FLUSHING, MI -- The gunman in one of the most notorious homicides in the city of Flushing’s history has died in prison at age 63.
A Michigan Department of Corrections spokeswoman said that Michael Prast died June 7 of natural causes inside state prison, 41 years after he confessed to killing a high school student and two store clerks in a botched armed robbery at a convenience store just outside Flushing County Park.
Prast admitted to investigators and told MLive-The Flint Journal in a 2013 interview that he executed high school student Robert L. Shepp Jr. and clerks Elizabeth Hale and Shirley Parvin on March 20, 1978, a crime that netted he and his partner, Ricky Newell, just $220, before they were arrested by police.
Newell remains in prison with no parole, serving three life sentences.
Mary Hale Mitchell, daughter of Elizabeth Hale, said Prast’s death doesn’t take away the pain he caused the friends and families of his victims.
Her mother was 44 when she died, working at both the Flushing Sunshine Food Store and as a part-time school cook.
“Nothing changes (the fact that) she’s gone and not coming back,” Mitchell said of her mother. “I truly believe I’ll see her again. There’s just so much she didn’t get to see” because she was killed.
The random nature and brutality of the killings were a shock in Flushing, a city that typically goes years between homicides. The crime is still remembered in the city.
Prast blamed Newell for having masterminded the Sunshine robbery, and maintained that the first shooting death in the store was accidental but triggered the panic and runaway violence that followed.
Given the opportunity to apologize to his victims’ friends and family before his death, Prast never did, telling The Journal that there was “no way to make it right.”
During that interview, Prast said he was suffering from kidney failure and liver disease and knew he would die in prison.