A woman forgave her killer — her husband’s mistress — moments before her brutal death on her hubby’s orders, prosecutors revealed during sentencing this week.
Michael Walker, 40, a former Army medic who was stationed in Hawaii, was sentenced Monday to 35 years behind bars for plotting the November 2014 stabbing of his wife, Catherine Walker, at their home in Honolulu. Michael’s lover, Ailsa Jackson, 29, who committed the killing, was given a 30-year prison sentence.
Jackson avoided a mandatory life sentence by helping prosecutors win an indictment against Michael, which involved explaining the coded messages she exchanged with her paramour before the killing, Assistant US Attorney Tom Brady said Monday.
Michael Walker and his wife, Catherine, in an undated photo Michael Walker (left) and Ailsa JacksonCatherine’s family supported the shorter sentence for Jackson, her father, Douglas Plotz, said following the sentencing.
“We wholeheartedly forgive her,” he said. “I want Ms. Jackson to know that.”
Catherine did the same herself in her last moments, according to Brady.
“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.”
Michael would have faced a 24- to 30-year sentence under a deal with prosecutors, but US District Judge Susan Oki Mollway said she made sure he would serve a longer term than Jackson.
“Ms. Jackson wielded the knife that killed your wife,” Mollway said, addressing the former medic. “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.”
Jackson, who had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, was not taking her medication at the time of the killing because of a lapse in her health insurance, according to Hawaii News Now.
Michael met Jackson through an online dating site in September 2014 and told her he was married, prosecutors said.
However, he confessed his “deepest desire” was to have his wife gone but he couldn’t divorce her — both because of financial concerns, and the fact that he stood to receive $400,000 in life insurance, according to prosecutors.
Michael and Jackson plotted the killing both in person and in a series of emails and text messages where they used a secret code, according to Michael’s plea agreement.
Jackson fatally stabbed Catherine at the couple’s home on the Aliamanu Military Reservation on Nov. 14, 2014 — while Michael worked in the emergency room at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.
In a subsequent interrogation, Michael admitted to having multiple other affairs and called himself a “sex addict,” but pinned the blame for the stabbing on Jackson, Hawaii News Now reported.
In 2016, a military court found Michael guilty of child pornography charges that surfaced as investigators probed the murder case.
The following year, he 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, dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the Army.
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