Ex-Minnesota prison guard tried to free killer who saved his life

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Guy Wicklander’s “hero” and “guardian angel” is serving a life sentence for brutally murdering his wife.

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Wicklander was working as a Minnesota Department of Corrections employee in 1999 when a prisoner hit him in the back of the head with a wrench, knocking him out, and then kept beating him until his head was “a bloody pulp,” he told the Washington Post.

That would have been it for Wicklander, he said, if it hadn’t been for Peter Shoen, an inmate serving a life sentence for beating his wife to death with a metal pipe. Shoen threw a box at Wicklander’s attacker, who then assaulted Shoen, giving corrections officers time to intervene.

“He saved my life,” Wicklander said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

On Thursday, a quarter-century after the attack, Wicklander told Minnesota’s Board of Pardons that he believes officials should free Shoen. Shoen has taken responsibility for what he did and seems truly remorseful, Wicklander testified.

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It wasn’t enough. The three members of the board — Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — unanimously voted to deny Shoen’s application to have his sentence commuted, a Department of Corrections spokesman said. Shoen can apply again in five years.

If that happens, Wicklander said he’ll probably be there.

“Because he saved my life,” Wicklander added.

On March 1, 1996, Shoen killed Kimberly, his wife of nine years and the mother of their two children, inside their farmhouse in Truman, Minn., according to a 1999 Minnesota Supreme Court opinion. He told investigators they had argued about an affair he had, and when she threatened to leave him and take their children and dairy farm, Shoen shoved her down some stairs. While she was knocked out, he beat her to death with a pipe.

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Eight months later, a jury convicted Shoen of first-degree murder, and a judge sentenced him to life in prison. There, he impressed corrections employees and worked his way up into a leadership role at the Oak Park Heights prison’s industrial shop.

On Dec. 3, 1999, Wicklander was overseeing Shoen and 26 other maximum-security inmates in the shop as they made three-ring binders and photo albums. As Wicklander was moving a pallet of materials, he said, Mark Profit, a suspected serial killer serving two consecutive life sentences for murder and criminal sexual conduct, crept up behind him with a 12-inch crescent wrench. Wicklander had written him up for subpar work in the shop about 90 minutes earlier.

Doctors would later tell Wicklander that Profit hit him at least eight times, causing a skull fracture and brain injury that kept him out of work for two years and caused permanent brain damage. Profit would have killed him but for Shoen, who threw a cardboard box at him, Wicklander said.

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Profit then attacked Shoen, repeatedly stabbing him with a 10-inch screwdriver in the neck and upper torso — and once through the nostril, causing a wound that took out a few teeth.

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Shoen’s intervention gave other corrections officers enough time to intervene before Profit could turn his attention back to Wicklander. Profit was later convicted of assaulting both men but died of a drug overdose before he could be sentenced.

Wicklander returned to work at a different prison in 2001 and, after retiring from the state, worked another seven years at a county jail. Shoen has continued serving his life sentence as a “model prisoner” who now teaches young inmates how to build cabinets, Wicklander said. He was also the only prisoner who murdered a spouse or girlfriend who didn’t blame his partner but took responsibility, Wicklander added.

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While Wicklander pressed the pardon board Thursday to free Shoen, several of Shoen’s children and former in-laws advocated that he remain in prison, the Department of Corrections spokesman said. Kimberly Shoen’s sister, Cynthia Celander, told the board that Peter Shoen is a narcissist, Minneapolis-based TV station KARE reported. Kimberly Shoen’s brother, Rob Celander, expressed disgust that Peter Shoen had a chance to save her midway through the attack but instead got a pipe to, as he said, “put her out of her misery.”

“What kind of man, husband or father is this?” Rob Celander said at the hearing, according to KARE. “Is this someone who deserves to be free?”

Wicklander offered a qualified “yes” to that question. He said he knows Shoen committed an awful crime that devastated a family and a community. While speaking before the board Thursday, he told Kimberly Shoen’s family how sympathetic he was to their suffering.

And while Peter Shoen had told him the broad brushstrokes of how he murdered his wife, Wicklander said he learned some of the details at the hearing. Given what he knows now, Wicklander said he wasn’t surprised officials denied Shoen’s application for freedom.

He said Shoen should “get honest with himself,” do some self-improvement and make amends with those he has hurt before applying again. But if Shoen does that work, he should be given another chance, Wicklander said.

“That’s the goal of corrections,” he said, “to help people make better choices and turn their life around.”

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