When William Walker married his new wife,Uloma Curry-Walker, some friends thought it would never last. William was a Firefighter in Cleveland, Ohio and had already been through one divorce, Firefighters have a high rate of divorce due to the nature of their work and the stresses involved. But no one foresaw the events surrounding the way this marriage would end.
From the beginning, Uloma seemed cold and unhappy when the two were together, but no one had any idea what was going on in her head. You see, Uloma had some problems that were unknown to the family and friends, but she also had a solution. Just four months into her marriage, she decided to kill her new husband to collect his 100,000 dollar insurance policy. But what she didn’t know is that her plan had one major flaw in it from the start.
Now the newlywed wife who stood trial accused of soliciting her firefighter husband’s killing to collect his insurance money and on Friday was convicted of aggravated murder. And the flaw in her scheme? His ex-wife was still the beneficiary of his policy.
Uloma Curry-Walker, 45, is facing what could be a sentence of life in prison without parole for the November 2013 slaying of her husband William Walker, whom she had married just four months earlier. Jurors deliberated for less than two hours before coming back with the guilty verdict according to reports on .
According to Prosecutors Mrs. Curry-Walker was close to financial ruin having run up tens of thousands of dollars in debt, but came up with a plan to fix all that. She allegedly asked her then-17-year-old daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend to find someone to kill her husband so she could collect his insurance money. But unbeknownst to Uloma, William had not gotten around to changing his beneficiary from his ex-wife.
Testimony in court, showed that Curry-Walker gave the daughter’s boyfriend, Chad Padgett a down payment of $1,000 to carry out the slaying. Padgett then got his cousin Chris Hein to kill Williams, but he failed in an attempt. Hein then hired Ryan Dorty to carry out the killing. Dorty was more successful, ambushing Walker as he returned home from a fast food run for his wife and shot him four times.
Not being total idiots, the daughter, Padgett, Hein and Dorty all turned states witnesses against Curry-Walker at trial as part of plea deal for their roles in the murder conspiracy. In exchange, they got sentences ranging from 18 years to life to Dorty’s 23 years to life. Adult charges were not pressed against the daughter, she will only spend a month in a juvenile detention center.
Initially, Uloma confessed that she killed her husband because he was abusive, but produced not testimony to back that up. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 8. Friday would have been the couple’s fourth wedding anniversary.