Prison heat may have contributed to Iowa inmate’s July death, his sister says

On one of the hottest days of the summer, with temperatures in the 90s, Robert Buel, 57, died at the Anamosa State Penitentiary. 

The official cause of death was arteriosclerotic and hypertensive cardiac disease, or chronic heart disease, according to the State Medical Examiner. But Buel’s sister, Kerensa Buel, of Sioux City, believes the lack of air conditioning in the prison contributed to her brother’s July 15 death.  

“I think that he probably wouldn’t have died of a heart attack if he would have been in an air-conditioned prison,” Kerensa Buel said. 

For 15 years, the Iowa Department of Corrections has been asking state lawmakers for money to install air conditioning at the Anamosa prison and at the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility – prisons that house more than 1,000 men each. 

The Iowa Legislature has never funded the proposals and, so far, the Corrections Department has prioritized other major infrastructure projects over adding A/C to the aging limestone lockups. 

Climate change is causing more and longer durations of extremely hot weather across the country and in Iowa. Eastern Iowa was under a heat advisory much of early September with heat indices topping 100 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. 

The air temperature at 8:30 p.m. in Living Unit C of the Anamosa State Penitentiary was 80 degrees or higher 21 days in July and 10 days in August, according to data collected by an inmate from a Corrections Department digital clock with a temperature display. 

Another inmate, Shawn Crowley, 55, said the hot, wet air at night makes it hard to breathe. 

“I’m having some pain in my chest, but it has not gotten to the point of going back to the hospital,” he said. 

Crowley, of Cedar Rapids, serving 32 years for second-degree kidnapping and voluntary manslaughter, had a heart attack in May 2025 and was airlifted from Anamosa to the University of Iowa Health Care in Iowa City, he said. 

“About a month and a half after returning from Iowa City, the weather was getting hot and the temp in the unit was hovering in the high 80’s to low 90’s every day and all night long,” Crowley said. “I began to get pains in my chest again, but not like the heart attack.”

Corrections medical staff diagnosed Crowley with pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac around the heart, he said. Doctors installed a defibrillator implant later in 2025, he said.  

“Because of the heart damage, being in the heat and humidity really takes a toll on me, to the point that I cannot do much, as in any form of exercise,” Crowley said. “I’m relegated to spending most of my time trying not to get overheated and pass out. Luckily the pericarditis has not flared up to the point of sending me to the hospital yet, but I’m in fear every day that it will, or worse.”

Kerensa Buel said she did weekly video calls with her brother, convicted of second-degree murder in Sioux City in 2022. Robert Buel often talked about struggling through summer heat waves in a prison without air conditioning in more than half the cells, she said. He said the cafeteria was the only place with air conditioning, but staff required inmates to leave soon after they’d finished eating. 

The night he died, Buel called his wife, Hilda, and said he felt like he was having a heart attack, Kerensa Buel said. 

“Instead of saying anything to anybody, he went and laid down and died,” she said. Robert Buel’s time of death was 11:36 p.m. July 15, according to the news release the Corrections Department sent out July 22. 

The Corrections Department did not respond to several emails and a voicemail message seeking comment for this story. 

About 1,700 people a year died from heat-related causes from 2018 to 2025, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the actual number of U.S. deaths affected by heat may be as high as 9,000, according to a new analysis by Boston University and National Public Radio.

Heat causes the body, especially the heart, to work harder to keep cool. It can also exacerbate other chronic health conditions, like asthma. Because heat doesn’t leave marks on a body, it often isn’t noted on death records, Dr. Sameed Khatana, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told NPR. 

Robert Buel was overweight, his sister said. Their father had died of a heart attack when he was 54. But Kerensa Buel believes if Robert hadn’t been incarcerated, he would still be alive. 

“He was a wonderful brother. He was a wonderful person,” she said. “He should not have been in prison and this should not have been the end of his life.”