Erwin Walker

In later testimony, Walker related that upon arrival at Leyte, he and another officer, a close friend, selected the emplacement for the radar and took routine security measures but did not post a day guard because of standing orders. Walker was ordered to return to his ship. When he returned to the radar site the next day, he learned that elements of an elite Japanese Army paratroop unit had attacked the radar site at sunrise. He learned that John Brake of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, his closest friend, who was also his commanding officer and fellow Signal Corps OCS graduate, had been bayoneted in the neck and disemboweled in the initial assault. Brake survived, and after years of hospital care, managed to live a productive life, despite being paralyzed from the neck down, until his death in 1989. All other members of the unit who had remained at the initial site were killed and horribly mutilated by their attackers, including disembowelment and amputation while they were still alive. It is likely that Walker's experiences witnessing the aftermath of the attack affected him deeply.

While the Supreme Court failed to overturn Walker's conviction or grant him a new trial, it instructed the lower court to delete that portion of Walker's life sentence that excluded any possibility of parole, allowing him to apply to the California Adult Authority for parole and to have his parole application duly considered. Walker applied for parole in 1974, which was granted, and he was released from Vacaville. After a short stay at a halfway house, Walker was released from further parole restrictions. Immediately after leaving prison, he legally changed his name. After obtaining a job as a chemist, he disappeared from public view. Walker died in 2008.

In 1970, Walker filed a habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court of California, which was denied without a hearing. Walker filed a similar petition in the Solano County Superior Court and sought to have his 1947 trial set aside on several grounds, including an allegation that his 1946 confession had been made involuntarily. The case made its way on appeal once more to the Supreme Court of California, which decided the case in February 1974.

In 1961, Walker was declared sane by a newly convened panel of psychiatric examiners. On March 28, 1961, in response to a clemency hearing appeal by Walker, Governor Pat Brown commuted Walker's death sentence to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Walker was sent to the CMF State Prison Facility, Vacaville to serve out his sentence, where he continued studying chemistry while he worked in a laboratory on the prison campus.

Walker's father was a Los Angeles County flood control engineer, and his uncle Herbert V. Walker was a prominent Los Angeles lawyer and Chief Deputy District Attorney. Herbert Walker would later become a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in the 1950s. He actually signed the final ninth death warrant for Caryl Chessman, the "Red Light Bandit," in February 1960 on which Chessman was ultimately executed in the gas chamber on May 2, 1960. Walker graduated from the Hoover School and attended the California Institute of Technology for one year, excelling in electronics and radio engineering.

Walker was sent to death row in San Quentin to await execution of his sentence. At San Quentin, he was diagnosed by a prison psychiatrist as having paranoid schizophrenia. On April 14, 1949, thirty-six hours before his scheduled execution, a corrections officer found Walker unconscious after an apparent suicide attempt in which Walker tried to hang himself with a radio headphone cord wrapped around his neck. He was successfully revived, and the execution was postponed indefinitely while a psychiatric examination was performed.

After his attempted suicide, Walker was examined by a psychiatric board, which delivered its report in April 1949. The examining board reported that Walker was agitated by fear of his impending death and was "negativistic, mute, fearful, and unresponsive and possibly reacting to hallucinations" and frequently lapsed into semi-unconsciousness. The psychiatrists determined Walker "does not know the difference between right and wrong," thus making him insane under the legal standard of the day and ineligible for execution.

Walker was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. After a motion for a new trial and appeal to overturn Walker's conviction and death sentence were rejected in December 1948, Walker's father, Weston, committed suicide by hanging.

In 1948, Eagle-Lion Films released a film that was loosely based on Walker's 1946 crime spree in Los Angeles, He Walked by Night. Walker's character, Roy Morgan, was played by actor Richard Basehart. The film was shot in a semidocumentary format on location in and around Los Angeles. In the film, Morgan is shot dead by police in one of the city's underground drainage tunnels as he attempts to shoot his way out of the police dragnet.

Walker later pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. At his trial on June 2, 1947, Walker's attorney Gerald Frederick Girard cited Walker's previous excellent record, his war experiences, and a family history of mental illness (Walker's paternal grandfather had been confined to a state mental hospital for 32 years). Walker's parents, Weston and Irene L. Walker, testified in his defense. Mrs. Walker stated that Erwin was kind and affectionate while he was growing up but returned from the war as a depressed loner.

On April 25, 1946, LAPD Hollywood division detectives Lieutenant Colin C. Forbes, and his partner, Sergeant Stewart W. Johnson, staked out Starr's home to wait for the suspect's arrival. As Walker approached the house, the detectives emerged to confront him. Walker opened fire, and Forbes was hit in the abdomen at pointblank range after his own pistol jammed. Johnson wounded Walker in the stomach and left leg with at least two bullets from his .38-caliber service revolver. Despite his wounds, Walker escaped on foot using the labyrinth of storm drains under the city. Forbes and Johnson were both rushed to a hospital, where Forbes was found to have a .45-caliber bullet lodged against his spine. He recovered although doctors were unable to remove the bullet and had to leave it in place.

In May 1946, Walker committed another burglary by stealing rolls of safety-detonating fuse and priming cord. To open safes and break locks, Walker made his own explosive, nitroglycerine, by using fuming nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and glycerine. On June 5, 1946, Walker drove to a meat market at the corner of Los Feliz Boulevard and Brunswick Avenue in Glendale, California. According to Walker's court testimony, after severing the lock on the store with bolt cutters, he then put on his own padlock. Walker then hid the bolt cutters in an adjoining area, got into his car, and drove around the block to see if he had been observed. Not seeing anyone, he retrieved the bolt cutters and returned to his car, again driving around the block. Getting out of his car, Walker said he saw a person with a flashlight in the vicinity of where he had hidden the bolt cutters. He watched the person with the flashlight enter a car and drive it toward him.

Roosevelt died in hospital a few hours after the shooting. Walker's abandoned car was found to contain bolt cutters, a loaded Thompson submachine gun, a bag of tools, sap, sash cord, bell wire, hacksaw blades, hand drill, electric drill, crescent wrenches, pry bar, extension cord, hammer, pliers, wire cutters, nitroglycerine, adhesive tape, a percussion-type dynamite blasting cap crimped to a white blasting fuse, and a primer cord attached to the percussion cap. Following the fatal shooting of Officer Roosevelt, Walker abandoned safecracking and briefly worked at several jobs. He then experimented with making California license plates and drivers' licenses, which could be used in selling several cars that he had stolen. By December 1946, Walker was robbing liquor stores at gunpoint.

At 2 a.m., December 20, 1946, three detectives (Officers Wynn, Donahue, and Rombeau) entered Walker's apartment by using a key provided by the owner. Walker, who had been asleep with a .45-caliber pistol at his bedside table, was caught reaching for a Thompson submachine gun on the bed beside him when the three detectives burst into the living room. After a fierce struggle for the submachine gun in which the arresting officers twice shot Walker in the shoulder and broke the butt of a pistol over his head, Walker was finally handcuffed and arrested. According to the detectives, Walker stated: "All right, now, you have me. Do a good job." Detective Donahue asked Walker why he killed the highway patrolman, to which Walker replied that he "had to." When asked, "Did you shoot the two officers in Hollywood?" Walker answered, "Yes." The officers saw that Walker was bleeding badly, and they attempted to make him comfortable by covering him and putting a pillow under his head. Officers testified that Walker stayed conscious throughout the arrest and transport to the hospital.

Detective Wynn would later testify at Walker's trial that on the morning of December 21, 1946, he talked with the petitioner for about an hour at the hospital, and Walker had made statements indicating that he murdered Officer Roosevelt during an attempt to commit a burglary, that Walker had committed the attempted murders of Detectives Forbes and Johnson in addition to various robberies and burglaries, and that his statements were freely and voluntarily made. At the time, Wynn testified that a stenographic reporter named Bechtel came and the conversation was repeated and transcribed in the hospital room at which a doctor and nurse were also present. The detective further testified that he visited Walker two days later at the hospital, where Walker again made admissions. Officer Forbes, who had been seriously wounded by Walker, testified that on December 28, 1946, he talked with Walker at the hospital, and the petitioner made various admissions to him as well.

Detective Wynn told the court that on December 30, 1946, he again visited Walker as he was being prepared for transfer from the hospital to jail. Wynn stated that Walker "kept asking me for opiates" and asked the detective to request some from the doctor. Wynn said he tried to do so but that Walker's doctor refused. In response to a question about his condition, Walker told Wynn that he was "a little weak" but did not complain about any discomfort. En route to jail, Detective Wynn testified that he told Walker that he would like to film a reenactment of the killing of Highway Patrolman Roosevelt and asked if Walker had any objection to which Walker replied he would like to contact his attorney first, Mr. Gerald Frederick Girard of Hindin, Weiss & Girard in Los Angeles. Walker gave Wynn the attorney's card. Wynn stated that after he tried unsuccessfully to reach Girard, he asked if Walker had any objection to going to Griffith Park and Soledad Canyon to recover articles that Walker had left there. Walker stated "he didn't see anything wrong in that." Wynn, Walker, and several officers proceeded to Griffith Park and Soledad Canyon, where the articles were duly recovered, and Walker made additional incriminating statements."

Early in 1945, still on active duty as an Army First Lieutenant, Walker burglarized an auto repair garage, taking a set of tools, voltmeter, and radio tuner. In August 1945, he entered an Army Ordnance warehouse at night and stole seven 45-caliber Thompson submachine guns, twelve .45-caliber pistols, six .38-caliber revolvers, ammunition, holsters, and magazines. Walker was discharged from the Army in November 1945. During his first week of terminal leave, he stole an automobile, changed its license plates, and used it to transfer some of the stolen goods. He next broke into a clothing store and took several pieces of men's clothing. Walker next targeted the warehouses and offices of record and film companies, taking amplifiers, electronic equipment, records, movie projectors, recording turntables, cameras, and other equipment. He rented a garage, fitting it out as an experimental workshop.

After he dropped out of Caltech, Walker worked as a radio operator and police dispatcher for the Glendale Police Department. During World War II, he was conscripted by Selective Service despite his poor eyesight because of his radio and electronics skills. Walker was stationed in Brisbane, Australia, where he attended the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) U.S. Army Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Camp Columbia, Wacol. In 1944, Walker graduated from OCS and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

In June 1944, Walker received his first duty assignment. In November, he received orders transferring him to Leyte Island in the Philippines, where he was placed in charge of a Signal Corps radar detachment with 85 men. Walker was apparently well liked by the soldiers who worked with him, and he was reputed to be more than usually considerate of them.

Although Walker and his men were not combat infantrymen, his unit was not reinforced after the initial assault, and the small detachment endured three days and nights of continuous battle with fanatical Japanese paratroopers, who inflicted many casualties. While a subsequent investigation found no dereliction of duty on the part of any of the officers in the detachment, Walker later testified that he felt responsible for what had happened. After the encounter on Leyte, Walker informed his commanding officer that he could not continue to serve and asked to return to the United States. He was released from active duty in the South Pacific in December 1944, but was promoted to first lieutenant in July 1945, three months after his arrival in the United States.

William Erwin Walker, also known as Erwin M. Walker and Machine Gun Walker (born Erwin Mathias Walker; October 6, 1917− October 7, 2008), was an American police employee and World War II United States Army veteran who is remembered for a violent series of thefts, burglaries, and shootouts with police in Los Angeles County, California, in 1945 and 1946, one of which resulted in a fatality. The film He Walked by Night (1948) was loosely based on Walker's 1946 crime spree.

Not much is known about Walker's early life. He was born Erwin Mathias Walker in 1917 to Weston and Irene Walker, and was raised in Glendale, California. He lived with his parents and a sister. Although nearsighted, Walker was a good athlete. He would later be described as "gentle, affectionate, considerate above the ordinary for the welfare of others, and [giving] no trouble in any way."

Acting on a tip, police located Walker living at a duplex apartment at 1831.mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}1⁄2 N. Argyle Avenue in Los Angeles.