Ex-Army medic sentenced to 35 years for his wife's murder (2025)

A former Army medic has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for arranging to have his mistress stab his wife to death in 2014.

Michael Walker, 40, was sentenced on Monday in Honolulu, Hawaii, after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in September, about a week before his trial was scheduled to begin.

He admitted to hatching the plot to have Alisa Jackson, the woman he was having an affair with, kill his wife Catherine Walker while he was working in the emergency room at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.

Jackson, who carried out the fatal stabbing at the Walkers' home on the Aliamanu Military Reservation, was also sentenced on Monday.

She received a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to murder in 2015 under a deal with prosecutors which saw her avoid a life sentence in exchange for helping secure an indictment against Michael Walker.

Jackson, 29, described in court how she stabbed Catherine Walker multiple times with a kitchen knife and then waited half an hour to ensure she was dead.

She also provided prosecutors with information about her coded messages with Michael Walker, in which they discussed having Jackson commit the killing while he was at work so that he would have an alibi.

'Our goal from the very beginning was to hold everyone responsible for Catherine´s death accountable,' Assistant US Attorney Tom Brady said Monday.

Catherine Walker's father, Douglas Plotz, said his family supports a lower sentence. 'We wholeheartedly forgive her,' he said. 'I want Ms Jackson to know that.'

Catherine Walker also forgave Jackson, Brady said. 'On the night she was stabbed to death, Jackson asked her if she forgave her,' Brady said. 'As she was being stabbed, Catherine, replied, yes.'

Under a deal with prosecutors, Michael Walker faced 24 to 30 years in prison. But US District Judge Susan Oki Mollway said she sentenced Walker to a longer term because he orchestrated the killing.

Mollway, who agreed to sentence Jackson to a range of 30 to 33 years, said she wanted to make sure Walker's sentence was longer than Jackson's.

'Ms Jackson wielded the knife that killed your wife,' Mollway said. 'And that was a terrible, terrible deed. But it does appear to me that you were in control. That she did what she did because you wanted her to. And you knew she had mental health problems.'

After meeting through an online dating site in September 2014, Michael Walker told Jackson he was married and that his 'deepest desire' was to have his wife gone, but he couldn't divorce her, prosecutors have said.

Michael Walker told Jackson he couldn't simply divorce his wife because of financial concerns and stood to receive $400,000 in life insurance, Brady said.

They plotted the killing in emails, in person and in text messages where they called each other 'daddycakes' and 'babygirl', according to Walker's plea agreement.

On November 14, 2014, they met in a military reservation's gym parking lot, where Jackson said she would kill Catherine Walker that night, Brady said.

He described how the two came up with a text messaging code to let Jackson know whether she should enter the home through a window or use a key near the back door. If Michael Walker texted, 'good', that would mean use the window and 'bad' would mean the key.

Walker texted 'bad', Brady said, and at about midnight Jackson walked to the Walkers' house at Aliamanu Military Reservation and found the key, Brady said.

Jackson said in court previously she 'went inside and grabbed a knife and went upstairs and stabbed her'.

During that 2015 testimony, Jackson revealed that she was taking medication for depression and psychosis.

Defense attorney Birney Bervar said afterward that prosecutors were basing their case on a mentally unstable woman.

Brevar said his client had been having an affair with Jackson but that he loved his wife very much and did not want her dead.

The couple had been married for more than 11 years at the time of the killing and were about to undergo in-vitro fertilization after a decade of trying to conceive a child, Brevar said.

After Monday's sentencing, MichaelWalker apologized to his wife's family.

'I love Cathy very much and I would do anything if it could bring her back,' he said.

In 2016, a military court found Walker guilty of child pornography charges that surfaced during the murder investigation.

In 2017, Walker was convicted of sexually abusing a child, physically assaulting a child, and wrongfully communicating a threat.

He was reduced in rank from sergeant to private, sentenced to 10 years confinement, and received a dishonorable discharge, the Army said.