Illinois Man Gets Life for Murder-for-Hire Killing of Portia Rowland

Gary Johnson will spend the rest of his life in prison for the killing prosecutors called a calculated murder-for-hire plot built out of a divorce, a payment, and a morning ambush outside Portia Rowland’s Collinsville home.

A Madison County judge sentenced Johnson to mandatory natural life on April 23, 2026, after a bench-trial conviction for first-degree murder. Prosecutors said Johnson was hired by Sammy Shafer Jr. during Shafer’s divorce from his wife, and Johnson told investigators he had been offered $10,000 to kill Rowland. The state said the payment showed up in the aftermath of the killing, including Johnson’s ability to pay $2,206 in back rent one day later after previously being served an eviction notice.

Johnson’s sentence landed with added weight because he already had a violent history. Prosecutors said he had a prior first-degree murder conviction from 1997, a case that carried a 40-year sentence before he was released early. At sentencing, the state argued that history made a life term necessary, not only to punish Johnson for Rowland’s death but to account for the risk he posed long before this case reached court.

Rowland was 32. She had graduated from Collinsville High School in 2010, worked as a mechanic for the Metropolitan Sewer District in St. Louis, and was remembered for the time she spent on the court and in the pool hall, playing flag football, volleyball, and billiards. She and Sarah Shafer met at a pool hall and were planning to get engaged, a detail that turned the case from a simple murder file into the kind of intimate, grinding true-crime story that starts with a relationship and ends in a contract killing.

The investigation relied heavily on surveillance video and license-plate-reader data as authorities pieced together the movement of the people involved. Johnson’s courtroom conduct became part of the record too. He complained about his lawyer, said counsel was ineffective, and asked for new representation, but Judge Neil Schroeder rejected the request. Defense attorney Mary Copeland told the court there was no legal basis to suppress the evidence Johnson wanted challenged, and the judge denied the motion.

Rowland’s stepfather, Bob Mueller, gave an emotional victim-impact statement, while prosecutors pressed for the maximum punishment. Johnson’s sentence closes one chapter, but the broader case is still moving. Shafer has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for trial in April 2027, and Marty D. Shaw is also awaiting trial in Madison County jail.