1860
The original name of the town was Daunt, after William Daunt, a settler who opened the first store in the town in 1860.
about 0:06:34The story
Walker was born in Toledo, Ohio, on 10 August 1931.
He started an advertising company, Ad Biz Inc., and did well enough to buy a lake house on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin and earn $45,000 a year when the average salary was about $5,500. In 1967 the Chicago Tribune profiled him as one of the founders of the agency Sharon Walker and Stein. He stole a helicopter, stole a neighbour's tent and pitched it in his own yard, held up a camera shop and read poetry to the owner at gunpoint, and built a long record of thefts.
In 1969 an Illinois state trooper, Sven Ludingrin, stopped him on Route 12 for a licence plate check. Walker chatted with him, handed him a business card, then shot him in the head. The trooper survived. Detective Robert Swalwell, the trooper's best friend, concluded after going through thirty boxes of Walker's belongings that he was a textbook psychopath.
In January 1973 Walker was taken to a Chicago hospital for what was said to be internal bleeding, which he had faked by drawing his own blood and putting it into his urine samples. He wore silk pyjamas and a robe. On 31 January he said he was going to shower on another floor and walked out. He paid his bill and went west, writing taunting letters to his lawyer; one described a dinner of martinis, oysters, turtle soup and steak.
On 9 February 1973 he checked into the Marriott Inn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and befriended Taylor O. Wright III, a 41-year-old jewellery salesman. That night he beat and tortured Wright for four hours and stole his clothes, wallet, American Express card and driving licence. For the next two weeks Walker was Taylor Wright. On 21 February he checked into the Beverly Hilton on Wright's card and rented a white Lincoln Continental.
Hope Nivens, later Hope Masters, was 31 that year. She had been raised in a Beverly Hills mansion by her grandmother. She eloped to Mexico at 16, had two children by 20, then married a public relations man named Tom Masters and had a third child before that marriage ended. In 1973 she was divorced and living in Beverly Hills on $435 a month. They were planning to marry.
On 23 February 1973 Bill telephoned Hope to say that a man from the Los Angeles Times wanted to interview him for a feature on the ten most eligible bachelors in town. At 11.50 that morning a well-dressed man carrying a carved pipe walked into Daily and Associates and introduced himself as Taylor Wright. The lunch lasted four hours. That evening Hope and Bill drove three hours to River Valley Ranch in Springville, a 500-acre property in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and stayed in the guest cottage.
Taylor Wright arrived at the ranch early on the afternoon of 24 February in the white Lincoln: tall, tanned, in dark trousers, a red turtleneck and a leather jacket, carrying his pipe. They sat in the living room, Hope served wine and cheese, and she talked about her life. Late in the afternoon they went down to the river to take photographs; she slipped on the wet grass and he caught her. At dinner she was tired and dizzy from wine and painkillers, and she went to bed, asking Bill to wake her when Wright left.
That night she woke with a gun in her mouth. She rolled off the bed and ran to the living room, where Bill appeared to be asleep on the sofa. The rocking chair was empty. A voice from behind the sofa said, "He can't help you, he's dead." A man pulled her away by the hair and showed her that her hands were covered in blood. She was sick in the bathroom, dragged into the bedroom and raped. He bound her with tape, covered her with blankets and said he loved her.
Over the hours that followed he told her a story. Her husband, he said, had borrowed $42,000 from "the organisation" and had taken out a $200,000 insurance policy on her; Walker was being paid $3,600 to kill her, and the husband wanted a Sharon Tate-style bloodbath for the publicity. The two older children were to be killed and the youngest "removed". At one point he laid the gun down and fell asleep on top of her.
The next morning he moved Bill's body into a back bedroom, offered to cook breakfast and talked about buying her a white lace dress. He took photographs of her on the mountainside and drove her back to Beverly Hills, telling her that her children were still in danger and that the police could not be called until he had fixed it. For two days he stayed in her house, played with her children, cooked and drove them to school.
On 27 February she persuaded him that something had to be done about the body, and they went to her mother's house with a cover story: an intruder had killed Bill, and Walker had arrived on the Sunday, found the body, moved it and rescued her. Her stepfather reached for the telephone and said he had never broken the law and was not starting now. Walker said he would call the police himself from the Beverly Hills Hotel, and left. At about 10.30 that night officers from Porterville found Bill Ashlock's body at the ranch, wrapped in a bedspread in the back bedroom, shot in the head. At almost the same moment a man rented a white Chevrolet Impala at Los Angeles Airport, paid with Bill Ashlock's credit card and signed the dead man's name.
Tape recordings arrived in her mother's mailbox in which a voice gave a detailed account of the killing, said he had been hired to kill her and her children, promised to stand by her and ended, "I'd love to come home to you. Give the kids a kiss." Hope's mother and stepfather identified Walker from a mug shot, and Hope did too.
On 11 March 1973, at 10.25 a.m., sixteen armed officers who had kept an all-night stakeout surrounded Walker at the Howard Johnson's Motel in North Hollywood. He was registered as Taylor Wright, was carrying a .38-calibre pistol and offered no resistance. His car contained eleven pages of inventoried property, including surgical gloves, other men's clothing, credit cards, Bill's W-2 form and keys.
At the preliminary hearing in Porterville Walker acted as his own co-counsel, questioned witnesses with his handcuffs clinking and argued that there was no proof Ashlock was dead or that he had been killed in Tulare County. The prosecution refiled, but without the evidence the case against Hope collapsed. She became the star witness against him.
He again acted as his own attorney, and 98 witnesses were called, including Tom Masters, the real Taylor Wright and Hope's 13-year-old son Keith. Hope testified that she had recognised Walker in the dark room, and that she had promised anything to stay alive.
A 1977 Oakland Tribune article described his cell at Vacaville, packed with a colour television, a typewriter, law books and FBI reports, and said he spent his time writing spec scripts and helping other inmates. He claimed to have been a Korean War hero, the "polite bandit" who gave his loot to charity, a CIA operative, and the creator of Captain Crunch. An FBI profile described him as a smooth-talking big spender, irresistible to women, with an IQ of 140, capable of killing with a smile.
Hope returned to the ranch for the first time in July 1978 and then cried in her bedroom for four days. In 1981 Joan Barthol published A Death in California. In 1983 Walker sued Tulare County sheriff's officers and a deputy district attorney for $62,500. In 1985 the book became a two-part ABC miniseries with Cheryl Ladd as Hope and Sam Elliott as Walker. Hope remarried, changed her name and withdrew from public life.