A woman was convicted of aggravated murder after she had her husband killed shortly after they got married. She was planning to collect the insurance money of the deceased but found out she was not listed as his beneficiary.
Police identified the convicted woman as 45-year-old Uloma Curry-Walker. According to News.com.au, the victim was William Walker, a firefighter. He and Curry-Walker have been married for four months in 2013 before he was killed in November. However, she did not know that Walker’s former wife was still the beneficiary of her husband.
The convicted wife did not receive anything from the firefighter's insurance money, KVUE reported.
What was the plan of Uloma Curry-Walker
Prosecutors of the case said that she had been having problems with her finances, the circumstances of which have not been released by police. She asked her daughter, who was 17 years old then, to find a killer so she could get Walker’s insurance money. The boyfriend of the daughter was also in on the scheme.
Per the testimonies, Curry-Walker gave the boyfriend of her daughter $1,300 to have her husband killed. It was only a down payment but police did not say how much more the convicted woman promised to pay Chad Padgett. Padgett was not the one who actually killed Walker as he asked his cousin, Chris Hein, to do it for him.
Hein failed to kill Walker so they turned to Ryan Dorty.
Uloma asked her husband to get something to eat from a fast food chain on the night he was killed. Dorty shot the victim four times when he was on his way home. Walker and his wife were supposed to move to a house in Cleveland and were packing for the move the night Walker was killed.
Punishment Curry-Walker could receive
Curry-Walker could receive life in prison without the possibility of parole as punishment for the death of Walker.
Hein received 18 years behind bars while Padgett got 28. Dorty received 23 years to life in prison. The three agreed to testify against the then-suspect for a lesser sentence. The daughter, who has not been identified, will only spend one month at a juvenile detention center.
Curry-Walker initially claimed her deceased husband was abusive towards her which is why he had him killed.
The prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to back Curry-Walker’s claim that Walker was in any way abusive to her when he was still alive. Cleveland .com reported that Jurors deliberated for "less than two hours before coming back with the (guilty) verdict on Friday." The sentencing of Curry-Walker is on August 8.
