Original subtitles

[somber music playing]

[man] When I look back at the life that I've lived…

it wasn't a life at all.

I've never been a bad person.

I've always been misunderstood,

because I didn't understand myself.

[somber music continues]

[man] I've hurt people.

I've hurt people real bad.

But I've never killed anyone, before.

That's something that I… have to live with every day.

It took me a few years in prison…

to accept the fact that I had killed somebody.

[theme music playing]

[slow rhythmic percussion playing]

[inhales]

Even though I'm… being punished right now,

I continue to punish myself for it.

The individual that is sitting in front of you right now…

would not take responsibility for anything,

back then.

I didn't care about responsibility.

Only thing I cared about was

eat, sleep, and getting high.

[percussion fades]

I was born in 1963 in Rochester, New York.

[soft piano chords playing]

It was very urban and challenging.

During those times, it was really rough on single parents, and kids in general.

Me and my brothers and sisters, we were all close.

If one of us was missing, it was like a missing part of the puzzle

and things just wasn't right.

And, particularly, that part of the puzzle that was missing most of the time was me.

[ominous music playing]

[ominous music fades]

[soft piano chords resume]

When I was enrolled in school, they were always saying that

I was aggressive, or I had a learning disability.

I had no problem learning.

I did have a disability though.

When I was six years old, they put me on medication

'cause I had an incident

where a teacher had took my pants down in front of the whole class

and hit me with a ruler.

This ruler had a brass plate.

I'm a… I'm a child. I'm crying, whatever.

And, uh, after she hit me a few times with the ruler,

she sent me back to my desk.

She turned around, I picked up a chair and I threw it at her.

And then I ran out of the class.

And that was the actual first recording of my blackouts.

'Cause when my mother asked me about it, I didn't remember it.

When I was off medication is when I was going through the blackouts.

They would last anywhere from two hours to three weeks.

I wouldn't know what I was doing.

But everybody else would think that I was acting normal.

And I would be very destructive. I would be very violent.

Very defensive.

[gentle music playing]

[James] I would say

the majority of my life I spent on the streets.

I got into a lot of trouble,

breaking into buildings, doing what I had to do to survive.

Every time you're under arrest or taken into custody,

you're taken to a juvenile facility.

I think I went to about ten of them.

These were places that were supposed to help me,

but they did more harm than they did good.

And this progressed into being a prisoner.

[ominous music playing]

Between 20 and 30, I spent seven and a half years in jail.

Most of the time it was real petty stuff.

My habit was somewhere very high.

I was trying to control my blackouts with alcohol and drugs.

One minute you think you're in control,

the next thing they're in control of you.

I was scared of myself, 'cause I felt myself getting worse.

The blackouts were lasting longer and longer.

And I just had no control.

[ominous music continues]

[James] I was 37 years old at the time the crime happened.

I had just got done smoking crack.

I really don't know what I'm doing, where I'm going.

I'm in the bookstore now.

[unsettling music playing]

[James] They told me that I had killed somebody.

They say I gave them a statement.

True enough. Yeah, I did kill him.

I don't remember none of that.

[unsettling music continues]

[music fades]

[horn sounds]

[poignant music playing]

[woman] The fact that he could take a life,

I couldn't understand it.

It hurt me because that's my brother.

It was real devastating.

My name is Toni Walker-Coleman, and I am James's sister.

[locks clicking]

[tut-tuts]

This is the only family family picture we have with James in it.

We don't have too many pictures

of James.

He was our little chubby teddy bear brother.

You know, he liked to laugh and everything.

My mother made the best out of what she had.

Good days were excellent, but then there were dark days.

She used to drink a lot.

Sometimes we just never knew what person was coming home.

He was the one that would get the worst of it all.

You know, she would get the extension cord at him,

or whatever was in front of her.

You know, but… When she was under the influence, so…

And then he would run away.

Sometimes he would run away for a week or two.

Sometimes during that time, he would get in trouble.

He went to boys' homes, stuff like that, until he graduated to jail.

He just always was locked up.

I can't remember a time

when he stayed home a full year without going back.

I think they call that institutionalized.

[birdsong]

[music fades]

[James, on recording] As a kid, every time you're under arrest or taken into custody,

you're taken to a juvenile facility,

where in the '70s, early '80s,

these facilities were ran by ex-convicts and child molesters.

You're supposed to be safe, but you feel like you're being farmed out

to different families to abuse you.

I internalized a lot of it,

'cause at first I thought it was my fault.

Thought they were doing this because of whatever bad reasons, whatever I'd done.

And, uh, first I implode,

then I explode.

And the rest I just forget.

That's where the blackouts come in at.

It seems like that's pretty much the pattern for that.

If I didn't succeed in hurting myself enough,

then I would hurt somebody else.

That was powerful.

That was powerful.

And, uh, I heard some things I never heard before.

And there was a lot of realization.

I know he's been through a lot.

So that was just more added on.

He was wrong for what he did.

But who are these responsible individuals that did not do their job?

Nobody stepped in.

Instead, they just let it just build up and build up inside him,

and just waited for him to create his next episode in life,

that led him to where he is right now.

And I don't think a lot of people take notice of that.

They see a criminal.

And we see…

a person that grew up in hard times

and needed a lot of love… [voice breaks] …and attention.

That's what we see.

[sobs]

[gentle melodic music playing]

[man] My name is Joe Dominick.

I've been involved in between 200 and 250 homicide cases

over the course of my career.

This case makes my top ten.

It's not just the violence that was used in the case,

it's kind of the totality of the circumstances

that were involved, so…

What I can tell you about the victim in the case, uh…

Mr. Curry was-- There wasn't a lot of information on him.

Uh, I would describe him as a loner.

We actually couldn't reach out to any family members.

His last moments were probably horrendous for him.

Somebody came up behind him and took a box cutter,

and cut him from ear to ear.

At some point he bleeds out and he dies.

I can't think of, probably, a worse death than that, honestly.

[unsettling violins playing]

James Walker's demeanor when we brought him in for the interview

was-- That was the eerie part of the case for me.

Because he was so, like, calm and casual

about this, like, violent crime that he had committed,

and it was just… It was just an unusual confession.

[somber music playing]

[Joe] You know, he asked for a pack of cigarettes,

and we gave him some cigarettes

and he kinda just opened up and started telling us how it came to be

that he had killed, uh, Mr. Curry.

While I'm sitting there talking to him, I'm like, "This guy is pleasant enough."

But it's like I'm looking at pure evil.

You know, this guy is pure evil.

Just to sit there

and to tell you the details about how he killed this victim.

It's just, I don't know. It was just something

that always stuck with me because it was just so bizarre.

As far as James Walker saying that he was emotionally disturbed during the crime,

is… is not something that I buy. I didn't buy it then. I don't buy it now.

[somber music continues]

All right, so this video is from the CCTV that we retrieved from the store.

And what it's gonna show is James Walker getting his courage up to do this robbery.

[clicks]

Uh, this is the victim, James Curry.

He's standing behind the counter,

and this person over here is James Douglas Walker.

[indistinct voices on tape]

So they're just shooting the breeze, nothing happening.

[James, on tape] Well, tomorrow, I don't have to work.

And he's there for a good part of three hours.

I think he's kinda biding his time until the right moment.

I'm gonna fast-forward a little bit here.

And you'll see

James Curry is going to leave the booth.

And here he goes. This is Curry leaving the booth,

and then that's when the murder's gonna occur.

[unsettling music builds]

[Joe] This thing happens real quick, blink of an eye.

In fact, it's happening right now.

[rattling on tape]

[Joe] James Curry's life just got taken away from him.

Here comes Walker.

He gets into the booth,

and now he's going to go through the cash register.

So, there must be something with this cash register,

where there's another drawer that he can't get in,

because he opens the top drawer.

-And there's nothing in there. -[rattling on tape]

[register beeps]

[James] How you open it?

[Joe] Now he yells to James Curry, "How you open it?"

which… I think James Curry was probably already dead at that point.

He's wiping down the cash register,

and eventually he leaves.

So to say that, you know, he was deranged and didn't know what he was doing

at the time that he commits this robbery is basically BS, right?

It wasn't about anything else other than committing this robbery.

That's it. Plain and simple.

This particular crime wasn't a one-time thing for James Walker.

He's cut people in the past and that's kind of his MO.

[unsettling music fades]

[seagulls calling faintly]

[ominous music playing]

[labored breathing]

[man] It was traumatic. It was horrific.

It's something that never leaves you.

[labored breathing]

I learned to deal with it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to forgive

what happened and how it changed me and what it took from me.

It was around 7:30, 7:40 in the morning, and that's when everything happened.

I heard his voice behind me and it felt like a punch,

like a, you know, light tap or something.

I thought he was joking around until I looked down and saw

there was a pretty good size puddle of blood there.

He looked at me and said he was gonna kill me.

It was just pure coldness and no heart.

No… anything, just, "I'm going to kill you."

I felt like this was it,

and I just…

I told him that I have a daughter that's going to be born in October…

[sniffs]

…and I said, "All I want is to see my daughter."

"Take whatever you want out of the store, out of the register."

"I don't care. I just want to see my daughter."

And suddenly, very surprisingly,

and to this day, I still…

It still baffles me, he just suddenly stopped,

and… told me to just wait there ten minutes.

Then he just left.

[music continues]

The police told me they caught him about 15 minutes later,

walking down the street with a big bag of loose quarters

that was taken from the store.

[sniffs]

[seagulls squawking]

[David] I went to the bathroom to check the wounds,

and I pulled a rather large piece of glass out of my throat

from the broken beer bottle.

[clears throat]

I have a very large scar here on the throat.

I also have another scar on the chest where the skin was just ripped off.

Uh, all said, about 13 different wounds.

[melancholic music playing]

I just-- I couldn't understand it. No one could explain it to me,

why he was prosecuted that way.

I got no answers on it when I questioned it.

I can't help but think that maybe if he would have been in jail longer,

the guy he killed would have been alive still, with his family.

[music fades]

[gentle piano chords playing]

[woman] I had a message for Mr. Walker the first time I met him,

and that's that I was going to give him every opportunity

to change the path of his life.

But it was still his choice.

My main concern in supervising Mr. Walker was his substance abuse.

Because that is directly related to his propensity for violence,

and deeply enrooted in his criminal conduct.

About a month and a half into his parole supervision,

he reported to me like he was supposed to,

a routine office report,

and he did disclose to me that he had relapsed over the weekend.

I told him, "Go right over to your drug treatment counselor,

come up with a plan, intensive plan, and call me from there."

And he did it. He did exactly what I asked him to do.

He went directly to his treatment provider

and they did. They came up with an intensive treatment plan

to deal with his re… relapse.

And then I never heard from him again.

The next time I saw James Walker

was when he was in custody.

James came across very, uh, defeated, extremely quiet.

Uh, even his… his body language was that of just sadness.

Almost as if he had realized he just destroyed his life.

But again, focused on the fact that he destroyed his life,

not the life he took.

I can't say that I regret helping him.

I hope I never do.

I hope I never regret trying to help people.

But he chose not to accept the help that he was given.

So, that's on him.

I think his blackouts, if they're real,

um, are because he chooses.

He chooses not to address his mental health,

he chooses not to address his substance abuse,

and then uses that as an excuse to, basically,

slash and kill people and do violent things.

So I don't buy that this is not his fault.

It's completely his fault and completely up to him.

[music fades]

[somber music playing]

[man] James Walker never had a chance.

Someone who's endured a childhood full of trauma

and untreated mental illness and escalating substance abuse,

it affects how they handle stress.

It makes them susceptible to falling into urges

and committing awful, horrible crimes.

[gentle guitar instrumental playing]

[Bill] I'm Bill Easton.

I'm a lawyer here in Rochester, and I represented James Walker.

I am definitely a bleeding heart. Uh, proud of it.

When I met James and began to represent him,

we immediately, uh, went out to get as many records

and to dig into his background

as deeply as we could.

And within six weeks,

we had come across just an overabundance

of records showing a childhood that was just traumatic.

James was one of seven children, uh, born to his mother

from seven different fathers.

His childhood was marked by abuse, neglect,

uh, an utter lack of parental guidance.

The details here are frightening.

"When he was 16 months old,

an unidentified adult placed James on a burning stove."

"James was admitted to the emergency room with second and third degree burns

branded on his buttocks in the shape of a grill mark."

And there was just a history of violence in his family of people being killed.

James's father was an intimidating, violent man

and was, uh, shot and killed

when James was, uh, 15 years old.

So he grew up in a family that was shaped and misshaped by violence.

He had what we call mitigation.

It's not a defense or an excuse to the crime,

but it puts the crime in context.

We set forth why the death penalty

would be inappropriate punishment for James Walker.

[music turns somber]

You know, there are many people

that are afflicted with alcoholism or drug addiction,

and many children are the product of a broken home.

Others are raised by alcoholic parents.

Some experience incarceration of a parent or violence in their family.

A few lose parents to violence.

But what's extraordinary about this case

is not one single factor, but James had all of these.

This is a man whose life was horribly warped,

and he succumbed to factors that we all would have succumbed to

if we were in his position.

[music intensifies, fades]

[poignant music playing]

[man] I was very disappointed in James when I found out what he had done.

You don't have the right to take life. That belongs to God.

I'm Theodore Walker, and I'm the firstborn of seven siblings.

I was about 22 when I finally gave my life to the Lord.

We didn't have what some folk considered the best of life.

I mean, we had to make do.

We would put sugar on bread, and, uh, you know, just to make a meal.

It was a tough bringing-up.

You know, I… I hustled and I sold weed and cocaine, things like that.

But I think he took it a little more extreme than me,

far as the robbin' and things like that.

My brother James always had a physical presence about him.

If he got upset, that young man was somethin' to deal with.

I would say from the age of eight is when it really started manifestin'

where couldn't nobody do nothin' with him when he got angry.

He became a different person, and he really acted out of control.

Like, you're not stopping him. He's not hearing you. He's gone.

In the back of my mind, I always felt James was gonna go too far,

to no return.

I never brought it up front 'cause I didn't want to believe that,

but the signs pointed to it.

[soft footstep]

[click]

[James, on recording] My blackouts was me and my mother's best kept secret.

She didn't want the other kids to know that I had these type of problems.

And she didn't want me to think I'd be treated like I was different.

I always had a home, but when I'm sliding in my blackouts,

and sliding out of them,

I would occasionally

wake up in places where I didn't know where I was.

I'm a kid. I'm supposed to be home with my brothers and sisters.

And I'm waking up behind a building.

And I can't even go home 'cause I don't know where I'm at.

I was afraid. I never knew what was going to happen or when it would happen.

It took place because somebody yelled at me, or somebody abused me.

I wouldn't remember anything 'cause I didn't want to remember.

[poignant music continues]

Absolutely phenomenal, what I heard.

He opened up his heart.

That helped me understand now

what I've experienced with him when he had his blackouts,

you know, because I thought he was just…

That's just James, you know, 'cause he was always a tough character.

But now we know that he was actually not remembering

what he had just did.

He never shared a lot… a lot of his personal stuff.

He bottled it in,

but this James here, that's talking on here now,

he's a changed James.

Yeah. It's a little emotional for me…

to be honest with you.

[sighs]

[James] I'm a better person now than I was before.

From the day of arrest, I have been on medication.

I have not committed a violent act against myself,

or anyone else…

in over 20 years.

I'm gonna need medication and maybe a therapist for the rest of my life,

and it's not because of the crime that was committed.

I needed this before the crime was committed.

[gentle piano music playing]

[Cynthia] He chooses not to address his mental health,

he chooses not to address his substance abuse,

and then uses that as an excuse

to, basically, slash and kill people and do violent things.

The fact of the matter is

when I needed help,

I asked for it.

I'd tell the counselor and the therapist, "This is what I'm going through,

and I don't have my medication."

"Okay, uh, come back next week."

So it's not like I turned completely to drugs.

Being off my medication, I just lost all touch with reality.

But I'm sitting here in front of you now.

I'm not that person.

I will never be that person again.

And I'm no longer ashamed to say, "Hey, I need some help."

[interviewer] Why do you think you committed

two near-identical attacks on men who worked in adult bookstores?

Well, to be totally honest,

because when I was a child growing up in the streets,

those… those people in those places were the ones that hurt me the most.

Simple as that.

If you was downtown,

you could find something to eat,

you could find clothes, you could do whatever.

But it was these people

that use those things as a carrot to harm children,

and I was one of those children that they harmed.

Mentally, I see the people that hurt me,

and I did what I did.

[interviewer] Hmm.

[Theodore, on recording] He never shared a lot of his personal stuff.

He bottled it in.

But this James here, that's talking on here now,

he's a changed James.

That's progress, and I got to take every little bit I can get

when it come to my brother.

And I want to give him all of the positive reinforcement that I can give him

to keep on doin' what he doin', you know. Don't change.

Well, that was very difficult to listen to.

That-- Just hearing his voice

made 20 years of struggle and change worth it.

For me to be the person that I am now, that was like my reward.

You know, I feared myself for a very long time,

because I didn't know myself.

But now that I do, there's nothing to fear.

[music continues]