Gunman in 1997 double homicide, Philip Leishman, seeks parole

SALT LAKE CITY — Phillip Michael Leishman says he grew up around violence.

“Violence was normal. That culture was normal,” he said Tuesday.

By the time he was 19, he was fully entrenched in the gang lifestyle and carried a gun with him wherever he went just to be prepared for whatever happened next.

“As we are every day of my life … ready for whatever comes. We expect violence,” he said.

On Jan. 19, 1997, Leishman went looking for the person who allegedly took his friend’s car stereo. The thief was allegedly a rival gang member. Leishman claims his goal that night wasn’t necessarily to kill that person, but he says he was expected by his friends to send a message.

“Did you expect to use the gun?” Utah Board of Pardons and Parole member Dan Bokovoy asked him Tuesday.

“I can’t deny that it was in my head,” Leishman said.

On that night, Leishman shot Derek “Snyper” Shaw, 24, and 19-year-old Michael Allgier — who had just arrived at the same location — in the back of the head, killing them both.

Leishman was charged with two counts of capital murder and faced a potential death sentence. He pleaded guilty in 1998 to two counts of aggravated murder and was sentenced to two concurrent sentences of life in prison with the possibility of parole.

On Tuesday, Leishman, now 48, had his first parole hearing.

Leishman was emotional during his one-hour hearing as he recounted to Bokovoy a violent childhood growing up in the Rose Park area. He was stabbed in the chest at age 7, started using drugs by age 11 and became a regular in the juvenile justice system by age 12.

Leishman admits he “had behavioral challenges” as a child and that his mindset was to be the bully in order to avoid being bullied.

“I learned in order not to be beaten, you had to fight others,” he said. “I chose to learn that particular groups of people don’t fit in with norms and standards, so we make our own rules, and we live by these misguided delusions,” he said.

Leishman added that he had been handling guns from a young age.

“Guns were in my history since (I was) 13 or 14, I just never was the one to discharge. I was the one who was told to carry for other adults and older guys just in case, when we were out,” he said.

By the time he was 18, he says he was “on a collision course to catastrophe” because of his mindset that he was expected to perform tasks for his gang or face consequences.

So on Jan. 19, 1997, when his friend Summer Johnson, 16, told him that rival gang members had vandalized her car and stolen her radio, he went with a group to find the alleged perpetrators.

“I was prepared well before that night (to use violence),” he told the parole board. “It was normalized. I was expected to.

“There was no escape. … I chose this, and I am stuck,” he said.

He said his goal was to “shake down” whoever took the radio.

“And if things get out of control, we’re going to take control. … It’s stupid,” Leishman said emotionally on Tuesday while noting he looks back with regret about his mindset at the time.

“It’s pathetic, right?” he continued. “But for some reason, that was a big deal to me. … The extent of my plan was to pull him out and see where it goes.”

When Leishman went to Shaw’s apartment in West Valley City, he ran into Allgier, who had just arrived and was also going to visit Shaw. Not knowing which unit was Shaw’s, Leishman asked Allgier. When Allgier knocked on the apartment door, Shaw answered.

“I figured he’s loading his gun, I figured it’s going down,” Leishman said.

He shot Allgier in the back of the head and then Shaw.

“This man shot my son in the back of the head like an execution style,” an angry Dale Allgier told the parole board on Tuesday. “Why … should he be granted parole?”

Allgier called Shaw’s killing “premeditated” and says his son “just got in the way.”

“This man should never be allowed on the streets again. Ever,” he said. “My son’s dead, he’s in a graveyard, directly because of him. Shot him in the back of the head like a … coward. And I never want to see him out on the street. I don’t believe he’s worth of it. Double homicide, Double homicide, one of them premeditated …over a … car stereo.”

“Can you believe that? I can’t,” Allgier continued angrily. “I just can’t forgive and forget, I’ll never forget. My son should bury me. I should never have had to bury him.”

In response, Leishman says he has tried to live his life in tribute of the two men he killed and wants to do what he can to break the cycle of violence.

“This garbage that we get ourselves into, we can change it,” he said, calling it a “shame these lives are lost.”

“Something good can come out of this. … That’s the only reason I showed up today. I know I can do something with this crime,” Leishman said.

Bokovoy noted that Leishman had a lot of disciplinary violations for fighting when he first arrived at prison but hasn’t had one since 2020.

“Eventually, I learned how to walk away,” he said. “It doesn’t always have to be a violent altercation.

“I find more inner strength now. I believe in the person that I can be and the impact I can have. I not afraid of what someone might think of me. I’m not afraid of the consequences.”

Bokovoy says the full five-member board will likely make a decision about whether to grant parole in about a month.

Leishman has unsuccessfully appealed in recent years to have his guilty pleas withdrawn.

Johnson pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal homicide by assault, third-degree felonies, and was sentenced to up to five years in the Utah State Prison. Those charges were reduced to class A misdemeanors in 2004.

According to a 2019 court filing, Johnson has done well since being released.

“Ms. Johnson has graduated from Weber State University with a degree in social work, started a family, and currently works for one of Utah’s largest homeless shelters as the deputy director,” according to a motion filed in 2019.