A former Lakeville middle school principal died in custody last week while being held on a Department of Corrections warrant.
Former Lakeville principal dies in Crow Wing County jail
Jerome Endicott was found unresponsive in his cell on Nov. 20.
November 24, 2021 at 1:04PM
Christopher Jerome Endicott, 53, was found unresponsive Saturday in his cell at the Crow Wing County jail in Brainerd, according to Crow Wing County Sheriff Scott Goddard.
Lifesaving measures were not successful, the sheriff said. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension will investigate the cause of death.
It was not immediately clear why Endicott was being held on the warrant. He had been released from prison Nov. 2 under the Department of Corrections' Challenge Incarceration Program, according to his online inmate profile, a voluntary program in which inmates complete training on topics such as substance use, restorative justice, education, and transition preparation before supervised release for the remainder of their sentence.
Endicott pleaded guilty in 2019 to charges of stalking, burglary and identity theft and was sentenced to 8½ years for crimes committed between 2013 and 2018. He also was ordered to pay $19,876.35 in restitution to 18 victims.
Apple Valley police began investigating Endicott, then principal of Century Middle School in Lakeville, in January 2018 after receiving reports that the school district's information technology system had been hacked.
Electronic devices and a paper notebook that investigators found held the key to many of Endicott's hacking activities, according to the charges. Endicott cracked security measures and got access to bank accounts, credit cards, airline rewards programs and store memberships to places such as Sam's Club. Many of those hacked had connections to Endicott's former school district as fellow employees, court documents showed.
While authorities were investigating the identity theft allegations, they contacted a woman who said she had been harassed by Endicott for years and feared him, the charges said.
She told investigators that she worked with Endicott in 2012 and had been in a relationship with him. The woman reported that Endicott became upset when she tried to end the relationship, according to the complaint.
