Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 29 - Curry-Walker - Full Episode | Forensic Files

Firefighter hero William Walker is shot in a Cleveland street. [gunshots] His wife makes a desperate call.
911: What's going on? ULOMA WALKER: He got shot! 911: Who got shot? ULOMA WALKER: My husband!
NARRATOR: It appears a senseless random killing of a man without enemies. There was no one who disliked this man.
He always try to lift people up that were struggling. NARRATOR: The first responder leaves
behind his new wife, Uloma, herself reported to be gravely ill. JENNIFER KING: They were married under the guise of her
possibly having breast cancer. NARRATOR: But with Uloma Curry Walker, no one is sure what's the truth and what's a lie.
Who knows what goes on in the mind of a psychopath? BAILIFF: Uloma Curry. JUDGE: Do you wish to enter a not guilty plea?
Not guilty plea is accepted. NARRATOR: Detectives will soon ask, was Uloma Curry Walker a grieving widow
or a calculating killer? [music playing] When Uloma Curry met Lieutenant William Walker,
mutual friends remarked on how much they had in common. Lieutenant William Walker is known as Will, is well-liked,
well respected firefighter and paramedic with the Cleveland, Ohio fire department.
Very, very proud guy. He was a go-getter. He worked hard. William Walker was a steadfast, strong,
and responsible individual. He saved money to take care of his family. He worked hard.
People liked him. NARRATOR: And a woman about to enter his life who appeared cut from the same cloth.
In 2005, Will meets Uloma. She's a nurse. She's a single mother with a 9-year-old daughter
from a previous relationship. I think when he met Uloma, she checked all of the boxes.
She was somebody who was working in the caregiver role. She seemed kind. She seemed gentle.
NARRATOR: Part of the same world of heroes and lifesavers. A natural fit. If you're not involved with firefighters and nurses
and docs, it's crazy. There's nothing like it. It is a second family. NARRATOR: Uloma and Will were both chasing
a second chance at marriage. He's been married before. He has two children. His wife Rita and he still get along really well.
He had a love for family. He loved his girls. Yes, he did. NARRATOR: Will and Uloma's relationship
seemed fun, uncomplicated. The two of them start dating. And they date happily for eight years.
He talked of her often. I met her one time at the fire training academy when she came in.
Was cordial, you know, that type of thing. Will loved to dance, and I guess she did too.
NARRATOR: After working together at the Cleveland Fire Department for almost two decades,
Lieutenant Ronnie Stepka had become a close friend and confidant of Will Walker.
Will taught me to salsa way back in the day there. He was a fun guy to be around.
And like I said, I think she was into the dance scene as well, because he spoke of dancing
with her numerous times. NARRATOR: But after all those years of dating, the couple still hadn't danced down the aisle.
Uloma may have begun to wonder if a proposal was ever coming, so she told Will something that would hurry things along.
In 2013, Uloma told Will but she had stage four breast cancer, and that her insurance
wouldn't cover it. She needed health insurance. He had that health insurance. Will wanted to help.
If the two of them got married, in his estimation, that she would have the medical insurance that she needed.
The fire department provided such. So they got married, not necessarily because they didn't
love each other, but the main precipice for that was the health insurance for her breast cancer.
They have a quickie marriage. They eloped together or they go to the courthouse,
make it official. And they don't even tell anyone about it until after it's over.
NARRATOR: Not even their closest friends I'm not even sure if it was like a formal ceremony.
I don't know if they snuck away to get married. NARRATOR: Perhaps Will had an inkling that someone might poke
holes in his wife's story and in his grand plan to be Uloma's savior. She also pulled at his heartstrings and perhaps
a hero complex that he had. Will is this caring firefighter and paramedic. He's a rescuer.
This is somebody who is a giver. This is somebody who will risk their own life to save complete strangers.
It makes absolute sense why that might have actually drawn Will to Uloma more, like, I need to be in her life,
I need to make her better. NARRATOR: The first few months of married life went well.
Newlyweds Will and Uloma were making big plans together. They wanted to get out of that neighborhood that they were in.
It was a rougher neighborhood. He's ready to just-- let's retire and let's just move out of the city
and start a family together. RONNIE STEPKA: They bought a little place out in the country.
It was somewhere out east of Cleveland. I remember him showing me pictures of the house from the back porch overlooking the land he bought.
He was very much looking forward to that move. NARRATOR: But whilst Will was imagining their dream life,
Uloma was harboring a dark secret. CAROLYN CANVILLE: She's in serious financial debt.
Credit cards, loans. She is in deep tens of thousands of dollars. A few months into the marriage,
Uloma's debt problem got worse. She had taken out more loans. And in fact, she had taken out credit in Will's name.
She feared that he was going to discover what she had done. William Walker, we believe, had the understanding
that they had more money than they actually had, and wasn't aware of, necessarily, all of the debt
that Uloma had brought into this marriage and then accumulated in the short time
since they had been married. Uloma was in this real tough spot with a brand new house,
and she was going to have to tell Lieutenant Walker that they financially couldn't afford it,
that they could stay in it. NARRATOR: This wasn't Uloma's only secret. The whole premise of their whirlwind wedding
had been based on an even more sinister lie. From everything the evidence showed us, she didn't
appear to have breast cancer. And he seemed to believe that she did, at least that's what he had told co-workers and friends.
Now, not only was this a lie, but this was extremely callous. JENNIFER KING: They were married under kind
of the guise of her potentially possibly having breast cancer, and that was never confirmed that she had it.
There was no medical documentation that she did. She lied about her cancer, but then fails to tell the truth
about her actual predicament. I think Uloma had a plan from the very start, and that was to murder him for his life insurance policy.
She didn't want to tell him about her debt because that would maybe make his spider senses go up.
NARRATOR: But she needed to act fast. With the house purchase looming, Will was about to discover that their bank accounts were thousands
of dollars in the red. She didn't want to have him start to be suspicious of her.
Does she really love me, or is she just after me for my money because she's so in debt?
And so I think she hid it for a very strategic reason, and that's because she was just waiting it out
until she could hatch her plan. NARRATOR: In late summer 2013, Uloma Curry Walker
took the first steps in a deadly plot and introduced someone new to her scheme. Uloma's daughter Jacqueline would later
testify that she, her mom, and Chad Padgett, her boyfriend, were in the car when her mother raised
the idea of having Will killed. NARRATOR: Uloma promised to make it worth their while.
JENNIFER KING: She believed that there was a large insurance policy that she would get paid out on
and then she would be able to give Mr. Padgett a cut in that, and then also her daughter would receive a cut in that.
And Uloma offers Chad $1,000 as a down payment if he can find someone who can get the job done.
Chad Padgett had some difficulty. There were a couple of other they reached out to who we ended up having testify
that they had turned it down. NARRATOR: It was a pitiful sum to offer for the act of taking
an innocent man's life. ROD DEMERY: Anyone agreeing to kill someone for $1,000 has a diminished thought process.
Not even violent people would do that for $1,000. NARRATOR: Former homicide detective Rod Demery
thinks that Uloma Curry Walker knew exactly what she was doing as she got Jacqueline
and Chad involved in the plot. The fact that someone would agree to do it for $1,000
shows that that person is very, very immature, very, very impressionable. So it fits that she would use her 17-year-old daughter's
friends to do it because no reasonable, respectable killer would do that. Chad Padgett then reached out to his cousin,
Christopher Hein, who said at first he was willing to do it. Christopher Hein was pivotal in getting the firearm.
We could see from his text messages that he had bought and sold and was involved
in dealing with firearms. NARRATOR: But Christopher Hein never cashed in on his payday.
During a test run a few months before the homicide, had backed out and decided that he couldn't
actually be the gunman. What we were able to glean from not only the cell phone text records, but then from what the defendants
had stated that Christopher Hein was just not willing to pull the trigger. Was there, was at the location, and just couldn't quite
go through with it. NARRATOR: Another man was enlisted to help, Ryan Dorty. After the failed attempt, the group reached out to Ryan Dorty
to commit this crime for $800. JENNIFER KING: Low functioning, had a large criminal record,
but was willing to commit this far a little under a grand and for some marijuana.
NARRATOR: A hitman hired, Mrs. Curry Walker made the final preparations to become a widow just four
months after becoming a wife. She saw this chunk of change that she wanted to get.
The only way to get it was for William to die, so William had to die. NARRATOR: On November 3, 2013, Will and Uloma were just days
away from starting their new life in a quiet town, 30 miles east of Cleveland. Uloma and Will have now been married for four months.
They're packing up the house because they bought a property outside of the city.
They're going to move there and retire. Sometime after 8:00 PM, Uloma sent Will to McDonald's.
NARRATOR: This was the first step in the plan that Uloma had meticulously laid out to her co-conspirators.
JENNIFER KING: On the night of, Christopher Hein stayed on the west side of Cleveland
with Jacqueline Hines, and then Padgett and Dorty went to the east side. NARRATOR: The two young men lay in wait on Lampson Road,
the residential street of unkempt colonial style two-story homes, near to Cleveland Heights.
Jacqueline Hines was in communication with Uloma. Uloma told her when she had sent Lieutenant Walker out
to get food, and that at that time, Padgett and Dorty were waiting for him to leave the house
and then return with the food. NARRATOR: It was a cool, cloudy Sunday evening in late autumn.
Will Walker drove a mile to the restaurant. And when he comes back, Ryan Dorty ambushes him
and shoots Will four times. [gunshots] Lieutenant Walker was gunned down as he was opening
the side door to his home. They were driven by a man who had no idea what was going on.
He thought they were just buying weed. And when he heard the gunshots, and both Dorty
and Padgett came back to the car, he was like, whoa, what happened. They asked and they had said, well,
it was like a drug deal gone bad. He was like, you're not getting back in my car.
NARRATOR: As Will lay slumped against the side door of the house, bleeding heavily,
his new wife was biding her time. Uloma was inside. She heard the gunshots. Both Dorty and Padgett were able to flee,
and no one saw them there that evening. At 8:35, Uloma calls 911. My husband's been shot!
911: What's going on? ULOMA WALKER: He got shot! Curry Walker was frantic on the phone with 911.
ULOMA WALKER: My husband's bleeding! When first responders arrived, they found Will had been shot four times,
and his keys were still in the door. The first people, first responders on scene
were people who knew Lieutenant Walker, who were with the fire department, and the EMS who
had worked closely with them. NARRATOR: The colleagues who had rushed to Will's aid immediately noticed something not right.
He's covered in blood, but Uloma is spotless. There's no blood on her. She had some training in home health care aide.
She's a nurse, isn't she? Seems odd. NARRATOR: Odd because Uloma Curry Walker had done nothing
to help her husband as he lay bleeding heavily in the doorway of their marital home.
Perhaps she was in shock. She certainly acted like a woman in torment. She rode in the EMS on the way back.
Uloma appeared to be distressed and she put on quite a show. NARRATOR: Lieutenant William Walker, shot four times,
was still breathing when, lights and sirens blaring, the ambulance arrived at the hospital.
Within minutes, news of the shooting had reached Ronnie Stepka. My brother Dave was on duty at Station 17 that night.
And Dave knew my love for Will. Dave called me and he says, Will just got shot. I jumped in my car and I drove to metro from my home
here in Avon Lake. NARRATOR: It was a tense, agonizing 20-mile journey for Ronnie.
RONNIE STEPKA: I pulled in to metro, parked the car, ran into the emergency room.
And that's where the scene unfolded. It was-- it was surreal. This isn't what you expect to happen to this guy.
There was probably, I'd say, maybe a dozen or so firefighters in the emergency room.
And we could see him. He was in trauma bay one. And we could see the doctors, nurses, and all the specialists
in there working on Will. They knew he was a firefighter, so they did everything that they humanly possibly
could have done with Will. NARRATOR: In the packed waiting room of the MetroHealth
Medical Center, first responders prayed for Will to come through. We had some pure promise that maybe Will
was going to survive this because the way they kept working on-- I mean, they could call have called that code a long time
before they actually did. NARRATOR: When medics finally stepped away from the operating
table, the news wasn't good. RONNIE STEPKA: The doc did come out and he came right to me.
We knew each other. And he says, you want to go say goodbye to Will? So I walked in there.
I held his hand for a short time. I gave him a kiss on the forehead and told him I loved him.
And that was not uncommon for me to tell him I loved him. I told him that thousands of times in my career.
I did. I loved being around him. He was a good guy. NARRATOR: It was heartbreaking news for Will's
friends and colleagues. RONNIE STEPKA: The nurses crying, firefighters crying. It was a rough time.
NARRATOR: But what of Uloma, the woman Will had married just four months previously?
I do not recall seeing her at the hospital. No, I do not. NARRATOR: The Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department launched
a homicide investigation. ROD DEMERY: At the crime scene, investigators found 9mm shell casings, which they sent off for DNA testing.
The investigation began with talking to family, friends, and all that knew Uloma and Will.
Did you get along well with Lieutenant Walker, or were there you issues there? We were clueless.
It was Will Walker. That was the guy you would never expect to have an enemy. I know of not a single guy that had a grudge against him.
There were a couple of different leads that the police followed. One was that Will had a dispute with a car dealer.
There were two cars that he was purchasing for Uloma and himself for their retirement.
And one of them got lost. ROD DEMERY: He had bought a new car, paid $10,000, but the car never showed up.
He and the car dealer had an issue. Maybe this might have had something to do with it.
No, it doesn't turn out to go anywhere. NARRATOR: Will and Uloma's neighborhood came under scrutiny from detectives.
Cleveland, Ohio enjoys a rather high crime rate. And it's not uncommon for people to be shot, I'm sure.
It's probably a daily occurrence. The neighborhood he was in was in a rougher part of town.
And he did his civic duty there trying to change that neighborhood. He told us about drug dealers, that he got
chased out of the neighborhood. NARRATOR: But for the most part, Will was seen as a community hero.
Will was quite the mediator with disputes in the neighborhood. He was well respected, so he often broke up fights.
He put together a small food bank for either a family or a section of his community.
Police are really going down these rabbit trails, and they're not coming up with anything.
NARRATOR: Investigators were at a loss. This really beloved firefighter paramedic,
who would want to do this? They couldn't find anybody with a motive. There was no one who disliked this man.
NARRATOR: Months passed with no resolution for Will's loved ones. There was nothing for a long, long time of real substance.
NARRATOR: The first anniversary of his death came and went. 13 months after Will Walker's murder,
investigators still had no suspects, no motive, no weapon, no clues. It was a stale, stale atmosphere
with the case for a long time. NARRATOR: But then, a routine appeal for new leads
was rewarded with a tale of complexity, calculation, conspiracy. So police are at a standstill.
They don't know where to go with this investigation until December of 2014. Crime Stoppers and Cleveland Fire Department
offer a reward for information leading to whoever it was that killed Lieutenant William Walker.
A guy named Enrique Ramos came forward to talk to the police. He tells them that his friend Isaiah Solomon was approached
by a guy named Chad Padgett, and that Chad Padgett asked him if he would carry out a hit on Will Walker.
When police spoke with Solomon, he confirmed it. And he told them that Padgett approached him with the request
and said that it was his girlfriend's mother who wanted the hit done. And that's the first break in the case that police get.
NARRATOR: Isaiah Solomon told detectives that he refused to murder William Walker,
but, clearly, somebody else had said yes. When police tracked down 21-year-old Chad Padgett,
the pieces began falling into place. His girlfriend was a teenager called Jacqueline Hines.
Her mother's name, Uloma Curry Walker. They were living in the same home as Lieutenant
Walker and Uloma Curry. NARRATOR: Isaiah Solomon's testimony pinpointed Uloma Curry Walker as the driving
mind who wanted to take out a hit on her husband. They had met, married, and just four
months later, she was allegedly trying to have Will killed. But more information was needed to complete the picture.
They pulled out all stops to try to find out what happened to Will. Police get a subpoena, and they search the cell
phone records of Chad Padgett. JENNIFER KING: A major portion of this case was the cell phone records.
NARRATOR: Jennifer King was the Assistant County Prosecutor tasked with bringing Will
Walker's killers to justice. And suddenly, she had half a dozen suspects in the mix.
JENNIFER KING: Investigators, one, didn't know which suspects to be looking at. But once they did and they had to subpoena those phone
records, when the phone records came in, especially the text message records, that then gave them a clear identity
to who the defendants were. They find this continuing communication between three people, Chad, Jacqueline, Uloma's daughter,
and a guy named Ryan Dorty. Well, cops know who Ryan Dorty is. I mean, the guy's been a troublemaker
in the neighborhood. He's been around a while. JENNIFER KING: He committed a couple of armed robberies
after this had occurred. And so a violent individual, but someone who I don't think
had the intellectual capacity to really realize the depth and impact of what he was doing.
NARRATOR: Did this flurry of communication with known criminals signify a wife arranging
for her husband to be killed? Detectives still weren't sure, but they were a step
closer to uncovering a motive. Police subpoena Uloma Walker's cell phone and her financial records.
When Uloma was brought in, she told investigators that she had no financial problems
and everything was fine. What Uloma didn't know was that investigators had already
pulled her financial records and they knew what type of debt she had. NARRATOR: Uloma had crippling money problems,
but she also had her eye on a solution. She knows that Will has a $100,000 life insurance policy.
NARRATOR: To stand any chance of getting her hands on Will's life insurance payout, Uloma would
need to be married to him. Will had died knowing nothing about Uloma's debt or her fake diagnosis.
Now, by the summer of 2015, detectives had uncovered both. Investigators asked Uloma when was the last time
she had been to the doctor. And she explained that she hadn't been in the last year
since Will's death, which was really strange for someone with stage four breast cancer.
NARRATOR: Detectives were sure that they had their motive and that Uloma had something to do with the murder,
but nobody was talking. They had to let Uloma go free once again. But in August 2015, another break in the case.
Police get a DNA sample from Chad Padgett, and it turns out to be a direct match to the shell casings
found in the Walker's yard. NARRATOR: At the same time, forensic examination of the suspect's phones had finally yielded
a damning piece of evidence. Not only was there a lot of communication between the parties, but the cell phone records
show that to the precise minute of the crime they were in contact. Then, they find a smoking gun.
They find a text message that Chad Padgett sent out right after the murder. It says, we have a body.
NARRATOR: For one of the suspects, denial no longer seemed like an option. In August 2015, Chad Padgett was arrested.
And while in custody, he laid out the entire plot. NARRATOR: Accused of complicity to commit murder,
21-year-old Chad Padgett confessed to everything. Cuyahoga County Sheriff's investigators revisited
events of late summer 2013. What he told investigators was that Uloma had approached him
with her daughter and said that they wanted to have a Will killed because he was abusive to her.
Uloma was very good at making people feel sympathetic for her, to feel these genuine emotions for her,
and then to use that emotion to her advantage and to get them to do whatever she wanted them to do.
NARRATOR: Dr. Judy Ho studies how killer's minds work. For Uloma Curry Walker, pulling on people's heartstrings
was a frequently used tactic. I think they really thought, oh, my goodness, we need to save her from this horrible abuse she had been
suffering all of these years. And I think at that point, their own hero complex has probably got triggered.
This is me doing her a huge favor. This is me doing a favor for society. And that's why we have to do it even though it feels like it's
the wrong thing to do. And so what she had discussed with Chad Padgett, her daughter's boyfriend,
was killing Mr. Walker. NARRATOR: That was the story told by Chad Padgett. Two years after the crime, investigators had to verify
if his claims were true. With painstaking scrutiny of cell phone records, they pieced together the events of the night
of November 3, 2013. We were able to take all of the text messages between all of our main defendants and splice them and timeline
them to see that Jacqueline Hines was in communication with Uloma. NARRATOR: They could see not only
who was communicating with whom, but where each of the actors was at the time. So by our cell phone pings, we were
able to find the route that they traveled, that they were at the location. Then, we know that Dorty and Padgett
had to take the RTA back from the east side to the west side. NARRATOR: Only when her accomplices were clear
of the scene did Uloma dial 911. She was in no rush to call for help or to do anything to save her husband's life.
ULOMA WALKER: He got shot! 911: Who got shot? ULOMA WALKER: My husband! I think Uloma had been waiting for this moment.
She had been waiting for the moment that her plan could come to fruition, that he would die.
And then finally, she would get her hands on his money. And I think that it was very deliberate that she
didn't want to save him. NARRATOR: Detectives needed to speak to those first responders who had tried
to save Will's life that night. We had quite a few witnesses, some who played even dual roles
who knew William Walker personally, and then also were involved in the case, from some of the firefighters and EMS
workers who arrived on scene. NARRATOR: They told of a woman whose reactions were
not quite what they expected. When the ambulance arrived, she got in the back of the ambulance and rode to the hospital.
This is not uncommon for spouses to do, but this is all part of her act. We had testimony from some of those first responders
who say just that she had a fairly odd response and that she acted hysterical, but then also was
kind of reserved, and asked, you know, is he still alive yet, in a way that didn't settle well with those first responders,
people who see these kind of tragic things regularly enough to know how people typically react.
Even the text messages, once Lieutenant Walker had passed at the hospital, between Jacqueline Hines and Uloma
were not ones of shock and dismay, more like, we had finished the job. NARRATOR: Detectives in Cuyahoga County charged
Chad Padgett with the aggravated murder of Lieutenant William Walker. LAWYER: Regarding Mr. Padgett, your Honor,
he would like to waive the 24 hours notice from reading that indictment which he has received
and entered a not guilty plea. JUDGE: Thank you. All right, not guilty plea will be accepted.
This goes-- it will be heard by Judge Ronald Suster, a visiting judge. $1 million cash surety property original bond is continued.
NARRATOR: One by one, Uloma's accomplices were incarcerated, awaiting trial for murder.
Perhaps knowing that she would be next, Uloma played her final card. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Before she turns herself in,
she writes this confession up where she claims that Will Walker was physically abusing her.
I think Uloma thought this is going to be the easy story. People are going to believe it, because Will
was a strong firefighter, very macho. NARRATOR: Under interrogation, Uloma denied masterminding
her husband's killing. Instead, she pointed the finger at her only child. She turned on her daughter and said
that it was her daughter Jacqueline who came up with the plan. JENNIFER KING: Her defense was that she had nothing
to do with this, that Jacqueline Hines and Chad Padgett did not like how strict Lieutenant Walker was.
They didn't like how he was controlling her, and they wanted him gone. DR. JUDY HO: I think that it's very
surprising that Uloma tried to blame the entire thing on her daughter. Even some of the worst criminals that we know
are still protective of their own kin because they have that evolutionary perspective of,
well, if I can't survive, at least my kin will, and then my genes will go on forever.
But in this case, she was all about self-preservation. The trouble is there's no evidence of this.
No one can provide any kind of clues, or history, or anything that shows that Will Walker was abusing her.
It's pretty clear that this is another one Uloma Curry Walker's lies. NARRATOR: Despite Uloma's denials, in September 2015,
she was charged with her husband's murder. Do you have an attorney? Do you have any money or funds to hire an attorney?
All right, the court will appoint Attorney Robert Dixon and Russell Tye to represent you
in this matter. NARRATOR: Cleveland's first responder community were hearing for the very first time
that the person who had Lieutenant William Walker murdered was none other than his wife.
We had no idea what actually went down there until the story broke. And when that story broke, it was huge.
It was huge. It took my breath away. It took my breath away. JUDGE: Ma'am, having received and reviewed
a copy of the indictment, do you wish to waive the 24-hour notice, the reading in open court,
and do you wish to enter a not guilty plea? Not guilty plea is accepted. Bond is set at $1 million cash surety property.
Thank you. I never knew there was any strife at home with him. NARRATOR: To Ronnie Stepka and his colleagues,
Uloma had always come across as the perfect example of a grieving widow. RONNIE STEPKA: His wife, she played a game.
They bought a house just prior to Will being shot. And the firefighters jumped on board and helped her move.
I mean, that's what firefighters do. They come to the rescue, you know? She received some benefits from, like,
the firefighter fund, approximately made $50,000 in payouts. NARRATOR: Later that month, September 2015,
Uloma's daughter, Jacqueline Hines, was also charged along with Christopher Hein,
and Ryan Dorty, the man accused of pulling the trigger. At first, each of them protested their innocence.
LAWYER: We got Mr. Dorty, your Honor. He has received a copy of his indictment. He would like to waive the 24-hours notice,
the reading of it, and enter a not guilty plea this morning. Thank you, Mr. Corrigan.
The court will accept a not guilty plea. LAWYER: We have Mr. Hein, Your Honor. We'd like to waive the 24-hours notice, the reading
of the indictment, which he has received, and enter a not guilty plea. JUDGE: Not guilty plea is accepted.
$1 million cash surety property bond is set. NARRATOR: But as the trial date approached,
the defendants began to fall like dominoes. JENNIFER KING: We had been working on essentially five
defendants and slowly getting statements from them, and then working out plea negotiations.
NARRATOR: Chad Padgett had already crumbled. Then, gunman Ryan Dorty threw in the towel.
Jacqueline realized that she can't hold out anymore, and she spills the whole story and her part in it.
And she agrees to testify against everyone in trial, including her mother and her boyfriend, Chad Padgett,
who is the father of her child. Literally, the morning of trial, Christopher Hein finally plead.
We thought we were going to trial that morning on Uloma Curry and Christopher Hein, so we were able to work out a plea
deal just prior to her trial. Hein, Padgett, and Dorty all struck deals and were given between 18 and 28 years in sentences.
Prosecutors decide not to pursue adult charges against Jacqueline. Instead, they treat her as a juvenile.
She's 17 at the time of the killing. She is sentenced to one month in a juvenile lockup.
NARRATOR: Her co-conspirators now on the side of the state, it was bad news for Uloma.
JENNIFER KING: Going into the trial, we had just one defendant that we were trying,
Uloma Curry Walker. All four defendants testified against her at trial. And so that was part of the plea negotiations prior to was
we wanted that testimony. NARRATOR: William Walker's widow had almost two years between arrest and her trial in June 2017
to consider her options. She remained defiant about her innocence. The fact that she didn't take a plea deal
was not surprising to us. Just in my experience, when you see defendants who commit kind
of shocking crimes or things that are hard for you to wrap your skull around, they're not the type of people
who are willing to plea. And they would rather take their chances with the jury than admit any sort of wrongdoing.
NARRATOR: Uloma chose instead to tell her version of the truth to a packed gallery at Cuyahoga County Common
Pleas Court in Cleveland. The courtroom was filled daily with family members. And then someone from the Cleveland Fire Department
was in that courtroom for everything. Uloma, when she went to trial, she turned on her daughter
and said that it was her daughter Jacqueline who came up with the plan. The relationship between William Walker and Jacqueline
Hines maybe wasn't warm and fuzzy, but despite what Uloma ended up saying at trial,
It wasn't strained either. There wasn't some hatred or anything between them. NARRATOR: Uloma stuck to her story about her new husband
abusing her. ROD DEMERY: The defense team never presented any evidence of abuse, and there
was no record of abuse. If this was in fact true, someone would have known, someone would have heard.
We hear reports of domestic violence all the time where the neighbors say, oh, they were
fighting like cats and dogs. There's none of that here. She very clearly doesn't understand
how the criminal justice system works. NARRATOR: In fact, there were dozens of people in court willing to testify to William
Walker's true character. JENNIFER KING: We had quite a few of those people who were able to give the jury an understanding of what
an upstanding and beloved figure that William Walker was, just about how much he was respected,
how much he was loved. RONNIE STEPKA: He was a guy's guy. He was everything that you can want in a guy, in a man.
He was fun, intelligent, knew how to communicate very, very well, was in touch with his community.
Some of them wept in the hall. And it was just heartbreaking. NARRATOR: The state presented a much more compelling version
of events than Uloma had. The prosecution is going to show that this was all about money.
What did she have to gain here? She was in this financial trouble. She thought that she was getting this large payout.
And it made sense that she had a reason to have Lieutenant Walker killed. NARRATOR: Uloma's co-conspirators took
the stand for the prosecution. The star witness was her daughter, just 17 years old when her stepfather was murdered.
Some of the most moving testimony at trial came from Jacqueline Hines, and listening to her
describe her relationship with her mother, the manipulation, the guilt that they had, and how strange and perverted
their relationship was. NARRATOR: Jacqueline told the court that in the summer of 2013, weeks after her mother's
marriage to William Walker, she and her boyfriend Chad had been in the car when Uloma had raised
the idea of having Will killed. What she said was that Uloma told them once Will was dead,
she'd be able to collect the $100,000 insurance policy. She would then be able to get out of the debt that she had,
live in this nice new home they had purchased, and be rid of Lieutenant Walker. Uloma and her daughter's relationship
clearly wasn't healthy. Jacqueline was trying to please her mother, give her mother something there.
NARRATOR: Uloma had successfully recruited vulnerable teenagers to do her dirty work.
JENNIFER KING: These were these kids. They weren't the criminals that were just gunning people
down who they didn't like. That wasn't in their criminal history, and it didn't appear to be in their character.
Uloma's daughter Jacqueline testified that, at one point, her mother suggested that they pull the pocket out of Will's
trousers after they shot him to make it look more like a robbery. In fact, attorney Jennifer King
had some sympathy for the predicament that Jacqueline Hines found herself in. She was partially responsible for the death of Lieutenant
Walker, but her testimony was compelling enough and had a ring of truth about just how manipulative Uloma was
throughout her life and would lead to something this extreme happening. NARRATOR: There was one final surprise witness
in the prosecution's case, Will Walker's adult daughter from his first marriage.
She told police that before Uloma had come forward with this claim about breast cancer,
that her dad had told her that he was still in love with her mom, Rita. And so Uloma knows this and she decides she has to act fast,
and that's when she concocts the story to get Will to marry her. NARRATOR: On July 7, 2017, just a week
shy of what would have been Will and Uloma's fourth wedding anniversary, testimony was concluded.
The trial lasts for just about two weeks. And it takes jurors all of two hours to reach their decision.
It's the first time Uloma Curry Walker has shown any emotion, but she breaks into tears when the jurors
announce their verdict, guilty on all counts. Judge Sherrie Miday presided over this trial.
And with the way that murder is in Ohio, it is a life sentence. NARRATOR: Life without parole for the murder of the man
that she had married just four months earlier. She was doing all of this to get her hands on Will Walker's
$100,000 life insurance policy. It's so rare that you see a female defendant for a murder-for-hire for something, like,
just for money, money issues that were not insurmountable money issues. NARRATOR: But there was a twist in the tale.
Everything Uloma had done, even drawing four young people into a murderous plot,
had been for nothing. There was a wrinkle in Uloma Curry Walker's plan. What she didn't realize was she and Will had only
been married for four months. Will hadn't had a chance to change his life insurance policy.
She wasn't even the beneficiary of the insurance payout. She hadn't even done the due diligence
to discover that his daughter from a previous marriage was the beneficiary. So that part of it was just shocking.
NARRATOR: It's a bittersweet twist for those who loved Lieutenant William Walker.
Uloma gained nothing. But in the process, the world lost a very good man. It was one of the greatest losses
that I can recall in my career on the job. He's just one of those guys that, gee, just the character
he was could laugh-- he'd have me howling laughing so hard. He was a great man I miss him.
I loved him with my heart. I know he had my back, and I know I had his. [music playing]

Just weeks into their marriage, debt-ridden Uloma Curry-Walker was plotting how to get her hands on her husband William's cash.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Uloma Curry Walker plotted to murder her husband William for life insurance, but was ultimately caught and sentenced to life in prison.

Key points

The Tragic Shooting. Will is ambushed and shot four times as he returns home.
Firefighter Hero William Walker. A beloved firefighter is shot in a senseless act of violence.
A Whirlwind Marriage. Uloma and Will marry under the pretense of her needing health insurance.
A Dark Secret. Uloma hides her financial troubles and a sinister plot against Will.
The Fatal Plan. Uloma conspires to have her husband killed for insurance money.
Uloma's Financial Motive Uncovered. Detectives reveal Uloma's crippling debt and her plan to collect her husband's life insurance.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Who knows what goes on in the mind of a psychopath?

NARRATOR reflecting on Uloma's true intentions.

0:52WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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