Board to consider parole for Sweet, 56

The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole is considering this week whether to consider parole for a man convicted 20 years ago of murdering his two young children.

Richard Sweet, now 56, was camping on Sept. 8, 1993, near the Fisher River with his daughter Anna, 8, and son Erik, 6, when he shot each of them twice in the head with a .22-caliber rifle.

He then placed them in their dinosaur sleeping bags inside his own sleeping bag and drove to a remote forested area about six miles south of Libby. There he buried his children in a shallow grave.

Sweet had recently picked up the children from his wife, Janice, with whom he had been having marital problems, according to then-Lincoln County Sheriff Ray Nixon. They had been married since April 1982.

Sweet’s brother-in-law contacted the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office three days later after Sweet showed up at his Libby home and told him about killing the children and his plan to head to Kalispell, where Janice was living.

The news of Sweet’s approach was communicated to Flathead County sheriff’s deputies and Kalispell police, who found his vehicle an hour later on Montana 35 near Kmart and surrounded him. Sheriff’s Sgt. Dale Walter stopped Sweet’s vehicle and he was taken into custody without incident.

A .41-caliber pistol and a bundled-up tent were confiscated from Sweet’s vehicle. A fisherman later found the murder weapon near the Sweets’ campsite.

The bodies of Anna and Erik were found that afternoon.

Sweet was a part-time Kalispell resident but worked in Alaska.

After being convicted of two counts of mitigated deliberate homicide, Sweet was sentenced on Sept. 2, 1994,  — almost a year after the murders — to 40 years in prison by Lincoln County District Judge Robert Keller.

On Wednesday, the state parole board will conduct a paper review of Sweet’s case and decide whether to set a parole hearing or schedule another review up to five years from now.

Sweet was last denied parole in January 2009.

(Jesse Davis writes for the Daily Inter Lake)