The family of slain Humboldt convenience store clerk Sheila Myers talked with reporters today after Michael Swanson of Minnesota was sentenced to life in prison. Swanson was convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree robbery in the shooting of Myers last November at a convenience store in Humboldt.
Swanson smiled as judge Thomas Bice called him a “cold blooded murderer” several times before the sentencing. Myers daughter Robin described Swanson as empty. “I think he doesn’t have a heart and soul actually, there’s nothing there, there’s emptiness really,” she said.
Mandy Myers says the sentencing does not allow them to move on. “I don’t think you ever move on from losing a parent like this, or a wife,” Mandy Myers said. She says trying to remember their mother is painful.
“It’s hard for us to dream about her, because then we wake up missing her,” Myers said,”and at the same time you don’t want to have a bad dream either. So it’s easy not to dream at all, but at the same time it’s the only way we can see her and talk to her.”
Myers husband Roger remembered his wife. He says Sheila was always there for him and she always put herself second and put him first. He says she was “a hardworking woman, none any better.”
Roger Myers says it has been tough, but “you gotta keep going I guess, got to keep moving on, nothing you can do now.” Swanson’s sentences for murder and robbery will run consecutively and Swanson was ordered to pay 150-thousand dollars in restitution to the heirs of Sheila Myers.
Swanson is expected to change his plea in a hearing in Algona today before a second murder trial starts in the shooting death of Vicky Bowman-Hall of Burt. Swanson is charged with first-degree murder and robbery in the shooting of Bowman-Hall at an Algona convenience store.
By Alex Solsma, KHBT, Humboldt