Men plead not guilty in killing of grandmother

Published 10:41 pm Wednesday, June 17, 2009

EVERETT — Two men accused of beating a Marysville grandmother to death didn’t have to show their faces in court Wednesday as they pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

Joshua Gilliam, 25, and Ryan Miller, 22, were allowed to keep their backs to the judge after Gilliam’s attorney objected to his client being videotaped by two television crews set up in the courtroom.

“I don’t like this tried by the media,” Everett attorney Thomas Cox said.

He told Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Eric Lucas that his client may not have been at the house where Shirley Sweeton, 73, was beaten to death with a hammer.

Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Janice Albert told Lucas the defendants’ identities are not in dispute.

Lucas allowed Gilliam and Miller to keep their backs to him during the arraignment hearing.

The men were returned to Snohomish County on Tuesday after they agreed to waive extradition proceedings in Missouri. They are being held in the county jail on $1 million bail.

Lucas ordered that the men not have any contact with each other in jail.

Gilliam and Miller are accused of killing Sweeton while robbing her June 5 of her credit and debit cards, the contents of her safe and prescription medication. The men then drove off in Sweeton’s Buick, according to court documents.

Marysville detectives began investigating the pair’s potential involvement in the slaying after Gilliam and Miller were caught on video surveillance allegedly using Sweeton’s debit card at the Lynnwood Wal-Mart to buy clothes and cigarettes. The men also allegedly used her cards to buy food at a McDonald’s in Monroe.

Marysville police continued to track activity on the cards as they were used across the country. Finally, a Missouri State Patrol trooper arrested the men last week after he noticed the car they were in had been reported stolen.

Miller told the trooper he and Gilliam “killed someone, an old lady. (Gilliam) hit her with a hammer seven or eight times and I hit her twice,” Albert wrote in court documents.

The car, which belongs to Sweeton, also was brought back to Snohomish County to be searched.

Gilliam had once lived with Sweeton while he dated her granddaughter. Sweeton last year filed a protection order against Gilliam on behalf of her adult granddaughter. She accused Gilliam of coercing her granddaughter into giving him money to buy drugs. She told the judge she was afraid of Gilliam.

Gilliam and Miller recently lived at the men’s shelter in Everett. They both have a history of mental illness and had been patients at Compass Health.

Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463, hefley@heraldnet.com.