officer who took custody of Vogel reported Vogel made "numerous unprovoked comments to him, including that he knocked out his cellmate, tied up his hands and feet, and then strangled him to death with his hands," the complaint states.

Inside the 10-by-6-foot cell Vogel and Laureano shared, officers located a handwritten note with racist and homophobic slurs and the words "kill all humans," the complaint says.

In an interview with a Brown County Sheriff's Office investigator, Vogel told investigators he killed Laureano because he was "bored," and had wanted to kill him since the first time he met him days prior, the complaint says.

The homicide charge against Vogel also carries a repeater modifier , because he was previously convicted of attempted first-degree intentional homicide.

According to a criminal complaint in that case, Vogel repeatedly stabbed a family member in September 2016, when he was 16 years old. He was sentenced in 2017 to 20 years in prison followed by 20 years of extended supervision.

Laureano was serving a three-year sentence for concurrent cases in Waukesha and Columbia counties involving robbery and battery, according to public records.

No hearings have yet been scheduled for Vogel. He is in custody at Green Bay Correctional Institution, according to online records.

This is the second homicide in two years at Green Bay Correctional Institution related to a hate crime investigation. In October 2022, Joshua Scolman, 40, fatally stabbed 25-year-old Timothy Nabors and attempted to kill a second person during medication distribution.

RELATED: 19-year-old prisoner at Green Bay Correctional Institution was strangled in homicide, autopsy shows

Scolman was convicted after a jury trial in April of one count of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of attempted first-degree intentional homcide, both as hate crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of release .

Contact Kelli Arseneau at 920-213-3721 or karseneau@gannett.com . Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ArseneauKelli .

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay Correctional Institution prisoner charged with killing 19-year-old cellmate as a hate crime