Washington man serving life for killing his lover and a Seattle TV reporter dies in Airway Heights prison

A former Richland businessman, convicted of a brutal double murder, has died after spending more than 30 years in prison.

William “Bill” Pawlyk Jr., 80, passed away in his sleep from cancer and other complications, said an obituary from his family published this past week.

He died Oct. 6 at the Airway Heights Corrections Center near Spokane.

Pawlyk was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for killing his lover Debra Sweiger, 35, and a popular Seattle television reporter, Larry Sturholm, 46, in 1989.

A graduate of the Naval Academy, he was a submarine officer. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business, was a Naval reserve officer and was the chairman of the Richland Economic Development Board.

Pawlyk and Sweiger, a mother of two, had been seeing each other for six months.

The couple spent a weekend in 1989 at Sweiger’s Issaquah home. He started heading back to the Tri-Cities when he decided to return to Issaquah to talk with her about the tension between them.

Sturholm, a former member of the KIRO-TV staff, and Sweiger were planning on taking a trip to the Cayman Islands together.

“I wanted us to have this thing about Larry out. … I should have kept on driving home,” Pawlyk told the Tri-City Herald in a 1993 interview in prison.

He waited inside Sweiger’s home and first had an argument with Sturholm that ended with him stabbing the man a dozen times.

Then he attacked Sweiger for nearly 30 minutes. Pawlyk left her for dead before trying to kill himself with the knife. She died on her way to the hospital.

Investigators initially thought he was dead too. He laid in a bathtub of water for eight hours until investigators later returned with a search warrant and heard him cough.

Sturholm’s celebrity in Seattle fueled the news of the double murder, and left the Tri-Cities and Seattle in shock.

While Pawlyk later admitted to the attack, he maintained he was insane at the time and not responsible for his action.

But King County jurors rejected the argument, and he was convicted of aggravated first-degree murder.

Life in prison

The father of two tried to make his time in prison productive, according to the obituary.

“With great remorse for his crimes, he worked to help other prisoners in his new life,” his family wrote. “His commitment to improving the lives of his fellow prisoners was extraordinary.”

He supported the University Beyond Bars program, and helped with college prep math, algebra, small business management, as well as giving lectures on oceanography. He was proud of helping dozens of prisoners get their GEDs, they said.

He also provided orientation to hundreds of new prisoners and offered help to make their time productive.

He helped lead a veterans group, the Concerned Lifers Organization and others.

In a 2016 speech to the Concerned Lifers Organization Conference he said that the decades of involvement had given him some of his most memorable moments.

“Seeing men overcome a life history of strife, struggle, stinging put-downs, savage treatment and smashing defeats – seeing their transformation into achievers with newly found self-confidence and sense of accomplishment – that is memorable,” he said.

“This is my community. Therefore, more than a quarter century after my crime, I wake every morning with this question in my mind: What can I do to make my community better?”