Topeka ? The mothers of two Shawnee County Jail inmates who committed suicide want a federal grand jury investigation into recent deaths at the jail.

Sharon Vaughn and Cathy Thomas spoke Monday during a news conference and demonstration in front of the Shawnee County Courthouse.

Bias Busters and the National Action Network of Kansas organized the event, conducted in conjunction with a news conference by Victims of Real Crime, which opposes Dist. Atty. Robert Hecht’s efforts to oust Topeka Mayor Butch Felker.

Five inmates at the jail have committed suicide by hanging since July 1999. Another inmate hanged himself in December 1998 at the adjoining Shawnee County Juvenile Detention Center.

Thomas is the mother of Anthony Stapleton, 28, who hanged himself at the jail in November. In August, she filed a $20 million lawsuit against jail employees and county commissioners, and Monday she called for a federal grand jury investigation into all inmate deaths at the jail.

“How many deaths is it going to take for them to do something?” she asked.

Vaughn, mother of William H. Vaughn Jr., questioned whether her son’s death late Saturday was a suicide. He was booked into the jail Friday on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in a limited actions civil case.

Jail spokesman Capt. Timothy Phelps said William H. Vaughn Jr. was placed in the jail’s general population, but officers granted his request to be moved into an isolation cell. He wasn’t on suicide watch.

County Corrections Director Elizabeth Gillespie said jail officials told Vaughn he could post bond with the $21 in cash he had and be released.

“But he refused to do so,” she said. “That’s something we thought was odd.”

Sharon Vaughn said Monday that her son had requested isolation after having “problems” with other inmates.

“My son was in jail for misdemeanors,” she said. “You tell me, what individual would go into county jail with misdemeanors and commit suicide?”

Gillespie said there were no indications that Vaughn’s death was anything other than a suicide.

Sonny Scroggins, state National Action Network chairman, is asking legislators to establish an independent inmate death review board. He said internal investigations by sheriff and jail officials were “an example of the fox watching the hen house.”

“Evidently, something fell through the cracks,” Scroggins said. “Something is terribly wrong at our jail for the size that it is.”

Scroggins said the public was assured that procedures were changed after the death of Scotty Sisk, who committed suicide in 1999.

A federal jury in April awarded $10 million to Sisk’s parents. The jury found that there had been negligence, but not deliberate indifference, in the county’s handling of Sisk after his mother told jail employees he was a suicide risk.