Admitted Strangler Gets 20 Years Without Parole

Wed., Nov. 27, 1996

By John Craig johnc@spokesman.com

Oliver J. Riehart said he didn’t torture Pete Swimptkin with a hot poker, but he did strangle the 65-year-old victim.

That was enough to land Riehart in prison for 20 years without possibility of parole.

Riehart, 37, apologized to Swimptkin’s family Tuesday when Ferry County Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson imposed the first-degree murder sentence, recommended in a plea bargain.

Two of Swimptkin’s daughters and a son-in-law told the judge Riehart deserves life imprisonment.

Swimptkin was murdered April 15 while visiting Riehart’s home at Keller, Wash., on the Colville Indian Reservation. An accomplice, Marvin L. Shepard, 33, said everyone in the house had been drinking when Riehart became angry with Swimptkin and tortured him with a hot poker.

Riehart admitted choking Swimptkin to death, but said Shepard tortured him with a poker near the living room. Prosecutor Al Nielson thought blood in the hallway supported Shepard’s statement that the torture occurred in a bedroom.

But Nielson said Riehart claimed the blood was his own. Riehart had recently amputated part of one of his own fingers because it was infected, Nielson said.

By the time Swimptkin’s body was found in June, it was in such poor condition that genetic testing for comparison with the blood was impossible.

Shepard, who is legally blind from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, pleaded guilty in federal court to aiding and abetting aggravated assault and being an accomplice to first-degree murder. Riehart’s wife, Dorothy, 41, is awaiting trial on a charge that she helped cover up the crime.

Contrary to earlier reports, Shepard is not related to Oliver Riehart. Shepard is the nephew of a previous husband of Dorothy Riehart.

, DataTimes

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