The Reporter newspaper, Camdenton Missouri

The Reporter covers Miller, Morgan and Camden County in Central Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks and is published once per week on Wednesdays.

Published November 15, 2017

Man charged with double murder at campground

LAKE OZARK – A Rolla man has been arrested and charged with a double murder that took place last week at a Lake Ozark campground.

According to a press release by Miller County Prosecuting Attorney Benjamin Winfrey, the suspect, Gary L. Sweet, 58, of Rolla, Missouri, is responsible for the killings.

“Sweet is charged with First Degree Murder for ‘knowingly causing the death’ of two Lake Ozark residents with ‘deliberation’ by shooting them with a gun,” Winfrey stated.

The Prosecutor also said that in addition to the murder charges, Sweet is also charged with First Degree Assault for “attempting to kill or cause serious physical injury” to two other Lake Ozark residents by shooting them or shooting at them with a gun.

The offenses allegedly took place on Woodriver Road last Wednesday (November 7)

At a press conference last Thursday, Lake Ozark Police Chief Gary Launderville briefed the press on the situation, though many details are being left out for now because it is an ongoing investigation.

“On November 8 at 12:36 in the morning we received a 911 call here at Lake Ozark, of a shooting,” Launderville said. “Officers responded from Lake Ozark PD, Miller County Sheriff’s Office, Osage Beach and Missouri State Highway Patrol and Eldon PD.”

Initially they had two victims that were injured and both were transported to Lake Regional Hospital. One sustained some injuries from the gunshot wound but both were transported to make sure there were no injuries to the second person.

“A short while later while we were trying to determine if there were any other victims, and trying to locate a suspect or suspects, at that point, we found two other victims and they were deceased,” said Launderville.

When asked about the weapon used, The Chief said “We had more than one weapon used. That’s all I can tell you on that right now.”

Though he did not release the names of the deceased victims, The Chief did confirm they were husband and wife and were employees of the campground.

Since Lake Ozark is a small city with a small police department they don’t have the manpower or resources for situations like this so Launderville called in the Major Case Squad (which they are a member of) and 12-15 agencies came to help with the investigation.

“Late (Wednesday night or early Thursday morning) we were finally able to attempt to interview our suspect in this case and up to that point he was considered a person of interest, he was not a suspect,” Launderville said. “Between our investigation and talking with him and other interviews that we have done, the prosecuting attorney felt comfortable with filing all the charges against Gary Sweet.”

This was not the first contact that the city police have had with Sweet. He had been staying at the campground for several months and had a few minor incidents so the police were “somewhat” familiar with him.

Launderville said that one of the incidents was in March of 2017 where Sweet was involved with a simple assault-type situation that had occurred at the campground.

“We have many more leads that we are still chasing down. This will be an ongoing investigation for the next several days if not weeks until we finally conclude that we have everything that we need, said the police chief.

Some of those present at the press conference questioned the chief on why more information was not initially released to the public.

“We have an ongoing criminal case here and if we don’t have every ‘i’ dotted or ‘t’ crossed and we make one little mistake, the end result could be somebody walks away from this. Our intention is to do the best job absolutely possible in this. That is our goal,” Launderville responded.

Sweet has been charge with the following crimes:

• Two counts of First Degree Murder
• Four counts of Armed Criminal Action
• Two counts of Assault 1st Degree Or Attempt - Serious Physical Injury Or Special Victim

He is being held on No Bond in the Miller County Jail.

“It’s an unfortunate situation. Lives have been lost, lives have been hurt and it really involves a lot of people here and affects a lot of lives so we want to make sure that we do this slowly, methodically and correctly,” said the Police Chief.