Pod Insights True Crime All The Time William Walker About this episode William Walker was a Cleveland firefighter who was fatally shot in his driveway one night in November 2013. Over a year later, a Crime Stoppers tip led police to look into those closest to William as suspects.
Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the murder of William Walker. The murder investigation would uncover a tangled web of lies and deceit, all instigated by the person closest to William, his wife, Uloma. But she wasn't in it alone. Uloma recruited her daughter and several other young people to participate in William's murder.
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Transcript 0:34 Speaker 00 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 460 of the True Crime All the Time Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you?
0:44 Speaker 01 Hey, I'm doing good. How about you?
0:46 Speaker 00 I'm doing great.
0:47 Speaker 01 That's awesome.
0:47 Speaker 00 Except you and I are both battling bad backs.
0:51 Speaker 01 We are.
0:52 Speaker 00 Like a couple of old men that we are actually. I mean, I know you had trouble getting your walker with the tennis balls down the stairs to the studio, but we are, we are battling, you know, some less than perfect backs right now.
1:11 Speaker 01 That is some image that you just put in a lot of people's heads right now.
1:16 Speaker 00 Yeah. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Lexi B. jump out to our highest level.
1:21 Speaker 01 What's going on Lexi?
1:22 Speaker 00 Annalise Laranega.
1:24 Speaker 01 Hey Laranega.
1:25 Speaker 00 Book Lady.
1:26 Speaker 01 What's up Book Lady?
1:27 Speaker 00 Sarah Compton.
1:28 Speaker 01 Hey Sarah.
1:29 Speaker 00 Steph Myrick.
1:31 Speaker 01 Well, thanks Steph.
1:32 Speaker 00 Crystal Mauhaus.
1:33 Speaker 01 Wow, what's going on Crystal?
1:35 Speaker 00 Thomas Watson.
1:36 Speaker 01 There's Thomas.
1:37 Speaker 00 Sarah Janowitz.
1:39 Speaker 01 Ah, Janowitz in the house.
1:41 Speaker 00 Paul Armstrong.
1:43 Speaker 01 Armstrong, Stretch Armstrong.
1:45 Speaker 00 Oh, I used to love Stretch Armstrong.
1:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:48 Speaker 00 But I had a habit of cutting them open to see what was on the inside.
1:52 Speaker 01 You wanted to see whatever that stuff was.
1:54 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:56 Speaker 00 What are you gonna do?
1:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
1:58 Speaker 00 And last but not least, we had Debbie Brown Gatos.
2:01 Speaker 01 What's going on Gatos?
2:02 Speaker 00 And then if we go back into the vault.
2:06 Speaker 00 This week, we selected Robert Blitz.
2:09 Speaker 01 Hut, hut, hut. Go.
2:12 Speaker 00 That's your football knowledge right there. You know, I, speaking of Stretch Armstrong, I was thinking about like my favorite toys as a kid.
2:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:22 Speaker 00 I think my absolute favorite was I had the, this Evel Knievel motorcycle.
2:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:30 Speaker 00 That you wound up and he like took off and jumped over this ramp. Do you remember that one?
2:35 Speaker 01 I do. Yeah.
2:36 Speaker 00 I also had a lot of the six million dollar man stuff. I remember that.
2:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:42 Speaker 00 The Bionic Man or whatever.
2:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, Bionic Man. Steve Austin.
2:45 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:47 Speaker 01 Yeah. And then his girlfriend came into the picture later, Jamie, the Bionic, Bionic Woman.
2:53 Speaker 00 She, she had her own show, right?
2:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, she did. Yeah.
2:56 Speaker 00 I didn't know they were boyfriend, girlfriend, but hey, I was younger than you. So I didn't pick up on all the cues.
3:03 Speaker 01 When you both have Bionic Parts, you know?
3:07 Speaker 00 Well, yeah, I don't need to know all those details, but uh, so we have a, an episode out right now on True Crime All The Time Unsolved, where we're talking about 16 year old Judy Rollins, who was reported missing from her family's home in 2001. Two weeks later, her body was found in the woods. And you know, this is one of those unsolved cases, Gibbs, where police have identified or come out and said so and so is a suspect.
3:40 Speaker 01 Right.
3:41 Speaker 00 But the person has not been charged, has not gone to trial. And those are, for me, are always very interesting cases because you know, they're closer to a solved case, but technically, obviously, they're not solved.
3:56 Speaker 01 And you're like, what do you, what do we gotta do here to push it to the uh?
4:00 Speaker 00 Finish line?
4:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
4:01 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean,
4:04 Speaker 00 What are you gonna do? We will find out and you will too, if you listen to that episode.
4:09 Speaker 01 That's right.
4:10 Speaker 00 All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of True Crime All The Time?
4:13 Speaker 01 I am.
4:14 Speaker 00 We're talking about William Walker. William Walker was a Cleveland, Ohio firefighter who was fatally shot in his driveway. One night in November, 2013. Over a year later, a Crime Stoppers tip led police to look into those closest to William as suspects. I don't know if we've talked a lot about firefighters. I mean, obviously you and I have done a lot of episodes, almost a thousand.
4:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:44 Speaker 00 If you think about True Crime All The Time and Unsolved Combined, people from all different walks of life with a lot of different types of occupations. You know, to me firefighter, it's one of those that, you know, a lot of kids, they dream of being when they're younger.
5:08 Speaker 01 Sure.
5:09 Speaker 00 You know, there's a, there's a bravery aspect to it. You're talking about people who are putting their lives on the line.
5:17 Speaker 01 Of course, yeah.
5:18 Speaker 00 To help others, right? To stop fires and save homes and save lives. It's a very dangerous job.
5:26 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely it is, you know, and my hat off to all those guys and gals that do that day in and day out. It can't be easy. I know you just wanna go twirling down the pole. You like that, you know, just like this, why you have a stripper pole in here?
5:43 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
5:44 Speaker 01 I don't know.
5:45 Speaker 00 Well, I figure if you ever need to practice, if Rex needs to practice, I, I got it here for you. I'm not gonna watch, but I'll leave the room. You can do your practice if you got a gig later that night or whatever.
5:59 Speaker 01 I walked myself right into that.
6:00 Speaker 00 You did walk yourself into that. William Walker was 45 years old when he was murdered. He was described as a personable jovial man who loved his job. Not only did he enjoy firefighting, he also enjoyed teaching classes at the Fire Training Academy. Personable and jovial, those are two words that, you know, people would use to describe you. You're a very jovial person.
6:28 Speaker 01 I kind of think I am jovial.
6:30 Speaker 00 No, I'm not kidding around. I'm not making fun of you. You really are. You get along with people very easily. I can be jovial. I don't know that people would grab that word out of thin air right off the bat. Wouldn't be the first word that probably comes to mind.
6:48 Speaker 01 No.
6:50 Speaker 00 There should be some other word.
6:51 Speaker 01 I'm just gonna say, no, it would not be.
6:54 Speaker 00 William Walker joined the Cleveland Fire Department in March 1998. He was a member of the department's Elite Rescue Squad Four. The most highly trained firefighters skilled in demanding rescues. When the merger of the Fire Department and EMS Services was announced, William was selected to oversee quality assurance in the EMT office and the EMS.
7:19 Speaker 01 Sounds like a pretty important role.
7:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, it does. And, and obviously, I think it denotes this air of, you know, competency, right? What people thought of William Walker. He was good at his job. And those people are, you know, often the ones selected for this role or that role. Secretary Michael Norman told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "That was a very difficult assignment. Will earned a lot of respect for being willing to step up into that position." President of Cleveland Firefighters Local 93, Frank Zabo, said about William, "He always put everyone else's needs ahead of his own.
8:03 Speaker 00 This is a guy who would read the paper and take away what's positive and ask himself, who can we serve today? He would give you the shirt off his back." Now, the shirt off your, his back thing, that's, it's kind of a cliche, right? You hear that a lot.
8:18 Speaker 01 Sure.
8:19 Speaker 00 Does anybody really give someone the shirt off their back? Not normally.
8:24 Speaker 01 I do every Saturday night.
8:26 Speaker 00 Well, taking it off and twirling it around and throwing it into the crowd is not quite the same thing.
8:33 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
8:34 Speaker 00 What I will say is that's, you know, a lot more preferable to the last part of the act and what comes off last and gets thrown.
8:44 Speaker 01 I do warn the audience, this could take your eye out.
8:48 Speaker 00 How is a thong gonna take somebody's eye out?
8:51 Speaker 01 It's the size of the thong.
8:53 Speaker 00 They got a peanut M and M size? Is that what you, you just click peanut M and M? In August 2013, William was promoted to lieutenant. This was just one month after he married his longtime girlfriend, Yuloma Curry. William and Yuloma met back in 2005. They were both divorced with children. It seemed like they had a stable and loving relationship. Yuloma revealed that she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and couldn't afford treatment. William asked her to marry him so she could receive his health insurance benefits.
9:32 Speaker 01 Stand up guy.
9:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, that's uh, kind of fits right in line with what people said about him, right? Put others' needs ahead of his own, would give you the shirt off his back. Unfortunately, you know, I have a lot of experience with um, with breast cancer. And it's, it can be very nasty.
9:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, sure can.
9:55 Speaker 00 On July 7, 2013, they got married in a private ceremony at a courthouse in Cleveland. Soon after the wedding, they purchased a home in Madison Township. They both wanted to move out of the city to a quieter area. At the time of the murder, William and Yuloma were living in a two-family home with an upstairs and downstairs unit. Yuloma's daughter Jaclyn, who was 17 at the time, and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Chad Patchett, lived in the downstairs unit. Chad lived with the Walkers for weeks at a time. And it was, you know, kind of noteworthy that when researching the case, when you go back to like
10:36 Speaker 00 2013 articles, they don't use Jaclyn's name because she was technically a minor at the time. Now, all the reporting that came after that, they do use her name because obviously she would have turned 18 at some point.
10:54 Speaker 01 You could use her name at that point.
10:55 Speaker 00 But this is an interesting situation, right? You're living upstairs. Yeloma's daughter and her boyfriend are, are living downstairs. It was said that Chad had no interaction with William while he was living in the house. He never even said hello to William because William would not have accepted his relationship with Jaclyn. William was described as having a strict parenting style.
11:23 Speaker 01 Sounds like a tense house.
11:26 Speaker 00 Well, yeah, I mean, and I can only assume that his biggest issue would have been the age gap, right? Chad's 20, Jaclyn was 17. Now, to some, three years is not that big a deal, but she was technically a minor. So that, that probably played into William's thinking.
11:49 Speaker 01 I just can't imagine being in a house and, or a building and knowing that your daughter and boyfriend are on the other floor and you just never talk to the other person, like not even, hey, how's it going?
12:04 Speaker 00 Yes. I mean, you're, you're gonna cross paths, right? When you're living in same building, I get it. It's two different units, but you know, people are gonna come out at the same time. They're gonna, one person's gonna be leaving as the other comes in. It would be very awkward. A detective later wrote in an affidavit that William had problems with them in the past and had received threats from Chad. So, okay.
12:33 Speaker 00 It's one thing to have an awkward situation where you don't like this guy. He doesn't like you, so you don't really interact that much. It's a completely different thing for William to have received threats from this 20 year old.
12:51 Speaker 01 I think I'd have a problem with that, though. So now you're living in my building. You threaten me and now you're living here. I don't know. I, I would have a, there had to be some type of conversations happening.
13:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, and obviously we don't know what conversations, if any, were happening. It's also a weird dynamic because, you know, it's his wife, Uloma's daughter. So how do you kick him out?
13:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, I get it. You know, you probably can't do that, but you have to find some way to coexist. But maybe that's why they, they chose not to talk to each other. It just seems so stressful.
13:31 Speaker 00 I feel like it would be. On the night of November 3rd, 2013, Uloma, William, Uloma's son, Macklin, and his girlfriend were home packing up in preparation for the move to Madison Township. After 8:00 PM, Uloma sent William out to get them some fast food. He returned home around 8:30. As he was heading to the front door, he was shot four times in the chest. Uloma was the one who called 911. She was inside when the shooting occurred. She claimed she looked up and saw a man at the end of the driveway, but could only see his silhouette. She heard William screaming and found him in the driveway.
14:15 Speaker 00 And I mean, this is just a nightmare situation, right? For anyone to have their significant other, wife, husband, shot outside the home.
14:27 Speaker 01 But not once, four times.
14:29 Speaker 00 Four times. And there's no way you're not going to hear those shots. I'm assuming somebody's not using a suppressor. There's a, it's probably going to be pretty loud. Now, she claims that she looked out, saw a man, but could really only see his silhouette. William was responsive when paramedics first arrived, but his condition worsened during the ride to the hospital. For a time, it appeared he was stabilizing. He was taken to the ER for surgery, but his condition deteriorated rapidly. William died at 11:42 PM that night. I get it, people do survive shootings, but he take four shots to the chest.
15:13 Speaker 01 It's gonna be pretty rough.
15:14 Speaker 00 It is. Police found nine millimeter shell casings at the scene and submitted them for DNA testing. William's coworkers at the fire department were deeply saddened by his death. Hundreds of people attended a candlelight vigil in his honor, but Yuloma did not. And I think, you know, you could look at that a couple of different ways. Some people are going to say, oh my gosh, how could she not be there? All these people are out in support of her husband and she doesn't show up. But then, you know, I think the flip side of that is people could be grieving so much that they can't get out of bed. They don't want to be around anybody.
15:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, they can't go out to the public right now.
16:00 Speaker 00 Yeah. So, I don't know, people are going to make of that what they will. And, and I'm sure a lot of people did in the moment. Cleveland detectives initially followed leads provided by Yuloma that neighborhood drug dealers might have killed William to stop him from complaining about them. But this didn't lead to any arrests. Sound plausible?
16:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, it could happen.
16:26 Speaker 00 Sure. I mean, I think if you're living in an area where, you know, there's drugs being sold and you don't like that, and somebody knows that you're complaining or calling the police. All right, you could be targeted for that.
16:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:43 Speaker 00 Very easily.
16:44 Speaker 01 They might want to shut you up.
16:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, because you're endangering their livelihood, right? Their, their drug operation.
16:53 Speaker 00 Police opened up a tip line and received several calls about a man named Chad being involved. Investigators asked Yuloma if she knew anyone named Chad and she pointed to her daughter's boyfriend Chad Pachin. She said Chad was a good kid who got along with William, but William's coworkers at the fire department told a different story. They said William disliked Chad and thought he wasn't good enough for Jacqueline. He thought Chad was lazy. And I think if you're the, the police, if you're the investigators, this has to strike you as odd. Obviously Yuloma knows the relationship between William and
17:37 Speaker 00 Chad. She's painting it as good, but you have all these other people who are saying something completely different.
17:46 Speaker 01 So then you have to figure out, okay, who's telling the truth?
17:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, because somebody's not.
17:51 Speaker 01 Exactly.
17:51 Speaker 00 Now, you could have a situation where someone thinks they're telling the truth. They just have a, you know, kind of a messed up view of the relationship, but you wouldn't think Yuloma would have a messed up view. She's right in the middle of it. And then when you, you know, you talk about his coworkers, the assumption has to be that he's going in day in and day out. He's talking with all these people, right? Firefighters spend a lot of time with each other.
18:20 Speaker 01 They do, yeah.
18:21 Speaker 00 And so I'm sure they're not lying about it, which makes it seem as though he's, he's in there kind of bad mouthing this guy Chad. He doesn't like him. Police talked to Jackie on November 17th. She claimed she and Chad were at his house the night of the murder, watching football. She also claimed she didn't know Chad's last name, his phone number, or his address. This was obviously a red flag to investigators and they felt as though she was protecting him.
18:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, it sounds like a bunch of BS for sure. You don't know his last name, really?
18:58 Speaker 00 But yet he stays over all the time. You've been dating for, you know, some period of time.
19:04 Speaker 01 I mean, did you ever date a girl? You didn't know her last name?
19:07 Speaker 00 Can we define the word date?
19:10 Speaker 00 You mean like movies and dinner?
19:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:13 Speaker 00 No. Investigator subpoenaed Chad's phone records, but it took until December 2014 to get them.
19:21 Speaker 01 Seems like a while.
19:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, I mean, this is over a year after the murder occurred. And I get it. Sometimes the phone companies can put up a fight or whatever, but it doesn't seem like it should take that long to get them. It seemed like the investigation hit a wall, but around that time, Crime Stoppers in the Cleveland Fire Department offered a cash reward. And you and I talk about cash rewards a lot, right? What do they mean? Well, sometimes they don't mean anything. You can offer money and people deem that it's not enough to come forward, even if they know about it. Sometimes you can offer a lot of money. Nobody comes forward.
20:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, we've had those cases down in Australia where they offer a hundred or more thousand dollars.
20:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:14 Speaker 01 And the cases still are unsolved.
20:17 Speaker 00 And why is that? Maybe it's because nobody has information.
20:21 Speaker 01 Exactly.
20:22 Speaker 00 Or even with that amount of money, they're too scared to come forward.
20:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's just not worth the, uh, risk.
20:30 Speaker 00 But in this situation, a man named Enrique Ramos came forward to report that his friend, Isaiah Solomon, was approached by Chad Paget, who offered him money to commit the murder. Solomon confirmed this story and claimed Chad told him he was working for his girlfriend's mother, Yaloma Curry Walker.
20:52 Speaker 01 So the plot thickens.
20:54 Speaker 00 Well, it does. It also, if true, starts to explain a number of things, right? Why would Yaloma say that the relationship between William and Chad was good? When everybody else seemed to know that it wasn't? Well, maybe it's because she had a vested interest in protecting Chad because he could implicate her.
21:20 Speaker 00 When reviewing Chad's phone records, police saw a communication pattern between Chad, his girlfriend Jacqueline, and a man named Ryan Doherty. Ryan lived in the Walkers neighborhood and was known for being a burglar and according to Oxygen, trouble on wheels. Not a phrase that a lot of people use, I think, very often.
21:42 Speaker 01 Not.
21:43 Speaker 00 Maybe they used to.
21:45 Speaker 01 Back in the day.
21:46 Speaker 00 Back in the day. Chad's text specifically said he was trying to buy a ham or a hammer, which police believed was slang for a handgun. He obtained the same type of handgun used in the shooting. Phone records showed Chad was at his mother's house early on November 3rd, 2013, but he left home around 7:00 PM and traveled to Lamson Road, where the Walkers lived, and was there around the time of the shooting at 8:30 PM. And almost immediately after the murder was committed, Chad sent out a text that said, "We have a body." Okay, not looking great for Chad right now.
22:27 Speaker 01 It's not.
22:28 Speaker 00 And you know, we're in the digital era here, right? And I think cases that occur in the cellphone era, I'll call it, the time when people had cellphones and we leave such a digital footprint. It's always fascinating what police are able to glean from not only someone's text messages, because obviously those can tell a story, but the tracking of someone's movement. And I don't know what people are thinking. If you're setting out to do something bad, do you not think that your cellphone is at some point going to tell a story?
23:11 Speaker 01 I don't know how many people don't realize that. You know, even back in 2013, did you not know it's like a little tracking device?
23:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, because it's, it's been used that way for, you know, many years now.
23:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:27 Speaker 00 I feel like nowadays, every app that we have on our phone kind of tells where we are.
23:35 Speaker 00 Police also subpoenaed Yuloma's cellphone and financial records and learned she accumulated significant debt before the murder. She was brought in for another round of questioning and said that they hadn't been experiencing any financial problems. She also said she hadn't been to the doctor since her husband died, which detectives considered unusual because she claimed she had cancer.
24:01 Speaker 01 Well, that would be very strange. When you have cancer, you're doing follow-up visits, checkup visits, things like that. Why wouldn't she have seen the doctor?
24:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, it just doesn't seem to make sense, but there was no evidence that she actually had cancer. Investigators concluded she lied to possibly expedite a proposal. And there were a lot of low-down, dirty things that people can do.
24:29 Speaker 01 Sure there is.
24:30 Speaker 00 Lying about the fact that they have cancer when they don't?
24:34 Speaker 01 It's on the top of the list.
24:35 Speaker 00 It's, it's up there. Williams teenage daughter, Melody, also disclosed to police that before Yuloma revealed her diagnosis, her father told her he was still in love with his ex-wife Rita Walker, who is Melody's mother. So maybe another reason why Yuloma felt that she had to expedite things. She needs to be married, right? If at some point down the road, she's going to get benefits, life insurance money from Williams' death, and then if she has any hint that Williams is thinking about leaving the relationship and going back to his ex-wife, she might have gotten desperate.
25:20 Speaker 01 Sure. And that would have been when she hatched the plan to tell everyone she had cancer.
25:26 Speaker 00 Detectives re-interviewed Chad Page, took a DNA sample, and it matched the DNA from the shell casings found at the crime scene. All right. None of this is looking good for either Chad or Yuloma. Investigators are way beyond like the red flag.
25:45 Speaker 00 You know, scenario here. This is, oh, we kind of got you.
25:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:51 Speaker 00 On August 6, 2015, Chad was charged with aggravated murder. Prosecutors said Chad was part of an orchestrated hit on William Walker, as shown by his text messages seeking a gun. On September 14 of that year, Yuloma Walker Curry, her daughter Jacqueline, Chad Pageant, and Chad's cousin Christopher Hind, were indicted on charges, including aggravated murder, conspiracy, and felonious assault. Yuloma was accused of having the co-conspirators kill William so she could collect his life insurance in order to cover up financial fraud she committed in his name.
26:34 Speaker 00 Yuloma wrote a confession letter the day she surrendered to police, claiming she had William killed because he was abusive. Initially, none of the co-conspirators implicated Yuloma when speaking to detectives or grand juries, but after receiving favorable plea deals and reduced sentences, all of them testified that Yuloma paid to have William killed. So I think, you know, here we have two things that you and I talk about quite a bit, right? What does a defendant come up with to try to get out from underneath suspicion and actual charges?
27:15 Speaker 00 Well, here, she's saying, yeah, I killed him, but it was because he was abusing me. And then the second thing is, you know, plea deals, reduced sentences for members of the group to testify against someone. And I think, you know, you have to look at that as kind of one of those necessary evils. Right? You don't want these people to get off lightly, but you got to do what you got to do to make sure you get the conviction on the person who orchestrated the whole thing.
27:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. The mastermind.
27:51 Speaker 00 Prosecutors agreed not to seek adult charges against Jacqueline, who was held in juvenile detention. While in custody, Chad Pageant made a full confession. He said that Yuloma approached him in October 2013 and asked him to find someone to kill William, claiming he was physically abusive. She said William had a life insurance policy worth $100,000 and she offered Chad a $10,000 payment. She gave him $1,000 upfront and another $200 to buy a gun. Right, $200 is not a lot of money to buy a gun. But again, I guess you're not looking for the best of the best.
28:34 Speaker 01 You're just looking for something to do, I guess, the job.
28:38 Speaker 00 Yes, this one job, which seems cold, right? To call it that. But I'm not sure it's that far off the mark of how many of these people think of what they're doing.
28:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think they're that cold.
28:54 Speaker 00 It's like, okay, I'm doing my job. I'm doing a job. When Isaiah Solomon declined his offer to kill William, Chad approached his cousin, Christopher Heine. Christopher backed out and then recruited Ryan Doherty. On November 3rd, Chad and Ryan went to the Walker home and waited for the signal from Yuloma. Chad loaded the gun, which explained why his DNA was on the shell casings. And I know I've talked about that recently. I think that is something that a lot of people don't think about. You know, when you load a magazine with bullets,
29:36 Speaker 00 you are pressing each of those shell casings, most people do it with their thumb, to get them to go down into the magazine, one after another.
29:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:46 Speaker 00 You're essentially leaving not only DNA, but probably a big old thumbprint on every one of them.
29:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:55 Speaker 00 Yuloma messaged Jacqueline, which served as a signal. And Jackie told Ryan and Chad it was time. Ryan got out of the car and hid behind a garbage can. He shot William four times. When Christopher Heine first spoke to the police, he implicated Chad, but not Yuloma.
30:17 Speaker 00 After lying to the police and receiving a favorable plea bargain, Christopher contended that Yuloma wanted William killed for money. He admitted he intended to kill William in October 2013, but lost his nerve. He contacted Ryan Doertie and offered him money to kill William. Chad paid him and provided the gun he obtained through Christopher. On November 3rd, 2013, Christopher and Chad enlisted Christopher's cousin Derrick Yaneta to drive Ryan and Chad from the west side of Cleveland to the east side where Walker lived. Derrick was told they were going to buy marijuana. He didn't know the real purpose of the drive.
31:01 Speaker 00 Chad directed Derrick to park. At 8:30 PM, Ryan went to the Walker's backyard and hid behind a garbage can. Ryan shot William multiple times before he and Chad returned to Derrick's car. Derrick ordered them out of his car when he learned they had shot someone. So Ryan and Chad ended up taking a train home.
31:24 Speaker 01 Well, there's a lot of things going on here. I just found it strange that they took the train home.
31:29 Speaker 00 That's what you found strange in all of this.
31:33 Speaker 01 Well, there's a lot of things going on here that are very strange.
31:36 Speaker 00 Well, I assume they they didn't really have many other options. But think about this guy Derrick. Yeah, he's hanging out with these people. Maybe he considers them to be friends. And they say, hey, we're gonna go get some weed. Okay, maybe they're all into that. So he's driving to get or to do what he thinks is going to be, you know, to obtain weed. And the next thing you know, he's involved in a murder. But once they get back to the car and he's realized that, he's like, I'm not taking you guys home. And, you know, he takes off, which You know, obviously that was a good thing for him to do because he probably could have got caught up in it too.
32:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, you have to say, I'm out. I don't know what's going on, but I'm out of this. This is crazy.
32:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, this is not what I signed up for. But I think the overarching thing that I really take away from this is just the coordination and how many different people were involved, had knowledge of it. Of course, you have Yuloma because she's kind of the catalyst for the whole thing. Then you have Chad, you have Jacqueline, but then Chad enlists a couple of different people. So you have four, five, six people with knowledge of what is going to happen. But you know what not one person does? And we talk about it all the time, right?
33:08 Speaker 00 No one says, hey, this is a bad idea. No one goes to the police and says, hey, I don't want to be wrapped up in this. Somebody's going to get killed. And I do want to talk about the money for a minute. Okay, Yuloma is set to inherit $100,000 in life insurance.
33:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:28 Speaker 00 No way anyone's life is worth 100,000. We know that. Chad is going to get $10,000. So now you have to weigh $10,000 versus someone's life. He's paying someone else to actually kill William.
33:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:47 Speaker 00 So now we have a lower amount, whatever that amount is, it just gets to be ridiculous. The whole thing.
33:55 Speaker 01 That people were willing to kill for such a little amount of money?
33:59 Speaker 00 Yes.
34:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:01 Speaker 00 And I think it illustrates just how little some people value human life. It's a scary thing. It really is.
34:10 Speaker 01 It is. It used to really bug me when we first started doing the podcast. It still bugs me, but I'm not surprised anymore because we've heard people being killed for hundreds of dollars.
34:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, you're right. It's not surprising. But somehow it does still befuddle me in some way.
34:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:33 Speaker 00 That people are willing to go along with some of this stuff. Ryan Doertie was later arrested for multiple robberies, including one where he shot a victim. In 2014, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aggravated robbery. Derek Yanetta was murdered in February 2017 by Dominic Williams, who shot him outside a bar. On April 28, 2016, Jacqueline pleaded guilty to delinquency charges in juvenile court. According to court filings, Yuloma gave her daughter cash, which she gave to Chad, which initiated this series of events, leading to William Walker's murder.
35:18 Speaker 00 So, you know, let's face it, right? Delinquency doesn't really seem to fit the bill, but she was a juvenile at the time. And I'm sure that that played a big role in determining her charges and her ultimate sentence. But there's no doubt she had a great deal of culpability in this whole thing.
35:40 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
35:41 Speaker 00 In June 2016, Ryan Doertie pleaded guilty to aggravated murder. He agreed to a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 23 years. So he got 15 for aggravated robbery. He got a life sentence for aggravated murder. Possible parole after 23 years, but he's also got that 15 year sentence, so.
36:06 Speaker 01 On top of that.
36:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, I don't think he's, he's gonna be getting out anytime soon. Also, I think the, the chance of him getting parole after the 23 is probably not great.
36:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:19 Speaker 00 On November 14, 2016, Chad Paget pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. In exchange for his testimony at Yuloma's trial, he agreed to serve 28 years in prison. On June 21st, 2017, Christopher Hine made a plea deal. In exchange for 18 years in prison, he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy after giving a detailed confession. But if his testimony at trial didn't match what he told police, he would lose his plea deal and his confession would be used against him.
36:59 Speaker 01 That's a good thing to put in there.
37:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, obviously it is, but it's interesting, right? That he got 18 years. The agreement came hours after jury selection was set to begin in his trial with Yuloma. Yuloma's attorneys chose to proceed to trial. During opening statements, the jury heard that Yuloma gave away most of her belongings after the murder and moved to North Carolina to stay with a relative. Yuloma left Williams ashes in his car, which was abandoned in a parking lot and repossessed. So this is your husband, a man you are supposedly, right? In love with, who shot and killed.
37:46 Speaker 00 You're giving his ashes and you care so much about him that you leave the ashes in his car and just leave the car.
37:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, a lot of love there, isn't it?
37:57 Speaker 00 I mean, it fits though, right? With everything that we know about her.
38:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, it does.
38:03 Speaker 00 Yuloma was nearing financial ruin after accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in debt through credit cards and loans, some of which she had taken out in William's name. She asked her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to find someone to kill William so she could collect insurance money and pay off her debt. However, William had not yet changed the beneficiary of his insurance policy from his ex-wife to Yuloma. So in the end, Gibbs, she didn't get a single cent.
38:36 Speaker 01 Which is awesome. I hate to say it that way, but I'm glad she didn't get a cent.
38:40 Speaker 00 Well, she wouldn't have anyway, because, you know, police figured her out, but you know, does it go to the point of how little forethought there was in this whole thing?
38:56 Speaker 00 I mean, do you not even make sure that you are the actual beneficiary of the life insurance policy before you make the decision that you're going to have this guy killed?
39:07 Speaker 01 You would think it'd be one of those important things to figure out, you know, is everything in line with how it needs to be for me to get my money?
39:15 Speaker 00 Defense attorney Robert Dixon said they weren't going to argue which of the co-conspirators killed William. What was in dispute was whether Yuloma played the role the prosecution said she did. Cleveland detective Thomas Lynch testified that Yuloma was being deceitful during the 911 call she made on the night of the murder. According to State versus Walker Curry, he testified that the biggest indicators in this call, when I reviewed it, is the term please, used alone by itself, is an indicator of deception. She used it 17 times in this 911 call.
39:56 Speaker 01 Wow, 17 times.
39:58 Speaker 00 Lynch testified that Yuloma didn't answer direct questions from the dispatcher. For example, she said, I don't know, when asked who shot her husband. Lynch testified that a common deceptive indicator again is when asked a question by a dispatcher, the caller starts talking to the person that is at the scene that they're calling for. In this case, I love you, I love you, I love you, was noted being said by Yuloma Walker Curry when asked a question by the dispatcher. Also, another red flag deceptive indicator is repetition. When a caller says things over and over and over again, that in itself
40:40 Speaker 00 is a deceptive indicator. And I get it, this guy's, you know, probably an expert in that field, but I'm sure there are times when people do that, and it turns out they didn't have anything to do with killing the person they're calling 911 about, but an indicator is an indicator, right? What does that mean? Maybe you should check into it.
41:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:08 Speaker 00 The defense moved for a mistrial during Lynch's testimony. Yuloma's attorney argued there was no basis for the psychological analysis on behalf of the detective. Their motion was overruled. Yuloma's daughter Chad Paget and Christopher Hunt testified that Yuloma said she wanted William killed for his insurance money. She offered to pay $10,000 with $1,000 up front for the murder.
41:36 Speaker 01 It's nuts, man.
41:38 Speaker 00 Yeah, the amount of money that we're talking about. But you know, here you have not only Chad and Christopher, but her own daughter, right? All three of these individuals testifying had to be pretty powerful, right? In the courtroom. Now, I think you do balance that with the fact that, okay, they're, they're getting deals. Doesn't mean what they're saying is untrue, but you kind of have to take it into account a little bit. Chad testified that he bought a gun from Christopher Hunt for this purpose. All three testified about the failed attempt to kill William in October 2013, which was arranged by Yuloma.
42:22 Speaker 00 Chad was to be the shooter, but the plans fell through. On the night of the murder, Yuloma called her daughter and told her it was time to come home. This was the signal that William had left to pick up food and Chad should head to the house to wait for him and kill him. Ryan Doertie testified that he was contacted by Christopher Hunt and Chad on November 3rd and asked if he wanted to make some money. Ryan said, yes. Chad and another person picked him up and drove him to Walker's house. Ryan hid behind a garbage can and waited until William pulled into the driveway. He got out of his car and Ryan shot him as he approached the house.
43:06 Speaker 00 Ryan was supposed to get a thousand dollars, but Chad only paid him 800.
43:12 Speaker 01 That's the other thing. You got somebody doing this for you. Are you really gonna short him on the money you owe him?
43:19 Speaker 00 It seems dangerous, doesn't it?
43:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's like, maybe he'll just turn you in or frame you for it. Or maybe he'll just take you out of the picture and get all the money.
43:29 Speaker 00 But to me, this goes back to the short sighted thinking on the part of all these people. You're gonna shoot and kill somebody for a thousand dollars? You're gonna orchestrate the whole thing for a hundred thousand?
43:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:46 Speaker 00 You're gonna be a big part of it for 10,000? I mean, you know, I get it. This is a lot of money and it's even more money to certain people than it is others. But you're still talking about a man's life. The state presented forensic evidence that four nine millimeter casings were found in the driveway and two bullets were recovered from William's body. The bullets and casings were fired from a High Point gun. The same type of gun Christopher Hines sold to Chad Paget. As mentioned, Chad's DNA was found on the casings.
44:24 Speaker 00 And High Point makes a lot of sense here because it is one of the least expensive guns out there.
44:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:32 Speaker 00 It's, it's not known to be anywhere close to, uh, I shouldn't even say top of the line, is the bottom of the barrel. Not that they don't work, it just, it's, it's not, uh, it's not, it's not a well-respected brand. It's a very cheap brand.
44:51 Speaker 01 Yeah. So that's where that $200 went.
44:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, I'm surprised you can buy one for 200, but they are fairly inexpensive.
45:00 Speaker 01 They're budget friendly.
45:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, they are. Jacqueline testified that she was in the car with Yuloma and Chad. When her mother first brought up the plot, Yuloma asked Chad to tell the shooter to pull William's pockets out to make it look like a robbery gone wrong. Yuloma also said, "No one would believe I would hire a bunch of kids to kill someone when I know people that could." Well, you know who's gonna believe it? The authorities, when there's a bunch of other people corroborating that story.
45:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:33 Speaker 00 These so-called kids that she hired. Christopher Hine testified about feeling down over committing the murder, saying, as quoted by the plane dealer, "I'm going to kill a man. She didn't pay me no money and I started thinking, I'm going to kill a man for nothing. He didn't do anything to me. He's a firefighter." And all of those are correct. And I'm sure, you know, played a big part in this guy backing out. The problem is, he was already a big part of it, right? At this point. Now, he even took it a step further and found somebody else to commit the murder.
46:15 Speaker 00 I don't know what would have happened if he would have just backed out at that point and gone to the authorities. But remember, he got 18 years.
46:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:24 Speaker 00 And he didn't pull the trigger, but he did reach out to Ryan Doherty, who ultimately did.
46:31 Speaker 01 But he did help set some things up.
46:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, he's paying the price, right? 18 years in prison, it's no joke. But also well deserved.
46:41 Speaker 01 I was gonna say, it's well deserved. You know, you can't get away with doing something like that. You gotta pay the price.
46:48 Speaker 00 Cell phone records corroborated the co-conspirators' testimony. The state also presented evidence that Yuloma cashed a $1,000 check and gave the money to Chad. This check was dated November 1, 2013, and drawn from William's account. So she took money out of William's account to pay for his murder.
47:11 Speaker 01 That's messed up.
47:13 Speaker 00 Enrique Ramos testified that in November or December 2013, he was in his garage working on a car when his friend, Isaiah Solomon, began talking about how Chad and Christopher Hine attempted to recruit him to kill William Walker. But Solomon declined. Solomon said that Chad's girlfriend and his girlfriend's mom were involved.
47:36 Speaker 00 Ramos was so disgusted by this conversation that he recorded it and eventually reached out to the police. His recording was played for the jury. Finally, we have somebody in this whole saga that that actually did the right thing.
47:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:53 Speaker 00 The state introduced two letters. Yuloma wrote after the murder in the presence of her daughter and Macklin Hines Jr., who is her ex and the father of her children. Yuloma's first letter said, in part, "I, Yuloma Curry Walker, hereby told Chad Page to kill William Walker." Her second letter was addressed to her son. She apologized and told him to be a good man. Okay, pretty hard to argue against those letters.
48:24 Speaker 01 Some pretty compelling evidence. How are you going to argue that?
48:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think it would be really tough. In closing arguments, the defense pointed out discrepancies in witness testimony and suggested it was Jacqueline who made the plot. The defense pointed to a family trip to Ireland that the daughter wasn't allowed to go on as a possible motivation. She also accompanied Chad and Christopher on the failed murder attempt. Okay, I get that. They have to try to shift the blame somewhere else. But if you're weighing the two sides, Jacqueline wants William dead because what, she's not
49:03 Speaker 00 allowed to go on this trip to Ireland versus Yuloma thinks she's going to collect $100,000 and has racked up massive amounts of debt in both her name and in William's name. To me, those motivations don't even compare. The defense didn't call a single witness who testified that William was abusive, as Yuloma had claimed. On July 7, 2017, Yuloma Curry Walker was found guilty of aggravated murder, conspiracy, murder, and felonious assault. She was convicted on what would have been her four-year wedding anniversary
49:46 Speaker 00 with William. On August 8 of that year, she was sentenced to life without parole for aggravated murder with 11 years for conspiracy and six years for firearm specification. So, you know, I think when you look at the sentences that everybody got. Yuloma got the biggest sentence by far because she was the catalyst, or as you would say, the mastermind, right? She's the, the reason that, that any of this happened at all.
50:18 Speaker 01 If it wasn't for her, none of this would have, have happened.
50:21 Speaker 00 Right, and then you have Ryan, who actually pulled the trigger. He got life, but with the possibility of parole. And then, you know, the sentences kind of go down from there, but everybody was held accountable. I think the person who got off the lightest was obviously Jacqueline.
50:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:42 Speaker 00 You know, she spent some time in juvenile detention, but it was nowhere near what everybody else received. Christopher Hines' expected parole eligibility date is scheduled for August 2033. Ryan Doherty's next parole board hearing is scheduled for June 2038. Chad will be eligible for parole in June 2043.
51:08 Speaker 01 It's a long time away.
51:10 Speaker 00 It is, I mean, all of them are, but for good reason. We just rewrapped this thing up, Gibbs. You know, we said it early on. William Walker was a kind, generous person who dedicated his life to serving his community. When his girlfriend told him she had cancer, he married her so that she would have better health insurance, not knowing that the whole thing was a lie. Instead, Yuloma plotted to have her husband killed so she could pay off debt, but failed to realize that she was not yet the beneficiary of William's life insurance. She didn't receive any money and is now serving life in prison for her crime, which is exactly where she should be.
51:54 Speaker 01 Absolutely, it's where she belongs.
51:56 Speaker 00 And, and my mind, I think she should spend the rest of her life there. You know, what she also did, though, is she messed up the lives of a bunch of other people.
52:08 Speaker 01 She really did. And I can't believe that these individuals were so stupid to, one, take somebody's life for such a little amount of money, ruin their lives for such a little amount of money. I mean, think about it. There, you've got one guy in prison, probably for the rest of his life. Maybe he'll get parole. Maybe he won't. For a thousand dollars?
52:32 Speaker 00 Of which he only got eight hundred?
52:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:34 Speaker 00 You know, it's
52:35 Speaker 01 You took somebody's life and you're sitting in prison for the rest of your life. Was that really worth eight hundred dollars?
52:40 Speaker 00 No, I mean, that it's just, it's unbelievable to me that when faced with, you know, this kind of notion, people go along with it so easily.
52:54 Speaker 01 It's like they're not even using their brain. Like, are you really thinking this through? I'm doing something illegal that will put me in prison for the rest of my life and I'm taking a good person's life for a thousand dollars. It should automatically in your head click like, that's not a great deal. I should not be doing this. I shouldn't be doing it at all. But I definitely shouldn't be doing it for a thousand dollars. I don't get it.
53:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, but it's part of the fascination.
53:25 Speaker 01 Oh, it is.
53:26 Speaker 00 How can these people sit around, talk about it, rationalize it, and then ultimately make the decision that, that, yeah, this is what we're gonna do?
53:36 Speaker 01 I mean, they could say, well, if you come from a place of, you know, where you're struggling and you don't have any money and a thousand dollars is, is like, you know, a hundred thousand dollars to me when I'm struggling. I still, I think, I don't, I still don't buy it. I don't know how you get to that thought process. And I'll never understand it. I really don't think I ever will.
53:59 Speaker 00 No, no. And if you did, or could, I don't know what that would say about you. But that's it for our episode on William Walker. We got some voicemails. You want to check those out?
54:11 Speaker 01 Let's hear them.
54:12 Speaker 02 Hi, this is Carrie from North Dakota. I just wanted to call and say that I really enjoyed this week's podcast between True Crime All The Time and Unsolved. I saw somebody had posted in a local Facebook group that they were selling used 55 gallon drums. And my first thought literally was, they use those for bodies or something. I just thought that was kind of funny and figured I'd share. Keep your own time ticking and have a great day. Cool. Facebook group that they were selling used 55 gallon drums. And my first thought
54:54 Speaker 02 literally was, they use those for bodies or something. I just thought that was kind of funny and figured I'd share. Keep your own time ticking and have a great day. They use those for bodies or something. I just thought that was kind of funny.
55:08 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, if you're into true crime, I don't know how you would see a post like that about 50 gallon drums and not think. One, they've either already been used, or you know, somebody's buying these to use them for that. Now, I get it, 50 gallon barrels are used for all kinds of things.
55:32 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely.
55:33 Speaker 00 But they very often are used to hide bodies.
55:37 Speaker 01 55 gallon drum, you could easily get a body in there.
55:40 Speaker 00 And it's been done many, many times.
55:43 Speaker 01 It has.
55:44 Speaker 03 Hey, Mike and Gibby, it's Kaylee from Ottawa. I've been a longtime listener in the background for a long time. And I was just listening to your Jose Heron case. And at the end of it, you were mentioning how in Montreal, everything's French, and in Ontario, everything's English and French. And it's actually Canada wide that products sold in Canadian stores have to be both bilingual.
56:15 Speaker 03 In Canada and French and the or English and French and the only reason I know this is because I'm in the warehouse industry and it is a whole thing. Um, so yeah, Montreal doesn't really abide by the rules, but the rest of the place, rest of the country has to sucks for us. But yeah, anyways, love you guys. Um, keep it up. I will continue lurking in the background. Bye.
56:41 Speaker 00 She's out there lurking.
56:43 Speaker 01 Lurking.
56:44 Speaker 00 Just lurking. That's great information. We appreciate it very much.
56:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, thank you for that.
56:49 Speaker 00 All right, buddy. That is it for another episode of True Crime All The Time. So for Mike.
56:54 Speaker 01 And Gibby.
56:55 Speaker 00 Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
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