0:00

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0:26

army wife was killed by an intruder on a military reservation.

0:29

And the neighbors feared lax security was to blame, but they would soon find out that the killer was already in their neighborhood.

0:38

I'm Charlie, and welcome to crime lines.

0:41

Welcome

0:41

to

0:41

the

0:41

12th

0:41

day

0:41

of

0:41

the

0:41

final

0:41

day

0:41

of

0:41

the

0:41

12

0:41

days

0:41

of

0:41

crime

0:54

lines. I had such a great response to this on social media that I'm already planning to repeat it next year.

1:02

I'm just going to start a little earlier than mid October to start working on it, because it really was tricky trying to fit in all the extra work while still releasing my regular episodes.

1:14

This

1:14

is

1:14

also

1:14

the

1:14

final

1:14

episode

1:14

for

1:14

2021,

1:14

except

1:14

for

1:14

patron

1:14

bonus

1:14

episodes,

1:14

which

1:14

are

1:14

coming

1:14

and

1:14

the

1:14

next

1:14

week's

1:14

Q

1:14

and

1:25

a. If you have any questions or topics you want to hear about, you still have time to send those in because I'm not recording until Thursday, which is December 23rd.

1:35

So let's go ahead and get into today's episode.

1:37

This

1:37

case

1:37

starts

1:37

when

1:37

Catherine

1:37

plots

1:37

met

1:37

Michael

1:37

Walker

1:37

in

1:37

upstate

1:37

New

1:37

York,

1:37

she

1:37

had

1:37

grown

1:37

up

1:37

there

1:37

in

1:37

the

1:37

Albany

1:37

area

1:37

and

1:37

he

1:37

was

1:37

from

1:37

Bennington,

1:37

Vermont,

1:37

which

1:37

isn't

1:37

that

1:37

far

1:52

away. He was living in New York at the time.

1:54

And they met through friends.

1:55

They had a pretty normal progression of their relationship.

1:59

And the two married in may of 2003 in Albany, Mike was in the army and he worked as a medic.

2:07

So that meant after marriage, they moved multiple times, which isn't something that Kathy minded, she actually liked living in different parts of the country.

2:18

They

2:18

were

2:18

members

2:18

of

2:18

the

2:18

church

2:18

of

2:18

Jesus

2:18

Christ

2:18

of

2:18

latter

2:18

day

2:18

saints,

2:18

which

2:18

is

2:18

commonly

2:18

known

2:18

as

2:18

the

2:18

Mormon

2:25

church. So one of the hardest things about moving a lot, which is making new friends and connections ended up not really being a problem for them.

2:34

They would jump into any new area and between the military and the church, they were able to quickly make friends in July, 2013.

2:45

They moved to their fourth state in their 10 years of marriage.

2:49

When Mike was sent to work at the Tripler medical center, ER, and they ended up living at the Aaliyah Manu military reservation is Northwest of Honolulu, Hawaii, Kathy and Mike like they had before jumped right into activities at the church where they both became involved in the youth group at the LDS church, they were attending.

3:13

Mike helped with the boy Scouts and Kathy was the young women's leader.

3:19

So the church runs their male and female youth groups separately.

3:24

They do overlapping activities sometimes, but they are two separate organizations being the young women's leader meant Kathy was over the whole of the girls program, which runs ages 12 through 18.

3:38

And when Mike had time off the ER, he would also volunteer at the church with Kathy, helping her with whatever she was doing, as well as his work with the boy Scouts.

3:48

I know when people hear LDS or Mormon, they assume the family must have a bunch of kids.

3:54

Kathy and Mike actually had no children, but that was not by choice between issues within fertility and then miscarriages.

4:03

They spent years trying to have a baby.

4:06

And as Kathy was in her late thirties, they decided it was time to try in vitro, figuring out what doctor do you use and how to pay for it.

4:16

But they never got the chance to even try.

4:21

It was Saturday morning, November 15th, 2014.

4:25

When Mike came home from his overnight shift at the ER, it was around six 30 in the morning within moments.

4:34

He was on the phone with nine one, one and making a panic call for help.

4:38

Mike told the dispatcher that he had come home from work and went upstairs to his in Cathy's bedroom where he found Kathy on the bedroom floor and blood everywhere on this call, Mike was crying as he explained that he found Kathy with all that blood around her, a knife near her hand.

5:02

And when he checked for a pulse, he couldn't find one and she felt cold.

5:08

Kathy Walker was only 38 years old because the couple lived on the military reservation.

5:15

The army crime investigation division known as CID was the initial investigating agency.

5:23

The first officer on the scene, officer Partridge had misunderstood what she was responding to, or it was miscommunicated to her.

5:34

She thought it was a DUI call.

5:37

For some reason, she rang the doorbell and knocked on the door for a good minute, minute and a half before she heard someone call I'm here, I'm here.

5:46

And then the sound of someone coming down the stairs, Mike Walker opened the front door, which was locked and let her inside.

5:53

Mike

5:53

was

5:53

already

5:53

on

5:53

his

5:53

phone

5:53

with

5:53

someone

5:53

from

5:53

his

5:53

unit's

5:59

command. He led officer Partridge up the stairs to the main bedroom.

6:03

Now officer Partridge looked in the room, saw Kathy's body, all that blood and told Mike go back downstairs and out of the house.

6:13

She did not walk into the room and she was doing what you're supposed to do back out of the scene until it can be documented and processed.

6:22

Mike

6:22

agreed

6:22

to

6:22

go

6:22

downstairs,

6:22

but

6:22

he

6:22

didn't

6:22

want

6:22

to

6:22

go

6:27

outside. He said something about being more comfortable sitting on the couch.

6:31

So he sat in the living room while officer Partridge asked him for some basic information.

6:37

Mike was in a lot of distress.

6:39

He was rocking back and forth.

6:41

As they talked.

6:42

Mike

6:42

told

6:42

her

6:42

that

6:42

he

6:42

attempted

6:42

CPR,

6:42

but

6:42

there

6:42

was

6:42

no

6:42

blood

6:42

on

6:48

him. So it seemed unlikely that he had done that.

6:51

Officer Partridge then asked Mike if he could get Kathy's ID so that she could be positively identified.

6:58

Mike went to her purse to get the idea out.

7:02

And surprisingly it had a smear of blood on it.

7:06

Mike was then asked or rather ordered at this point to step outside on the porch so that the scene could be fully processed around this time support was arriving for Mike lake.

7:21

His chaplain, Mike told the chaplain that Kathy had been depressed recently, primarily over their issues with infertility.

7:28

Beyond that, he said, when he left for work the night before he saw her staring out the bedroom window, which was odd and nerving to him, he then said it straight out that she had been to some degree suicidal or struggling with suicidal ideation.

7:49

While Mike was on the porch, talking to his chaplain, the Honolulu police showed up.

7:55

They also wanted to ask Mike some questions as well.

7:59

Mike mentioned that he and Kathy had an argument right before he left for work.

8:04

The day before the argument was minor, it was about food.

8:08

And then Mike left.

8:10

So basically what he's saying is Kathy was definitely upset when he went to work and she had this moment of just looking off into the distance out the window.

8:22

Mike was then taken to the CID office for a formal recorded interview.

8:28

While the investigators finished processing the scene.

8:32

One of the first things Mike was asked for when they got to the office was consent to search while the house was a crime scene and they could search it as part of it being a crime scene, they still needed a search warrant to search beyond just what was directly connected to the crime.

8:51

We've seen this come up.

8:53

In other cases you want one case in particular, go back and listen to the Tommy Ziglar case.

9:00

We get into it a little bit there too.

9:01

Now they also wanted to have a look at Mike Walker's cell phone.

9:07

Mike signed the consent to search forums and even gave his cell phone passcode over.

9:13

When he was asked for it, he was upset and crying, but importantly, for the investigation, he was also cooperating.

9:21

They

9:21

also

9:21

took

9:21

Mike's

9:21

clothing,

9:21

fingernail,

9:21

scrapings,

9:21

and

9:21

his

9:28

fingerprints. Even though it would turn out that Mike had an airtight alibi, they would still need the fingerprints to rule out the ones in the house that were his.

9:39

He lived there. So you could expect his prints to be on just about everything.

9:43

All of this took around 50 minutes and then an agent Mitchell started with the questioning.

9:49

Mike provided his alibi.

9:52

That one I mentioned was airtight.

9:54

He was at work at an ER all night and he could be vouched for from 6:00 PM until 6:00 AM.

10:03

He said he didn't know anyone who would have wanted to kill Kathy, but he did mention they had an incident five days before Kathy was killed.

10:11

Their car had been broken into and Mike's wallet had been stolen.

10:16

Kathy was a little on edge about their security.

10:19

After that happened, agent Mitchell continued for the first 30 minutes or so getting all these basic questions covered, then he asked Mike straight out if he had any extra marital relationships and Mike, without any further prodding, fessed up to it.

10:41

He first said he had affairs with a couple of people, but later emitted, it was more than a couple.

10:50

Mike explained that these relationships were sexual.

10:54

Only. He was meeting up with random people.

10:57

He found on Craigslist and he did this for pretty much the entire time they lived in Hawaii.

11:03

Mike admitted he had some of those people over to the home.

11:10

At times, Kathy was out of town.

11:12

The very day of the murder.

11:15

He did meet up with a man from Craigslist for sex, but not at the house.

11:19

Mike even admitted that some of the men he slept with would pay him for sex.

11:25

He was asked why he took payment.

11:28

And he essentially said, why not?

11:31

It was a way to get money.

11:32

So the agent pushed this angle.

11:35

Was there any one he had seen or was still seeing who might want to kill Kathy and Mike insisted.

11:42

He had no idea who would want to hurt her over the course of this questioning, which did go on for hours.

11:49

They took a break for lunch.

11:51

After the short break agent Mitchell went back into the interrogation room and told Mike that they needed to read him his Miranda rights agent Mitchell said it was based on things they found on his phone.

12:05

Up until this point, Mike was being interviewed as and treated as a witness as the husband of the victim.

12:14

Now with some of the admissions he was making, he was enough of a suspect that he needed to be read his rights.

12:23

And in response make asked for a lawyer, but the agent continued to question him without calling his lawyer make was asked more about his relationships.

12:36

And then he was asked why his bloody fingerprint was found on the murder weapon.

12:42

Mike's fingerprint was not found on the knife, but the police are allowed to lie to people.

12:48

Pressure was being put on Mike, clearly trying to rattle him.

12:53

At this point, they likely didn't know how solid his alibi was in response to the continued questioning.

13:02

Even after he asked for a lawyer, Mike brought up Kathy being suicidal and said she may have taken her own life.

13:09

As we know the seed was planted back at the house, but the investigators knew that this was not what happened and could not have been what happened.

13:20

The scene wasn't even staged to look like a suicide.

13:24

So the suggestion was immediately dismissed.

13:27

For one thing, the wounds were impossible to be self-inflicted.

13:31

The autopsy would show that Kathy died from multiple stab wounds to the neck and the torso based on the blood evidence.

13:40

The attack began while she was in the bed and then continued on the floor.

13:46

On top of that, someone did search the room after the murder, there was blood on a light switch plate, as well as blood on Kathy's purse and on her driver's license, the DNA results would come back a match to Kathy.

14:02

So after Kathy was stabbed someone with her blood on them, transferred it to the light, switch the purse in the ID.

14:11

There is no way this could have been Kathy with the extent of her injuries.

14:15

There was another party, their bottom line, and that other party had gone through Kathy's purse.

14:22

That said nothing was taken from her purse.

14:26

It was just rifled through nothing was missing from the house.

14:31

Either. There were no broken windows or signs of a forced entry, even though Kathy had a locked the doors at night, it was clear to the investigators that the person who entered the house, however they got in there had one goal.

14:46

And that was to murder Kathy Walker.

14:49

She was the, but even without all of this evidence that this wasn't a suicide that would come out and days to come.

14:57

They knew at this point, it wasn't.

14:59

So after Mike brought up the suicide theory, he was told, I think, you know why she's dead?

15:05

What happened?

15:06

And that's when Mike gave up a name, a specific name while Mike did not admit to any direct knowledge of what happened.

15:17

He said he had been seeing a woman named Lisa for a few months and she wanted Mike to leave Kathy for her.

15:27

He initially wouldn't give any more details about her and invoked his right to remain silent.

15:33

Now, this is the second time Mike called on his Miranda rights.

15:38

And the second time the agent kept going anyway, Lisa's name came up again.

15:44

Mike said, the only thing I can think of is that she did it though.

15:50

He insisted he didn't know her last name or any more specific information about her in spite of admitting that they had hooked up multiple times for around two months.

16:02

So agent Mitchell kept the conversation going and by keeping a conversation going, I'm going to say he launched into these very long monologues.

16:12

Eventually Mike blurted something out about having a problem and being a sex addict.

16:20

Then he said, Lisa had actually threatened Kathy's life, but he didn't think she would do anything.

16:26

He had tried to break things off with her shortly before the murder.

16:31

And he insisted he had nothing to do with what happened to Kathy.

16:35

Mike then asked for a lawyer again, and this is the point where the interview ended.

16:42

So the investigators walked away from this interrogation with several leads as an everyone make had slept with while in Hawaii.

16:52

Unfortunately, that was not a very short list.

16:56

And it included people much like Mike, who didn't want the relationship public because they were either married in the closet or both.

17:06

So a few lawyered up just to avoid getting involved.

17:11

The only person they were able to rule out from early on as having actually committed the murder was Michael Walker.

17:21

They checked that alibi.

17:23

He had done a 12 hour shift at the medical center from 6:00 PM until 6:00 AM.

17:29

The time of death estimate was pretty much smack in the middle of that shift.

17:34

There was simply no way he could have left long enough to kill Kathy and get back completely unnoticed.

17:42

It was simply impossible as

17:47

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17:54

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17:57

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19:48

of the people Mike had relationships with who would talk to the police.

19:52

They all said they had never met Kathy though.

19:55

Mike was open with pretty much all of them.

19:58

The arrangement was just sex.

20:01

And Mike was upfront about that most, if not, all of them knew he was married, but Lisa was the name.

20:10

Mike had flagged in the interview, but they had not been able to figure out who she was right away.

20:16

The way they finally found out who Lisa was, was through Mike's phone.

20:23

Like a lot of people who cheat on a partner, Mike was a very good at deleting messages, but by pulling his phone records, they were able to find a number that was called pretty much more than any of the other sexual partners.

20:40

Mike had. It showed up again and again in the two months leading up to Kathy's murder.

20:45

And then all with that phone number stopped abruptly.

20:49

After the murder, they found the number belonged to a 24 year old woman named Alyssa Jackson, Alyssa, and Lisa not only sound alike, but it turned out that Alyssa Jackson went by the nickname.

21:04

Lisa, she lived less than a mile from Kathy and Mike's house though.

21:09

She was a civilian. She lived with her parents and one of her parents was in the military.

21:14

Lisa had been developing feelings for Mike beyond this casual relationship.

21:21

He had offered her.

21:23

And this was evidenced to by the text messages and emails between them though they were deleted, many were recovered.

21:30

And unlike the other people, Mike was sleeping with.

21:36

Lisa actually saw Kathy once Mike and Kathy went to the movie theater where Lisa worked while she was on shift.

21:45

She didn't say anything to either Mike or Kathy, but she did text to Mike later that it hurt her feelings for him to bring his wife on a date to where she worked.

21:57

Lisa clearly wanted Mike to leave Kathy, but Mike had told the CID investigators that that was not going to happen.

22:05

He said he was a sex addict.

22:07

So his affairs had really nothing to do with Kathy or the state of the marriage they had to do with his own issues.

22:14

According to Mike, he was just going to keep this double life going as long as he could.

22:21

He managed to compartmentalize this happy marriage to Kathy and the Craigslist affairs.

22:29

Now I do want to take just a very quick second to talk about sex addiction, which is a little controversial, particularly when we are giving it a label of an addiction.

22:39

I personally think that it is best to think of a sex addiction, similar to a gambling addiction.

22:45

Compulsive gambling is very often not about money.

22:49

There is something else at the root of the issue than an obsession with money or else people would stop gambling when they began losing money.

22:58

There's more to it than that.

23:00

And sex addiction is similar.

23:02

It isn't always about sexual drive and the root of the issue needs to be treated preferably before it starts negatively impacting the person's life.

23:13

At this point in Mike Walker's life, though, it seemed he was able to control things well enough that Kathy was completely in the dark as were his friends and his coworkers.

23:24

This hadn't started impacting his life negatively up until someone went into his house and murdered his wife and the CID investigators really wanted to talk to the person they suspected did that.

23:42

Lisa Jackson, but because Lisa had no military affiliation and this was looking like it was not going to stay a military case.

23:52

The FBI joined the investigation.

23:54

Now the FBI has jurisdiction because the military reservation is under federal oversight and not state the agents first attempted to speak to Lisa by showing up at the movie theater where she worked on announced, but she wasn't there.

24:12

They did talk to a coworker who we are going to call.

24:16

Donna. Donna was also a friend of Lisa.

24:19

So they would talk about things like relationships.

24:21

And she could confirm that Lisa was indeed dating a married man who she had fallen in love with.

24:29

The investigators, asked Donna about Lisa's movements on the weekend of Cathy's murder.

24:36

As for the day of the killing Donna hadn't seen Lisa, but she did see her the next day, both Lisa and Donna were scheduled to open the theater.

24:46

And prior to opening, as they were doing their various tasks, Lisa was clearly upset.

24:52

She was wringing her hands.

24:55

She was pacing around and she was muttering things about how she had hurt somebody.

25:00

She did it for him and he loves me.

25:04

Things like that.

25:05

Now, Donna, wasn't entirely sure what Lisa was talking about.

25:09

And in fact, she assumed Lisa meant that she had hurt someone's feelings.

25:16

Not that she was saying she actually hurt anyone physically.

25:22

So

25:22

as

25:22

Lisa

25:22

cried

25:22

about

25:22

hurting

25:22

someone,

25:22

Donna

25:22

tried

25:22

to

25:22

comfort

25:22

her

25:22

saying

25:22

the

25:22

things

25:22

you

25:22

would

25:22

say,

25:22

like

25:22

how

25:22

she

25:22

was

25:22

sure

25:22

the

25:22

other

25:22

person

25:22

would

25:22

eventually

25:22

get

25:22

over

25:34

it. Now these words of constellation to not work, of course.

25:37

And Lisa went to speak with the manager before she left work early.

25:42

And that was the last time Lisa was at work.

25:45

The FBI agents then reached out to Lisa's parents who Lisa lived with as far as they knew, the parents told them that Lisa wasn't living there anymore.

25:56

She had moved to Indianapolis, Indiana to stay with family.

26:01

This was quite an abrupt move from Hawaii, all the way to Indiana.

26:06

But at least the authorities knew where she was.

26:10

Yes. Lisa had left Honolulu.

26:12

She had left Hawaii, but she wasn't exactly on the run either.

26:16

They were able to put a tail on Lisa in Indiana while they were pulling her phone records and continued their investigation though, Lisa and Mike had both deleted hundreds of texts and emails between them.

26:33

They were able to largely be recovered and they showed that contrary to Mike story.

26:40

The relationship appeared to be mutual in these text messages exchanged up to the day of the murder.

26:50

There was no indication in any of them that Mike was trying to get away from Lisa.

26:55

It was quite the opposite.

26:57

Mike sent a message saying he wanted to be with Lisa and someone was in the way.

27:06

Now it's not hard to figure out that the someone was Mike's wife, Kathy, that message was barely coated, but there were other texts that seemed to be in some sort of light code that they did not have obvious context for.

27:24

The one that would become the most relevant here though, was where Mike referred to his quote, deepest desire when there was nothing in the texts or emails between the two spelling out what that desire was.

27:38

So the conversation around this deepest desire must have happened in person or on the phone.

27:46

And the investigators very much wanted to know what this referred to.

27:52

It did take some time months in fact, but in April, 2015, five months after the murder, the federal grand jury returned with an indictment for Lisa Jackson, grand jury proceedings are sealed, but it was reported that Lisa's parents were called to testify.

28:11

The authorities had enough to arrest Lisa Jackson, who was still in Indiana and they charged her with Kathy's murder.

28:19

The hope was that after the arrest, she would talk to them and would let them know what, if any role Mike Walker played in this because they solidly suspected him at this time because it wasn't just texts with Lisa.

28:36

They recovered. They also pulled ones with other sexual partners.

28:40

And in one text, Mike said he was bisexual and his wife didn't know, and that he wanted to be free to live life.

28:49

How he wanted.

28:50

Now that's a far cry from Mike saying he was happy with his wife and keeping these two lives separate.

28:58

He is saying to another person he wanted to be free.

29:02

So while they suspected Lisa Jackson was the one who carried out the murder, they suspected it was at Mike Walker's request.

29:14

Now,

29:14

fortunately

29:14

for

29:14

this

29:14

investigation,

29:14

Lisa

29:14

Jackson

29:14

did

29:14

talk

29:14

to

29:14

the

29:21

investigators. She had a lot to say.

29:23

I mean, she was probably a little hesitant at first, but then they showed her where in that initial interview with Mike, where he called her a psycho who wouldn't leave him alone, that seemed to warm Lisa up to this conversation.

29:40

So Lisa told the investigators, the background on her relationship with Mike Walker and how she had fallen in love with him in a large part because he accepted and understood her early on in their relationship.

29:56

Lisa confided to Mike that she dealt with severe mental illness, including psychosis.

30:03

She had been on medication, but when her medical insurance lapsed, she could no longer afford her anti-psychotic medications.

30:13

There are programs here in the U S that can help people afford their medication.

30:18

In instances like this, now they're not always a guarantee and they can be difficult to access for someone who is lake Lisa going without medications that prevent things like psychosis.

30:31

Lisa had even told Mike that during these few months they were together, she was hearing voices.

30:37

And as Lisa confided in him, Mike Walker also confided in her.

30:44

She said that about two weeks after they had met.

30:48

Mike told her that his deepest desire was for Kathy to be gone.

30:55

He went on to say that he couldn't divorce Kathy, because one, it was frowned on in his religion and two, he couldn't afford it.

31:04

But if Kathy died, he would get $400,000 in life insurance money.

31:13

That would go a long way to security for Mike and by extension Lisa who believed that they would be together.

31:23

If it wasn't for Kathy.

31:25

During

31:25

that

31:25

conversation,

31:25

the

31:25

idea

31:25

of

31:25

Kathy

31:25

dying

31:25

in

31:25

a

31:25

staged

31:25

robbery

31:25

came

31:25

up

31:32

later. There was a discussion of making Kathy drink something to poison her.

31:37

So this conversation of Mike wanting his wife gone, wasn't a one-time thing.

31:44

It continued for the two months from when they met until Kathy was dead to show that Mike was the one in control here.

31:55

The investigators had an email from Lisa to Mike, essentially saying she needed his permission to go forward.

32:04

On November 4th.

32:07

Mike sent Lisa an email that red, you have my permission, the sooner, the better.

32:13

And here Lisa is confirming to the authorities that these emails are referring to a planned murder.

32:22

Lisa decided to try on November 11th or 12th to kill Kathy.

32:28

But when she got to the house, the doors and windows were all locked.

32:32

Kathy was worried about security after the break-in of the car and had made doubly sure everything was locked up the next day, when the murder didn't happen.

32:43

Mike sent a text to Lisa that said, I need my desire taken care of soon.

32:50

I'm going crazy.

32:51

Lisa replied, I know daddy cakes because daddy cakes was the nickname.

32:58

She called him.

32:59

She told him that she ran into a quote access problem.

33:03

And Mike replied that he could help with that on November 14th, 2014, just days later, according to Lisa, the two met up in the gym, parking lot near both of their houses.

33:17

Lisa said she would try to kill Kathy that night.

33:22

Lisa told her he would either leave a window unlocked or he would leave a spare key in the gravel near the back door.

33:30

He would text her later, which one?

33:33

It was a text of just the word.

33:36

Good meant to go through the window and a text that said bad meant to use the key.

33:42

And that night Mike Walker texted Lisa Jackson, the word bad.

33:50

So around midnight, Lisa walked to the Walker home and found the key hidden where Mike said it would be.

33:56

She entered the kitchen and took a knife from the butcher block.

34:01

She went upstairs to the bedroom where Kathy was sleeping.

34:05

Lisa then began stabbing her.

34:09

Kathy woke up during it and trying to get away, ended up out of the bed, but she was already seriously injured.

34:16

So Lisa pretty easily managed to get Kathy on the floor.

34:21

Lisa said she felt remorse even as she was stabbing Kathy and asked Kathy, do you forgive me?

34:29

According to Lisa?

34:31

Kathy said yes.

34:33

Before she lost consciousness, Lisa said she stayed in the house for another 30 minutes.

34:41

She wanted to make sure Kathy was dead while she was there.

34:46

She turned on the light and went through Kathy's purse to check for her ID because she wanted to be sure she killed the right person.

34:54

That's how the blood got on the light switch, the purse and the ID.

34:59

Lisa also confirmed that they timed the murder plans for when Mike had that airtight, alibi Lisa's story matched the evidence at the scene perfectly as well as made sense of the email and texts, communication.

35:15

The agents already polled Lisa's confession was incredibly valuable.

35:21

I

35:21

am

35:21

going

35:21

to

35:21

interject

35:21

something

35:21

right

35:26

here. Religious reasons were cited as for a reason why Mike claimed he couldn't get a divorce, but I personally do not buy it.

35:36

Divorce is definitely not favored in the LDS church, short of adultery or abuse, but Mike said he wanted to be out of his marriage so he could live his life the way he wanted.

35:50

And the way he wanted also was not in line with the church's teachings, either engaging in sex work and casual sex would have been worse than divorce in the eyes of the church.

36:03

If he planned to just live his life the way he wanted, what difference would a divorce make?

36:09

It would only matter in the eyes of the church if he intended to stay in the church, which is definitely not what he seemed keen on doing so personally, I think the real motive was 100% money.

36:21

Not only did he not want to split everything 50 50 in a divorce, he would walk away with everything.

36:28

Plus $400,000 in life insurance, which was more wealth than the couple currently had.

36:36

The stigma of divorce just does not ring true to me as a motive here, but emotive and Lisa statement, we're not all the authorities would need to get an indictment against Michael Walker.

36:52

Lisa was a confessed killer.

36:55

She had been diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder.

36:58

She was unmedicated at the time of the murders and admitted to hearing voices.

37:03

And at the time of the confession, she was back under significant psychiatric medications.

37:09

A defense attorney could tear her credibility apart without even breaking a sweat.

37:15

They could say that Mike broke up with her in the gym parking lot that day.

37:20

Not that he told her to kill Kathy.

37:22

And she went ahead and killed Kathy and set him up to get back at him now, right or wrong, fair or not.

37:29

That is how it would play out.

37:31

The FBI looked at Lisa's mental health struggles in a different way.

37:36

They believed that Michael Walker on hearing Lisa talk about her unmedicated mental illness decided she was the perfect person to manipulate into killing his wife.

37:48

They were also working on recovering more deleted messages and emails.

37:54

At this time.

37:55

We do know Mike willingly, let them search his phone, but that's because he erased everything.

37:59

But deleted doesn't always mean completely gone, which is definitely what we saw in this case.

38:06

Another thing the investigators did in this investigation was to recruit one of Kathy's sisters, Julie, to make two recorded phone calls.

38:15

She was asked to do this after she expressed to investigators that she suspected Mike was involved, Julie and most of Kathy's family hadn't at first suspected, Michael Kathy's father even said so to the media.

38:30

But over the months that trust in him eroding for Juliet started at Kathy's funeral.

38:39

In New York. Mike mentioned that there were no signs of a forced entry into the house and that the murder weapon was a knife from their own kitchen.

38:49

So how would a killer get into a locked home without help?

38:54

And why wouldn't they bring their own weapon?

38:57

It sounded like the killer was someone who had access to the house or someone gave it to them and they knew there would be a murder weapon at the ready when they got there.

39:09

Now, who else could have set that up except for Mike?

39:13

So Julie already suspected Mike, when she learned that Mike had posted a dating profile online, it sounds like she wasn't aware that he had multiple secret profiles prior to the murder to her.

39:30

It seemed like Mike was very eager to move on, to be clear.

39:35

I'm not putting a timeline on grief or the appropriate time to wait until you start dating again.

39:41

After the loss of a spouse, I'm just explaining the pieces that led to Julie suspecting Mike.

39:47

And it wasn't any one thing, but rather the totality of circumstances, Julie ended up making two phone calls to Mike one before Lisa's arrest and the other after it.

39:58

And Mike didn't give up too much, but he did make a few odd statements that just added to her overall suspicions of him.

40:06

Like on the first call, he said that there was even a part of him who didn't even want them to find out who killed Kathy.

40:15

Now I don't want to speak for every family of every murder victim out there.

40:20

But while I have talked to a lot of families in the course of my years of true crime podcasting, I have never heard someone voice this.

40:29

I have heard them say, they know how hard a trial will be when it does happen.

40:33

They know how re-traumatizing it will be, but I've honestly never heard anyone say that there was any part of them that didn't want to know who did this, who didn't want the person responsible to be found to be caught and for there to be justice.

40:49

So while I try not to judge too strongly on an out of context statement, I will say that this one really hit my ear wrong.

40:57

And it certainly did so for the family and for the FBI.

41:01

So as they built this case against Mike, they were fortunate in one regard.

41:06

And that was that he was in the military.

41:07

Mike was always going to be easy to find and they weren't concerned he was going to move out of the area and disappear.

41:14

It was in November, 2015 a year after the murder that the grand jury indictment was handed down against Michael Walker.

41:23

He was arrested for murder in the first degree and conspiracy to commit murder.

41:28

In the first degree, friends who had supported Mike through the loss of his wife, felt incredibly betrayed at this arrest.

41:36

And when more and more information that led to it came out then just a month after Mike's arrest, Alyssa Jackson pleaded guilty to second degree murder in exchange for her testimony against Mike, the prosecution would recommend she get 32 33 years in prison without this plea deal, had she been found guilty of first degree murder.

42:03

She would have gotten a life sentence and the prosecution would have really benefited from Lisa's testimony because she could give context to those vague text messages and emails.

42:15

That is something only Lisa could provide.

42:18

They weren't going to hold her sentencing hearing until after Michael Walker's trial, which was planned for the following year.

42:27

And Mike did go to trial the following year, but not for Kathy's murder, pretrial motions delayed that trial, but other crimes had been uncovered during the investigation.

42:38

The first was that on Mike's computer, they didn't just recover emails with men and women.

42:44

He met on Craigslist.

42:46

They also found child sexual abuse material, which included 92 images and 19 videos.

42:53

They were on his laptop.

42:55

So Mike was charged with possession of child pornography, which is the legal wording for having child sexual abuse material and due to Mike's admission of charging for sex through Craigslist.

43:09

He was event charged with solicitation.

43:12

This

43:12

was

43:12

taken

43:12

care

43:12

of

43:12

in

43:12

the

43:12

military

43:16

courts. So this was a court martial.

43:18

Mike pleaded guilty to the solicitation charge, but not guilty to the possession of child sexual abuse material.

43:25

His attorney said that Mike didn't put the files on his laptop.

43:31

He said, Mike traded files and even hard drives with other people.

43:36

And he was unaware.

43:37

They were even on his computer, but Mike was found guilty in 2016 on both charges.

43:43

And the military judge ordered a rank reduction two years in prison and a dishonorable discharge.

43:51

The next year in 2017, Mike went to trial, but again, not on the murder, he was charged and yet a another crime, a teen came forward and disclosed that Mike had sexually abused him at a boy scout event in 2014, the charge also included assault by battery and communicating a threat.

44:16

Mike was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

44:20

So by the middle of 2017, Mike had been to trial twice and racked up 12 years combined in his sentences.

44:28

And yet the, for murder kept getting delayed.

44:32

It was delayed once again, in August, 2017, just a week before the trial was scheduled to begin, this was a pretty big reason to delay the trial.

44:44

It had to do with the admissibility of Mike's interview.

44:47

On the day he found Kathy's body.

44:50

This was the interview with Mike, where he asked for a lawyer and the agent kept questioning him.

44:56

And then Mike said he didn't want to talk.

44:58

And the agent kept going.

44:59

The prosecutors knew they were not going to be able to use all of that videotaped statement because Mike invoked his rights, but they still wanted to use some of it.

45:10

However, the defense said the whole thing should be thrown out.

45:14

They argued that Mike should have been given his Miranda warning before they started talking at all, not after the lunch break.

45:21

And then when he was read his rights and invoked them, that should have doubly stopped.

45:27

The talking the whole statement, according to the defense violated his rights.

45:32

The judge agreed with the defense.

45:35

The statement was out, but the prosecution of course appealed this decision and they eventually got some of the statement back in.

45:44

They just didn't get as much in as they wanted, but it was more than the defense wanted the jury to hear the defense.

45:51

Also tried to get the phone calls with Julie thrown out though.

45:55

Mike didn't say anything super incriminating.

45:57

What he did say wasn't entirely great for him either.

46:00

But those recordings were going to be allowed in this entire process, delayed the trial and it wouldn't be settled for two more years.

46:09

In September, 2019, it had been nearly five years since Kathy's murder, though.

46:16

Both suspects were in custody within a year.

46:18

Her family was dragged through this back and forth in court.

46:22

In the end, Michael Walker folded a week before the trial was finally going to happen and took a plea deal.

46:31

His attorney said, Mike took the offer when it came indicating he may have pleaded out earlier.

46:38

If he was given the chance to Mike lake, Lisa Jackson had made the deal for second degree murder, giving him the hope of release from prison.

46:48

One day he admitted that what Lisa Jackson said happened was more or less true.

46:56

He conspired with her to kill Kathy, but he claimed he didn't think it was really going to happen.

47:03

He said he was genuinely shocked and upset to come home and find Kathy dead.

47:10

And here's another part of Mike Walker story that I just don't buy.

47:16

I get that maybe the reality of it didn't really click until it happened, but the idea that it wasn't going to happen at all, I don't believe him.

47:26

Lisa had gone to the house kill Kathy three days before and couldn't get in.

47:32

That's a point where Mike could have gotten the message that Lisa was set on doing this.

47:37

He could have backed out then if he didn't really want her to do it instead, he left a key for her.

47:46

So her second attempt would be successful.

47:48

It sounds to me like not only did he think it was going to happen, he very much wanted to facilitate it.

47:56

The court accepted his plea deal.

47:58

And with Michael Walker's case finally resolved, they moved on to sentencing, both him and Lisa at sentencing.

48:07

Kathy Walker's family said that they believed Lisa.

48:11

When she said, she asked Kathy for forgiveness and that Kathy gave it, they too forgave Lisa.

48:19

And they asked the judge to give her the minimum sentence.

48:23

They said they were not seeking any type of revenge or vengeance.

48:28

And Lisa's defense attorney of course asked for the minimum as well.

48:33

They pointed to Lisa's documented mental illness, which was one she was diagnosed with at 21.

48:39

Now that she was medicated and stable, she understood what she did.

48:45

She felt remorse and she deserved to have some mercy.

48:49

The judge then sentenced Lisa Jackson to 30 years in prison.

48:55

According to the federal inmate lookup, she is scheduled for release in November, 2040, when it was Michael Walker's turn, he apologized to his in-laws saying he would do anything.

49:08

If he could bring Kathy back, of course, his chance to act and prevent Kathy's death had long since passed, but Kathy's family still expressed forgiveness towards him.

49:20

The us attorney asked for 30 to 33 years, which was the same as they asked for, for Alyssa Jackson.

49:28

And Mike's defense asked for 24 to 30 years.

49:33

The judge told Mike that Lisa May have wielded the knife, but he was the one in control.

49:41

He knew that she was mentally ill and he used that.

49:45

Lisa did what she did because he told her to the judge, then handed down a 35 year sentence, which was longer than the prosecution asked for.

49:55

And five years longer than Lisa sentence.

49:57

This sentence was a statement as to who was more culpable in the court's eyes.

50:03

The us attorney said after the sentencing that Michael Walker and Alyssa Jackson were held accountable for their actions and that the hearing brought this tragedy to a close and for the U S attorney, I am sure that was true.

50:20

He turned his attention to the next case, the next family, the next pursuit of justice, but for Kathy Walker's family, for Michael and Lisa's families for the friends who felt grief and then be trail, let's just say that closure.

50:39

Isn't a word that families and friends of victims and of perpetrators throw around so easily for them.

50:48

It will never really be over, but reaching the point where you can forgive is sometimes going to just have to be enough Not Not to sound cheesy, but the CAISO at Pancheros is pepper, jacked, deliciously, creamy, and oh, so dreamy, ladled on to anything you desire or being the dip for chip after chip, after chip CAISO may CAISO may mucho Pancheros CAISO made fresh burritos, better built to sound cheesy, but the quesote pancheros is pepper jacked, deliciously creamy and oh so dreamy, ladled onto anything you desire, or being the dip chip after chip after chip. Caso May, Caso May Muacho, Pancheros, Caso made fresh, burritos better built. An army wife was killed by an intruder on a military reservation, and the neighbor's feared lacks security. Was to blame. But they would soon find out that the killer was already in their neighborhood. I'm Charlie, and welcome to to the twelfth day, the final day of the twelve days of crime lines. I had such a great response to this on social media that I'm already planning to repeat it. Next year. I'm just gonna start a little earlier than mid October to start working on it because it really was tricky trying to fit in all the extra work while still releasing my regular episodes. This is also the final episode for twenty twenty one except for Patreon bonus episodes, which are coming and the next week's Q and A. If you have any questions or topics you want to hear about, You still have time to send those in because I'm not recording until Thursday, which is December twenty third. So let's go ahead and get into today's episode. This case starts when Katherine Plott met Michael Walker in upstate New York. She had grown up there in the Albany area, and he was from Bennington Vermont, which isn't that far away. He was living in New York at the time and they met through friends. They had a pretty normal progression of their relationship and the two married in May of two thousand three in Albany. Mike was in the army and he worked as a medic. So that meant after marriage, they moved multiple times. Which isn't something that Kathy minded. She actually liked living in different parts of the country. They were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, which is commonly known as the Mormon Church. So one of the hardest things about moving a lot which is making new friends and connections ended up not really being a problem for them. They would jump into any new area and between the military and the church, they were able to quickly make friends. In July twenty thirteen, they moved to their fourth state in their ten years of marriage when Mike was sent to work at the Triple Air Medical Center and they ended up living at the Elia Manu military reservation, which is northwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. Cathy and Mike like they had before jumped right into activities at the church where they both became involved in the youth group. At the LDS Church they were attending. Mike helped with the Boy Scouts and Kathy was the young women's leader. So the church runs their male and female youth groups separately. They do overlapping activities sometimes, but they are two separate organizations. Being the young women's leader meant Kathy was over the whole of the girls program, which runs ages twelve through eighteen. And when Mike had time off the he would also volunteer at the church with Kathy helping her with whatever she was doing as well as his work with the boy scouts. I know when people hear LDS or Mormon, they assume the family must have a bunch of kids. Kathy and Mike actually had no children, but that was not by choice. Between issues with infertility and then miscarriages, they spent years trying to have a baby. And as Kathy was in her late thirties, they decided it was time to try in vitro figuring out what doctor to use and how to pay for it. But they never got the chance to even try. It was Saturday morning, November fifteenth, twenty fourteen when Mike came home from his overnight shift at the it was around six thirty in the morning. Within moments, he was on the phone with nine eleven making a panicked call for help. Mike told the dispatcher that he had come home from work, and went upstairs to his and Kathy's bedroom where he found Kathy on the bedroom floor and blood everywhere. On this call, Mike was crying as he explained that he found Kathy with all that blood around her a knife near her hand. And when he checked for a pulse, he couldn't find one and she felt cold. Cathy Walker was only thirty eight years old. Because the couple lived on the military reservation, The Army Crime Investigation Division, known as CID, was the initial investigating agency. The first officer on the scene, officer Partridge, had misunderstood what she was responding to. Or it was miscommunicated to her. She thought it was a DUI call for some reason. She rang the doorbell and knocked on the door for a good minute, minute and a half before she heard someone call, I'm here, I'm here, and then the sound of someone coming down the stairs. Mike Walker opened the front door, which was locked and let her inside. Mike was already on his phone with someone from his unit's command. He let officer Partridge up the stairs to the main bedroom. Now officer Partridge looked in the room saw Kathy's body, all that blood, and told Mike go back downstairs and out of the house. She did not walk into the room and she was doing what you're supposed to do back out of the scene until it can be documented and processed. Mike agreed to go downstairs, but he didn't want to go outside. He said something about being more comfortable sitting on the couch. So he sat in the living room while officer Partridge asked him for some basic information. Mike was in a lot of distress. He was rocking back and forth as they talked. Mike told her that he attempted CPR, but there was no blood on him, so it seemed unlikely that he had done that. Officer Partridge then asked Mike if he could get Kathy's ID so that she could be positively identified. Mike went to her purse to get the ID out and surprisingly, it had a smear of blood on it. Mike was then asked or rather ordered at this point to step outside on the porch so that the scene could be fully processed. Around this time, support was arriving for Mike, like his chaplain. Mike told the chaplain that Kathy had been depressed recently primarily over their issues with infertility. Beyond that, he said when he left for work the night before, he saw her staring out the bedroom window, which was odd and unnerving to him. He then said it straight out that she had been to some degree suicidal or struggling with suicidal ideation. While Mike was on the porch talking to his chaplain, the Honolulu police showed up. They also wanted to ask Mike some questions as well. Mike mentioned that he and Kathy had an argument right before you left for work the day before. The argument was minor. It was about food. And then Mike left. So Buckley, what he's saying is Kathy was definitely upset when he went to work. And she had this moment of just looking off into the distance out the window. Mike was then taken to the CID office for a formal recorded interview while the investigators finished processing the scene. One of the first things Mike was asked for when they got to the office was consent to search. While the house was a crime scene and they could search it as part of it being a crime scene, they still needed a search warrant to search beyond just what was directly connected to the crime. We've seen this come up. In other cases you want one case in particular, go back and listen to the Tommy Ziglar in other cases if you want one case in particular. Go back and listen to the Tommy Zigler case. We get into it a little bit there too. Now they also wanted to have a look at Mike Walker's cell phone. Mike signed the consent to search forms and he even gave his cell phone passcode over when he was asked for it. He was upset and crying, but importantly for the investigation, he was also cooperating. They also took Mike's clothing, fingernail scrapings, and his fingerprints. Even though it would turn out that Mike had an airtight ELABY, THEY WOULD STILL NEED THE FINGERPRINCE TO RUL OUT THE ONES IN THE HOUSE THAT WERE HIS. HE LIVED TO THERE SO YOU COULD affect his prints to beyond just about everything. All of this took around fifty minutes, and then an agent Mitchell started with the questioning. Mike provided his alibi, that one I mentioned, was airtight. He was at work at an all night, and he could be vouch for from six PM until six AM. AM. He said he didn't know anyone who would have wanted to kill Kathy, but he did mention they had an incident five days before Kathy was He said he didn't know anyone who would have wanted to kill Kathy but he did mention they had an incident five days before Kathy was killed. Their car had been broken into and Mike's wallet had been stolen. Cathy was a little on edge about their security after that happened. Agent Mitchell continued four of the first thirty minutes or so getting all these basic questions covered. Then he asked Mike straight out if he had any extramarital relationship. And Mike, without any further prodding, fast up to it. He first said he had affairs with a couple of people, but later admitted it was more than a couple. Mike explained that these relationships were sexual only. He was meeting up with random people he found on Craigslist. Andy did this for pretty much the entire time they lived in Hawaii. Mike admitted he had some of those people over to the home at times Kathy was out of town. The very day of the murder, he did meet up with a man from Craig list for sex but not at the house. Mike even admitted that some of the men he slept with would pay him for sex. He was asked why he took payment and he essentially said, why not? It was a way to get money. So the agent pushed this angle. Was there anyone he had seen or was still seeing who might want to kill happy, and Mike insisted. He had no idea who would want to hurt her over the course of this questioning, which did go on for he had no idea who would want to hurt her. Over the course of this questioning, which did go on four hours, they took a break for lunch. After this short break, agent Mitchell went back into the interrogation room and told Mike that they needed to read him his Miranda rights. Agent Mitchell said it was based on things they found on his phone. Up until this point, Mike was being interviewed as and treated as a witness as the husband of the victim. Now with some of the admissions he was making, he was enough of a suspect that he needed to be read his rights. And in response, Mike asked for a lawyer, but the agent continued to question him without calling his lawyer. Mike was asked more about his relationships and then he was asked why his bloody fingerprint was found on the murder weapon. Mike's fingerprint was not found on the knife, but the police are allowed to lie to people. Pressure was being put on Mike clearly trying to rattle him. At this point, they likely didn't know how solid his alibi was. In response to the continued questioning, even after he asked for a lawyer, Mike brought up Kathy being suicidal and said she may have taken her own life. As we know, this seed was planted back at the house. But the investigators knew that this was not what happened and could not have been what happened. The scene wasn't even staged to look like a suicide. So the suggestion was immediately dismissed. For one thing, the wounds were impossible to be self inflicted. The autopsy would show that Kathy died from multiple stab wounds to the neck and the torso. Based on the blood evidence, the attack began while she was in the bed and then continued on the floor. On top of that, someone did search the room after the murder. There was blood on a light switch plate as well as blood on Kathy's purse and on her driver's license. The DNA results would come back a match to Kathy. So after Kathy was stabbed, someone with her blood on them transferred it to the Light Switch, the purse, and the ID. There is no way this could have been Kathy with the extent of her injuries. There was another party there bottom line. And that other party had gone through Kathy's purse. That said, nothing was taken from her purse. It was just rippled through. Nothing was missing from the house either. There were no broken windows or signs of a forced entry, even though Kathy had locked the doors at night. It was clear to the investigators that the person who entered the house however they got in there had one goal. And that was to murder Kathy Walker. She was the target. But even without all of this evidence, that this wasn't a suicide that would come out in days to come. They knew at this point it wasn't. So after Mike brought up the suicide theory he was told, I think you know why she's dead, what happened. And that's when Mike gave up a name, a specific name. While Mike did not admit to any direct knowledge of what happened, He said he had been seeing a woman named Lisa for a few months, and she wanted Mike to leave Kathy for her. He initially wouldn't give any more details about her and invoked his right to remain silent. Now this is the second time Mike called on his Miranda rights, and the second time the agent kept going anyway. Lisa's name came up again. Mike said, the only thing I can think of is that she did it. Though he insisted he didn't know her last name or any more specific information about her in spite of admitting that they had hooked up multiple times for around two months. So agent Mitchell kept the conversation going. And by keeping a conversation going, I'm going to say he launched into these very long monologues. Eventually, Mike blurted something out about having a problem and being a sex addict. Then he said Lisa had actually threatened Kathy's life, but he didn't think she would do anything. He had tried to break things off with her shortly before the murder, and he insisted he had nothing to do with what happened to Kathy. Mike then asked for a lawyer again, and this is the point where the interview ended. So the investigators walked away from this interrogation with several leads as in everyone Mike had slept with while in Hawaii. Unfortunately, that was not a very short list. And it included people much like Mike who didn't want the relationship public because they were either married in the closet or both. So a few loyered up just to avoid getting involved. The only person they were able to rule out from early on as having actually committed the murder was Michael Walker. They checked that alibi. He had done a twelve hour shift at the medical center from six PM until six AM. The time of death estimate was pretty much smack in the middle of that shift. There was simply no way he could have left long enough to kill Kathy and get back completely unnoticed. It was simply impossible. As as we look at the end of one year and we're going into the next, it's a good time to evaluate, are we achieving our we look at the end of one year and we're going into the next, it's a good time to evaluate. Are we achieving our goals? Are we finding happiness, enjoy in lives? And with better help, you can do that from the comfort of your own home, in a safe and private online And with better help, you can do that from the comfort of your own home in a safe and private online environment. It is so It is so convenient. The convenience factor is one of the things that made better help work for The convenience factor is one of the things that made betterhelpcomcrimelines work for me. And this is a service that is available for clients this is a service that is available for clients worldwide. They have a broad range of expertise available that might not be locally available to you. Betterhelpcomcrimelines has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in depression, stress anxiety relationships, sleeping trauma, self esteem, and more. It is convenient, professional and affordable. This is not self help. This is not a crisis line. It is professional counseling, better It is professional counseling. help. We'll assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. And if it, for whatever reason, turns out not to be a good match, that's no problem because better help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic And if it for whatever reason turns out not to be a good match, that's no problem. Because better help is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches. They may get free and easy to change counselors if They may get free and easy to change counselors if needed. I want you to start living a happier life today. As a listener, you'll get ten percent off your first month by visiting our sponsor betterhelpcomcrimelines dot com slash crime lines. Join over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental Join over one million people who have taken charge of their mental health. Again, that's better help aglp.com/crime Again, that's betterhelpcomcrimelines, HELP, dot com slash crime lines. This episode is brought to you by candy crush episode is brought to you by Candy Crush saga. The holidays can be pretty The holidays can be pretty hectic. So take a little time for yourself with the ultimate Some take a little time for yourself with the ultimate holiday tree. The classic Mach three puzzle Candy Crush saga. And right now you can catch the limited time events, sweet surprise season, and win sweet daily rewards like a super rare party booster and up to 10 gold And right now, you can catch the limited time events, sweet surprise season, and win sweet daily rewards like a super rare party booster and up to ten gold bars. Don't miss out. Play Sweet Surprise season in Candy Crush Saga, and crush it this holiday season now until January first. Download from the App Store, Google Play, or Windows Store for free. Terms and conditions apply. Now of the people Mike had relationships with who would talk to the police, they all said they had never met Kathy, though Mike was open with pretty much all of them. The arrangement was just sex, and Mike was upfront about that. Most if not all of them knew he was married. But Lisa was the name Mike had flagged in the interview, but they had not been able to figure out who she was right away. The way they finally found out who Lisa was was through Mike's phone. Like a lot of people who cheat on a partner, Mike was very good at deleting messages. But by pulling his phone records, they were able to find a number that was called pretty much more than any of the other sexual partners Mike had. It showed up again and again in the two months leading up to Kathy's murder. And then all contact with that phone number stopped abruptly after the murder. They found the number belonged to a twenty four year old woman named Alyssa Jackson. Alyssa and Lisa not only sound alike, but it turned out that Alyssa Jackson went by the nickname Lisa. She lived less than a mile from Kathy and Mike's house, though she was a civilian, she lived with her parents, and one of her parents was in the military. Lisa had been developing feelings for Mike beyond this casual relationship he had offered her. And this was evidenced by the text messages and emails between them. Though they were deleted, many were recovered. And unlike the other people Mike was sleeping with, Lisa actually saw Cathy once. Mike and Kathy went to the movie theater where Lisa worked while she was on shift. She didn't say anything to either Mike or Kathy, but she did text to Mike later that it hurt her feelings for him to bring his wife on a date to where she worked. Lisa clearly wanted Mike to leave Kathy, but Mike had told the CID investigators that that was not going to happen. He said he was a sex addict, so his affairs had really nothing to do with Kathy or the state of the marriage. They had to do with his own issues. According to Mike, he was just going to keep this double life going as long as he could. He managed to compartmentalize this happy marriage to Kathy and the Craigslist affairs. Now I do want to take just a very quick second to talk about sex addiction, which is a little controversial, particularly when we are giving it a label of an addiction I personally think that it is best to think of a sex addiction similar to a gambling addiction. Compulsive gambling is very often not about money. There is something else at the root of the issue, then an obsession with money or else people would stop gambling when they began losing money. There's more to it than that. And sex addiction is similar. It isn't always about sexual drive. And the root of the issue needs to be treated preferably before it starts negatively impacting the person's life. At this point in Mike Walker's life though, it seemed he was able to control things well enough that Kathy was completely in the dark as were his friends and his coworkers. This hadn't started impacting his life negatively up until someone went into his house and murdered his wife. And the CID investigators really wanted to talk to the person they suspected did that, Lisa Jackson. But because Lisa had no military affiliation and this was looking like it was not going to stay a military case, the FBI joined the investigation. Now the FBI has jurisdiction because the military reservation is under federal oversight and not state. The agents first attempted to speak to Lisa by showing up at the movie theater where she worked unannounced, but she wasn't there. They did talk to a coworker who we are going to call Donna. Donna was also a friend of Lisa, so they would talk about things like relationships. And she could confirm that Lisa was indeed dating a married man who she had fallen in love with. The investigators asked Donna about Lisa's movements on the weekend of Kathy's murder. As for the day of the killing, Donna hadn't seen Lisa, but she did see her the next day. Both Lisa and Donna were scheduled to open the theater. And prior to opening as they were doing their various tasks, Lisa was clearly upset. She was ringing her hands she was pacing around and she was muttering things about how she had hurt somebody. She did it for him and he loves me, things like that. Now Donna wasn't entirely sure what Lisa was talking about, and in fact, she assumed Lisa meant that she had hurt someone's feelings, not that she was saying she actually hurt anyone physically. So as Lisa cried about hurting someone, Donna tried to comfort her saying the things you would say like how she was sure the other person would eventually get over it. Now these words of consolation to network, of course, and Lisa went to speak with the manager before she left work early. And that was the last time Lisa was at work. The FBI agents then reached out to Lisa's parents who Lisa lived with as far as they knew. The parents told them that Lisa wasn't living there anymore. She had moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, to stay with family. This was quite an abrupt move from Hawaii all the way to Indiana. But at least the authorities knew where she was. Yes, Lisa had left Honolulu. She had left Hawaii, but she wasn't exactly on the run She had left Hawaii but she wasn't exactly on the run either. They were able to put a tail on Lisa in Indiana while they were pulling her phone records and continued their investigation. Though Lisa and Mike had both deleted hundreds of texts and emails between them, they were able to largely be recovered. And they showed that contrary to Mike's story, The relationship appeared to be mutual. In these text messages, exchange up to the day of the murder, there was no indication in any of them that a mike was trying to get away from Lisa. It was quite the opposite. Mike sent a message saying he wanted to be with Lisa and someone was in the way. Now it's not hard to figure out that the someone was Mike's wife, Kathy. That message was barely coded, but there were other texts that seemed to be in some sort of light code that they did not have obvious context for. The one that would become the most relevant here though was where Mike referred to his, quote, deepest desire. But there was nothing in the texts or emails between the two spelling out what that desire was. So the conversation around this deepest desire must have happened in person or on the phone. And the investigators very much wanted to know what this referred to. It did take some time months in fact, but in April, twenty fifteen, five months after the murder, the Federal Grand jury returned with an indictment for Lisa Jackson. Grand jury proceedings are sealed, but it was reported that Lisa's parents were called to testify. The authorities had enough to arrest Lisa Jackson who was still in Indiana and they charged her with Kathy's murder. The hope was that after the arrest, she would talk to them and would let them know what if any role Mike Walker played in this. Because they solidly suspected him at this time. Because it wasn't just texts with Lisa they recovered. They also pulled ones with other sexual partners. And in one text, Mike said he was bisexual and his wife didn't know and that he wanted to be free to live life how he wanted. Now that's a far cry from Mike saying he was happy with his wife and keeping these two lives separate. He is saying to another person he wanted to be free. So while they suspected Lisa Jackson was the one who carried out the murder, they suspected it was at Mike Walker's request. Now fortunately for this investigation, Lisa Jackson did talk to the investigators. She had a lot to say. I mean, she was probably a little hesitant at first, but then they showed her where. In that initial interview with Mike, where he called her a psycho who wouldn't leave him alone, THAT SEEMED TO WARM LISA UP TO THIS CONVERSATION. SO LISA TOLD THE INVESTIGATORS THE BACKROUND ON HER RELATIONSHIP with Mike Walker and how she had fallen in love with him in a large part because he accepted and understood her. Early on in their relationship, Lisa confided to Mike that she dealt with severe mental illness, including psychosis. She had been on medication, but when her medical insurance lapsed, she could no longer afford her antipsychotic medications. There are programs here in the U. S. That can help people afford their medication in instances like this Now they're not always a guarantee, and they can be difficult to access for someone who is like Lisa, going without medications that prevent things like psychosis. Lisa had even told Mike that during these few months they were together, she was hearing voices. And as Lisa confided in him, Mike Walker also confided in her She said that about two weeks after they had met, Mike told her that his deepest desire was for Kathy to be gone. He went on to say that he couldn't divorce Kathy because one, it was frowned on in his religion and two, he couldn't afford it. But if Kathy died, he would get four hundred thousand dollars in life insurance. Money that would go a long way to security for Mike and by extension Lisa, who believed that they would be together if it wasn't for Kathy. During that conversation, the idea of Kathy dying in a staged rubbery came up later there was a discussion of making Kathy drink something to poison her. So this conversation of Mike wanting his wife gone wasn't a one time thing. It continued for the two months from when they met until Kathy was dead. To show that Mike was the one in control here, The investigators had an email from Lisa to Mike, essentially saying she needed his permission to go forward. On November fourth, Mike sent Lisa an email that read, you have my permission, the sooner, the better. And here, Lisa, is confirming to the authorities that these emails are referring to a planned murder. Lisa decided to try on November eleventh or twelfth to kill Kathy. But when she got to the house, the doors and windows were all locked. Cathy was worried about security after the break in of the car and had made doubly sure everything was locked up. The next day when the murder didn't happen, Mike sent a text to Lisa that said, I need my desire taken care of soon. I'm going crazy. Lisa replied, I know daddy cakes because daddy cakes was the nickname she called him. She told him that she ran into a, quote, access problem, and Mike replied that he could help with that. On November fourteenth twenty fourteen just days later, according to Lisa, the two met up in the gym parking lot near both of their houses. Lisa said she would try to kill Kathy that night. Lisa told her he would either leave a window unlocked or he would leave a spare key in the gravel near the back door. He would text her later which one it was. A text of just the word good meant to go through the window and a text that said bad meant to use the key. And that night, Mike Walker texted Lisa Jackson the word bad. So around midnight, Lisa walked to the walker home and found the key hidden where Mike said it would be. She entered the kitchen and took a knife from the butcher block. She went upstairs to the bedroom where Kathy was sleeping. Liza then began stabbing her. Kathy woke up during it and trying to get away ended up out of the bed, but she was already seriously injured. So Lisa pretty easily managed to get Kathy on the floor. Lisa said she felt remorse even as she was stabbing Kathy and asked Kathy, do you forgive me? According to Lisa, Kathy said yes before she lost consciousness. Lisa said she stayed in the house for another thirty minutes. She wanted to make sure Kathy was dead. While she was there, she turned on the light and went through Kathy's purse to check for her ID because she wanted to be sure she killed the right person. That's how the blood got on the light switch, the purse, and the ID. Lisa also confirmed that they timed the murder plans for when Mike had that airtight alibi. Lisa's story matched the evidence at the scene perfectly as well as made sense of the email and text communication the agents already pulled. Lisa's confession was incredibly valuable. I am going to interject something right here. Religious reasons were cited as for a reason why Mike claimed he couldn't get a divorce. I personally do not buy it. Divorce is definitely not favored in the LDS Church short of adultery or abuse, but Mike said he wanted to be out of his marriage so he could live his life the way he wanted. And the way he wanted also was not in line with the church's teachings either. Engaging in sex work and casual sex would have been worse than divorce in the eyes of the church. If he planned to just live his life the way he wanted, what difference would a divorce make? It would only matter in the eyes of the church if he intended to stay in the church, which is definitely not what he seemed keen on doing. So personally, I think the real motive was one hundred percent money. Not only did he not wanna split everything fifty fifty in a divorce, he would walk away with everything plus four hundred thousand dollars in life insurance, which was more wealth than the couple currently had. The stigma of divorce just does not ring true to me as a motive here. But a motive and Lisa statement were not all the authorities would need to get an indictment against Michael Walker. Walker. Lisa was a confessed Lisa was a confessed killer. She had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. She was unmeticated at the time of the murders and admitted to hearing voices, and at the time of the confession, she was back under significant psychiatric medications. A defense attorney could tear her credibility apart without even breaking a sweat. They could say that Mike broke up with her in the gym parking lot that day. Not that he told her to kill Kathy, and she went ahead and killed Kathy and set him up to get back at him. Now, right or wrong, fair or not, that is how it would play out. The FBI looked at Lisa's mental health struggles in a different way. They believed that Michael Walker, on hearing Lisa talk about her un medicated mental illness, decided she was the perfect person. To manipulate into killing his wife. They were also working on recovering more deleted messages and emails at this time We do know Mike willingly let them search his phone, but that's because he erased everything. But deleted doesn't always mean completely gone, which is definitely what we saw in this case. Another thing the investigators did in this investigation was to recruit one of Kathy sisters, Julie, to make two recorded phone calls. She was asked to do this after she expressed to investigators that she suspected Mike was involved. Julie and most of Kathy's family hadn't at first suspected Michael. Kathy's father even said so to the media. But over the months, that trust in him began eroding. For Juliet started at Kathy's funeral in New York. York. Mike mentioned that there were no signs of a forced entry into the house and that the murder weapon was a knife from their own Mike mentioned that there were no signs of a forced entry into the house and that the murder weapon was a knife from their own kitchen. So how would a killer get into a locked home without help? And why wouldn't they bring their own weapon? It sounded like the killer was someone who had access to the house or someone gave it to them. And they knew there would be a murder weapon at the ready when they got there. Now who else could have set that up except for Mike? So Julie already suspected Mike when she learned that Mike had posted a dating profile online. It sounds like she wasn't aware that he had multiple secret profiles prior to the murder. To her, it seems like Mike was very eager to move on. To be clear, I'm not putting a timeline on grief or the appropriate time to wait until you start dating again after the loss of a spouse. I'm just explaining the pieces that led to Julie suspecting Mike and it wasn't any one thing but rather the totality of circumstances. Julie ended up making two phone calls to Mike, one before Lisa's arrest and the other after it. And Mike didn't give up too much, but he did make a few odd statements that just added to her overall suspicions of him. Like on the first call, he said that there was even a part of him who didn't even want them to find out who killed Kathy. Now I don't wanna speak for every family of every murder victim out there. But while I have talked to a lot of families in the course of my years of true crime podcasting, I have never heard someone voice but while I have talked to a lot of families in the course of my years of True I have never heard someone voice this. I have heard them say, they know how hard a trial will be when it does happen. They know how re traumatizing it will be. But I've honestly never heard anyone say that there was any part of them that didn't want to know who did this, who didn't want the person responsible to be found to be caught and for there to be justice. So while I try not to judge too strongly on an out of context statement, I will say that this one really hit my ear wrong. And it certainly did so for the family and for the FBI. So as they built this case against Mike, they were fortunate in one regard, and that was that he was in the military. Mike was always going to be easy to find, and they weren't concerned he was going to move out of the area and disappear. It was in November twenty fifteen a year after the murder that the grand jury indictment was handed down against Michael Walker. He was arrested for murder in the first degree and conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree. Friends who had supported Mike through the loss of his wife felt incredibly betrayed at this arrest and when more and more information that led to it came out. Then just a month after Mike's arrest Lisa Jackson pleaded guilty to second degree murder. In exchange for her testimony against Mike the prosecution would recommend she get thirty to thirty three years in prison. Without this plea deal, had she been found guilty of first degree murder she would have gotten a life sentence. And the prosecution would have really benefited from Lisa's testimony because she could give context to those vague text messages and emails. That is something only Lisa could provide. They weren't going to hold her sentencing hearing until after Michael Walker's trial, which was planned for the following year. And Mike did go to trial the following year, but not for Kathy's murder. Pre trial motions delayed that trial, but other crimes had been uncovered during the investigation. The first was that on Mike's computer, They didn't just recover emails with men and women he met on Craigslist. They also found, child's appeal abuse material, which included ninety two images and nineteen videos. They were on his laptop. So Mike was charged with possession of child pornography, which is the legal wording for having child sexual abuse material. And due to Mike's admission of charging for sex through Craigslist, he was then charged with solicitation. This was taken care of in the military courts, so this was a court martial. Mike pleaded guilty to the Solis citation charge, but not guilty to the possession of child's sexual abuse material. His attorney said that Mike didn't put the files on his laptop. He said Mike traded files and even hard drives with other people and he was unaware they were even on his computer. But Mike was found guilty in twenty sixteen on both charges and the military judge ordered a rank reduction two years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. The next year in twenty seventeen, Mike went to trial, but again, not on the murder. He was charged in yet another crime. Eighteen came forward and disclosed that Mike had sexually abused him at a boy scout event in twenty fourteen. The charge also included assault by battery and communicating a threat. Mike was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. So by the middle of twenty seventeen, Mike had been to trial twice and racked up twelve years combined in his sentences and yet the trial for murder kept getting delayed. It was delayed once again in August twenty seventeen just a week before the trial was scheduled to be in. This was a pretty big reason to delay the trial. It had to do with the admissibility of Mike's interview on the day he found Kathy's body. This was the interview with Mike where he asked for a lawyer and the agent kept questioning him. And then Mike said he didn't want to talk and the agent kept going. The prosecutors knew they were not going to be able to use all of that videotaped statement because Mike invoked his rights, but they still wanted to use some of it. However, the defense said the whole thing should be thrown out. They argued that Mike should have been given his Miranda warning before they started talking at all, not after the lunch break. And then when he was read his rights and invoked them, that should have doubly stopped the talking. The whole statement, according to the defense, violated his rights. The judge agreed with the defense, the statement was out, but the prosecution, of course, appealed this decision and they eventually got some of the statement back in. They just didn't get as much in as they wanted, but it was more than the defense wanted the jury to hear. The defense also tried to get the phone calls with Julie thrown out. Though Mike didn't say anything super incriminating, what he did say wasn't entirely great for him either. But those recordings were going to be allowed in. This entire process delayed the trial and it wouldn't be settled for two more years. In September, twenty nineteen. It had been nearly five years since Kathy's murder. Though both suspects were in custody within year, Her family was dragged through this back and forth in court. In the end of Michael Walker folded, a week before the trial was finally going to happen and took a plea deal. His attorney said Mike took the offer when it came, indicating he may have pleaded out earlier if he was given the chance to. Mike, like Lisa Jackson, had made the deal force second degree murder giving him the hope of release from prison one day. He admitted that what Lisa Jack and said happened was more or less true. He conspired with her to kill Kathy, but he claimed he didn't think it was really going to happen. He said he was genuinely shocked and upset to come home and find Kathy Depp. And here's another part of Mike Walker's story that I just don't buy. I get that maybe the reality of it didn't really click until it happened, but the idea that it wasn't going to happen at all? I don't believe him. Lisa had gone to the house to kill Kathy, three days before and couldn't get in. That's a point where Mike could have gotten the message that Lisa was set on doing this. He could have backed out then if he didn't really want her to do it instead, he left a key for He could have backed out then if he didn't really want her to do it. Instead, he left a key for her, so her second attempt would be successful. It sounds to me like not only did he think it was going to happen, he very much wanted to facilitate it. The court accepted his plea deal and with Michael Walker's case finally resolved. They moved on to sentencing both him and Lisa. At sentencing, Kathy Walker's family said that they believed Lisa when she said she asked Kathy for forgiveness and that Kathy gave it. They too forgave Lisa and they asked the judge to give her the minimum sentence. They said they were not seeking any type of revenge or vengeance. And Lisa's defense attorney, of course, asked for the minimum as well They pointed to Lisa's documented mental illness, which was one she was diagnosed with at twenty one. NOW THAT SHE WAS MEDICATED AND STABLE. SHE UNDERSTOOD WHAT SHE DID. SHE FELT REMORES AND SHE DESERVE TO HAVE SOME MERCY. The judge then sentenced Lisa Jackson to thirty years in prison. According to the Federal inmate lookup, she is scheduled for release in November twenty forty. When it was Michael Walker's turn, he apologized to his in laws saying he would do anything if he could bring Kathy back. Of course, his chance to act and prevent Kathy's death had long since passed, but Cathy's family still expressed forgiveness towards him. The US attorney asked for thirty to thirty three years, which was the same as they asked for for Lisa Jackson, and Mike's defense asked for twenty four to thirty years. The judge told Mike that Lisa may have wielded the knife, but he was the one in control. He knew that she was mentally ill and he used that. Lisa did what she did because he told her too. The judge then handed down a thirty five year sentence, which was longer than the prosecution asked for and five years longer than Lisa's sentence. This sentence was a statement as to who was more culpable in the court's eyes. The US attorney said after the sentencing that Michael Walker and Alisa Jackson were held accountable for their actions, and that the hearing brought this tragedy to a close. And for the US attorney, I am sure that was true. He turned his attention to the next case, the next family, the next pursuit of justice. But for Kathy Walker's family, for Michael and Lisa's families, for the friends who felt grief and then betrayal. Let's just say that closure isn't a word that families and friends of victims and of perpetrators throw around so easily. For them, it will never really

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be over. But reaching

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the point where you can forgive

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is sometimes going to just have

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to be enough.