Killer gets 40 years in prison
A Creston man convicted of murdering his Columbia Falls-area girlfriend during a domestic disturbance was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison (50 years with 10 years suspended).
After the March 2008 shooting death of Lorraine Kay Morin, 48-year-old Robert Dean Kowalski involved SWAT teams from three jurisdictions in a 31-hour armed standoff outside his Montana 35 residence.
"There's a hole in our hearts that as hard as we try can never be healed," Morin's daughter, Heather Sullivan, said during Kowalski's sentencing hearing Thursday in Flathead County District Court.
"My feelings toward him, I can't even describe - hate and disgust," Sullivan said.
Morin's son, Robert Sullivan, told the court his mother was a generous woman who "would take the shirt off her back and give it to a stranger."
"If she could help, it didn't matter what kind of bind it put her in, she would do it," said Sullivan, who recalled speaking with his mother the day before her death to arrange a visit with his daughter. "If I could ask for anything in the world, it would be my mom."
Six of Morin's children live in the Flathead Valley. The youngest still is in elementary school and living with an older sibling.
"My mom was my best friend. I could talk to her about anything, no matter what it was, and you took that away from me," said another of Morin's daughters, Allison Becke.
When sheriff's deputies informed her of her mother's death, Becke said she had "never felt so sick."
Pursuant to a plea bargain, Kowalski pleaded guilty by way of Alford plea in January to mitigated deliberate homicide.
An Alford plea allows a defendant to assert his innocence while admitting that sufficient evidence may exist to convince a jury of his guilt. Alford pleas often are used to take advantage of a plea bargain even though a defendant does not admit the alleged act.
Kowalski, who has admitted the shooting but told investigators it occurred as he was falling back into a chair, maintains Morin's death was not intentional.
"This is a very tragic accident, that it happened," Kowalski said Thursday, turning to face a courtroom packed with members of Morin's family. "I wish I could tell you all how in words how sorry I am, and the pain that I feel inside for us all."
During the hearing, Kowalski's attorney, Lane K. Bennett, attacked a presentence report written by state probation officers to give judges an independent sentencing recommendation.
Bennett called references in the report to a similar case in which Kowalski shot a woman in 1996 "outside the scope" of the document and "prejudicial."
Extensive similarities between Morin's murder and Kowalski's shooting of another woman, Sandra Perry, at an Alaska lodge have prompted cold-case prosecutors in Alaska to review their case against him.
Soon after pleading guilty to Morin's murder, Kowalski attempted to back out of the plea bargain he struck with prosecutors. Kowalski testified during a pair of hearings in January that his attorneys "rushed" him into the deal and "coached" him on what to say.
But Flathead County District Court Judge Katherine R. Curtis ruled in February that his claims were "not credible."
"I have no doubt your plea was freely and voluntarily entered," Curtis said Thursday.
The plea bargain, which called for the sentence Curtis eventually imposed, was written to allow Kowalski to withdraw his guilty plea and proceed to trial should a stiffer penalty be passed.
Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan has said prosecutors were willing to accept Kowalski's version of events - and his story that he was under undue emotional distress when the shooting occurred - only for the purposes of the plea bargain.
Investigators believe that early on the morning of March 16, 2008, Kowalski and Morin - both of whom had been drinking - became involved in a domestic disturbance over a minor slight and Morin attempted to throw Kowalski out of the house.
The altercation continued to escalate until Kowalski shot Morin once in the face from a distance of about 12 inches.
Morin's body was found in a living-room chair at her home a few hundred feet north of Elk Park Road on Montana 206. Kowalski had told a roommate about the shooting, and the roommate notified authorities.
After the shooting, Kowalski fled to his home on Montana 35 where he was arrested the next day following an armed standoff with law officers that was resolved peacefully only after irritant gas was launched into the residence.
The gun used to kill Morin was recovered from Kowalski's home at the conclusion of the standoff, Corrigan said.
Kowalski previously was cited and fined in 2003 for assaulting a family member and violating a restraining order at his Bigfork home. In 2005 Kowalski was accused of threatening, kicking and pushing his ex-wife and threatening a stepson, also in the Bigfork area. He was cited for drunken driving on the same date.
Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com