Albert Johnson Walker

Albert Johnson Walker (born 1946) also known as "The Rolex Killer" (before being caught)^[1] is a Canadian criminal serving a prison term for embezzlement and murder. He is noted for murdering an Englishman whose identity he had been assuming, and for posing for years as though his daughter were his wife.

Early life[]

Originally from Paris, Ontario, Walker was a high school drop-out. After doing numerous odd jobs, he was eventually hired as a bank teller for a trust company. He also started filing other people's income tax returns. Walker quit his job at the trust company some two years later to establish his own freelance bookkeeping business, "Walker Financial Services Incorporated."

Walker Financial[]

In over a decade, Walker Financial grew into a six-branch operation with about thirty employees. In 1986, a stock deal that Walker had invested in collapsed. As a mortgage broker and financier, Walker defrauded about 70 Canadian clients of $3.2 million. In 1990, he fled to Europe with the second of his three daughters. In 1993, Walker was charged in Canada with 18 counts of fraud, theft and money laundering. Over a period of time, Walker became Canada's most wanted criminal and the second most wanted by Interpol.

Time in England[]

Walker eventually made his way to Harrogate in North Yorkshire where he lived with his daughter, who was posing as his wife. During this time, that daughter had two children, the paternity of whom has not been revealed. He changed his name to David Sibindi and began a business career with television repairman Ronald Joseph Platt. Platt, raised in Canada, wished to return to his home country. Walker bankrolled this trip, but claimed he needed Platt's driver's licence, signature stamp and birth certificate for the business. When Platt left for Canada in 1992, initially with the intent of permanently settling there, Walker assumed his identity.

Murder and conviction[]

Platt was out of money and returned to England in 1995. Walker took Platt out on a fishing trip 20 July 1996 where he murdered him, weighed him down with an anchor, and dumped his body in the sea. Two weeks later the body was discovered in the English Channel by fisherman John Copik^[2] with a Rolex wristwatch being the only identifiable object on the body.^[2] Since the Rolex movement had a serial number and was engraved with special markings every time it was serviced, British police traced the service records from Rolex. Ronald Joseph Platt was identified as the owner of the watch and the victim of the murder. In addition British police were able to determine the date of death by examining the date on the watch calendar and since the Rolex movement had a reserve of two to three days of operation when inactive and it was fully waterproof, they were able to determine the time of death within a small margin of error.^[2][3] Walker was apprehended shortly thereafter.

In the spring of 1998, Walker's preliminary hearing was held in the village courtroom in Teignmouth, England. On 27 April 1998, Walker pleaded not guilty in his murder trial in the English city of Exeter. He was found guilty in 1998 and received an automatic life sentence for murder. Had Walker not been convicted, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would have transferred him back to Canada to face his fraud charges.

Transfer to Canada[]

On 22 February 2005, The Globe and Mail reported that Walker would be transferred to a Canadian prison, where he faced additional charges of fraud, theft and money laundering.^[4]

On 23 July 2007, Walker was sentenced in Kingston, Ontario, to four years for fraud and one year concurrent for violations of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada). He started serving his life sentence in Canada at Kingston Penitentiary.^[5] When that prison was permanently closed in 2013 he was transferred to a prison in the Canadian province of British Columbia.^[6][7]

Media[]

In 1998 a book detailing the story of Albert Walker, A hand in the water: The many lies of Albert Walker, by award-winning Toronto Star journalist Bill Schiller, was published by HarperCollins.

Also in 1998, a second book detailing Walker's story, Nothing Sacred: The many lives and betrayals of Albert Walker, by award-winning Toronto Sun journalist Alan Cairns, was published by .

A made-for-TV movie documenting Walker's crimes and eventual arrest was released in 2002.

In 2002, Walker's wife, Barb (née MacDonald), authored a book entitled Dancing Devil - My twenty years with Albert Walker, detailing her life with Walker leading up to his departure from Canada.

A documentary detailing the crime called Interpol Investigates - Body Double was made by National Geographic.

A Forensic Files episode titled "Time Will Tell" details Ronald Platt's murder investigation and Albert Walker's capture.

A theatrical play by Peter Colley, Stolen Lives, The Albert Walker Story, performed at the Blyth Festival in Blyth, Ontario in 2000.

The background behind Walker's arrest in England was featured in an episode called "The Almost Perfect Murder" in the documentary series Real Crime.

In 2010 British Soap Opera Coronation Street aired a story-line that bore a striking resemblance to the Albert Walker/Ronald Platt Murder, in which character John Stape, after being struck off the Teaching Register for kidnapping a school girl steals the identity of a former colleague named Colin Fishwick in order to once again gain employment as a teacher. Fishwick had emigrated to Canada, allowing Stape to freely assume his identity. But Fishwick would soon make an unexpected u-turn and choose to return to live in the UK, uncovering Stape's deception and ultimately dies during a confrontation with Stape. Although not directly responsible for his death as Fishwick had been the victim of a savage beating by another man in an unrelated incident just days prior to their confrontation and had succumbed to his injuries, Stape chooses not to report his death, knowing he could easily be shown to have a motive for murdering Fishwick and buries his body in a construction site in order to maintain his deception.

References[]