From Deseret News archives:
Swapp is sorry for crimes
Audio link (2.5 MB .mp3)
Addam Swapp goes before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole and asks for forgiveness for the 1988 standoff.
Audio link (825 KB .mp3)
Swapp is asked about the death of John Singer, which ultimately sparked the seige at Marion.
Note: The audio was recorded during Swapp's March 10, 2007, parole hearing in Arizona. The recording, provided by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, is of marginal quality with some audio difficulties.
"I was wrong, what I did. I'm sorry for it," he said on a tape recording of his parole hearing released Monday. "If I could take it back, I would."
Swapp has just begun his 15-year sentence for manslaughter in connection with the 1988 standoff with law enforcement in Summit County that ended with the death of Utah Department of Corrections Lt. Fred House.
A Utah Board of Pardons and Parole member traveled to the Arizona prison, where Swapp is being kept to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Many corrections officers involved in the standoff still work at the Utah State Prison.
"I want to be like Jesus Christ," said Swapp, quickly adding: "I don't mean I want to be Christ. He's my example."
The Singer-Swapp saga began in 1979 when family patriarch John Singer was killed by police officers. Years later, Swapp joined the family and took Singer's daughters, Heidi and Charlotte, as his polygamous wives.
Recounting the events that led up to the siege at their Marion ranch, Swapp said what sent him over the edge was when the family received the bloodstained clothes and the autopsy photos of John Singer from the Summit County Sheriff.
"His wife (Vickie Singer) was inconsolable," Swapp said. "Her tears and her feelings of pain never seemed to lessen over those nine years."
In 1988, an enraged Swapp bombed the LDS stake center in Kamas.
"Pride and self-righteousness are the hardest sins to see," he said Friday. "I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to do because of Vickie and her family, even if it wasn't right."
The bombing was reportedly intended to spark a confrontation that would usher in Singer's resurrection. It resulted in a 13-day standoff with law enforcement and ended with a shootout that left Swapp wounded and House dead.
