Pa. native returning to park for anniversary of brother’s death


By Jeanne Starmack

Mike Pratt will go to Central Park to remember his brother, and he hopes old friends will stop by.

GREENVILLE, Pa. — There is a park in Greenville that’s special to Mike Pratt.

Pratt said he met a lot of people there, and they were “a great comfort” to him after the murder of his younger brother.

“People met me at the park, and they sat with me,” said Pratt, who’s originally from Pittsburgh and now lives in Warren.

He’d have petitions there, and people would come by to sign them. They were trying to keep three people who were in prison for Roger “Butch” Pratt’s death from being released early.

Pratt is going back to Central Park again Tuesday, the 20th anniversary of his brother’s death. He figures he’ll be there around lunchtime. He hopes some of his old friends will come by again as he remembers Butch, 22, who graduated from Thiel College on May 15 and was beaten to death by a former college roommate a little more than a month later.

That roommate, Ed Swiger, from Tiltonsville, Ohio, is still in prison for aggravated murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to 43 years to life, and will be eligible for parole in 2029.

“He and Ed were so close,” Pratt said.

Butch, who had majored in business administration at Thiel and was going to graduate school, had even planned to room with Swiger again in Philadelphia, where Swiger was going to study law.

But an association with a woman named Linda Karlen, who dated Swiger, would set the stage for the tragedy that unfolded instead, Pratt remembered.

Karlen had approached Swiger and Butch to burn down the Oldtown Furniture store in Greenville, of which she was half-owner, for insurance money, Pratt said.

Butch wanted nothing to do with the plan, his brother asserted, and “so they did it themselves.”

Karlen, Swiger and his brother, Michael Swiger, all were eventually convicted of arson in the store fire, which happened in May 1988 shortly after graduation at Thiel.

Even though Butch refused to participate in the arson, returning home to Pittsburgh and avoiding Pratt’s and Karlen’s calls, he had been involved in the burglary of a fraternity house with Swiger.

“He was going to take responsibility for it,” Pratt said.

That willingness to come forward and admit the burglary, Pratt said, may have doomed his brother. Karlen and Swiger were likely afraid, he said, that Butch would tell authorities it was they who’d burned down the store. They planned to lure him up from Pittsburgh and they got help to do it, Pratt said.

They got two women who were roommates at college in Akron to invite him there for a party, Pratt said. “They told the two they needed to talk to him,” Pratt said.

Butch and Ed Swiger previously had visited the two women in Akron.

Butch took a Greyhound bus up to Akron to meet them.

The murder happened in a remote area in Hudson, Ohio. The women drove him down a gas well road on the pretense of having to go to the bathroom in the woods, Pratt said. He got out of the car so one could get past him. She got back in, and they drove off and left him.

Waiting in the woods were the Swiger brothers. Butch was tied up, handcuffed and beaten so badly that every bone in his head and face was broken. They threw him in the trunk of Michael Swiger’s car and went to Kent to meet Karlen.

She was living on a farm north of Jamestown in Crawford County at the time. “So the Swigers buried him in the woods behind the house,” Mike Pratt said.

Butch would remain missing for 16 months. His body was recovered in October 1989 after Karlen admitted she knew Ed Swiger had killed him.

At their trial, they testified that they hadn’t meant to kill Butch, Pratt remembered. “They said a fight got out of hand. Then why did they have shovels and ropes and handcuffs with them?” he said.

The two women who lured Pratt to the wooded area never served time in jail. They received suspended sentences in exchange for their testimony.

Karlen was sentenced to seven to 15 years for conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

“She served the whole 15 years,” Pratt said. He credits his and his mother Rose’s efforts at gathering thousands of signatures on petitions over the years for keeping her there. She’s now serving time in Pennsylvania for the store arson.

Michael Swiger was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and kidnapping. He was sentenced to 21 to 53 years but was paroled after 15, three years before he should have been eligible, Pratt said.

Michael Swiger now has a prison ministry in the Cleveland area. That ministry is associated with Gospel House Church in Walton Hills. He also is married and has a 10-month old son.

Pratt said he doesn’t begrudge Michael Swiger his family or his job in the ministry. “I’m glad the prison system rehabilitated him.”

Swiger had said he stood by while his brother Ed beat Butch, he helped to bury him and he kept the secret. He also told The Vindicator that at one point, he tried to pull his brother off Butch.

“I’m not happy he got out before his time,” Pratt said. “That’s all we ever wanted — serve the time they were given.”

Swiger contended he was actually eligible for parole after 13 years as a co-defendant. He said he served 161‚Ñ2 years.

Swiger said it was indeed the prison system that led to his changed life.

“I became a Christian my first year in prison. I worked in the chapel the whole time and went to seminary there.”

The 20th anniversary of the murder, he said, “is a tragic day.”

“I’m sorry for my involvement. If there’s anything I can do, I would.

“My heart still breaks for that family and what I put them through,” he said.

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