Neillsville woman charged with two counts of attempted murder

A 45-year-old Neillsville woman was charged in Clark County Circuit Court last week with two counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide after she allegedly stabbed her ex-boyfriend and a woman with whom he was engaged in sexual activity.

Shannon M. Liddell is being held in jail on a $50,000 cash bond and is scheduled for a Dec. 10 initial appearance on the charges. In addition to the two counts of attempted homicide, she is also charged with two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety.

The charges are the result of a multiple stabbing in the early morning hours of Oct. 28, in an upstairs apartment in a building on Hewett Street that houses the Clark County Press.

Police responded at approximately 2:15 a.m. to a 911 call reporting a stabbing. A woman at a city residence was found there with stab wounds to her neck and arm, and she told officers she had been stabbed by Liddell at the Hewett Street location and had then ran to a relative’s house to get help. Meanwhile, police were alerted to a second stabbing victim near the Neillsville Public Library, about two blocks from where the stabbings allegedly happened. Police found two men there on a sidewalk, one of who had been stabbed in the chest. Neither of the men would tell police who had stabbed the man.

The two victims both told police the stabbings had occurred in the Hewett Street apartment. Officers went there and found Liddell in an adjacent apartment. Upon questioning by officers, Liddell said she had caught her ex-husband cheating and said, “I hurt people.”

According to the criminal complaint filed on Oct. 29, Liddell told police that she and both victims had gone out to play pool earlier that evening. She was married to the male victim, she said, “through a pagan marriage called hand fasting but there was no legal certificate.” Liddell lived in one apartment at the Hewett Street location and the male victim lived in the other. Liddell returned home earlier that evening, she said, while the victims stayed out. Later, she said, she went to the male victim’s apartment to see if he had made it home, and when she walked in found the victims engaged in sexual activity. Liddell said at that point she felt “extreme anger,” but told officers she had difficulty remembering exactly what happened. She did say she got two knives from the male victim’s kitchen and had one in each hand.

The male victim was stabbed three times, including in the chest, and had cuts on his, back, hands and fingers. The female victim sustained two cuts on her left arm and another to the neck.

The female victim said she saw “the look of rage” on Liddell’s face when she first entered the apartment. She said Liddell had a knife in each hand and stabbed her while she was on a couch.

Officers initially could not find the knives believed to have been used in the crime. On a second search of the upstairs portion of the building, two knives with blood on them were found in a closet/ storage area near Liddell’s apartment, according to the complaint.

According to online court records, Liddell has had contact with law enforcement and the court system regarding domestic violence in the past. In 2008 in Eau Claire County, she pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct/domestic abuse, and a count of battery/domestic abuse was dismissed but read-in to the court record. She had a similar disposition of a domestic abuse case in 2003 in Chippewa County. She also has a prior misdemeanor conviction for disorderly conduct in Clark County in 2007, with a battery charge dismissed.