Walker now faces a sentence of 20 years to life in prison. He will be sentenced by Circuit Judge Bo Hollingsworth April 7 at 1 p.m.
“We’re pleased with the verdict, and we’re very appreciative of the job the District Attorney’s Office has done,” Harrell’s daughter Becky Crews said after the verdict was read. “Since the day after it happened, from the beginning, they’ve been very professional and have gone out of their way for us. They walked us through the whole process, which was very helpful. We are very impressed with their professionalism, and I want to let people know what a great job their doing serving the people.”
Leigh Jordan, also Harrell’s daughter and employee at the shop, said, “I know this has been a very hard work for both families, ours and his. But his daughters still have a daddy in this world. They can still visit him, even though he’s in jail. We can’t.”
The defense never disputed that fact that Walker pulled the trigger and fired the fatal shot. Instead, defense attorney Mark Nelson argued that Walker, who is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, was so delusional at the time of the shooting that he was not fully aware of the ‘nature and quality’ of his actions, one of the definitions of legal insanity in Alabama.
Walker’s delusions were documented in detail in a series of videotapes that he sent to the U.S. Marshal Service about a week before the shooting, as well as almost a full day on the witness stand. His obsessions included demonology, rape, poison gas being pumped into his trailer, stolen ATVs being stored on cement pads at the bottom of lakes and sold through the shop and the belief that he was being drugged and forced to have sex with both women and men while unconscious. He also ranted at length about ‘queers.’
Harrell was apparently at the center of his obsessions, which both sides conceded had absolutely no basis in reality. In addition to moving stolen parts through the shop, Walker believed that Harrell was a homosexual who nevertheless took payment for having sex with women. Walker also testified at one point that he saw Harrell morph into a demon minotaur, his head replaced by a bull’s head with no horns.
Walker was also convinced Harrell and his ex-wife, among hosts of other people, were FBI agents, operatives or plants. He said that he had worked briefly as an FBI agent but had backed out when he found out that he would have to participate in the rape of female recruits before he could be fully inducted. He believed he was a U.S. Marshal instead.
Walker spent a great deal of time documenting what he apparently believed were stolen parts. He said that about six years before the shooting Harrell had told him to stop ‘or something might happen to those pretty little girls of yours.’ This, he said, was one of the major reasons he wanted his boss dead.
He said that he was first ordered by the Marshals to execute Harrell about three or four months before the shooting. On the day of the shooting, he said he heard the voice of God in his car, telling him ‘You know what you have to do.’
Walker said he then asked for a sign. When he got to work and saw that Jordan and Harrell’s son, who also worked in the shop, were both out sick. Since Walker had reservations about killing Harrell in front of his children, he said he interpreted their absence as his sign.
Walker shot Harrell with a 9 mm automatic handgun in front of two other employees. He then went to his car, got a brief case and called information to get the main number for the Marshal Service in Washington, D.C. He was on the phone with a chief inspector when Oxford police arrived at the scene. Walker was subdued by the Oxford officers, although the investigation was later handed off to the Talladega County Sheriff’s Office. Walker was also charged with a federal firearms violation for building a homemade booby trap that used a shotgun shell. While in federal custody, Walker again heard the voice of God, which commanded him to amputate his penis. About two weeks later, Walker pulled apart a prison razor with his teeth and complied.
In his closing argument Monday afternoon, Talladega County District Attorney Steve Giddens pointed to several portions of the videotape where Walker makes a laundry list of alleged misconduct and insults of his boss. Walker’s motivation, according to Giddens, was not the protection of his daughters or accomplishing a mission for the Marshal Service, it was pure hatred, plain and simple.
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