Ex-cop enters no contest plea in estranged wife’s 1983 death

BY STACI WILSON

A 30-year-old murder case came to a close Thursday in Susquehanna County when a former sergeant with the Montrose police entered a no contest plea in the 1983 death of his estranged wife.

John Walker, 54, of Montrose, entered the plea to one count of voluntary manslaughter and was immediately sentenced by Specially Presiding President Judge Linda Wallick Miller, 43rd Judicial District, to serve 24-48 months in a county correctional facility, followed by five years probation.
There is no admission of guilt in a no contest plea.

Following a grand jury investigation, Walker had been charged in October 2012 with first degree murder in the Nov. 13, 1983 shooting death of his estranged wife Lynda Conrad Walker at the couple’s New Milford Twp. mobile home.

Lynda Walker died from a single, close-range gunshot wound to the chest.
As part of the plea deal, the murder charges were dropped in exchange for the voluntary manslaughter plea.

Defense attorney Paul Ackourey said his client has already spent 16 months in jail, and with the minimum sentence, Walker will be incarcerated for another eight months.

“He came into this process looking at a life sentence which was probably the principle motivating factor in entered in the (no contest) plea,” Ackourey said. “His family needed closure; as well as the victim’s family needed closure.”

Arresting officer Tpr. Greg Deck told the court he had been in contact with the victim’s mother, Norma Conrad, and that she was satisfied with the agreement.

Judge Miller said the resolution avoiding a trial would “save the victim’s family from having to open up 30 years of grief.”

The death had initially been ruled a suicide in 1983 by John Conarton, Susquehanna County Coroner at that time.

Walker was employed at the time of the shooting as a police officer in Great Bend. In the years since, he has been employed by several other municipalities, including Silver Lake Township and Montrose Borough. His most recent rank held on the Montrose force was sergeant and he had formerly served as the chief of police in the borough.

Walker was suspended from the Montrose police force after his arrest in 2012.

The Office of Attorney General initiated its investigation into Lynda Walker’s death in February 2010 at the request of Susquehanna County District Attorney Jason Legg based on a conflict of interest. Walker had served as a Susquehanna County Task Force detective under the supervision of the district attorney.

Evidence in the investigation was gathered by the Pennsylvania State Police and presented by the Office of Attorney General to the Statewide Investigating Grand Jury.

In 1983 Walker claimed that he came home to find his wife’s lifeless body in his bed, with his gun lying next to her.

In June 2011, at the request of the grand jury, Lynda Walker’s body was exhumed from the West Lenox Church Cemetery in Lenox Twp.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Isidore Mihalakis conducted the autopsy; looked at the path the bullet took as it passed through Lynda Walker’s body; and examined other evidence.

Dr. Mihalakis concluded that the death of Lynda Walker was not consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Rather, the manner of death was homicide, according to Dr. Mihalakis.

According to the 15-page grand jury presentment, which was accepted by Judge Miller at Thursday’s plea hearing as the basis of facts in the case, Lynda Walker’s body was found in her bed and a cocked .45 caliber handgun was partially in her right hand and a bullet wound to her left chest.

In a 1983 interview with police, Walker said the couple had been separated since July of that year but had agreed to meet that day at their home.

Walker told police the two argued after he told her he was filing for divorce and she threatened to kill herself.

Grand jury witnesses testified that they did not believe Lynda Walker was suicidal. Testimony also contradicted Walker’s 1983 statement to police about his whereabouts at the time of the death.

Laurence Braungard, who was also served as a police officer in Great Bend in 1983, told the grand jury that Walker had attended classes on suicide investigation at Lackawanna College prior to Lynda Walker’s death.

The case was prosecuted by John J. Flannery, Jr., of the Attorney General’s Criminal Prosecutions Section.

During the preliminary hearing Flannery argued, “There were two people at that trailer, one was the defendant, and one was deceased.”