Anthony Guy Walker

On January 15, 1979, just across the street from the Lenawee County Sheriff's Department in Michigan a house caught on fire.  Inside authorities would find the bodies of nineteen year old Theresa Carey and twenty-four year old Yolanda Madison.  They would also find the body of Yolanda's ten month old daughter, Jessica.  It was apparent fairly quickly that Theresa and Yolanda had not died in the fire but had been shot prior to the fire being started.  The poor young baby had perished due to the fire.  

The case had very few leads but was doggedly pursued by authorities.  In 2002 new DNA testing was done and authorities believed they found their man in Anthony Walker.  I cannot tell you why but it was another eight years before he would be charged in the triple murder. 

Anthony Walker was no stranger to law enforcement.  In fact when the DNA testing confirmed his involvement he was already in prison, and had been since 1996 for a charge of 1st degree rape.  He had also been a suspect in the 1975 murder of twenty-four year old Arleen Salcedo whose body had been found in a field.  So in 2010, after being charged with the murders in Lenawee County the fact that he plead to the murders of Theresa Cary and Yolanda Madison (he would avoid admitting guilt in the death of Jessica) and even the murder of Salcedo was not necessarily a surprise.  What did surprise authorities however was his admission to killing twenty-eight year old Floyd Beatty in 1979 and the 1986 murder of fellow inmate Daniel Staggs.

Walker would claim that the motive for Theresa and Yolanda's murders was robbery and basically attempted to say they were home when he decided to rob the home but authorities would believe that the real motive was that a few weeks earlier Theresa had thwart his advances.  Regardless of the true motive Walker had admitted his guilt.  

To the naked eye one would possibly wonder why Walker would plead guilty not just in the murders of Theresa and Yolanda but the others, and he had apparently agreed to talk to Michigan officials about other murders he may have been involved with in Michigan and other states.  Michigan does not have the death penalty. They abolished that in 1846 and unlike so many other states they have never reinstated it.  We see in so many cases where a guilty plea in made that it is done so to prevent a death sentence but obviously that was not the case here.  After looking at Walker's long rap sheet I believe he made this plea because he had spent so much time in prison that he was more comfortable there then when he was free.  One could argue that he pleaded guilty in the Carey-Madison case because there was DNA connecting him and he would have likely been found guilty at trial.  This is true but that does not explain why he would openly confess to the other three murders and be willing to discuss others he had committed.

Walker would claim that the murder of Floyd Beatty in 1979 was a result of a murder for hire, saying someone paid him $2,000 to murder him but he has never said who that person was.  And, as I stated earlier he has refused to take accountability in the death of ten month old Jessica Madison.  I believe he did not want that murder on his rap sheet because child killers are on the lowest rung in prison.  

The only real "deal" that Walker got out of his plea agreement was being allowed back into a "normal" prison setting.  While the negotiations had been going on he had been held in segregation.  While to the average person this did not seem like much of a deal but to Walker it may have meant everything.

His plea agreement was accepted officially in January of 2011 when he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms.

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