Report: Guards smuggled drugs into one of Kentucky’s most notorious prisons
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Two EKCC guards charged with trafficking meth and suboxone into prison.
- Investigators linked guards to inmates/relatives using monitored calls, letters and video.
- Case underscores staff misconduct amid EKCC’s recent scandal-plagued history.
Two guards at one of Kentucky’s most scandal-plagued prisons, Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex, are being prosecuted for allegedly trafficking drugs to inmates, including methamphetamines, according to public records.
Dwayne Lee Skaggs, 34, and William Chester Caudill, 32, are charged in Morgan Circuit Court with first-degree promoting contraband, first- and second-degree drug trafficking, official misconduct and engaging in organized crime. No trials have been scheduled yet.
Also charged in the alleged prison drug-smuggling scheme are two inmates, Challis Ray Davis, 44, and Shane A. Wilder, 42, as well as Wilder’s 70-year-old mother, Donnie G. Wilder.
Davis and Shane Wilder already were serving time for burglary and meth-related convictions, but they since have been transferred to different state prisons.
The medium-security Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex has a history in recent years of physical and sexual abuse of inmates at the hands of staff, leading to criminal charges and civil rights lawsuits. Four inmates died at the prison over a recent five-month period. State officials have provided few answers on that so far.
Still, the local prosecutor said organized drug smuggling by guards is surprising and disappointing.
“I feel like I can understand inmates, in a way, who want to try to get drugs while they’re in prison. But when we’ve got officers on the job who go and do that, when they’re profiting off this stuff, then that’s something we definitely want to try to weed out,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Brandon Ison in Sandy Hook.
“I have two state prisons in my jurisdiction, and then I have a county jail as well in Carter County. So drugs come into prisons and jails pretty frequently,” Ison said. “But you know, the majority of the time, it’s not the corrections officers bringing it in. It’s through the mail, it’s during visitation, it’s stuff like that.”
Skaggs and Caudill, the former guards, did not respond to requests for comment. Justin Janes, an attorney for Caudill, declined to comment on the case.
The Herald-Leader used the Kentucky Open Records Act to get the state Department of Corrections’ internal affairs report about the alleged prison drug-smuggling scheme.
Internal affairs investigators stopped Skaggs and Caudill last Sept. 7 as they walked into work at the prison.
Inside Caudill’s lunchbox were 55.5 grams of white crystal meth and 800 strips of suboxone, a prescription medicine used to treat opioid withdrawal, according to the investigators’ report.
Investigators said they linked Skaggs and Caudill to a group of inmates and inmates’ relatives who paid the guards to smuggle drugs into Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex.
In phone calls and letters, which investigators started to monitor last June 10, the inmates arranged for their relatives to meet the guards for so-called “dates” at different stores and restaurants around London, about 90 miles southwest of the prison, investigators said.
Skaggs and Caudill were referred to in these communications as “the redhead” and “the big fat guy,” respectively, investigators said. (Caudill is 6 feet tall and weighs 400 pounds, according to his Kentucky State Police arrest report.) The calls and letters also described bags of money and “presents” or “the Mexican present” changing hands at these meetings.
Surveillance video from some of the London businesses used as meeting locations compared against the prison’s work schedule helped investigators determine who the likely suspects were, according to the report.
In an interview Sept. 7 with internal affairs staff, Skaggs “admitted to meeting inmates’ family members and introducing dangerous contraband inside the institution. Officer Skaggs then signed a resignation form and was escorted to his personal vehicle, where he exited state grounds,” investigators wrote.
Caudill acknowledged having drugs inside his lunchbox but would not say where the drugs came from, investigators wrote. A review of Caudill’s cell phone showed a recent GPS search for the London Walmart, although Caudill’s hometown is two hours from London and has its own Walmart, they wrote.
The grand jury indicted Caudill on Oct. 23, 2025, and Skaggs on Jan. 22.
This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
