Whitefish killer dies in prison

A man who shot and killed his girlfriend in Whitefish in 1989 died Sunday in the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge.

John Ed Gambrel Jr., 59, died after an extended illness, prison officials said in a press release.

Gambrel was serving a 110-year sentence handed down in 1990 for deliberate homicide committed with a dangerous weapon. He shot and killed Lori Anne Schwegel on Feb. 5, 1989.

“It’s a relief,” said Schwegel’s sister, Lee Ann Giesy. “We won’t feel like we have to look over our shoulders any more and count the days until his next parole.”

Giesy said the family received an erroneous victim notification message on Sunday saying that Gambrel was being discharged. After spending a night thinking Gambrel was going to leave prison alive, the family later learned that Gambrel had died.

“That’s the last night we will ever lose sleep over him — that’s over now,” Giesy said.

According to court documents, Gambrel shot and killed Schwegel five times with a .22-caliber rifle after a night of drinking in downtown Whitefish. Gambrel then returned to the bars to establish an alibi and later shot himself twice in the head to try to make it seem as if he, too, had been the victim of a shooting.

At trial, Gambrel denied the elaborately staged crime and still claimed to be a victim, but according to Schwegel’s family, he finally admitted to the murder in a letter to the Parole Board in 2014. Gambrel was denied parole in 2006 and 2014.

Gambrel’s attorney argued during the trial that Schwegel was killed by drug dealers who also shot Gambrel as he entered his apartment after closing down the Palace Bar.

According to three women who testified at Gambrel’s trial, Schwegel’s murder came after a serious of deviant and abusive relationships. One woman testified that Gambrel had tied her naked to a bed against her will and sexually abused her on Christmas Eve 1984.

Another woman said that in fall 1986 she had awoken to Gambrel having sex with her after she let him stay in a room in her house. She said she tried to get away and Gambrel shoved her head against the wall saying: “I will kill you; I will kill you; I will kill you.”

A third woman testified that on Halloween 1987 Gambrel chased her around her apartment, slapped her, slashed her water bed and told her:

“I am going to kill you. You are a dead woman. You are not going to be alive tomorrow morning. Don’t even bother going to sleep, because you are not going to live through to morning. You are not even worth living. I am going to take a knife and slit you.”

In 1990 the Montana Supreme Court found that Gambrel’s prior acts with the three women were admissible at trial because the testimony “more accurately characterized as violent or sadistic than as sexual behavior. Like the violence against Schwegel, it was apparently unprovoked and occurred after Gambrel had been drinking.”

— The Whitefish Pilot contributed to this story.