Original subtitles

Why would someone want a hero in our community dead?

Everything looked like it was a robbery gone bad.

However, we did kinda think that there was something

that just wasn't right about this case.

They couldn't find anybody with a motive.

The person comes forward

and says he's been hearing that someone's been

asking around to find a hit man to kill William Walker.

When that story broke, it took my breath away.

This whole thing was a ruse from the start.

We have a monster here.

And she kept repeating, he's going to kill me.

And he shoots my daughter.

That's about the only time in my career

that I just wanted to shoot him.

You can run.

You can't hide.

Being a first responder, you leave your house in the morning

and, you know, you're not sure if you're

going to come home at night.

Whether you're a fireman or policeman,

it's a dangerous job,

and you never know what's around the corner.

William Walker joined the Cleveland

Fire Department in 1998.

He spent 15 years with the department

and was a member of the elite Rescue Squad 4,

which meant he was highly trained and highly skilled

in some of the department's most dangerous rescues.

I would work with him on Squad 4 four days a week.

Very, very proud guy.

He--he was a go-getter.

He was fun, intelligent,

knew how to communicate very, very well.

You know, he was a character. He was.

I loved being around him. He was a good guy.

We both worked part-time at an arena

where the Cleveland Cavaliers played.

And William Walker was just a really, really nice guy.

In August 2013, I attended a ceremony in which

William Walker was promoted to lieutenant

at the mayor's office in Cleveland.

He was a very well-respected firefighter.

And the fact that he was promoted

showed that he was a great firefighter

and well-respected not only in the community,

but within the ranks.

In 2005, Will meets Uloma.

She's a single mother with a 9-year-old daughter

from a previous relationship.

The two of them start dating.

He talked of her often.

She was, you know, in love with Will.

He's been married before.

He has two children.

In fact, Will's kids say they kind of

see Uloma as a second mother.

She was providing home health care

for prominent families in Cleveland,

which means she was a caregiver,

a job that requires a lot of compassion.

If you're not involved with firefighters and nurses

and docs, it's crazy.

There's nothing like it. It is a second family.

William Walker found out that Uloma had cancer.

So he says, hey, let's get married.

That way you can get it on my insurance and we

could take care of all your medical issues.

They had been dating for quite a while, and that

for her to receive the treatments that she needed,

she needed more solid health insurance.

William and Uloma's neighborhood

is on Cleveland's East Side.

William Walker took care of his neighborhood

just like any policeman or fireman

would take care of their neighborhoods in the city

that you work for.

Cleveland is a fairly large city situated

on Lake Erie in the Midwest.

It does have its challenges, like every big city.

While I was covering crime there,

we had upwards of 120 homicides one year.

Unfortunately, Cleveland has been listed in the top ten

crime-infested cities, or highest crime rate,

for a number of years.

And we were trying to get crime to go on a down slide,

but it's a never-ending battle.

Uloma and Will have now been married for four months.

They're packing up the house because they bought a property

outside of the city, and they're going

to move there and retire.

At about 8:00 p.m., William and Uloma

were packing their home when Uloma sent William

to a local fast food restaurant.

When William returned, he was ambushed outside of his home

and shot multiple times.

Lieutenant Walker was gunned down as he was opening

the side door to his home.

First responders on scene were people

who knew Lieutenant Walker,

who were with the fire department and the EMS,

who had worked closely with them.

My brother Dave was on duty at Station 17 that night,

and one of the Arson investigators

took a phone call.

And he said to Dave, he goes, Will Walker was just shot.

Dave called me and he says, Will just got shot.

He's going to Metro.

I pulled into Metro, parked the car,

ran into the emergency room, and that's

where the scene unfolded.

It was surreal.

This isn't what you expect to happen to this guy.

I'd say maybe a dozen or so firefighters

in the emergency room.

And we could see him, he was in Trauma Bay 1.

And we could see the doctors, nurses,

and all the specialists in there working on Will

for a gunshot wound.

They gave him everything.

They knew he was a firefighter.

They did everything that they humanly,

possibly could have done.

We had some pure promise that maybe

Will was going to survive this.

Because the way they kept working him, I mean,

they could have called that code a long time

before they actually did.

And the doc did come out, and he came right to me.

We knew each other.

And he says, you want to go say goodbye to Will?

And I said, absolutely.

So I walked in there.

I held his hand for a short time.

I gave him a kiss on the forehead

and told him I loved him.

And, I mean, the nurses crying, firefighters crying.

It was a rough time.

I was one of the first supervisors on scene.

I met with the Homicide unit.

At that time, William Walker and Uloma, his wife,

had already been transported to the hospital.

We searched the property and we found four shell casings,

which was extremely helpful.

We also came up with a theory.

Detective Lynch and myself, we noticed

that William Walker pulled the car

to the back near the garage.

So what we devised is, someone had to be back there

before William Walker got there.

And it appeared that somebody jumped out

from either the garage

or where the garbage cans were behind the house

and, while William Walker was putting his keys in the door,

surprised William Walker and shot him four times.

So there are dozens and dozens of homicides

each year in Cleveland,

but when a firefighter is killed,

people definitely take notice.

The nature in which William Walker was killed

was shocking.

The fact that he was off duty outside of his home,

seemingly minding his own business,

and then gunned down viciously,

his homicide became the biggest story in the city.

All eyes were on the William Walker case.

Everyone wanted to know, who did it?

We have to find out what, why, who?

We already know where, which is a good thing.

But we have to find out the facts.

It didn't appear to be a random attack.

The neighborhood had one way in and one way out.

So anyone who was in that neighborhood

had a reason to be there, or at least some sort of intent.

So our job now is to start interviewing witnesses.

So we have to interview Uloma and find out

a little more about, you know, what had happened,

what she had heard.

Yeah, yeah.

Right now, the way we're looking at the case is,

Uloma is a victim because her husband

was just shot and killed.

However, we did kind of think that there was something

that just wasn't right about this case,

and hopefully it's going to come out

during the investigation.

Mm-hmm.

So interviewing Uloma, she said that she was in the house,

and then she heard William calling for help.

She finds William laying on the ground

with a lot of blood.

And right away she calls 911 to report that

her husband has been shot.

She was hysterical, and everything looked like

it was a robbery gone bad.

Some of those first responders

who say just that she had a fairly odd response,

in that she acted hysterical, but then also

was kind of reserved.

And asked, you know, is he still alive yet?

And in a way that didn't settle well

with those first responders,

people who see these kind of tragic things

regularly enough to kind of know

how people typically react.

Detectives, of course, were trying to establish

why someone would want to kill him.

That was the big question is, you know,

what was his private life like?

And why would someone want William Walker,

a hero in our community, dead?

I never knew there was any strife at home with him.

He was a private guy.

He didn't speak to anybody that I know

within our office of any issues with his home life.

Now, when it comes to in-depth information--

you know, who necessarily liked who

or who may have had a tense relationship--

we don't necessarily know all of that.

That is kind of some of the questions

that I ask that it's like, you know,

did you get along well with Lieutenant Walker?

Or were there, you know, issues there?

There were never any problems reported at the home.

He was an upstanding member of the community,

and his neighbors loved the fact

that they had a lieutenant firefighter

living in their neighborhood.

We were clueless.

Number one, it was Will Walker.

You know, that was the guy you would

never expect to have an enemy.

I know of not a single guy that had a grudge against him.

Our next progression is that we have to get back out there

on the streets and we have to knock on doors

because we don't have any current leads.

The neighborhood he was in was in a rougher part of town.

And he did his civic duty there,

trying to change that neighborhood.

He told us about drug dealers

that he got chased out of the neighborhood.

They wanted to get out

of that neighborhood that they were in.

They bought a little place out in the country.

I remember him showing me pictures

of the house from the back porch overlooking

the land he bought.

So he was--he was very much looking forward to that move.

And that was what was so hard about,

I think, the initial investigation

for the Cleveland Police Department,

was they couldn't find anybody with a motive.

Just a few days after the shooting,

there was a candlelight vigil outside

of William Walker's home.

Hundreds of people came out.

There was fire engines and police cruisers.

Friends, family, neighbors, you name it,

all came out in support of William Walker.

Oh, that was a well-attended vigil to honor him.

And it wasn't just firefighters there.

I mean, we--we stand shoulder to shoulder

with the fire community, but that was his community

that was out on the street that day.

There was that many people. They were hugging on us.

Yeah, Will was that type of guy.

William was part of the firefighter family,

so therefore Uloma was also part of that family.

There was an outpouring of support

from fellow firefighters, who even chipped in

to help pay for Uloma's living expenses

after William's death.

We let the investigators do their thing.

They pulled out all stops to try to find out

what happened to Will.

We stood back and we waited for information

to trickle down through our union.

They were probably the best source

of communication and intel on what actually happened.

There was nothing for a long, long time of real substance.

Because it was a stale, stale atmosphere

with the case for a long time.

They don't know where to go with this investigation

until Crime Stoppers and Cleveland Fire Department

offer a reward for information leading

to whoever it was that killed Lieutenant William Walker.

We sincerely hope that someone

will step forward and provide some information

to solve these senseless crimes.

And eventually, what the knocking on doors

and handing out flyers did was,

I actually received a call

that had some information about the shooting.

As a result of that, a person comes forward

and says he's been hearing that someone's been

asking around to find a hit man to kill William Walker.

They gave a name:

Chad Padgett.

And Chad Padgett is the boyfriend of Uloma's daughter.

They weren't sure if Chad was the actual shooter,

but they knew that Chad was involved in the shooting.

Uloma had a daughter from a previous marriage

who was dating a Chad Padgett.

They were living in the same home

as Lieutenant Walker.

According to him, the night of the murder,

he was on the West Side of Cleveland,

and he was watching a football game.

While looking at his phone records,

we see that he's actually right in the area,

or at least his phone is right in the area

of where the murder occurred.

Investigators found that in the days before the murder,

Chad Padgett was sending text messages

asking for a ham or a hammer, which is slang for a gun.

And we also had other numbers that he had been calling

the night of the murder.

Of course, his girlfriend's number

is in there, Uloma's daughter.

However, we come up with two new numbers.

We come up with the number for a man

by the name of Christopher Hein.

And we come up with a number for a man

by the name of Ryan Dorty.

Investigators didn't know

which suspects to be looking at.

The phone records came in,

especially the text message records, that then gave them

a clear identity to who the defendants were.

As a matter of fact, Ryan Dorty was in jail.

Ryan Dorty is already a convicted criminal

serving 15 years for an unrelated robbery.

Dorty was low-functioning, had a large criminal record.

A violent individual, but someone who I don't think

had the intellectual capacity to really

realize the depth and impact of what he was doing.

Of course, he doesn't want to tell us anything.

A major portion of this case was the cell phone records.

We knew that Christopher Hein,

he supplied the gun in this case.

We could see from his text messages

that he had bought and sold and was involved

in dealing with firearms.

So what are we thinking now?

That someone hires Chad Padgett

to kill William Walker.

So Chad Padgett doesn't want to kill him,

so he gets ahold of Christopher Hein.

He's able to get guns.

Christopher Hein gets ahold of Ryan Dorty.

Ryan Dorty decides he'll be more than happy

to kill William Walker.

So, Chad Padgett, we arrest him after his interview.

Police get a DNA sample from Chad Padgett,

and it turns out to be a direct match to the shell casings

found in the Walkers' yard.

So we know now that Chad Padgett had handled

the rounds that went into the gun that

had killed William Walker.

We finally are able to speak with Uloma's daughter.

She wants to come in and give us some information,

and she wants to cooperate.

And she actually is willing to take a polygraph test.

Police interview Uloma's daughter.

At the time of the murder, she was only 17 years old.

It's typical protocol to not name minors

unless they're being charged as an adult.

And to have all this attention being brought on you

could be very difficult for a teenager.

And during the polygraph and the information she provided,

she tells us the story of what actually went on.

Her mother, Uloma, actually wants William Walker dead.

She talks to her daughter and asks if she has anybody

that would kill William Walker.

The interviews were key at this point.

Chad Padgett gives us Uloma's name

and tells us that Uloma actually offered him

$10,000 to kill Will.

And Uloma also gave him $160

to purchase a gun from Christopher Hein.

Christopher Hein, he said he's certainly not

going to kill William Walker.

So now they got to find somebody else.

Christopher Hein gets ahold of Ryan Dorty.

Ryan Dorty decides he'll be more than happy

to kill William Walker.

They decide they're going to do this

on November 3rd of 2013.

She tells us that her mother wanted William Walker dead.

And she wanted him dead for the insurance money.

What we learned is that on the night of November 3, 2013,

Uloma had sent William out to go get some fast food

at a local restaurant.

While he was gone, she told Padgett

to get ready to commit the murder.

And that's when Dorty shot him four times in the chest.

One message sent after the murder said, we got a body.

Next, police subpoena Uloma Walker's cell phone

and her financial records.

And they find out that she's in deep financial trouble.

And one of the big reasons

was because she ran up a lot of credit card debt

and she needed money to pay off her credit cards.

William Walker, we believe, had the understanding

that they had more money than they actually had,

and wasn't aware of, necessarily, all of the debt

that Uloma had brought into this marriage

and then accumulated in the short time

since they had been married.

Uloma was in this real tough spot with a brand new house,

and she was going to have to tell

Lieutenant Walker that they--

they financially couldn't afford it,

that they couldn't stay in it.

She knows that Will has a $100,000 life insurance policy.

She believed that there was a large insurance policy

that she would get paid out on, and then she would be able

to give Mr. Padgett a cut in that.

So she comes up with a plan

that she's going to kill William Walker.

All this information that we hear about Uloma, we think,

we have a monster here.

Uloma's daughter was only 17 years old.

She was a juvenile.

There's manipulation involved.

The mother manipulates her and manipulates,

you know, anyone else she can in this case to get--

she had a goal.

We also found out that Uloma didn't have cancer.

This whole thing was a ruse from the start.

From everything the evidence showed us,

she didn't appear to have breast cancer.

She wasn't treated for any of that.

And he seemed to believe that she did.

At least that's what he had told co-workers and friends.

He rescues Uloma, thinking she's dying

or maybe dying of breast cancer.

And how she repays him is by taking his life for money.

So of course, we bring Uloma in.

She does an interview.

Okay.

She refused to admit any wrongdoing or any involvement.

And with all the information and evidence that we had,

we decide to charge Uloma and arrest her that day.

We had no idea what actually went down there

until the story broke.

And when that story broke, it was huge.

It was huge. It took my breath away.

Who would have ever thought it was her?

Nobody did. Nobody had an inkling.

It was heart-stopping.

She was very stoic and didn't appear

to be someone who was charged in her husband's murder.

Her defense was that she had nothing to do with this.

These were these kids, these young adults

that did not like how strict Lieutenant Walker was.

They didn't like how he was controlling her.

And they wanted him gone.

And they used their friends to gun him down,

and that it was their whole orchestrated event

that did this, that Uloma had nothing to do with that.

We had been working on essentially five defendants

and slowly getting statements from them,

and then working out plea negotiations.

Padgett, Hein, Dorty and Uloma's daughter each agree

to take plea deals in return for testifying against Uloma.

Padgett is sentenced to 28 years,

Dorty gets 23 years,

and Hein is sentenced to 18 years.

Uloma's daughter is sentenced to one month

in juvenile detention.

So going into the trial, we had just one defendant

that we were trying, Uloma Curry-Walker.

All four defendants testified against her at trial.

And so that was part of the plea negotiations prior to,

was we wanted that testimony.

The courtroom was filled daily with family members.

And then someone from the Cleveland Fire Department

was in that courtroom for everything.

The prosecution argues that Uloma was motivated by greed.

What did she have to gain here?

She was in this financial trouble,

that she thought that she was getting this large payout.

And it made sense that she had a reason

to have Lieutenant Walker killed.

She would then be able to get out of the debt that she had,

live in this nice new home they had purchased,

and be rid of Lieutenant Walker.

These were these kids.

They weren't the criminals

that were just gunning people down

who they didn't like.

That wasn't in their criminal history,

and it didn't appear to be in their character.

The trial lasts for just about two weeks.

And it takes jurors all of two hours to reach their decision.

It's the first time Uloma Curry-Walker has shown

any emotion, but she breaks into tears

when the jurors announce their verdict.

Uloma Walker was sentenced to life

without the possibility of parole,

which was the best thing that could have happened

for us and all the hard work that was done.

It doesn't bring back William Walker,

but Uloma Walker will never see the light of day again.

What we now know actually happened in this case.

Chad Padgett and Ryan Dorty get out of the vehicle.

Ryan Dorty goes to the back of the house...

And sits and waits for William Walker to come home.

Chad Padgett had already been contacted by Uloma,

basically given some sort of a code saying

that William Walker had left and went to the restaurant

to pick up food.

With Ryan Dorty in the back of the house,

Chad Padgett down the street in the alley,

William Walker pulls into the drive and gets out of his car,

goes up to put the keys in the door to open the door

with the food in his hand.

Ryan Dorty comes from behind the garbage cans at the back

of the house, confronts William Walker, shoots four times,

and hits William Walker with all four shots.

The food drops to the ground.

William Walker drops to the ground.

Ryan Dorty runs up to William Walker,

goes through his pockets to make it look like a robbery

and leaves the scene.

So at this time, Uloma believes

that her dream has come true.

And now that William Walker is dead,

she'll be able to get out of financial debt

and she'll be able to move on with her life

with an extra pocketful of money.

That someone is able to plan this murder, it's unimaginable.

She had a plan from start to finish.

To us, she's nothing but a monster.

Just so rare that you see a female defendant

for a murder-for-hire, for something, like,

just for money, money issues that were not

insurmountable money issues.

There was a wrinkle in Uloma Curry-Walker's plan.

She was doing all of this to get her hands

on Will Walker's $100,000 life insurance policy.

What she didn't realize was, she and Will

had only been married for four months.

Will hadn't had a chance to change

his life insurance policy.

So the beneficiary on that $100,000 life insurance policy

was actually Will's ex-wife, Rita.

It was one of the greatest losses

that I can recall in my career on the job.

Working in such close proximity with him every day

was the ticket.

You know, just the closeness that you felt with him.

And he would just--you know,

we had desks that were less than two feet apart,

and we were that close to each other.

And he would mumble something under his breath,

and I would hear it, and it would just crack me up.

He is--he was--he's just one of those guys

that he's just--the character he was could laugh.

He'd have me howling, laughing so hard.

We were in our office one day and we're dancing.

We're salsa dancing together, right?

We had somebody open up the door, look in, and goes,

uh, we'll be right back.

And they closed the door.

You guys need some alone time in there.

But yeah, he was a great man.

I miss him.

She took someone away from us

that was a good person, who was caring,

and all he wanted to do was take care of people,

including her.

She took him away

and got nothing out of it

other than life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

I can't explain to you why a person

would do something like this.

Some glitch, some wire

that didn't hook up to the right spot.

It seemed like every time we turned around,

there was another body.

So within a 12-square mile, you had nine victims.