MAN: A night of violence in northern Iowa has left
two convenience store clerks dead in two separate shootings.
A teenage gunman is accused of murdering a clerk in Algona
and then heading south to gun down another clerk
in Humboldt.
[theme music playing]
MAN: There's this thing inside of me, it's like...
the appetite.
It's like a wolf that's...
filling...the hunger.
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He has a complete disregard for supervision,
for sanctions, for the legal and criminal system.
And that's what we see with very criminally-oriented people.
It's also what we sometimes see with very,
very impulsive people.
MORGAN: I don't believe a statement like,
"I don't know why I took the pistol."
I think that his acquisition of guns and leaving was just
going to be to extend what he'd already been fantasizing about.
He needs to be powerful.
MUNDY: Psychopathic youths,
the literature shows that they are more likely to be carrying
specifically firearms than, say,
a roll of nickels or a knife or some other type of weapon.
Wanting to carry one,
despite knowing you're essentially a fugitive from
the law, and knowing that
it carries really significant consequences with it,
it's just very consistent with psychopathy.
MAN: It all started in Algona, Iowa.
Pretty heartbreaking story and unbelievable.
WOMAN: Investigators say a man wearing a ski mask
walked into the store
and demanded Bowman-Hall put cash and cigarettes
into a duffel bag.
She did, and he shot her.
[bell jingles]
She thought the gun was fake.
She's challenged his power, and he shoots her.
In his case,
going for power is the way he is going
to express his psychopathy.
SAHNI: By standing up and re-enacting,
I think he's showing off.
I think he's proud of what he's done,
and he wants to show someone what he has done.
Swanson is really showing us
all the markers of psychopathic behavior.
SWANSON: Um...
SAHNI: Swanson doesn't have any real emotion.
He's not upset or bothered by
the fact that he took another human being's life.
He is impulsive.
He is detached.
There's just no emotion.
[car engine starting]
When he was 17 years old, in 2010,
just about a month before he committed these murders,
he was evaluated.
Michael was having some sexual and violent themes, and there
was some concern that he had, and the staff had,
about him being impulsive.
Another excerpt says, "I am concerned that he poses a risk
"to society if unmedicated, and even if medicated,
he is still somewhat unpredictable."
That is a very strong conclusion.
If I'm reading this report, and I'm Swanson's family,
I'm scared.
This evaluation is absolutely a warning sign.
His anecdote about being high as a kite means
that he was using enough
to be completely disinhibited in a public space
to take his clothes off.
He has all the characteristic features that should alarm us.
Swanson has this pattern of drug and alcohol use and is
willing to try anything and everything.
Thrill-seeking behavior is one of those markers we look for in
psychopathic behavior
and in trying to diagnose psychopathy.
There is a relationship between impulse control
and drug use, and there is
a relationship between impulse control and psychopathy.
People with psychopathy tend to use drugs more.
I think that's similar to what
we're seeing here with Michael Swanson.
WOMAN: 25 miles south, a similar scene.
61-year-old Sheila Myers was shot and killed while
working behind the counter at the Kum & Go in Humboldt.
She's been a clerk at the store for 13 years.
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The fact that it's an hour between the first
and the second kill is behavior that absolutely is
becoming compulsive.
And when you add in an emerging compulsivity with
the fact that he's had impulse control problems
his entire life,
and he's a drug and alcohol abuser who is seeking that
high, and in the process of upping that ante,
we've now gotten to a place where he's murdered someone,
and he liked the high, he liked the thrill,
um, and he needs it again.
He thinks it's just kind of funny, like watching a comedy
show where someone bangs their head on something.
He has a complete lack of empathy about another
human being -- they're just objects.
That indifference is just the hallmark of psychopathy,
and it's pretty disturbing, because he's not that old.
SAHNI: He's jovial. He's laughing.
I think that really taps into the high that
he experienced, and also maybe
some budding sadistic tendencies.
This enjoyment that Swanson's showing us is highly consistent
with psychopathic behavior.
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[coughing]
He's 150% focused on his own well-being, how he's going to
be essentially inconvenienced by his crime,
and where he's going to be sent.
This is classic to psychopaths.
They don't care about others.
It's 100% about him.
MUNDY: Soldiers who have shot enemy
combatants still feel something after that.
He's not talking about an enemy combatant
that he killed in the line of duty.
He's talking about somebody across one or two state lines.
This is so impulsive. This is so pleasure-seeking.
It must be mania.
SAHNI: Swanson is not being straight with himself.
He's not being, I think, honest.
I don't actually think it is complicated.
He doesn't feel bad, because he's a psychopath.
It is really that simple.
[phone ringing]
[phone line picks up]
Swanson is an entirely different person,
with different tone, different speech pattern.
The pace with which he's talking -- he's alive,
he's animated -- he's experiencing
what feels like a high.
MORGAN: There is a status element in his mind.
He's bragging about what he's done,
and he's acknowledging -- it felt good.
So, these features of the mimicry, the thrill,
the lack of remorse, enjoying it, and bragging
about it, those are significant features of psychopathy.
WOMAN: The prosecution says Michael Swanson did this in
part for the attention he got from it.
The defense says he's insane and doesn't know right
from wrong.
The state then called a psychiatrist,
who interviewed Swanson after the crimes.
He says Swanson told him he'd been
planning to kill since he was 13.
MAN: He said, "I have always been fascinated by death
"and violence,
"and it was something that I wanted to do -- murder,
rape, and cannibalism."
WOMAN: Swanson's mother broke down when the doctor said this.
His original plan was
to kill his parents.
Those were the first two people he wanted killed.
He's fully capable of deliberating, premeditating,
and forming the specific intent to kill.
MAN: Verdict number one, we find the defendant
guilty of murder in the first degree.
MAN: Even after a jury convicted Michael Swanson, he smiled.
WOMAN: Mr. Swanson, how do you feel about the verdict?
-Oh, I'm good. -MAN: Earlier in the day,
Swanson added two obscene gestures to that
ever-present smile.
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