It took almost four years for Michael Ingold’s homicide case to come to trial, but it took just a few hours for a jury to return April 28 and say he wasn’t guilty in Sheila Laudon’s death.
Laudon, Ingold’s girlfriend, died in June 2022, and initial autopsy results showed manual strangulation as the cause of death, with a petechial hemorrhage in her right eye and another in her left eyelid. A revised report that came out days before the trial started in early April showed the same cause of death but that the cluster fractures around her throat were actually from the medical examiner’s instruments.
Assistant District Attorney Laura Nelson said in her closing statements the morning of April 28 that it took courage for the medical examiner, Dr. Adam Covach, of Fond du Lac County, to admit his mistake and file an amended and addended report, even with the timing being so close to the trial.
“It takes courage to admit when you’re wrong, and Dr. Covach did it in front of a jury of strangers,” Nelson said. “Strangulation may have some of these signs, or it may have none of these signs.”
Nelson noted that Ingold had told one of the prosecution’s witnesses that “I’m going to kill her” almost 12 hours before Laudon was found dead. Ingold had told several people that Laudon was doing drugs excessively and spending his money, even claiming that she had cheated on him twice in the 10 years they were together, Nelson said.
Laudon’s medical records had shown she had health issues, Nelson said, but nothing in the autopsy report showed those issues were factors in her death.
“Dr. Covach directly examined Sheila’s heart and admitted she had a large heart, but she had no sign of an acute heart attack,” Nelson said. “He looked at whether she had coronary heart disease — that’s where the plaque and the calcium builds up in the arteries of the heart. That’s where you see some people have to have a stent or a bypass. She had none. Her arteries were clear.”
Nelson also said Ingold’s story changed constantly, from the mode of transpiration he used to get home from his job in Waukesha to the television programming Ingold and Laudon watched the night before she died.
“This story just keeps developing,” Nelson said.
Defense attorney Kelli Thompson made it clear in the first words of her closing statement that Ingold can’t be guilty of murder, because Laudon’s death wasn’t a murder. Thompson said Ingold has said that constantly in interviews with detectives, when talking to his attorneys and even in jail calls.
“‘I did not touch her. I did not hurt her. I would not do this. I will maintain my innocence until the day that I die.’ We heard Michael say this over and over again,” Thompson said. “We heard him say it through tears. We heard him yelling it, pounding the table, frantic, and by the end, we knew it was true.”
Thompson said Ingold’s confusion and grief were to be expected from someone who loved Laudon and that the state was claiming that was proof Ingold had committed murder.
“At the center of all the testimony is a much simpler truth. This was not a homicide — this was a tragedy,” Thompson said. “The state wants you to take grief and shock and confusion and turn them into guilt. The evidence does not support that.”
Thompson noted the initial deputies from the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department who arrived on scene had turned off their body cameras during interviews with Ingold and believed Laudon’s death was from natural causes before the deputy coroner arrived on the scene. Pictures taken of Laudon’s body showed her clutching the comforter that had supposedly been used to kill her.
“The state has tried to build this case from hindsight, assumptions and one narrow interpretation of the medical evidence,” Thompson said.
That medical evidence, she said, included numerous indications that Laudon’s health had been failing for months before Ingold found her dead. Insomina, anemia and past drug use with cocaine and methamphetamine impacted Laudon, according to Thompson, and witnesses told the court she had difficulty moving around her house and property without having to stop and take a breath.
There was plenty of reasonable doubt in the state’s case, Thompson argued, and if the jury saw evidence of that, it was vital that members return a not guilty verdict. She noted that Ingold had offered on four occasions to take a polygraph test.
“All Mike is trying to do is figure out what happened, because right now, the cops keep telling him, law enforcement keeps telling him, ‘It’s you. It’s you,’” Thompson said. “This case is about perspective. The state wants you to view Michael’s grief as guilt. They want you to see his shock as suspicion. Panic is not a confession, and a man’s inability to be a cold and detached investigator in the wake of losing his person is not guilt.”
The trial, which lasted more than three weeks, ended two days ahead of schedule, as the case had been set on the docket through April 30.
Ingold’s legal woes are not over, though.
He’s currently being held in the Shawano County Jail on a $250,000 cash bond on 10 charges of threatening people involved with law enforcement and the court system. An adjourned initial appearance in that case will take place at 10 a.m. May 4, with Portage County Circuit Court Judge Louis Molepske Jr. presiding over the case after Shawano-Menominee County Circuit Court Judge William Kussel Jr. recused himself.
Michael Ingold talks with his attorneys, Albert Moustakis, left, and Kelli Thompson during a recess April 28 in Branch II of the Shawano County Courthouse. (Lee Pulaski | NEW Media)
Shawano-Menominee County Assistant District Attorney Laura Nelson gives her closing argument April 28 as Shawano County Clerk of Courts Ethan Schmidt takes notes in the background. Nelson argued that Michael Ingold’s inconsistencies with statements pointed to his guilt in the homicide trial. (Lee Pulaski | NEW Media)
