00:00:10
Firefighter hero
William Walker is shot in a Cleveland street. [gunshots] His wife makes a desperate call.
00:00:19
911: What's going on? ULOMA WALKER: He got shot! 911: Who got shot? ULOMA WALKER: My husband!
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NARRATOR: It appears a senseless
random killing of a man without enemies. There was no one
who disliked this man.
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He always try to lift people
up that were struggling. NARRATOR: The first
responder leaves
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behind his new
wife, Uloma, herself reported to be gravely ill. JENNIFER KING: They were
married under the guise of her
00:00:44
possibly having breast cancer. NARRATOR: But with
Uloma Curry Walker, no one is sure what's the
truth and what's a lie.
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Who knows what goes on in
the mind of a psychopath? BAILIFF: Uloma Curry. JUDGE: Do you wish to
enter a not guilty plea?
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Not guilty plea is accepted. NARRATOR: Detectives
will soon ask, was Uloma Curry Walker
a grieving widow
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or a calculating killer? [music playing] When Uloma Curry met
Lieutenant William Walker,
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mutual friends remarked on
how much they had in common. Lieutenant William Walker is
known as Will, is well-liked,
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well respected firefighter and
paramedic with the Cleveland, Ohio fire department.
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Very, very proud guy. He was a go-getter. He worked hard. William Walker was
a steadfast, strong,
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and responsible individual. He saved money to take
care of his family. He worked hard.
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People liked him. NARRATOR: And a woman about
to enter his life who appeared cut from the same cloth.
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In 2005, Will meets Uloma. She's a nurse. She's a single mother
with a 9-year-old daughter
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from a previous relationship. I think when he met Uloma,
she checked all of the boxes.
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She was somebody who was
working in the caregiver role. She seemed kind. She seemed gentle.
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NARRATOR: Part of the same
world of heroes and lifesavers. A natural fit. If you're not involved
with firefighters and nurses
00:02:37
and docs, it's crazy. There's nothing like it. It is a second family. NARRATOR: Uloma and
Will were both chasing
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a second chance at marriage. He's been married before. He has two children. His wife Rita and he still
get along really well.
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He had a love for family. He loved his girls. Yes, he did. NARRATOR: Will and
Uloma's relationship
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seemed fun, uncomplicated. The two of them start dating. And they date happily
for eight years.
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He talked of her often. I met her one time at
the fire training academy when she came in.
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Was cordial, you know,
that type of thing. Will loved to dance,
and I guess she did too.
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NARRATOR: After working
together at the Cleveland Fire Department for
almost two decades,
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Lieutenant Ronnie Stepka
had become a close friend and confidant of Will Walker.
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Will taught me to salsa
way back in the day there. He was a fun guy to be around.
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And like I said, I think
she was into the dance scene as well, because
he spoke of dancing
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with her numerous times. NARRATOR: But after all
those years of dating, the couple still hadn't
danced down the aisle.
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Uloma may have begun to wonder
if a proposal was ever coming, so she told Will something
that would hurry things along.
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In 2013, Uloma
told Will but she had stage four breast cancer,
and that her insurance
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wouldn't cover it. She needed health insurance. He had that health insurance. Will wanted to help.
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If the two of them got
married, in his estimation, that she would have the medical
insurance that she needed.
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The fire department
provided such. So they got married, not
necessarily because they didn't
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love each other, but the
main precipice for that was the health insurance
for her breast cancer.
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They have a quickie marriage. They eloped together or
they go to the courthouse,
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make it official. And they don't even tell anyone
about it until after it's over.
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NARRATOR: Not even
their closest friends I'm not even sure if it
was like a formal ceremony.
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I don't know if they
snuck away to get married. NARRATOR: Perhaps Will had an
inkling that someone might poke
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holes in his wife's story
and in his grand plan to be Uloma's savior. She also pulled at his
heartstrings and perhaps
00:04:57
a hero complex that he had. Will is this caring
firefighter and paramedic. He's a rescuer.
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This is somebody
who is a giver. This is somebody who
will risk their own life to save complete strangers.
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It makes absolute sense why that
might have actually drawn Will to Uloma more, like, I
need to be in her life,
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I need to make her better. NARRATOR: The first few months
of married life went well.
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Newlyweds Will and Uloma were
making big plans together. They wanted to get out of that
neighborhood that they were in.
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It was a rougher neighborhood. He's ready to
just-- let's retire and let's just move
out of the city
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and start a family together. RONNIE STEPKA: They
bought a little place out in the country.
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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.
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He was very much looking
forward to that move. NARRATOR: But whilst Will was
imagining their dream life,
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Uloma was harboring
a dark secret. CAROLYN CANVILLE: She's
in serious financial debt.
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Credit cards, loans. She is in deep tens of
thousands of dollars. A few months
into the marriage,
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Uloma's debt problem got worse. She had taken out more loans. And in fact, she had taken
out credit in Will's name.
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She feared that he was going
to discover what she had done. William Walker, we believe,
had the understanding
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that they had more money
than they actually had, and wasn't aware of,
necessarily, all of the debt
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that Uloma had brought
into this marriage and then accumulated
in the short time
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since they had been married. Uloma was in this real tough
spot with a brand new house,
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and she was going to have
to tell Lieutenant Walker that they financially
couldn't afford it,
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that they could stay in it. NARRATOR: This wasn't
Uloma's only secret. The whole premise of
their whirlwind wedding
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had been based on an
even more sinister lie. From everything the
evidence showed us, she didn't
00:06:55
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.
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Now, not only was this a lie,
but this was extremely callous. JENNIFER KING: They
were married under kind
00:07:10
of the guise of her potentially
possibly having breast cancer, and that was never
confirmed that she had it.
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There was no medical
documentation that she did. She lied about her cancer,
but then fails to tell the truth
00:07:24
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.
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She didn't want to
tell him about her debt because that would maybe
make his spider senses go up.
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NARRATOR: But she
needed to act fast. With the house
purchase looming, Will was about to discover that their
bank accounts were thousands
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of dollars in the red. She didn't want to have him
start to be suspicious of her.
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Does she really love me, or is
she just after me for my money because she's so in debt?
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And so I think she hid it
for a very strategic reason, and that's because she
was just waiting it out
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until she could hatch her plan. NARRATOR: In late summer
2013, Uloma Curry Walker
00:08:07
took the first steps
in a deadly plot and introduced someone
new to her scheme. Uloma's daughter
Jacqueline would later
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testify that she, her mom, and
Chad Padgett, her boyfriend, were in the car when
her mother raised
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the idea of having Will killed. NARRATOR: Uloma promised to
make it worth their while.
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JENNIFER KING: She believed
that there was a large insurance policy that she
would get paid out on
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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.
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And Uloma offers Chad
$1,000 as a down payment if he can find someone
who can get the job done.
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Chad Padgett had
some difficulty. There were a couple of
other they reached out to who we ended
up having testify
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that they had turned it down. NARRATOR: It was a pitiful sum
to offer for the act of taking
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an innocent man's life. ROD DEMERY: Anyone agreeing
to kill someone for $1,000 has a diminished
thought process.
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Not even violent people
would do that for $1,000. NARRATOR: Former homicide
detective Rod Demery
00:09:12
thinks that Uloma Curry
Walker knew exactly what she was doing as
she got Jacqueline
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and Chad involved in the plot. The fact that someone would
agree to do it for $1,000
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shows that that person
is very, very immature, very, very impressionable. So it fits that she would use
her 17-year-old daughter's
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friends to do it because no
reasonable, respectable killer would do that. Chad Padgett then
reached out to his cousin,
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Christopher Hein, who said at
first he was willing to do it. Christopher Hein was pivotal
in getting the firearm.
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We could see from
his text messages that he had bought and
sold and was involved
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in dealing with firearms. NARRATOR: But Christopher Hein
never cashed in on his payday.
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During a test run a few
months before the homicide, had backed out and
decided that he couldn't
00:10:08
actually be the gunman. What we were able to
glean from not only the cell phone text records, but
then from what the defendants
00:10:15
had stated that Christopher
Hein was just not willing to pull the trigger. Was there, was at the location,
and just couldn't quite
00:10:23
go through with it. NARRATOR: Another man was
enlisted to help, Ryan Dorty. After the failed attempt, the
group reached out to Ryan Dorty
00:10:32
to commit this crime for $800. JENNIFER KING: Low functioning,
had a large criminal record,
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but was willing to commit this
far a little under a grand and for some marijuana.
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NARRATOR: A hitman
hired, Mrs. Curry Walker made the final preparations
to become a widow just four
00:10:52
months after becoming a wife. She saw this chunk of
change that she wanted to get.
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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
00:11:14
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.
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They're packing up the
house because they bought a property outside of the city.
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They're going to move
there and retire. Sometime after 8:00 PM,
Uloma sent Will to McDonald's.
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NARRATOR: This was the
first step in the plan that Uloma had meticulously
laid out to her co-conspirators.
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JENNIFER KING: On the
night of, Christopher Hein stayed on the west
side of Cleveland
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with Jacqueline Hines,
and then Padgett and Dorty went to the east side. NARRATOR: The two young men
lay in wait on Lampson Road,
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the residential street
of unkempt colonial style two-story homes,
near to Cleveland Heights.
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Jacqueline Hines was in
communication with Uloma. Uloma told her when she had
sent Lieutenant Walker out
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to get food, and
that at that time, Padgett and Dorty were waiting
for him to leave the house
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and then return with the food. NARRATOR: It was a cool, cloudy
Sunday evening in late autumn.
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Will Walker drove a
mile to the restaurant. And when he comes back,
Ryan Dorty ambushes him
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and shoots Will four times. [gunshots] Lieutenant Walker was
gunned down as he was opening
00:12:40
the side door to his home. They were driven by a man who
had no idea what was going on.
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He thought they were
just buying weed. And when he heard the
gunshots, and both Dorty
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and Padgett came
back to the car, he was like, whoa,
what happened. They asked and they
had said, well,
00:13:02
it was like a drug
deal gone bad. He was like, you're not
getting back in my car.
00:13:06
NARRATOR: As Will lay
slumped against the side door of the house,
bleeding heavily,
00:13:10
his new wife was
biding her time. Uloma was inside. She heard the gunshots. Both Dorty and Padgett
were able to flee,
00:13:18
and no one saw them
there that evening. At 8:35, Uloma calls 911. My husband's been shot!
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911: What's going on? ULOMA WALKER: He got shot! Curry Walker was frantic
on the phone with 911.
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ULOMA WALKER: My
husband's bleeding! When first responders
arrived, they found Will had been
shot four times,
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and his keys were
still in the door. The first people,
first responders on scene
00:13:47
were people who knew
Lieutenant Walker, who were with the fire
department, and the EMS who
00:13:52
had worked closely with them. NARRATOR: The colleagues
who had rushed to Will's aid immediately
noticed something not right.
00:13:59
He's covered in blood,
but Uloma is spotless. There's no blood on her. She had some training
in home health care aide.
00:14:10
She's a nurse, isn't she? Seems odd. NARRATOR: Odd because Uloma
Curry Walker had done nothing
00:14:17
to help her husband as he lay
bleeding heavily in the doorway of their marital home.
00:14:21
Perhaps she was in shock. She certainly acted
like a woman in torment. She rode in the
EMS on the way back.
00:14:28
Uloma appeared
to be distressed and she put on quite a show. NARRATOR: Lieutenant William
Walker, shot four times,
00:14:34
was still breathing when,
lights and sirens blaring, the ambulance arrived
at the hospital.
00:14:39
Within minutes,
news of the shooting had reached Ronnie Stepka. My brother Dave was on duty
at Station 17 that night.
00:14:45
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
00:14:57
here in Avon Lake. NARRATOR: It was a tense,
agonizing 20-mile journey for Ronnie.
00:15:03
RONNIE STEPKA: I pulled in
to metro, parked the car, ran into the emergency room.
00:15:06
And that's where
the scene unfolded. It was-- it was surreal. This isn't what you expect
to happen to this guy.
00:15:17
There was probably,
I'd say, maybe a dozen or so firefighters
in the emergency room.
00:15:24
And we could see him. He was in trauma bay one. And we could see the doctors,
nurses, and all the specialists
00:15:32
in there working on Will. They knew he was a
firefighter, so they did everything that
they humanly possibly
00:15:41
could have done with Will. NARRATOR: In the packed
waiting room of the MetroHealth
00:15:46
Medical Center, first
responders prayed for Will to come through. We had some pure
promise that maybe Will
00:15:54
was going to survive
this because the way they kept working on-- I mean, they could call have
called that code a long time
00:16:00
before they actually did. NARRATOR: When medics finally
stepped away from the operating
00:16:04
table, the news wasn't good. RONNIE STEPKA: The doc did come
out and he came right to me.
00:16:09
We knew each other. And he says, you want to
go say goodbye to Will? So I walked in there.
00:16:19
I held his hand
for a short time. I gave him a kiss
on the forehead and told him I loved him.
00:16:26
And that was not uncommon for
me to tell him I loved him. I told him that thousands
of times in my career.
00:16:31
I did. I loved being around him. He was a good guy. NARRATOR: It was
heartbreaking news for Will's
00:16:36
friends and colleagues. RONNIE STEPKA: The nurses
crying, firefighters crying. It was a rough time.
00:16:41
NARRATOR: But what of
Uloma, the woman Will had married just four
months previously?
00:16:44
I do not recall seeing
her at the hospital. No, I do not. NARRATOR: The Cuyahoga County
Sheriff's Department launched
00:16:54
a homicide investigation. ROD DEMERY: At the crime
scene, investigators found 9mm shell casings, which
they sent off for DNA testing.
00:17:02
The investigation
began with talking to family, friends, and all
that knew Uloma and Will.
00:17:07
Did you get along well
with Lieutenant Walker, or were there you issues there? We were clueless.
00:17:13
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.
00:17:22
There were a couple
of different leads that the police followed. One was that Will had a
dispute with a car dealer.
00:17:30
There were two cars that
he was purchasing for Uloma and himself for
their retirement.
00:17:35
And one of them got lost. ROD DEMERY: He had bought
a new car, paid $10,000, but the car never showed up.
00:17:42
He and the car
dealer had an issue. Maybe this might have had
something to do with it.
00:17:48
No, it doesn't turn
out to go anywhere. NARRATOR: Will and
Uloma's neighborhood came under scrutiny
from detectives.
00:17:55
Cleveland, Ohio enjoys
a rather high crime rate. And it's not uncommon for
people to be shot, I'm sure.
00:18:03
It's probably a
daily occurrence. The neighborhood he was in
was in a rougher part of town.
00:18:10
And he did his civic
duty there trying to change that neighborhood. He told us about drug
dealers, that he got
00:18:16
chased out of the neighborhood. NARRATOR: But for
the most part, Will was seen as a community hero.
00:18:21
Will was quite the
mediator with disputes in the neighborhood. He was well respected, so
he often broke up fights.
00:18:28
He put together a small
food bank for either a family or a section of his community.
00:18:35
Police are really going
down these rabbit trails, and they're not coming
up with anything.
00:18:39
NARRATOR: Investigators
were at a loss. This really beloved
firefighter paramedic,
00:18:45
who would want to do this? They couldn't find
anybody with a motive. There was no one who
disliked this man.
00:18:52
NARRATOR: Months passed
with no resolution for Will's loved ones. There was nothing for a long,
long time of real substance.
00:18:59
NARRATOR: The first anniversary
of his death came and went. 13 months after Will
Walker's murder,
00:19:04
investigators still
had no suspects, no motive, no weapon, no clues. It was a stale,
stale atmosphere
00:19:13
with the case for a long time. NARRATOR: But then, a
routine appeal for new leads
00:19:17
was rewarded with a
tale of complexity, calculation, conspiracy. So police are at a standstill.
00:19:24
They don't know where to
go with this investigation until December of 2014. Crime Stoppers and
Cleveland Fire Department
00:19:33
offer a reward for
information leading to whoever it was that killed
Lieutenant William Walker.
00:19:41
A guy named Enrique Ramos came
forward to talk to the police. He tells them that his friend
Isaiah Solomon was approached
00:19:52
by a guy named Chad
Padgett, and that Chad Padgett asked him if he would
carry out a hit on Will Walker.
00:20:01
When police spoke with
Solomon, he confirmed it. And he told them that Padgett
approached him with the request
00:20:09
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.
00:20:16
NARRATOR: Isaiah
Solomon told detectives that he refused to
murder William Walker,
00:20:20
but, clearly, somebody
else had said yes. When police tracked down
21-year-old Chad Padgett,
00:20:27
the pieces began
falling into place. His girlfriend was a teenager
called Jacqueline Hines.
00:20:33
Her mother's name,
Uloma Curry Walker. They were living in the
same home as Lieutenant
00:20:40
Walker and Uloma Curry. NARRATOR: Isaiah
Solomon's testimony pinpointed Uloma Curry
Walker as the driving
00:20:54
mind who wanted to take
out a hit on her husband. They had met,
married, and just four
00:21:01
months later, she was allegedly
trying to have Will killed. But more information was
needed to complete the picture.
00:21:08
They pulled out all
stops to try to find out what happened to Will. Police get a subpoena,
and they search the cell
00:21:15
phone records of Chad Padgett. JENNIFER KING: A major
portion of this case was the cell phone records.
00:21:22
NARRATOR: Jennifer King
was the Assistant County Prosecutor tasked
with bringing Will
00:21:26
Walker's killers to justice. And suddenly, she had half
a dozen suspects in the mix.
00:21:31
JENNIFER KING: Investigators,
one, didn't know which suspects to be looking at. But once they did and they
had to subpoena those phone
00:21:38
records, when the
phone records came in, especially the text
message records, that then gave them
a clear identity
00:21:45
to who the defendants were. They find this
continuing communication between three people, Chad,
Jacqueline, Uloma's daughter,
00:21:56
and a guy named Ryan Dorty. Well, cops know
who Ryan Dorty is. I mean, the guy's
been a troublemaker
00:22:02
in the neighborhood. He's been around a while. JENNIFER KING: He committed
a couple of armed robberies
00:22:07
after this had occurred. And so a violent individual,
but someone who I don't think
00:22:12
had the intellectual
capacity to really realize the depth and
impact of what he was doing.
00:22:21
NARRATOR: Did this
flurry of communication with known criminals
signify a wife arranging
00:22:26
for her husband to be killed? Detectives still weren't
sure, but they were a step
00:22:31
closer to uncovering a motive. Police subpoena Uloma
Walker's cell phone and her financial records.
00:22:39
When Uloma was brought
in, she told investigators that she had no
financial problems
00:22:45
and everything was fine. What Uloma didn't know was
that investigators had already
00:22:49
pulled her financial records
and they knew what type of debt she had. NARRATOR: Uloma had
crippling money problems,
00:22:56
but she also had her
eye on a solution. She knows that Will has a
$100,000 life insurance policy.
00:23:06
NARRATOR: To stand any
chance of getting her hands on Will's life insurance
payout, Uloma would
00:23:10
need to be married to him. Will had died knowing
nothing about Uloma's debt or her fake diagnosis.
00:23:18
Now, by the summer of 2015,
detectives had uncovered both. Investigators asked Uloma
when was the last time
00:23:26
she had been to the doctor. And she explained that she
hadn't been in the last year
00:23:32
since Will's death, which was
really strange for someone with stage four breast cancer.
00:23:37
NARRATOR: Detectives were sure
that they had their motive and that Uloma had something
to do with the murder,
00:23:42
but nobody was talking. They had to let Uloma
go free once again. But in August 2015,
another break in the case.
00:23:51
Police get a DNA
sample from Chad Padgett, and it turns out to be a direct
match to the shell casings
00:24:00
found in the Walker's yard. NARRATOR: At the same
time, forensic examination of the suspect's phones
had finally yielded
00:24:07
a damning piece of evidence. Not only was there
a lot of communication between the parties, but
the cell phone records
00:24:16
show that to the precise
minute of the crime they were in contact. Then, they find a smoking gun.
00:24:23
They find a text message
that Chad Padgett sent out right after the murder. It says, we have a body.
00:24:34
NARRATOR: For one
of the suspects, denial no longer
seemed like an option. In August 2015, Chad
Padgett was arrested.
00:24:41
And while in custody, he
laid out the entire plot. NARRATOR: Accused of
complicity to commit murder,
00:24:47
21-year-old Chad Padgett
confessed to everything. Cuyahoga County Sheriff's
investigators revisited
00:24:54
events of late summer 2013. What he told investigators was
that Uloma had approached him
00:25:03
with her daughter and said
that they wanted to have a Will killed because he
was abusive to her.
00:25:09
Uloma was very good
at making people feel sympathetic for her, to feel
these genuine emotions for her,
00:25:15
and then to use that
emotion to her advantage and to get them to do whatever
she wanted them to do.
00:25:21
NARRATOR: Dr. Judy Ho studies
how killer's minds work. For Uloma Curry Walker, pulling
on people's heartstrings
00:25:28
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
00:25:36
suffering all of these years. And I think at that point,
their own hero complex has probably got triggered.
00:25:42
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
00:25:49
the wrong thing to do. And so what she had
discussed with Chad Padgett, her
daughter's boyfriend,
00:25:56
was killing Mr. Walker. NARRATOR: That was the
story told by Chad Padgett. Two years after the crime,
investigators had to verify
00:26:05
if his claims were true. With painstaking scrutiny
of cell phone records, they pieced together
the events of the night
00:26:12
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
00:26:23
them to see that
Jacqueline Hines was in communication with Uloma. NARRATOR: They
could see not only
00:26:29
who was communicating with whom,
but where each of the actors was at the time. So by our cell
phone pings, we were
00:26:35
able to find the route
that they traveled, that they were at the location. Then, we know that
Dorty and Padgett
00:26:42
had to take the RTA back from
the east side to the west side. NARRATOR: Only when her
accomplices were clear
00:26:49
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.
00:26:56
ULOMA WALKER: He got shot! 911: Who got shot? ULOMA WALKER: My husband! I think Uloma had been
waiting for this moment.
00:27:03
She had been waiting
for the moment that her plan could come to
fruition, that he would die.
00:27:07
And then finally, she would
get her hands on his money. And I think that it was
very deliberate that she
00:27:13
didn't want to save him. NARRATOR: Detectives
needed to speak to those first
responders who had tried
00:27:18
to save Will's life that night. We had quite a few witnesses,
some who played even dual roles
00:27:24
who knew William
Walker personally, and then also were
involved in the case, from some of the
firefighters and EMS
00:27:33
workers who arrived on scene. NARRATOR: They told of a
woman whose reactions were
00:27:37
not quite what they expected. When the ambulance
arrived, she got in the back of the ambulance
and rode to the hospital.
00:27:44
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
00:27:53
who say just that she
had a fairly odd response and that she acted
hysterical, but then also was
00:28:03
kind of reserved, and asked,
you know, is he still alive yet, in a way that didn't settle well
with those first responders,
00:28:12
people who see these
kind of tragic things regularly enough to know
how people typically react.
00:28:20
Even the text messages, once
Lieutenant Walker had passed at the hospital, between
Jacqueline Hines and Uloma
00:28:30
were not ones of shock
and dismay, more like, we had finished the job. NARRATOR: Detectives in
Cuyahoga County charged
00:28:38
Chad Padgett with
the aggravated murder of Lieutenant William Walker. LAWYER: Regarding Mr.
Padgett, your Honor,
00:28:48
he would like to waive the
24 hours notice from reading that indictment
which he has received
00:28:53
and entered a not guilty plea. JUDGE: Thank you. All right, not guilty
plea will be accepted.
00:28:59
This goes-- it will be
heard by Judge Ronald Suster, a visiting judge. $1 million cash surety property
original bond is continued.
00:29:08
NARRATOR: One by one, Uloma's
accomplices were incarcerated, awaiting trial for murder.
00:29:14
Perhaps knowing that
she would be next, Uloma played her final card. CAROLYN CANVILLE: Before
she turns herself in,
00:29:20
she writes this confession
up where she claims that Will Walker was
physically abusing her.
00:29:28
I think Uloma thought this
is going to be the easy story. People are going to
believe it, because Will
00:29:33
was a strong
firefighter, very macho. NARRATOR: Under interrogation,
Uloma denied masterminding
00:29:41
her husband's killing. Instead, she pointed the
finger at her only child. She turned on her
daughter and said
00:29:48
that it was her
daughter Jacqueline who came up with the plan. JENNIFER KING: Her defense
was that she had nothing
00:29:54
to do with this,
that Jacqueline Hines and Chad Padgett
did not like how strict Lieutenant Walker was.
00:30:02
They didn't like how
he was controlling her, and they wanted him gone. DR. JUDY HO: I
think that it's very
00:30:09
surprising that Uloma tried
to blame the entire thing on her daughter. Even some of the worst
criminals that we know
00:30:15
are still protective
of their own kin because they have that
evolutionary perspective of,
00:30:19
well, if I can't survive, at
least my kin will, and then my genes will go on forever.
00:30:23
But in this case, she was
all about self-preservation. The trouble is there's
no evidence of this.
00:30:29
No one can provide any
kind of clues, or history, or anything that shows that
Will Walker was abusing her.
00:30:38
It's pretty clear that
this is another one Uloma Curry Walker's lies. NARRATOR: Despite Uloma's
denials, in September 2015,
00:30:45
she was charged with
her husband's murder. Do you have an attorney? Do you have any money or
funds to hire an attorney?
00:30:53
All right, the
court will appoint Attorney Robert Dixon and
Russell Tye to represent you
00:30:57
in this matter. NARRATOR: Cleveland's
first responder community were hearing for
the very first time
00:31:11
that the person
who had Lieutenant William Walker murdered was
none other than his wife.
00:31:17
We had no idea what
actually went down there until the story broke. And when that story
broke, it was huge.
00:31:24
It was huge. It took my breath away. It took my breath away. JUDGE: Ma'am, having
received and reviewed
00:31:30
a copy of the
indictment, do you wish to waive the 24-hour notice,
the reading in open court,
00:31:34
and do you wish to
enter a not guilty plea? Not guilty plea is accepted. Bond is set at $1 million
cash surety property.
00:31:43
Thank you. I never knew there was
any strife at home with him. NARRATOR: To Ronnie
Stepka and his colleagues,
00:31:49
Uloma had always come across
as the perfect example of a grieving widow. RONNIE STEPKA: His
wife, she played a game.
00:31:57
They bought a house just
prior to Will being shot. And the firefighters jumped
on board and helped her move.
00:32:10
I mean, that's what
firefighters do. They come to the
rescue, you know? She received some
benefits from, like,
00:32:15
the firefighter
fund, approximately made $50,000 in payouts. NARRATOR: Later that
month, September 2015,
00:32:23
Uloma's daughter,
Jacqueline Hines, was also charged along
with Christopher Hein,
00:32:27
and Ryan Dorty, the man
accused of pulling the trigger. At first, each of them
protested their innocence.
00:32:34
LAWYER: We got Mr.
Dorty, your Honor. He has received a copy
of his indictment. He would like to waive
the 24-hours notice,
00:32:40
the reading of it, and enter a
not guilty plea this morning. Thank you, Mr. Corrigan.
00:32:46
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
00:32:53
of the indictment,
which he has received, and enter a not guilty plea. JUDGE: Not guilty
plea is accepted.
00:32:58
$1 million cash surety
property bond is set. NARRATOR: But as the
trial date approached,
00:33:04
the defendants began
to fall like dominoes. JENNIFER KING: We had been
working on essentially five
00:33:10
defendants and slowly
getting statements from them, and then working out
plea negotiations.
00:33:16
NARRATOR: Chad Padgett
had already crumbled. Then, gunman Ryan Dorty
threw in the towel.
00:33:22
Jacqueline realized that
she can't hold out anymore, and she spills the whole
story and her part in it.
00:33:28
And she agrees to testify
against everyone in trial, including her mother and
her boyfriend, Chad Padgett,
00:33:36
who is the father of her child. Literally, the
morning of trial, Christopher Hein finally plead.
00:33:44
We thought we were going to
trial that morning on Uloma Curry and Christopher Hein, so
we were able to work out a plea
00:33:50
deal just prior to her trial. Hein, Padgett, and
Dorty all struck deals and were given between 18
and 28 years in sentences.
00:34:01
Prosecutors decide not
to pursue adult charges against Jacqueline. Instead, they treat
her as a juvenile.
00:34:11
She's 17 at the
time of the killing. She is sentenced to one
month in a juvenile lockup.
00:34:19
NARRATOR: Her co-conspirators
now on the side of the state, it was bad news for Uloma.
00:34:23
JENNIFER KING: Going
into the trial, we had just one defendant
that we were trying,
00:34:28
Uloma Curry Walker. All four defendants testified
against her at trial. And so that was part of the
plea negotiations prior to was
00:34:37
we wanted that testimony. NARRATOR: William Walker's
widow had almost two years between arrest and
her trial in June 2017
00:34:43
to consider her options. She remained defiant
about her innocence. The fact that she
didn't take a plea deal
00:34:51
was not surprising to us. Just in my experience, when you
see defendants who commit kind
00:34:58
of shocking crimes or things
that are hard for you to wrap your skull around, they're
not the type of people
00:35:06
who are willing to plea. And they would rather take
their chances with the jury than admit any
sort of wrongdoing.
00:35:15
NARRATOR: Uloma chose instead
to tell her version of the truth to a packed gallery at
Cuyahoga County Common
00:35:21
Pleas Court in Cleveland. The courtroom was filled
daily with family members. And then someone from the
Cleveland Fire Department
00:35:31
was in that courtroom
for everything. Uloma, when she went to trial,
she turned on her daughter
00:35:37
and said that it was
her daughter Jacqueline who came up with the plan. The relationship between
William Walker and Jacqueline
00:35:45
Hines maybe wasn't
warm and fuzzy, but despite what Uloma
ended up saying at trial,
00:35:52
It wasn't strained either. There wasn't some hatred
or anything between them. NARRATOR: Uloma stuck to her
story about her new husband
00:35:59
abusing her. ROD DEMERY: The
defense team never presented any evidence
of abuse, and there
00:36:04
was no record of abuse. If this was in fact true,
someone would have known, someone would have heard.
00:36:11
We hear reports of
domestic violence all the time where the
neighbors say, oh, they were
00:36:15
fighting like cats and dogs. There's none of that here. She very clearly
doesn't understand
00:36:19
how the criminal
justice system works. NARRATOR: In fact,
there were dozens of people in court willing
to testify to William
00:36:26
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
00:36:34
an upstanding and beloved
figure that William Walker was, just about
how much he was respected,
00:36:41
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.
00:36:48
He was fun,
intelligent, knew how to communicate very,
very well, was in touch with his community.
00:36:59
Some of them wept in the hall. And it was just heartbreaking. NARRATOR: The state presented
a much more compelling version
00:37:05
of events than Uloma had. The prosecution
is going to show that this was all about money.
00:37:12
What did she
have to gain here? She was in this
financial trouble. She thought that she was
getting this large payout.
00:37:20
And it made sense that
she had a reason to have Lieutenant Walker killed. NARRATOR: Uloma's
co-conspirators took
00:37:27
the stand for the prosecution. The star witness
was her daughter, just 17 years old when her
stepfather was murdered.
00:37:34
Some of the most
moving testimony at trial came from Jacqueline
Hines, and listening to her
00:37:42
describe her relationship with
her mother, the manipulation, the guilt that they had, and
how strange and perverted
00:37:54
their relationship was. NARRATOR: Jacqueline
told the court that in the summer of 2013,
weeks after her mother's
00:38:01
marriage to William Walker,
she and her boyfriend Chad had been in the car
when Uloma had raised
00:38:07
the idea of having Will killed. What she said was that Uloma
told them once Will was dead,
00:38:14
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,
00:38:20
live in this nice new
home they had purchased, and be rid of Lieutenant Walker. Uloma and her
daughter's relationship
00:38:28
clearly wasn't healthy. Jacqueline was trying
to please her mother, give her mother something there.
00:38:37
NARRATOR: Uloma had successfully
recruited vulnerable teenagers to do her dirty work.
00:38:42
JENNIFER KING: These
were these kids. They weren't the criminals
that were just gunning people
00:38:50
down who they didn't like. That wasn't in their
criminal history, and it didn't appear to
be in their character.
00:38:56
Uloma's daughter Jacqueline
testified that, at one point, her mother suggested that they
pull the pocket out of Will's
00:39:02
trousers after they
shot him to make it look more like a robbery. In fact, attorney
Jennifer King
00:39:08
had some sympathy
for the predicament that Jacqueline Hines
found herself in. She was partially responsible
for the death of Lieutenant
00:39:16
Walker, but her testimony
was compelling enough and had a ring of truth about
just how manipulative Uloma was
00:39:25
throughout her life and
would lead to something this extreme happening. NARRATOR: There was one
final surprise witness
00:39:32
in the prosecution's case,
Will Walker's adult daughter from his first marriage.
00:39:37
She told police that
before Uloma had come forward with this claim
about breast cancer,
00:39:44
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,
00:39:55
and that's when she concocts the
story to get Will to marry her. NARRATOR: On July
7, 2017, just a week
00:40:02
shy of what would have
been Will and Uloma's fourth wedding anniversary,
testimony was concluded.
00:40:08
The trial lasts for
just about two weeks. And it takes jurors all of two
hours to reach their decision.
00:40:17
It's the first time Uloma Curry
Walker has shown any emotion, but she breaks into
tears when the jurors
00:40:24
announce their verdict,
guilty on all counts. Judge Sherrie Miday
presided over this trial.
00:40:32
And with the way that murder is
in Ohio, it is a life sentence. NARRATOR: Life without parole
for the murder of the man
00:40:41
that she had married
just four months earlier. She was doing all of this to
get her hands on Will Walker's
00:40:49
$100,000 life insurance policy. It's so rare that you
see a female defendant for a murder-for-hire
for something, like,
00:40:59
just for money, money
issues that were not insurmountable money issues. NARRATOR: But there was
a twist in the tale.
00:41:07
Everything Uloma had
done, even drawing four young people
into a murderous plot,
00:41:12
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
00:41:20
been married for four months. Will hadn't had a
chance to change his life insurance policy.
00:41:26
She wasn't even
the beneficiary of the insurance payout. She hadn't even done
the due diligence
00:41:32
to discover that his daughter
from a previous marriage was the beneficiary. So that part of it
was just shocking.
00:41:42
NARRATOR: It's a bittersweet
twist for those who loved Lieutenant William Walker.
00:41:45
Uloma gained nothing. But in the process, the
world lost a very good man. It was one of
the greatest losses
00:41:55
that I can recall in
my career on the job. He's just one of those guys
that, gee, just the character
00:41:59
he was could laugh-- he'd have me howling
laughing so hard. He was a great man I miss him.
00:42:06
I loved him with my heart. I know he had my back,
and I know I had his. [music playing]